[PTA] Endgame - pilot episode and first time experiment...

[craytonc]

This last weekend marked the pilot episode of our new game, "Endgame." Overall I have to say I was pleasantly surprised by how the session went, though there was definitely some issues to address.

A little information on my group first. I am one of the few GM's for the gaming group, and have been for the past 13 years or so. I've always been interested in the thought and practice of role-playing, but didn't find my way here to the Forge until very recently. Instead most of my reading and testing was done with the mainstream, "big-boy" systems. Those systems never quite felt perfect to me - or to the players - so we'd generally end up changing them quite a bit. We tended towards rules-light, with heavy immersion for the players and most of the creative burden on the GM.

My players wanted to play. While some of them have GM'd before, none were particularly interested in the theory of gaming, or how/why things worked, etc. They knew nothing about the differences between Task-Resolution and Conflict-Resolution, or GNS, etc.

Well... in reading more and more blogs on the hobby, I found my way to the Forge, and started poking around. It started with me reading about Dogs in the Vineyard, and buying it. After looking around, I bought all of the Sorcerer books, and then picked up PrimeTime Adventures.

I knew if I wanted to try and expand the group's horizons, I'd have to do it a little at a time. I had just been in the process of working together a new game, and wasn't happy with the system I was going to be using. So... I started looking harder and harder at PTA. We didn't go through the typical show construction with all hands aboard. They didn't want that, they had already read some of the background info I had put together and wanted to play that.

Characters had already been built in the old system for two of the three, so chargen went pretty quickly and smoothly. The biggest disconnect there was the concept of Connections. They could only see them as contacts, which I told them are rolled up into their Edges. They're still having problems with the concept, but are getting more used to it.

Then we got together last Sat. night and played. We used the card draw alternate instead of dice, and ended up walking while playing, as we normally do. I have a capsule of how play went on the Producer's Blog (one of two websites I have for the game). But here were the basic good and bad:

I ran into what Ron calls Conflict Block. It wasn't as bad as I had thought, mainly due to having just read the wonderful threads for Epidemonology and Heritage. They helped me immensely! But there were some times when it felt hard to find a conflict for a scene, or when (with hindsight) I realized I should have had one.

The guys were not used to being more than just players, but active participants in the world. They were at first against knowing more than what their characters would know, and therefore had a hard time setting scenes and creating narration if they won a conflict. Halfway through we took a break and I explained to them some of the "secrets" that were going on, and also showed them through antagonist scenes, and things started to smooth out.

The focus of PTA is another thing we all have problems with. I used to run games very much in the way of "A slice of life." Now we are all trying to think in the focused terms of PTA – each scene is just that, a scene. We don't need to see the unimportant stuff, so cut it. We started to get the hang of it a little by the end, and I think the next session will run much better.

All in all, we enjoyed ourselves. It was a challenge to all the baggage we had been carrying, and we were pleased with the change in venues – so to speak. So much so that we are considering changing our long running Robotech game to PTA as well.

So in short, I just wanted to thank all of you guys for opening doors for us that we wouldn't have even thought of. Things had started to get stale, but I think now they're looking up.

Now for a little actual info on the game: The show is a modern horror/drama set in an alternate New Orleans. The group is all of an investigative bent – Private Eye, Detective, Independent Photo-Journalist. We started with a mini-series that would let us know the characters, world and system. There is a B-story that is running throughout the entire series; it's this B-story that gives the show its name. God and Lucifer are both on earth, neither remembering who they are. There is another group of ancient gods that are attempting to break through to this plane, and it is their plot that has trapped God and Lucifer like this (in the forms of two teenaged girls to be exact).

The players are in a position to get involved in the fight by the end of the mini-series. Right now they know something big is going on, but not how big. The show is set to run a few seasons while the girls are in high-school, and slowing remembering who they are. The players will be in a position to influence things, and how the world ends is going to be kind of up to them.

I have the show's "bible" online at http://endgame.editme.com  All the pages have open comments, as are the pages for the Producer's Blog at http://endgame-rpg.blogspot.com, which is also where I'll be posting reviews of each night's sessions. I've only got the capsule up there now for the pilot, but I hope to have more in-depth information up soon.

Thanks again for the help guys, and anyone whose bothered to read this long post!  :)

[ScottM]

Sounds like a good game and a very good transition.  It took us several sessions of Dogs in the Vineyard to get to decent conflict resolution and to look beyond the blinders of the character.

What issues did your players pick?

Scott

[craytonc]

The issues for the three protagonists fit really well into what we ended up doing, and I can see them really working well as we get more comfortable with bringing them up. We found ourselves spending more time on the plot than on character issues, but mostly because we were still feeling everything out.

The Private Eye - Marc Dreven - is a character from an older game. He's jumped planes of existance a few times (and games), and has ended up living parts of his life over again because of it. So when he got to this world, he made decisions based on what he had seen in alternate planes. They didn't work out. So his issues is (Atonement) "fixing the problems that he's caused." He's also a bit of a boyscout, so he is always meddling in things, and usually making more mistakes there, so it will probably be an ongoing issue.

The Detective - Harry Breaux - is an older cop, close to retirement. His issue is (self-worth) "Keeping up with the young dogs," i.e. all these new, young detectives that think he is obsolete.

The Photo-Journalist - Dylan Foster - is an ex-Army ranger, who lost one of his legs in the war. He fell into the new job as a way to keep close to some of his military friends, and because it was a hobby he was good at. His issue is (Self-Worth) "Trying to find my place in the world, now that feel lost (being outside of the military)."

To cut and paste the end conflict out of the capsule review I put up on my blog, you can see how it turned out for at least two of them:

Fight in church – ends with close-up of Cadence (this was the coolest scene.)
They get to the Cathedral, and there is no sight of the blonde. They start to walk towards the doors, when they see the cab pull up and Jack step out. They ignore him, and quickly walk inside.

Once inside, they look again for the girl. They don't see her, and they hear the door open behind them. We see Jack stick his fingers in the holy water in order to mockingly genuflect, they hear the hiss as the water burns him/turns to steam.

They start heading towards the back of the church, only to find themselves trapped in the hallway leading to Father Tomas' office. Jack corners them.
He realizes that they're missing one person, and says that they should all head back to someplace they can talk.

Father Tomas walks up, and asks if there is a problem. Jack mocks him and his faith. Tomas pulls out some brass knuckles – crosses molded into them – and cold cocks him.

Conflict = Harry – if you succeed you stand your ground and help do enough damage to Jack (we all decided we wanted him to survive for at least another episode) that he has to leave, thereby proving your worth to yourself that you're still in the game (his issue is self worth because of his age). If you fail, you get hurt and prove to yourself that you're getting to old for this. Dylan – if you succeed you hurt Jack, and prove to yourself that you can still help people, even if you are no longer in the military (his issue is also self worth, after losing his leg and leaving the military he feels lost). If you fail you question whether this is something that you should do, after all what is someone like you doing trying to play hero?

Harry fails, Dylan succeeds. Jack shakes off the blow, and tosses Tomas like a ragdoll. Dylan shoots him in the knee, but he doesn't even show he feels it. He turns towards them, and Harry tries to hit him with the charm that Marc gave him. Jack knocks it out his hand, breaking his wrist in the process. He grabs him by the throat – Harry fires his entire magazine into his chest to no effect. It's about to be lights out for Harry.

Dylan realizes the gun isn't going to help, and Harry's almost done for. So he grabs the big wooden crucifix off the wall next to him, and breaks it across Jack's face – which he notices. He drops Harry, who lays there thinking "I'm getting to old for this" and goes to his knees.

Dylan, thinking he might be able to end it, goes to use the broken end of the crucifix to stab Jack through the chest. Instead Jack reaches up and grabs it, the point going through his hand and smoke starting to rise from the wound. Jack stands up, and Dylan thinks it might be curtains.

But then he sees someone walk around the corner behind Jack. It's the blonde. Jack does the full on exorcist head twist to look at her. She hisses at him, very quietly under her breath. Dylan's not even sure if he heard it correctly. Jack flinches, does the full on exorcist twist to look back at Dylan, and calmly announces "Be seeing you around."

He walks away, circling away from Cadence. We end the scene on a close-up of her.

[JMendes]

Hey, :)

This is great stuff. I was talking with Rogerio (one of the players in our PtA group) earlier today, and we reached the conclusion that PtA is a great "mould-breaker" for all those RPGers out there who want to take a big step towards the newer and fresehr side of gaming out there, but don't know how...

I share your joy! :)

Cheers,

J.

[Yokiboy]

"Be seeing you around."

Great stuff all around. I'm just coming off a PTA campaign (season) that didn't go so well. You definitely seem to have gotten the game better than we did, but we are ready to try it again. I enjoyed that fight scene, and how you set up the conflict with individual stakes, we simply never saw that as a possibility. We ended up focusing too much on the story, not enough on the characters issues.

Keep it coming,

Yoki

[craytonc]

The main issue I've been thinking about, and which I realized I didn't cover in my original post (I probably shouldn't be doing this from work, makes it easier to think!) is trying to get the players to feel more comfortable with the group ownership of the world, and the creative freedoms and necessities that they are now faced with.

This particularly showed up in narration rights. For the most part I won narration, but the few times I didn't they floundered and eventually passed narration rights back to me.

The other threads I've read really helped out in setting conflicts and understanding what conflicts should be about, but I haven't seen anything on trying to overcome a stodgy old gamer's habits of wanting the "GM" to call the shots after the dice rolls. Since this is really the first time we've tried something of this nature on this scale, any ideas or pointers would help - even just pointers to other threads that might help. I've tried searching, but no luck so far.

I have one other smaller issue I've been thinking about, but as it deals strictly with PTA I think I'll start it in that board instead of clogging this one.

Thanks again all!

[Yokiboy]

We had some trouble in this regards as well, in our first attempt at playing PTA. My players didn't know how much authority they had, or how far they could take the story as part of their narrative - and I could only relay the few examples from the rule book. I too would like to see this discussed further.

TTFN,

Yoki