Audience Pool & Budget Questions

[ashmoo]

In playing my first season of PTA (see 'The Z' in the Actual Play forum), and having an absolute blast.

I have a couple of questions about the dice economy:

1. What happens to the audience pool that hasn't been given out as fanmail at the end of the session?
We always seem to have loads left. Given that a Budget of 18 is typical, that's a lot of Fan Mail to award per session.

2. The Producer always seems to have lots of Budget left at the end of the session. Is this common? I don't know if it is based on a low number of Conflicts or the Producer not putting enough Budget into each Conflict.

[Chris Goodwin]

1.  It goes away.  

2.  Don't be afraid to push hard with budget; Ron Edwards suggests maxing every roll.  Remember, those dice are going back to the players, and hitting them with six dice every time should encourage them to give out the fan mail and spend it (which, on average, recycles half of the dice back to the producer).