pta: fan mail fixes dysfunctional narrativism

[Paul Czege]

It's the second scene of our game. Matt Gwinn's Russian defector to the American space program just lost a dice roll against the Producer. And we all know that means Mikael will be tossed out of the officer's club, into the rain and mud, by the NASA techs who've been harassing him. Matt had the high die, so narrates. And when he gets Mikael to the doorway, I offer a suggestion: Mikael's coat gets torn open as he's ejected, and a photo of the family he left behind in Russia lands face-up on the wet concrete. He quickly picks it up and dries the rain droplets from it. End of scene.

And Matt likes the suggestion and uses it. And it's a pretty cool scene.

So, Danielle has her budget and the audience response pool in bourbon glasses. She picks up the audience response glass and shakes it, so the pennies clink. And I'm thinking, "Yeah, she's right, I should get some fan mail for that suggestion." And then on the heels of that, "Wait, it's not my scene. I can't get any fan mail. How lame is that?" So I ask the group, "Do you think I should give Matt fan mail for using my suggestion?" And even as I was asking the question I knew I was going to do it. But Scott nodded too.

And it totally changed the way I think about PTA. We've played a shload of games that deliver narration to the players in one way or another, and always narration works out like this: the player audience makes suggestions, and the player doing the narration resists and ignores them and describes something different. What are we thinking? You want to be a Narrativist? Well, now's your fucking chance hotshot. Show me what you got. And often the player isn't that happy with what he actually narrates. Effectively, the suggestions from other players make narration harder, because they take good options off the table. When "showing what you got" is in the social contract, you can't really take suggestions from others.

So anyway, that award to Matt was the first fan mail of the game...and then no one used it differently the rest of the evening. For us right now, fan mail is for paying someone when they use your idea. And the rule that you can't get fan mail if it isn't your scene makes it work. (Otherwise Tom or Scott would have rewarded me for my suggestion that Matt used, which is how we all thought the rules were suggesting that we'd be using fan mail.) Fan mail fixes dysfunctional Narrativism!

So, I'm curious, who else has used fan mail this way in play? How consistently? And Matt Wilson, was this your design objective for fan mail...because if so, it's a freakin' sharp piece of design.

Paul

[Bankuei]

Hi Paul,

So, the role of fan mail shifts the focus from being an "author" instead towards being a "editing director"?  I could see how the second has a lot less pressure and brings the whole group into it as well.  

I've seen the same problem appear at times in other games.  Some players panic and get stuck trying to figure out how to narrate, and then if others give input, the pressure turns into NOT using those ideas.

I'm interested in hearing more.

Chris

[Matt Wilson]

First:

She picks up the audience response glass and shakes it, so the pennies clink.

Ha!

Anyway, on to questions and comments.

"... it's not my scene. I can't get any fan mail..."

... the rule that you can't get fan mail if it isn't your scene...

Unless that's a house rule, you're misunderstanding something in the game text. By the "official" rules, you can get and give fan mail at any time. There's only two restrictions: 1) the producer cannot award fan mail, not ever never nope no. 2) a player can only award one point of fan mail per scene. I don't think the guidelines for why you'd award it are much more specific than "if it makes you go yippee." It could be an internal yippee if you're the reserved type.

We've played a shload of games that deliver narration to the players in one way or another, and always narration works out like this: the player audience makes suggestions, and the player doing the narration resists and ignores them and describes something different.

Well, I can't claim the genius that you're seeing, because I haven't really had the experience you're describing above. My play experiences with the game are pretty much consistently like what Vincent describes in both the Moose and Demon threads (Moose and Demon sounds like the name of a pub, doesn't it?). I can't think of many situations where a suggestion's been waved off, and not any where it's made for a dysfunctional moment.

Unless I'm not following along with what you're saying. Is that what you're saying?

[Joshua A.C. Newman]

Yeah, we've used it in Epidemonology as reward for coming up with any cool idea. Any Protag player can give it to any other protag. Sometimes, it's a description someone comes up with, sometimes a plot idea, sometimes whole chunks of narration. We figured out that it's best to get it flying around the table. It determines your effectiveness as a player much more than the dice do.