[PtA] Heritage - A Spotlight Episode (again, long)

[JMendes]

Hey, :)

(I've been meaning to write this up since it happened, last Saturday, but irregular sleep and connectivity problems have precluded it...)

Last Saturday, we had another episode of Heritage, and it was our first spotlight episode, specifically, Micahel Addler's spotlight. As you may recall, his issue was greed, and the previous episode, he was confronted with the possibility of "spying" for unknown forces, and maybe even stealing an object from the team for them.

In this week's episode, the team was sent to Osaka, Japan, to recover a stolen artifact, a tanto (think knife-sized katana) allegedly used by the old shoguns to gain power. Michael was duly instructed to obtain said artifact.

Michael got to spot the Bad Guy That Had Stolen The Artifact and got priviledged information as to his whereabouts. He then proceeded to sneak into the bad guy's house and recover the artifact for himself. A fight ensued, a gun went off in the darkness, and Michael came away with the object.

We had an interesting moment with the rest of the team confronting Michael about his suspicious goings on, which Michael, with his increased Screen Presence, was unable to shrug off. (Everyone else was at 1 for this episode. It was 'All About Eve', so to speak...) However, suspicion was cast, and so the group decided to follow Michael, as he made his way out to hand the object to the aforementioned unknown forces.

Michael's player Ricardo had previously created a "Next Week On" where he was to be confronted by his nemesis, after having stolen the thingie. I switched things around, putting his nemesis in league with the unknown forces, and weaving the "Next Week On" into that. It caught some of the players by surprise in a cool way and gave new meaning to Michael's greed. So, a new fight scene put Michael in a bad position, just in time to be saved by the rest of the team. Right before this rescue, an implication is thrown about that Simon (the nemesis) may have been involved with Rowan's husband's disappearance, setting the stage for next week's episode, which is Rowan's spotlight.

As the team arrived in the States again, we discover that Michael hadn't been being greedy at all, but rather working behind the scenes with Mortimer to figure out who the unknown forces were. We learned that the big man was suprised to have his own son working against the foundation. (Recall that Michael's nemesis is Mortimer's son and John's cousin.) We also learn that Simon has some sort of dark influence over his father, setting the stage for more interesting stuff between Michael and his nemesis.

Finally, Michael was confronted with the fact that he had indeed killed the bad guy and the Japanses government was attempting to extradite him for it. Antonio (Val's player) called for a cool scene between Michael and John where they would bond a bit and establish a courtroom scene where John was defending Michael against this extradition. In this courtroom scene, we heard, for the first time, the words "my character will..." spoken in the third person by a player. (Not "my character would...", that hapens all the time.)

So, we had a chase scene, some fight scenes, some emotional scenes and a courtroom scene. Frankly, I don't see what more one might want out of a TV show! :)

Michael was redefined through the revelations in this episode, and Ricardo changed his issue to revenge, in order to justify his continued pursuit of his nemesis, even though greed is no longer involved. Michael is certainly an ambitious dude, but we have learned that he wouldn't betray his friends for his greed, contrary to what we had thought before, which was cool.

Regarding Creative Agenda, I was looking out for more narrativism, but it didn't surface. Sure, at a couple of times, Michael was put before a bang, which I'm sure Ricardo enjoyed, but overall, session CA remained a very solid Sim, with protagonist issues adding strong and interesting color to the TV-ey situations. Fan mail awards abounded, but they were given out for cool lines, cool framing, cool filming and imagery, and cool narration, with issue exploration accounting for very small fraction of the total awards. I don't know if this is drift or not, as the rules aren't all that clear on when and why to award fan mail, but as it is, this is what is working for us.

Next Friday, after roleplayer's meetup, we'll be doing Rowan's spotlight. Her issue is grief over her mussing husband, presumed dead, and a former member of H1. The "Next Week On"s are all juicy as hell, and it should make for interesting stuff. Ricardo's character is back to a lowly 1 screen presence, and since he is the more narrativist of the group, I'm half expecting him to play a solid support role and help bring out some bangs for Ana, Rowan's player, to deal with. We'll have to wait and see.

And yet, for all that, the ultimate peak of satisfaction seemed to slip away a bit again, though this time, it went the other way. Where before we were all a bit lost as to how PtA is supposed to work, this time we were all a bit into the mechanical too much. What I mean by that is that a lot of times during the session, people got into 'stakes arguments' (the opposite of Ron's Conflict Block) whereby suggestions for appropriate stakes were being thrown left and right and drawn out discussion ensued, and immersion (the good kind, not the vicious kind) suffered for it. I wasn't expecting it, and so I wasn't quick enough to pounce on it, but I certainly have learned to recognize it.

Anyway, I had promised to post my impressions after our first spotlight episode, and here they are. PtA is really working out well for us. We need more practice with it in order to keep those little snags like the above from getting at the fun, but it was only our fourth session, so time is on our side. :)

Cheers,

J.

[Andrew Norris]

Thanks for continuing to talk about your game here. I think watching your group get a handle on PTA is going to be really helpful when I finally run it, and this series of threads is going to be a useful reference.

It sounds like the stakes arguments are a consequence of your group getting a better handle on the game; it seems like a pretty good problem to have "too much" input from the players on forming the conflicts, considering it seemed in your first games that it was hard to get them to set the stakes. I imagine it's an element of the game that will stand out less as the comfort level continues to rise.

[JMendes]

Hullo, :)

Andrew, that's precisely my take on it. I wanted to post about it here, more as a possible heads up for future PtA first timers than anything else.

Cheers,

J.