PTA: revised budget and fan mail

[Matt Wilson]

Here's a fix to the current troubles I've had with awarding fan mail and maintaining a dice ecosystem.

My primary concern is reward and dice systems that promote the right kind of play, but I thought a lot about Mike's wariness of traits with names that don't match their use as much as they suggest. So maybe with this I've killed two birds with 1d10.

Here's the feedback I'm looking for: 1) does the reward system promote a good experience for everyone at the table? 2) Does the economy of budget/fan mail seem like it will flow well back and forth?

The producer starts each episode with a budget. The budget is used to beef up conflicts and make them more difficult. My thought is that the producer says "this conflict is big, let's film from multiple angles and add expensive special effects." That sort of thing. The producer gets 1 free die to roll in a conflict, and can draw up to 5 additional dice from the budget to make the conflict more dramatic/difficult.

Big conflicts draw in the audience, right? So each point of budget spent on a conflict goes into a pool of potential fan mail. During play, any player at the table except the producer can reward cool actions by taking a die (or chip or whatever you're using as a counter) from the pool and giving it to that player. There will be some rules regarding exactly when fan mail can be awarded (such as not dumping it in a player's lap right as a conflict begins), and how much at a time. This is a tool for players to say "now that's the stuff I like in the game," and I figure doling it out for anything and everything will be lame for everyone involved.

When a player spends fan mail to augment a conflict roll, it's analagous to the actor or writer saying "look man, the fans have spoken, they want Dude to get the girl." Each point of fan mail spent goes back into the producer's budget pool, because a big fan base keeps the ratings up, and big ratings help the producer procure a big budget for the show.

I'm anticipating that the budget will eventually dwindle, as not every chip in the fan mail pool will be spent, so it will give the producer a measure of when to wind up the episode and give little nudges in that direction.

So, to recap: 1) does the reward system promote a good experience for everyone at the table? 2) Does the economy of budget/fan mail seem like it will flow well back and forth?

Thanks in advance.

[Mike Holmes]

The producer starts each episode with a budget. The budget is used to beef up conflicts and make them more difficult. My thought is that the producer says "this conflict is big, let's film from multiple angles and add expensive special effects." That sort of thing. The producer gets 1 free die to roll in a conflict, and can draw up to 5 additional dice from the budget to make the conflict more dramatic/difficult.

That sounds just right. The producer can create a minimum conflict for free, but has to spend more on any conflict which is more difficult. Given the dice curves that sounds just right to me.

Big conflicts draw in the audience, right? So each point of budget spent on a conflict goes into a pool of potential fan mail. During play, any player at the table except the producer can reward cool actions by taking a die (or chip or whatever you're using as a counter) from the pool and giving it to that player. There will be some rules regarding exactly when fan mail can be awarded (such as not dumping it in a player's lap right as a conflict begins), and how much at a time. This is a tool for players to say "now that's the stuff I like in the game," and I figure doling it out for anything and everything will be lame for everyone involved.

That's pretty neat in general. Basically there's a flow of PC success equivalent to the amount of conflict that's going on in general.

When a player spends fan mail to augment a conflict roll, it's analagous to the actor or writer saying "look man, the fans have spoken, they want Dude to get the girl." Each point of fan mail spent goes back into the producer's budget pool, because a big fan base keeps the ratings up, and big ratings help the producer procure a big budget for the show.

This all sounds really good, but I think it might be a tad incestuous. That is, it's all very closely involved back and forth. What if you rolled each die spent again, to see if it went back into the other pool? If they roll even, they're removed from play instead? That way you can't be sure that every expenditure will be completely successful at generating energy in the other pool. In fact that would cause a rapid rate of decline which would make players think more about when to use the dice. You could reduce the rate of decline by making them "fail" to go over to the other pool on a roll of a 1 or something.

In this case, you'd want to give the producer more budget dice at the beginning of each episode in order to refresh the declining overall pool. In fact, if you want to get tricky, you could institute a "ratings" stat for the show overall that has to do with how successful the conflicts are back and forth - this then would determine the budget as the show went forward. Bad shows would eventually lose their budget and get cancelled. Lot's of things you could do with this.

I'm anticipating that the budget will eventually dwindle, as not every chip in the fan mail pool will be spent, so it will give the producer a measure of when to wind up the episode and give little nudges in that direction.

Again, this would be automatically facilitated by the dwindling mechanics. A show would have it's own momentum based on how players played. The big thing would be the player rewards - if players don't give them, then things slow down fast. This is a good effect, because players will need to have some incentive to hand fan mail to other players.
This might counteract the incentive not to give it because you don't want to face off against other players with more.

Mike

[Matt Wilson]

What if you rolled each die spent again, to see if it went back into the other pool? If they roll even, they're removed from play instead?

That'd be easy enough. You could roll a different color for your fan mail dice, and if they generate successes, they go back into the budget. Sort of supports the analogy as well.

Cool.

[Mike Holmes]

Why the different colors?

Mike