Just Finished My First Read Through.... Several Questions

[Doc Blue]

I recieved my copy of PTA in the mail yesterday (great service, btw!) and have been reading through it in my spare time since.

As others have said, this may well be the game I've been looking for all my life....  Well maybe not exactly, but close.

My one core player, currently, is my wife. Not a traditional gamer by any sense, but I was able to hook her with the D6 Hercules and Xena game.  Since running that game, I've used a 'Television Show' Framing Device to some extent to most games I have run.  I find the frame to be useful for helping players 'envision' the action.

That said, I am a tad nervous with how she will adjust to the additional responsibilities PTA places on the Players. In an experiment with Donjon, she (and my other players) expressed discomfort with the player freedom in that game. Which leads to...

Question #1: To what degree does PTA work or not work if not all the players agree to or take on their responsibilities?


Perhaps unsurprisingly, I had several thoughts about potential shows to turn into a game and games that I would like to run (not necessarially the same thing).  One show that I thought in terms of framing in PTA is the current run of Power Rangers (as an example).  The first several episodes of the series (with occassional two-parters) match PTA's description very well - the first episode, the spotlight episodes on each of the Protagonists, etc.  But something else occurs that is (on the surface) at odds with PTA.  That is, there is a clear power progression on the part of the Protagonists. As the season advances, they move from being well-trained recruits with special powers, to having Power Ranger suits (but no goodies), to having their special vehicles and weapons, to having their Zord. At first this bothered me, but then I realized that this was not an improvement in traits, per se, but instead, an escalation of what the traits meant.

Question 2 (A Two-Parter): Has anyone discussed this idea of an 'escalation of traits'?  Has there been any discussion of the idea of character advancement (say in terms of adding a trait at the end of the season or after a spotlight episode)?  I can imagine a rule that lets a protagonist spend stored up fan mail to add a trait.  (Spending the good will of the fans to dramatically change the character essentially.)


Now, despite the thoughts on Power Rangers, the show I want to run is "Four Color / Shades of Grey". I am avoiding spec'ing it out because I want to get player involvement, as per the book's discussion, but essentially, I am imagining something akin to the Justice League meets Veronica Mars. The Protagonists are the children of well-know super-heroes with powers and problems of their own.

One of the things I would love to do with this series, if Player Buy-In allows, is include regular flashbacks to the previous generation of heroes. Parrallel scenes of the Protags' Golden Age & Silver Age forebears, and/or of their Parents in action, that sort of thing. Optimally, I would have the players play these scenes out.  And thus,

Question Three (again two parts): Has anyone played Super Heroic PTA (I have seen the notes on the 'Blur' game) and do you have any thoughts or comments?  Has anyone made extensive use of flashbacks (or side scenes), particularly those not involving the Protagonists directly and do you have any comments?


I think that's all of my initial thoughts and questions....  Oh, yeah, one more - are the summary pages from the end of the book available via PDF?  It seems like they would be useful hand outs for players.


Thanks for your thoughts and thanks to Dog Eared (Matt) for a great game!

[Georgios Panagiotidis]

re: flashbacks

I think it depends on what you're trying to accomplish with the flashbacks. If you have a parallel storyline (a b-plot so to speak) it'd work fine, but you'd have to give secondary characters to the players as well. At the very least they should have some kind of input into those scenes. The Guest Star rules by JMendes (I think) in one of his threads might be useful there.

If you're using flashbacks purely for exposition, I'm not sure how playable it would be.

[Danny_K]

One of the Epidemonology episodes described in Actual Play made heavy use of flashbacks.  So it's doable, definitely.

[Alan]

Question #1: To what degree does PTA work or not work if not all the players agree to or take on their responsibilities?

Hm.  My initial response is that PTA play can fall flat if the players don't take responsibility for pushing their protagonist's issue, and I've seen this happen.  But when it did happen, it was because the group agreed to exempt some players from specific PTA game mechanics.

If you look carefully at the rules, you'll find that the formal requirements from the players are pretty small.

Here's the important ones as I remember them:

1) Propose a scene when it's your turn.  The scene idea you start with doesn't have to be a big brilliant thing all ready to shoot for the next episode of Smallville.  It only needs to be a handfull of words -- one word each for location and focus, and sentence about what happens.  eg.  "Apartment"  "Character"  "Clark's secret ID is threatened."  

2) Give Fan Mail for cool actions.  Matt's rules don't actually say it, but I think it's important to encourage players to give rewards mostly for Issue-related cool actions, or for challenging another protagonist's issue.

3) Narrate results when they get high die in a conflict.  Now, this doesn't mean that everyone else shuts up and waits eagerly for the narrator's masterful interpretation -- what it means is that the narrator gets final say on how things work out.  They can take other people's suggestions -- their minimum responsibility is to decide which suggestions to take and describe how those suggestions fit into what the dice say.

I'd suggest focussing your reluctant players on the bare minimums of these three.  What I think will happen is they will see that much of it is collaborative and they aren't on the spot to perform.  Once they get that, they'll probably start spontaneously yelling out suggestions "Ooh!  It would be cool if ... "

Question 2 (A Two-Parter): Has anyone discussed this idea of an 'escalation of traits'?  Has there been any discussion of the idea of character advancement (say in terms of adding a trait at the end of the season or after a spotlight episode)?

I think that increasing the number of Traits will dilute the experience Matt designed PTA to produce.  

First, Traits give players extra dice against the Producer, but they do not participate in the Fanmail -> Budget -> Audience Pool economy.  If the players get more Traits, they will have more dice in conflicts, and the Producer will find his influence crippled.  Now we might address this by changing the Producer's Budget formula, but ultimately what would this achieve other than inflation?

Second, keep in mind that Traits and Screen Presense and all the other quantified features of PTA are about how much _players_ can influence an episode.  These numbers and Traits have nothing to do with how much the _protagonists_ can influence things.  So giving a character more Traits doesn't mean the _character_ has more power within the fantasy world.

Finally, and most importantly, I think the Traits a player chooses produce a particular focus on the protagonist's Issue.  Whether the player chooses Traits arbitrarily or with this in mind, the effect exists -- and it defines their character's role in the Season.  If we allow an increasing range of Traits, that focus will be diluted and the character and his or her issue will lose definition.  This I think is the greatest reason why I would not consider increasing the number of Traits on a Protagonist.

I think Matt would agree, "it's your game group; play it your way."   However, I urge you to try it as designed before making changes.   Use the advancement system PTA provides: changing of Traits and/or Issues after dramatic events.  I think you'll find that this, along with the natural story progression produced by the Story Arc of Screen Presences, will give a very satisfying feeling of change and growth.

[John Harper]

About adding traits: I think PTA takes the position that television characters almost never advance in "power level" like your typical RPG character. Even characters that seem to advance in power/capability don't need an ever-growing list of traits in PTA.

Take Willow from Buffy, for instance. In the early seasons, Willow is the big nerd. She's good with computers and books. Willow might have the trait: "Nerd" or even a couple like "Computer Whiz" and "Book Smarts." She wouldn't have these traits in PTA in order to simulate her "abilities", though. She would have these traits because Willow's player wants to influence conflicts by narrating actions involving computer skills and book-smarts.

In later seasons, Willow becomes a powerful witch. If we were simulating Willow's abilities, we would want to add some witchy traits to her list. After all, it's not like she forgets how to hack a computer or do research. But on the show, the focus of Willow's conflicts shifts away from computers and research. Her magical traits take center-stage and almost all of Willow's conflicts revolve around magic.

So, in PTA terms, we would swap out Willow's old issue for a new one (something about magical addiction, probably) and we would swap out her old nerdy traits for magical ones. We can imagine that the fictional person of Willow still "knows" how to hack computers and such, but by changing her traits we are now saying that we want her to use magic when she comes to conflict. The computery stuff happens in the background (if at all), as part of narration and color. Magic (and its connection to her new issue) takes center stage during conflicts.

Like Alan said, traits in PTA are tools for the player to use during conflicts. They're not meant to be an exhaustive list of abilities to simulate a fictional persona.

Does that make sense? I'll address your other questions in another post.