A very basic question....

[DrDNA]

I have a very basic question regarding the "play-out" of each scene.

Do players truly make things up as they go along?

For example, Bob, a player, requests and acts in a scene where he finds a few unknown objects.  Can Jim, another player, make the next scene be about his character figuring out what those objects are (basically making the information up during the scene independent of what Bob was originally planning the objects to be)?  Could Jim just say, "My character puts the objects through his fancy analyzing machine and finds them to be +2 magical swords"? And then hope the other players can adapt the story to those findings?


Is PTA meant to be a "continue this story" sort of game equivalent to a bunch of people sitting around a table taking turns continuing the story?  Bob starts off saying, "Once upon a time there was this guy.....", then Carl continues with "....who had a bitchin camero."  and Dave follows by saying, "The camero was magical."  And so on.

Thanks,
Mike

[Matt Wilson]

Hi Mike:

Sort of. The protagonists are in charge of their characters, what they say and do and all that. Everything else is producer territory. So you can't just say "I win the lottery" during a scene.

However, if you involve that information in a conflict somehow AND win narration, then you have some ability to state facts like you're describing.

Of course the conflict isn't going to be "can I figure out what the things are," because that's boring, but it can involve the things. Like maybe the conflict is "can I learn what these are and keep the information secret from the others," because your character's issue is about trust.

So whoever wins narration might describe your guy at the microscope or whatever it is,  trying to do the sleight of hand and lying and various tricks to get the other player's guy to think it's just a shower curtain ring and not the Amulet of Very Much Power.

That makes for a great conflict, because the narration is satisfying no matter what the outcome is, and the opportunity to identify the mystery item is an additional reason to spend fan mail to get in on the action.

[DrDNA]

Things are still not entirely clear to me.  Let me pose my questions another way.

As I understand it, the Producer is basically a player that has the extra responsibilities of providing the voices of the NPC's, framing scenes, and judging the difficulty of conflicts.  Thus, unlike a traditional gamemaster, he does not come to a new episode with a script in hand.  Therefore if the series revolves around solving mysteries, the producer will not know "Who Dunnit" at the beginning of an episode.  Is that right?

If that is correct, then all the players including the producer are responsible for plot advancement ideas.  Correct?

Next, The Producer controls the actions of the NPCs and the players control the actions of their characters.  In addition, each set has been discussed amongst players at the creation of the series, so that is known to all of them.  Who, then, controls the various unpredictable and random things that occur in the world?  How is new information entered into an episode?
Via scene framing of the producer?
Via end of conflict narraration by the winner?
Via arbitrary decisions during the roleplaying of a scene?

Here's a concrete example:

Player A wants a mysterious object to appear in a scene (i.e. he wants it to be a surprise to his character, since his character wasn't actually looking for it).  How does he do this?
Via the result of some conflict?
Via scene framing from the producer?

Now Player B wants to make a scene where he identifies the object.  From your last answer, I understand that he must make the "identifying process" a conflict.  Barring the opinion that "I want to identify this object" is boring conflict, is it a valid one?  If so, exactly how will this work?  The producer adds budget dice, the player adds traits and so on.  The dice are cast and the player with the most successes wins the conflict.  However, the winner is NOT NECESSARILY the player to be the one to narrate the result, right?  That responsibility falls to the player who rolled the single highest die.  Therefore, it is that player who can basically make up the identity of the object right there on the spot, right?

As a side note, if a player uses an extremely unrelated trait in a conflict, wins that conflict, but loses the ability to narrate it, what happens if the narrator can't figure out how to connect the trait to the result?

[Alan]

If I may interject:

As I understand it, the Producer has final say over all events outside the Protagonist's hearts, minds, and bodies -- except after a conflict roll.  On the other hand, the Producer is encouraged to listen to player suggestions, both for scene requests and other events.  The Producers main role, as I see it, is to put pressure on the Protagonist's Issue and give the player's opportunities to make choices about that Issue.  The direction of the story depends on these choices.

For this reason, the Producer should not pre-script an episode.  However, having a wealth of possible ideas to plug into the episode is a good idea.  The Producer might come to a mystery with a model of how the murder happened and who did it, and some ideas how NPCs might pressure Protagonist Issues, but all this should be seen as amunition ready to be shot into play.  The Producer should not consider this ammunition "real" until it's actually shot into play.  Even if one shot implies another, only the launched shot actually has reality.  eg The Producer describes evidence that The Librarian Strangler is the murderer.  But he remains open to other suggestions as the game unfolds, only pushing the Strangler as it adds to the episode drama.

[Jasper Polane]

How is new information entered into an episode?
Via scene framing of the producer?
Via end of conflict narraration by the winner?
Via arbitrary decisions during the roleplaying of a scene?

The answer is, all of the above. You don't decide beforehand, but make it up while you go along, during play. So, if the player wants something specific out of a scene, he makes it the agenda of the scene. If he wants a conflict to have a specific outcome, he says so by setting the stakes of the conflict. If inspiration hits him during the playing of the scene, he can do it then.

--Jasper

[TonyLB]

Who, then, controls the various unpredictable and random things that occur in the world?

I suspect (and maybe Mike can clarify) that this question, or rather the priorities I suspect it to convey, sums up a disconnect with the PTA way of thinking.  'course, maybe I'm way off base.

"Who controls the things that set the scene for character issues?"  Anyone.  Everyone.  Who cares?  The game is about character issues.  What happens in the rest of the world is window dressing.

Think about a mission from Alias, for instance.  What do you remember about the mission?  "Well, she was going into a secure facility to... uh... get something.  A disc, maybe?  <long pause>  But, see, Arvin Sloane was there, so she had to choose whether to abort the mission or to risk being seen by him, and Vaughn managed to create a distraction at just the right second and save her bacon, but then they had information from her traitor mother, and she had to decide whether or not she could trust that information, and she didn't, but it turns out it might have been right and she totally screwed up, so now the question is does she actually trust her mother, even though her father doesn't want her to, or does she figure that this is just another type of manipulation, and what does that say about her ability to trust people generally in the scheme of...."

Color-coded to make abundantly clear how very little the actual mission matters to what makes the story.

Now if you imagine (from experience in past games) that the world-outside-the-characters is vitally important to their ability to address the challenges of the game... well then, this sort of widely distributed authority may seem impossible or naive.  But it doesn't give people any ability to slant their address of their own character issues... so why not let them pick their own backdrop for handling the real troubles of the game?

[Matt Wilson]

Hey, um, DrDNA:

Alan and Tony both have good points. Here's how I'd address that example of yours...

Player A wants a mysterious object to appear in a scene (i.e. he wants it to be a surprise to his character, since his character wasn't actually looking for it). How does he do this?

It could be as easy as setting up a scene like this:

Producer: Player A, it's your turn for a scene.

Player A: Stop calling me 'Player A.' My name is Bill and you know it.

Producer: Sorry, Bill. So what's your scene request?

Player A: I want a plot scene, in the laboratory, and it's about my protagonist discovering a strange object.

So that way everyone involved knows in advance, hey, we have to work this object into the scene, and it's moderately important.

Another way to do it is to have the scene already going, and just ask the producer, "hey, can I discover a strange object on the table?"

And like you suggest above, it could be included in conflict narration, and remember, even if you haven't earned the official narrator slot, you can pitch the idea to whoever it is.

This applies to your follow-up as well. Someone can request a scene where identification is the agenda. And right, presumably identifying the object is a boring thing to have a conflict about, but presumably there's some tie-in with things that have happened already in the series, otherwise what the hell is this player doing? So you would want to do something like "can Bill figure out what the thing is and keep it secret from the other people in the lab?"

Vincent Baker made a strong argument not long ago that conflicts in his game Dogs in the Vineyard are only worthwhile if they're against another character. That applies to this game pretty well, too, although you could include 'character against self' for many issue-related conflicts. So another way of handling the object ID conflict is 'who doesn't want them to know what the object is?"

Hope that helps.

[Mike Holmes]

Is PTA meant to be a "continue this story" sort of game equivalent to a bunch of people sitting around a table taking turns continuing the story?

I think the answer that you may best understand is, yes. It's in some ways "equivalent" to that sort of game.

But only if you define more traditional RPGs as, "The GM makes up what the world does, and the players make up their characters responses." All RPGs are about more than that, and PTA is about more than just telling a tale. Perhaps a better way to put it is that PTA puts a strong structure around this telling of the tale that "pass the conch" doesn't have.

Which leads to a substantively different and much better result. For example, with pass the conch, you tend to get stories that do not make much sense. They tend to meander, have no meaning to the events that occur, and usually die from boredom. PTA, OTOH, will produce a result that feels a lot like a good TV show of a certain kind. Including plots, character development, and resolution.

So to say that they're "equivalent" is probably selling PTA way short. But, yes, it's not a RPG in the most traditional of definitions. It's something deliberately and distinctly different. Something that all RPG players should try.

Mike