[PTA] "Bellows-Punk" and Playing the Antagonist

[Andy Kitkowski]

Hey all, I played out this excellent session of PTA about a month ago with Ben L, and two friends who had never played PTA before.  It was a fucking blast.  However, in the sake of time (I have very little today), I'll keep it short:

Alan and Eric- Two gamers from my regular group.  They are open to all sorts of games (Alan resists a lot when it comes to a new system, but once the game begins he's usually on board and happy).  We came to the table with Ben as the producer, and no prior ideas about what kind of show, etc that we wanted.

We start shooting off ideas, including a couple lame ones.  Then all of a sudden we get into a Time-Travel kick:  A gang of scientists from the near future get pulled into the past, in Elizabethan England. I knew very little about this era personally, but Eric and Alan were big into it and knew a lot, so I hummed along.  A few historical characters appeared that I knew nothing about, namely a "Doctor Dee", who historically was apparently some sort of wizard, who cast a spell to prevent the Spanish Armada from reaching England(?).

Anyway, as we hammered out the concept, we naturally started generating character concepts, identifying with them, and slipping into their roles.  Alan played the "Rational Scientist" from the future, caught in his own experiment, whose issue (IIRC) was "Not wanting to fuck up time".  My character was a "Chick Riddick" type (issue: Trusting others), a hardened criminal who volunteered to be experimented upon (and ended up pulled back into the past).  Ben was the producer. We also decided that Queen Elizabeth and Francis Bacon would be notable NPCs.

Eric, who is undoubtedly a great actor (quick as hell on his feet), picks up the role of the antagonist, Doctor Dee (issue: Power, and Wanting Lots of It).

This is the first time I've seen someone pick up the antagonist in PTA.  I've seen "dirty/dark/gritty" protagonists and the like, but a flat out "Big Bad" type? Naw.  But it fucking rocked.

Basically, it worked well because we had set the show up so that there wasn't a lot of physical distance between Doctor Dee and the other characters.  If the other characters were talking somewhere, and Doctor Dee wanted to just show up, he could. And did. That's different than most Geek Show antagonists I've seen, who often have lairs that they live in, or if they showed up it would have meant physical violence, etc.  The antagonist was powerful and sneaky, so he could approach the other characters and get into conflicts with them, none of which resulted in actual physical violence.

One issue that I thought we'd have a problem with: Fan mail.  Literally, it was basically Alan and I on one team, and Eric on the other.  In the episode we were playing, Alan and I were opposing Eric, and vice versa (we even had a "tie up the protagonists in the dungeon" scene).  However, Eric's lines were so good, his presence so strong that we couldn't help but to give him Fan Mail at times, even when we knew it would come to bite us on the ass later.

Luckily, as time went on, we saw how we could play Doctor Dee's issue so as not to come into direct conflict with ours (Doctor Dee wanted to control the time travellers, as he thought that they were "demons" that he summoned during a ritual... Later, after some time, we were able to show him that we weren't lying, that we were from the future... and gave him some possibilities to work with us at times to gain power).  Now, we didn't completely change him from an antagonist into a protagonist or anything like that, but we did see the character change and develop a little over the space of the adventure.

The other thing that worked for us was that Eric's issue wasn't just "Kill the Time Travellers", it was something dark/evil- And while it put him in conflict with us a lot, it didn't necisserily mean that he had to screw with us at every opportunity.  I think this is important, because if the antagonist isn't willing to stay fluid, or picks an iron-clad "must destroy the others" issue, then it wouldn't have worked out as great as it did.

Anyway, I just wanted to make a call out to other PTA players: Try to set up your own game so that one of you is playing the Antagonist, complete with your own scenes, henchmen, etc.  I'm thinking it'll really spice up your game, tighten the conflict, and do some really interesting play with Fan Mail.

-Andy

Note: BellowsPunk refers to Francis Bacon's laboratory- After meeting us, he proceeds to do his own time travel research.  And builds a half-magic half-tech time machine, disappearing in an explosion- We realized that they didn't have steam tech back then, but some mechanics ran on bellows and the like, hence the name of Elizabethan Engine Magic: Not SteamPunk, but BellowsPunk. :-)

[Andy Kitkowski]

Ahh, one more vignette:  IIRC (it's been a month, I'm kicking myself for not writing this up earlier when I had more time) the episode we played was:
Alan 1, Andy 2, Eric 3.  I think.  It was a 5-episode arc, and it was determined that my issue came up in episode 3.  I later decided that during that episode I must have really screwed over the scientist/comerades in some way, and regretted it ever since (having turned from a "bad girl" to a "sorta good/ok girl").  Since we were only playing this one adventure, the Season Finale, I actually made references to that event:

"I'm sorry- I never meant for it to happen, and I'll never forgive myself for (thinking for a sec) ... uh... That Thing I Did to You in Episode Three."

Not elegant, but it definitely saved time while keeping us on track- It didn't matter what happened, I did something bad and am trying to apologize for it. So we just referred to some events as "That thing that happened in Episode X".

Also, on a lighter moment we also decided on a theme song for the show (and a montage): So as not to make the show too cool (reflecting on the Star Trek: Enterprise theme song), we decided that it was Cindi Lauper's hit "Time After Time", sung by Michael Bolton.

During long breaks between scenes (some needed to go to the bathroom, etc), we would even sing the line, "Time After Time" in a cheesy faux-NBC drama intro Michael Bolton voice.

It was 4th wall stuff like this that lightened the game up, made it feel like a real TV show... and again made it fun as hell.

[Chris Goodwin]

"I'm sorry- I never meant for it to happen, and I'll never forgive myself for (thinking for a sec) ... uh... That Thing I Did to You in Episode Three."

Dude!  You should have come up with what it was you did on the spot.  That would have worked awesomely as a "Previously on..." blurb (kinda like a "Next week on..." blurb).  That way if you ever played out episode 3 you would have had something to throw in there!

Edit:  This was supposed to come across as "Hey, this would have been cool!" rather than a direct criticism.

[Andy Kitkowski]

First, I want to apologize for the organization of my posts above: When I'm in the zone, I basically post with perfection. When I'm under stress and time constraints, I tend to ramble. But I figure it's better to ramble with one or two points of direction than to keep it to myself indefinitely.

Anyway,

Edit:  This was supposed to come across as "Hey, this would have been cool!" rather than a direct criticism.

Absolutely, I gotcha, no problem. :-)

Dude!  You should have come up with what it was you did on the spot.  That would have worked awesomely as a "Previously on..." blurb (kinda like a "Next week on..." blurb).  That way if you ever played out episode 3 you would have had something to throw in there!

The only problem with that is something that I didn't mention above: Alan and Eric are REALLY... what's the word... distractable? Picky? Focused on the minutiae? Super-intellectual/Academic? As we were talking about the setting, they got into a 3-minute discussion on Elizabethan medicine until Ben and I got them back on course.  When a "new element" (espeically with the time period) came up, both of them stopped to "roll it over" in their minds, almost Tasting this new Fact/Event, as to see how it would fit in with the concept off the time period, the history, and the TV show in general (Simulationist, perhaps?).  So Ben and I were a little irritated with this at times, but knew that they had to do this, at least at first, because it's how they were "getting into" and understanding the game.  After a while, we were able to subtly get side-discussion crushed or moved back into the concept of the game.

When I first brought up the "That Thing that Happened in Episode 3", Alan's eyes lit up. He SO wanted to go there, and we even began to quickly formulate a situation in which I screwed them over (in fact, I think we did hammer out something quickly in about 30 seconds right then and there), but the discussion of "What happened then" started to drag on, and take away from our gaming Now, so we just left it at that and got back to the immediate scene.

Different group of people, or same people after playing two or more sessions? Totally there. As it was, we had to eject that notion to get on with the game at hand.

-Andy

[Chris Goodwin]

The only problem with that is something that I didn't mention above: Alan and Eric are REALLY... what's the word... distractable? Picky? Focused on the minutiae? Super-intellectual/Academic? As we were talking about the setting, they got into a 3-minute discussion on Elizabethan medicine until Ben and I got them back on course.  

...

When I first brought up the "That Thing that Happened in Episode 3", Alan's eyes lit up. He SO wanted to go there, and we even began to quickly formulate a situation in which I screwed them over (in fact, I think we did hammer out something quickly in about 30 seconds right then and there), but the discussion of "What happened then" started to drag on, and take away from our gaming Now, so we just left it at that and got back to the immediate scene.

I have been there.  Totally understood.  I have to beware of that sort of thing because I don't have a strong personality, and it's hard for me to get the group back on task when I'm GMing and something like that happens.

[Danny_K]

I think it works either way.  People are always watching TV shows out of order, so it's not at all unusual to see an offhand reference to something that happened five shows ago but isn't fully explained.  

Antagonism is a great idea, by the way.  That would help get around the "team of nice guys" problem that's come up in other PTA games (in other words, not enough interpersonal conflict to really drive the show).