(PTA GenCon) Hinky Milennium Hospital GO!!

[Nev the Deranged]

 So, PTA once again proves as flexible and robust as any group of players could hope for.

I am waiting for the amazing Meguey's AP post, but in the meantime, I offer the Hinky Milennium Hospital GO!! theme song:

"Surrounded by an ocean of starlight,
An angel soars through the endless night!
Borne up on fiery wings of love,
His kiss brings a fever (fever!)
And only you know the cure!

chorus:
(Doctor! Doctor!) Can't you see I'm burning up?
(Doctor! Doctor!) Only your touch can heal me!

Swimming through this empty sky,
I lose myself, I am drifting far too high!
Borne up on fiery wings of love,
I'm blazing with fever (fever!)
And only you know the cure!

chorus

If only I could feel your hand
Upon my sweating brow
I know that we could find a way
To soar together (together!)
Burning forever (forever!)
A binary star, pure white passion (passion!)
Lighting the way for lovers,
Through this endless night!"


- Binary Star (Hinky Milennium Hospital GO!! Theme)
(lyrics in parenthesis are in English. If Andy or someone wants to do a translation, I would be much amused).

Yes, it's a love song. All anime themes are love songs, regardless of what the anime is actually about, or the type of music it uses (thrash metal music? love song. hard driving techno? love song. wailing, noh-masked kabuki chant? doesn't matter. love song).

I hope the players find it worthy.

Dave.

 

[Meguey]

Dave!! You totally scooped me! Right, I'll get the AP up. Thanks for the theme song.

~Meguey

[Meguey]

So, the PTA session I ran after-hours at Embassy Suites. I stepped up to run this because there was a general call for a PTA game, and I felt familiar enough with it after just finishing a full, 5-session game at home. (Did anyone write that up, folks?) This was a leap of faith for me, trusting Matt's game to support me and the folks I'd just met to be patient if I bombed.

At the table: Star, Andrew Morris, Eric Minton, and Dave, with Joshua as fan-base occasionally.
Joshua was in my PTA game that had just wrapped, everyone else I'd met that day, Andrew I'd met only 20 mins before sitting down to play. Dave joined us straight from another game I think, and was pretty tired but still wanted to play.

The way I run PTA (and most other games) is with pencil in hand, so I introduced it by saying "Ok, ideas for the show?" I realize I just assumed people knew the game, I don't remember if anyone had to have a bit of catch-up on the side. Ideas I have written down are:

Anime, Hospital for Superheroes,
Cops / Drama, Exotic locals,
Soap opera, In space.

I had just finished a cops/drama, so I asked if we could go for something lighter, and when I got a general "sure" I crossed it off. Looking at what was left on the sheet, it all kind of gelled: Anime Hospital in Space. The superheroes got lost in the shuffle.

Anime, Hospital for Superheroes,
Cops / Drama, Exotic locals,
Soap opera, In space.

So we have a show! Series title: Hospital at the End of the Universe. Later it gained the sub-title Hinky Hospital Go!, an anime soap-opera.

Next I said "Ok, who is on this show?" All kinds of things got said, including aliens, mutants, robots, sexy nurses, arrogant doctors, and regular patients. As soon as the flow began to taper off I said something like  "All good, folks. Anybody feel drawn to any particular idea?" The following were selected:

Star = Nurse Niki Flapjack, the nurse with more cleavage than brains. She said she rarely plays characters like this, so why not.

Andrew = Dr. Smith, the arrogant intern "who was head of his class", and has a totally unpronounceable name. Possibly an alien, possibly a mutant, definitely odd. I think first fan-mail went out then, about how each time his actual name is mentioned, it's different.

Eric = Marc0, the sexy androgenoid robot doctor. Turns out hir has interchangeable parts.

Dave = Dr. Nieman Frobozz, the aging "I've served this hospital for 150 years" absent minded, rumpled, but brilliant senior doctor.

Everyone wound up choosing concepts they had contributed, which was not very surprising to me. I used the book as reference here, to get through the character generation. When they got to the writing down connections and traits, I put the connections on the sheet.

Nurse Niki = My mother
Arrogant Intern Smith = Head Nurse Matron Georgia
Marc0 = Janitor Cyrus X. York (and also hir inventor Marianna Florax)
Dr. Frobozz = Dr. Rebecca Flathead, an old flame currently on the board of directors, and Bernie the wise old hypochondriac.

On to personal sets, which I also wrote down.

Nurse Niki = a corridor outside ER
Arrogant Intern Smith = staff locker room
Marc0 = staff lounge
Dr. Frobozz = his office, old and filled with framed stuff

At some point someone said something like "Ok, what's going on, why is this interesting?"
"Well, obviously, the hospital's under review!" Brilliant and away we go.

I didn't want to worry about figuring out where we were with screen presence, so I set it as the pilot episode, everyone at 2. I started everyone at fanmail 2, 'cause I wanted that to come into play ASAP, since we only had an hour or two to play.  Play rolled pretty smoothly, with me framing the first scene so everyone saw how it worked. I put the paper with the characters, the supporting connections, and the personal sets in the middle of the table, and passed it around as each person framed a scene, to help support tight framing. Joshua was a big help once we got to conflict resolution, what with the really knowing the book well.

I'm not sure I want to do the play-by-play. Anyone else want to chime in, that's great. Particularly memorable scenes, however, I can't let slide. The scene in Dr. Frobozz' office, where there's a flashing Urgent message in his hand, and he gets distracted by complaining about Dr. Smith's oddly fitted scrubs and winds up stacking stuff on top of it without reading it. Great conflict there. My other favorite scene was when the lovely Nurse Nipples – I mean Niki – is trying to make a play for Marc0's friend the janitor. My god, the double meanings in that scene were astounding! I mean, he's polishing his tool, it's shaped like a water bottle, it's used for lubricating things, and you squeeze it to get the goo out?! What is this, Bacchanal?! I loved that he was not going for it while Niki pulled out every stop in the book, but the dialogue and scene description had me rolling. 

One player conflict that came up was the competing ideas about whether Dr. Smith was a multi-tentacled mutant or not. It was clear some players was really into the idea, and it was equally clear that Dr. Smith's player was not going with the idea. I spun it into an on-show ambiguity – Does he? Doesn't he? The fan boards are going crazy with rumors and ideas. This seemed to satisfy both parties. 

~Meguey

[Andrew Morris]

Thanks for running this game, Meguey. I was impressed that you had the stamina to run a game on the spot when it was already late. I barely had enough juice to play.

One noteworthy point, I think, is the fact that Mark0 is pronouced "Mark-ohh," (as in "Mark, ohh yeah"). Funny.

As to the tentacles thing...eh, I don't know. Guess I was tired and cranky. Reflexive "my guy" behavior, I suppose, since the tentacles didn't fit the picture in my head.

The two best (i.e. "funniest") moments for me were the "tool polishing" scene and the Freudian nipple slip (bad pun intended).

I was a bit disappointed that Smith's issues never really came into the spotlight, but that was just due to the length of the game. I sure didn't have the energy to continue, though, so I think it was good to end it where we did. All in all, it was a fun session, and I enjoyed myself thoroughly.

[Meguey]

Yeah, no-one really gets their issues addressed in the pilot. I did like the scene where Dr. Smith is so good with Bernie, but also so concerned that the other staff not know about his golden bedside manner. If that session had beent eh start of a full season campain, I would have been happy.

~Meguey

[Nev the Deranged]

K, I will take a shot at remembering even half the kewlness that was this game.

First, the Fan Mail flew in this game. I don't think anybody had less than 2 fan mail at any time, and often as much as six. I don't know what the typical ratios are, but I found this really cool and affirming. I am seriously considering house-ruling a Fan Mail mechanic into every single game I play or run. I already always put it in my Universalis tenets, and in nearly every after hours game I was in there was at least one point where myself or someone else used the phrase "Fan Mail!" while pointing at someone who had just said something awesome. Hell, I think I even overheard Meguey using it in a completely nongame context while chatting around the booth. Congratulations, Matt, for creating a mechanic that transcends the medium. ^_^

Some of my favorite moments from Hinky Milennium Hospital GO!!:

Doctor Frobozz finding Marc-0 at the bar in the hospital lounge (yes, they have a bar.. we assume with synthehol), weeping into his bottle of lubricant. Doctor F tries to cheer the hapless androgynoid up with an amusing story he's just overheard about a leopard-woman... which he thinks is just an anecdote but is in fact the very real situation Marc-0 is weeping over. As Marc-0 tries to impart his misery to Frobozz, the head doctor says "It's hilarious, but by gawd no funny business like that better go on in MY hospital!" at which point poor Marc-0 changes his story mid-sentence and agrees, sobbing, that it is indeed a very amusing story which he has nothing at all to do with.

Dr. Smith's scene showcasing his great bedside manner with Bernie the hypochondriac, with Nurse Nip- err.. Nikki, listening through the curtain. Someone suggested that every time Bernie is in a scene trying to get someone to pay attention to his imagined ailments, someone else is dying horribly in the background. I don't remember who but they definitely got fan mail for that. So in this scene while Dr. Smith is tending to Bernie's "horrible rash" someone comes in to the adjacent ward on a gurney amidst much hubbub... gets defibrillated... and promptly bursts into flames, triggering the sprinklers and doubling the panic. We the players are all dying laughing. And Dr. Smith, Bernie, and the eavesdropping Nurse Nikki just calmly finish their scene as if nothing's going on.

Dr. Flathead, old flame of Dr. Frobozz and junior Board of Directors member, is touring the facility and picking up slack, just like Cake said. Heading down the hall toward Dr. F's office to ask him about the Urgently blinking file he's completely forgotten about, and Marc-0 eavesdropping at the door to the Janitor's office (lots of eavesdropping in this game) as "Hellooooo Nurse!" Nikki tries to vamp.. er... flirt with the clueless handyman. Flathead, intent on her clipboard, doesn't even notice him until she bumps him through the door and into a heap with the other two... *skriiiiiitch* goes the pen across the clipboard. "Oh, Hello Doctor!".. from his entangled predicament Marc-0's perfect teeth gleam *ting!*.

There was more but my swisscheese brain is letting me down. The whole thing had, for me, the feel of Phil and Kaja Foglio's erotic-humor work in Xxxenophile, although we never really went past a PG-13 rating with lots and lots (and lots) of innuendo. It was great, and as my first actual game of PTA, I was very much not disappointed.

Thanks for the great game, Matt! And thanks to Meg for running it so well, and to everybody else for making it a great experience. Fan mail all around ^_^

[Meguey]

I did really like the way we all stepped up to the anime angle, with the explosions around Bernie, the *ting! of Marc0's teeth, and so on.

The scene of Niki and Dr. Smith in the locker room was surprisingly PG, with only a few comments about Niki appreciating his pysique before she started in on what she considered to be the ill fit of his scrubs. His annoyance and insistence on being "in the latest fashion" was lovely. 

I also liked the ending of the pilot episode (and the session), where Dr. Flathead takes her reports of all the 'hinky' goings-on to the board. Marc0 threw hirself fawninging around Dr. Frobozz' legs, and the board eventually has Dr. Flathead step in to "help whip this place into shape!" The scene is so totally set for a great season, full of tons of innuendo, eavesdropping, mishaps, and mad scrambles.

Hey, here's a wacky notion! If we're all at GenCon '06, I'll run the next session ^_^

~Meguey

(Also, seeing little anime emoticons in Dave's post made my day ^_^, even if he does it regularly.)

[Nev the Deranged]

Count me and Dr. F in!

[Andrew Morris]

Hey, here's a wacky notion! If we're all at GenCon '06, I'll run the next session ^_^

Ohhh...now I have to find a way to get to GenCon next year.

[Meguey]

Andrew, did you really need another reason to go to GenCon?  I do have all the character sheets, and I will save them with my copy of PTA. 

[Andrew Morris]

But...but...GenCon is far, and I'm poor, and airplane travel is my second-greatest fear in the world (if only I had my own A-Team to drug my milk...if I drank milk).