[Prime Time Adventures] Unseen

[jporrett]

Last Friday I ran the pilot episode of my PTA game.  The show is called Unseen, and if you want to read the long and tiring write up I did of the game, you can check it out here:

http://esotericmurmurs.blogspot.com/2005/02/unseen-pilot.html

I wanted to  post here some observations and comments about the game and the system.

First off, the game had 18 Scenes (13 plot, 5 character), but only 7 Conflicts.  I think I should have pushed for more conflict, but the show is an investigation kind of show and I didn't want to roll every single time the protagonists wanted to find something out.  I choose only things that I deemed crucial.  I decided to follow Vincent's advice from Dogs; Say yes or roll the dice.  It was easier to just say yes most of the time.  That said, my Budget of 18 was down to 2 at the end, mainly because I got them back when players spent them and succeeded on their rolls.

In the beginning of the game there was a bit of confusion for my players, and me for that matter.  None of them have ever played this kind of game.  I've run some Nine Worlds, but that game was very short.  I have to give them credit though, they really caught on quick and did some pretty amazing things.

In a few scenes that were requested, I just let the requester narrate the whole damn thing.  One was a scene showing the bad guy in his lair.  The player, Randy, said he wanted a scene to show the audience the villain.  I said sure, and he asked if he could just narrate it.  I had nothing in mind so I let him cut loose.  It was very cool.  I just sat back, keeping my "conflict detecters" up, and let him go.

There were some happy accidents that helped to create the plot.  Tarot cards had been introduced into the story, and James, the player that introduced them, went and grabbed a deck to show us the cards he had in mind.  The card of the Hanged Man happened to show Odin and I ran with that theme.  In fact our villain ended up being called Odin.  This sort of thing can happen in other games, but it really worked in our game.

Fan-mail took a while to catch on.  I had to remind them a few times, but eventually it started to flow.  James was the king of fan-mail.  He must have gotten four or five points.  If I could give it out, he'd have had more!   He was the king of coming up with good scenes and visuals.  Though, by the end of the game, he only had one left to carry over.

One thing we really really liked was the "Next Time On..." part.  We have some great material for the next game.  

Overall, my players really liked the game, and we're set to play again in March (we only get together once a month to game.)  I like it because a lot of the pressure for coming up with the plot was taken from me and spread among the players.  Great game Matt!

[Frank T]

Seems PtA is really a great success, judging from the number of Actual Play threads.

I find it interesting how the number of Conflicts seems to vary. In our game, too, we had Conflicts in only a good half of the scenes. That was quite okay with us, the rest was dialogues ment to show character developement, some exposition, and a little color.

I had also proposed allowing little color scenes which one player just narrates, but the group wanted to play "by the book" and so we skipped that. Seems to have worked pretty well for you, though. I will ask them to reconsider. After all, every good TV show has scenes about the villain and his plans, right?

With the Fan Mail, have you considered using tokens and placing them in the middle of the table, where they are visible to every player all the time? That should be enough to remind them.

[Emily Care]

Hi there,

Sounds like a good game. I especially like the use of Tarot cards.  Using tokens for fanmail works well for us, though we had to start using a cup to distinguish the current use pools from the ones that go away forever.

I had also proposed allowing little color scenes which one player just narrates, but the group wanted to play "by the book" and so we skipped that. Seems to have worked pretty well for you, though. I will ask them to reconsider. After all, every good TV show has scenes about the villain and his plans, right?

It seems like PtA is extremely custmizable in this aspect.  In our group we've always had all the scenes introduced by the players, and everybody suggests things all the time.  It was a shock to me to see that in the rules the players request & the GM describes a scene.  I suspect every game group will pick there own place of comfort. If Matt felt like making this a dial, I think that would capture the diversity that folks will probably put in to the game, and maybe give people ideas about doing things they wouldn't have thought about otherwise, going either in the direction of more or less collaborative.

best,
Emily