PTA for wuxia? PTA for supers? PTA for everything?

[BlackSheep]

I was thinking that PTA might work well for wuxia.  Even though it's a genre more traditionally connected with movies than with television, I think it'd work.  There's a lot of stuff about character issues and relationships, a lot of conflict of all kinds.

Since PTA really isn't geared for one-shots, though, I may end up using HeroQuest instead at the next all-day society event.  But that's an aside.

Then I read the first volume of Ultimates and realised that it was perfect for PTA.  The characters all have major issues (in the talk show sense of the word), plenty of rivalries and friendships, and you can see different characters coming in and out of focus.  It's not really about fighting supervillains - in the first volume the only real threat they face is one of their own.  Ditto League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, to an extent.

Then I saw Sin City and, well, you get the picture.

So I wanted to know about the most 'out there' genres and stories people have used PTA for.  Have you found anything that really doesn't work?  Have you found yourself looking at virtually everything and thinking about running it with PTA?  Or am I just in new game shock?

[KingstonC]

pulp 1930's detectives with wierd Gernsback science fiction thrown in for spice.

Any genre can be modeled with PTA, as long as the story told follows PTA's structure.

[Matt Wilson]

Yes, I like this line of reasoning. Excellent. Also, use PTA for doing stand up comedy and infomercials! Everything!

Seriously, though, the best way to do a movie might be to treat it as one really long episode. When Ron does one-shots of PTA, he has the group write out their story arcs and then has everyone agree on which episode they're going to play. I make it sound like he does it all the time, don't I? Okay, the two times he's ever done a one shot, that's what he's done.

You could do that for the movie, and whoever has the biggest screen presence is the star. Make sure you at least address everyone's issue, but give the star the most attention.

Something like that.

[BlackSheep]

The other thing I thought would work (and the one I'm most likely to get a short campaign out of) was a series set between Episodes III and IV, following a small group of Jedi hiding/running from Imperial hunters.

The Jedi code is perfect for issues.  Forbidden love, compassion versus distance, temptations of power, mercy versus justice.  It's an unattainable ideal, and every Jedi falls short of it in some way.

[Danny_K]

The RPG.Net game I've been producing started off with a "HBO show" type premise of a family of occult-tinged antique dealers.  Very cool premise, and cool characters, but it didn't quite click.  I think it would have worked great in tabletop, but for forum play you need something a with a stronger set of genre expectations, I think.  

So now we're talking superheroes, and I really don't see any obstacles to making that work.  Wuxia would work fine, I think -- I just watched Hero last night, and I could probably stat up the characters pretty easily, although Flying Snow, Broken Sword, and Moon are the ones most suitable for PTA play, I think.

[Danny_K]

The Jedi code is perfect for issues.  Forbidden love, compassion versus distance, temptations of power, mercy versus justice.  It's an unattainable ideal, and every Jedi falls short of it in some way.

I agree, although for somewhat different reasons -- nobody knows what the Jedi code actually *is*, so it's a perfect thing to obsess about -- am I a good enough Jedi?  Am I falling to the Dark Side?  *Should* I fall to the Dark Side, since they get the cool outfits and don't have to hide on crummy Outer Rim planets?  Can't I just settle down, bury my lightsaber and run a nice little cantina somewhere?    

There are interesting connections between Jedi Knights and xia heroes which is interesting but way off-topic, so I'll stop now.

[Doc Blue]

In the Actual Game Play Forum, I just posted the synapsis of the Pilot Episode of Storm Front - definite Supers-style play.....