Mixed questions

[Jonas Ferry]

I'm going to try PTA on Saturday, with the prep session, but I have three questions.

In another thread the question of protagonist vs. protagonist conflicts was left unanswered. Since the players are the ones driving the game, and they do it mainly through their characters, it would seem like a common kind of conflict to have.

I suppose it's as easy as using their screen presence against each other with the producer spending budget (but not the free die) as usual, right?

My next question is on players playing non-protagonist characters. I suppose there's nothing wrong with letting the players do that, if their protagonist is not present? I can see reasons why you would want to restrict the players to their protagonists and reasons why you wouldn't, so I'm basically wondering how people do it in their games.

The last question is on fan mail. Is it alright for players to award fan mail in the middle of a conflict, just because the other player needs one? That would feel like a cheap way of using them, and I'm thinking of restricting fan-mail awarding to before and after conflicts. Am I unnecessarily seeing a "problem" where there's none?

[JMendes]

Hey, Jonas, :)

I'll try my hand at this.

PvP conflicts are something that I was dreading as I started to get into PtA, but I've grown over that, and now we hardly have a session where we don't have one. Usually, as producer, I simply keep out of the die rolling, unless I am willing to establish independent stakes for the two Prots. If I am, then I roll the die plus budget as normal, treating it as a 3-way conflict rather than PvP. This requires coming up with two sets of win-loose stakes for each prot, which is sometimes hard. When the stakes we come up don't make sense, I back out of it entirely, and just let the Prots roll agains each other.

Players playing non-prots is something we never got into, and I don't see any reason to go that way. Then again, I don't see any reason not to, either. YMMV.

As for Fan Mail, yes and no. Presumably, there should be some sort of reason for the award, other than, hey, the guy needs it. Of course, declaring cool stakes can be a justifiable cause for award, so I don't see any problem with awarding during the conflict per se.

Hope to have made sense. :)

Cheers,

J.

[Jonas Ferry]

Hello JMendes,

I've read your Actual Play threads; very interesting and useful stuff.

Huh, three sides to the conflict. Yeah, that could work. I was planning on just adding my budget dice to the side I wanted to win, basically siding with the protagonist whose victory would help the show the most. I suppose you could use either version, depending on the situation.

On playing non-protagonists, that's something we've picked up in our current Ars Magica game. We play without a GM, with players suggesting scenes. We all have one or two spotlight characters, but if they're not present we play less important people to help out and feel involved. I think we've become so used to it by now that I would actively have to stop people from doing it, and I'm wondering if there's a reason to keep the players to their protagonists. If they're only allowed to play them, they would need to find reasons for them to enter the scene, for example by paying a fan-mail die, otherwise they would probably be content with playing non-protagonists instead.

But, yeah, you made sense. Thanks for your answers.

[Matt Wilson]

Hey Jonas:

I think Mendes has a good answer. If you take sides in a PVP conflict, you've all but guaranteed that that side will win.

In such a case, I'd try very hard to make the stakes not be a black and white situation. So that if you (producer) win, there are unfortunate consequences for both protagonists.

Let's say the conflict is Sarah and Jim fighting over the attention of their boss at work. What's at stake is maybe "who gets a raise" or "who gets promoted," but if the producer wins, maybe it means that they earn disapproval. You don't need any specifics, as the narrator will figure that out, but now you have three possible outcomes.

And that's applicable to any conflict, really.

[Jonas Ferry]

Oh yeah, I'm still trying to wrap my head around the concept of protagonists vs. the producer as well. When the producer wins, something bad should happen to the protagonist, but if I'm taking a side what will happen and who will narrate? I agree that a third side seems like the way to go, if I want both of them to fail for some reason.

I suppose we could then have three possible results:

a) Protagonist 1, Protagonist 2, Producer. Someone will narrate how none of the protagonists suffer the bad stuff the producer proposed and how Protagonist 1 gets their way.

b) Protagonist 1, Producer, Protagonist 2. Someone will narrate how one of the protagonists get their way and how the other suffer from both the first protagonist's and the producer's goals.

c) Producer, Protagonist 1, Protagonist 2. Someone will narrate how both protagonists suffer.

This is probably obvious to anyone who has played the game, but I'm thankful for the chance to clear it before actually playing. Do I have it right, is this how you would do it?

[Matt Wilson]

Hey Jonas:

I don't understand why you're writing out the players in certain orders.

I'll give you a bigger response on protag vs protag tomorrow after I've got some coffee in me. But in the meantime let me know what you mean by the a, b, and c things.

[Jonas Ferry]

I could've been clearer. It's the resulting order of the participants in the conflict, with the left-most having the most successes, then the middle one and the right-most one the least. In (a) Protagonist 1 could have 4 successes, Protagonist 2 could have 3 successes and the Producer 0.

Let's say the starting conflict is "Who gets a raise, 1 or 2?" and the Producer enters with "You earn the disrespect of your co-workers". In (a) Protagonist 1 would get a raise and keep the respect of the others, while Protagonist 2 wouldn't get a raise but still keep the respect. In (b) and (c) the order is different, one of them would still get a raise, but one or both of the Protagonists would earn the disrespect as well.

[Matt Wilson]

Yeah, you have it right. At least, that's how I'd do it.

And this subject is one more thing to add to the eventual rules revisions. Maybe even an example similar to this one.

[Danny_K]

My next question is on players playing non-protagonist characters. I suppose there's nothing wrong with letting the players do that, if their protagonist is not present? I can see reasons why you would want to restrict the players to their protagonists and reasons why you wouldn't, so I'm basically wondering how people do it in their games.

This is what people have been doing in the online PTA game I'm running -- it just seems natural to have people throw in bits of business, especially with their Contacts.  It makes me a little nervous as Producer, but so far it's working fine.