[PtA] Scope of Narration, Scene Requests, and other questions

[Rob Donoghue]

Ok, I was a bit unclear in asking, but this still sticks a bit for me - I don't think that "What the proag wants" needs to be something unalterable and cast in stone. Doing something lame "because it's what my character would do" is no more welcome here than in any other game.

Players are presumed to be somewhat creative and able to come up with a bunch of different things within that general scope of that limitation, and willign to talk, kick around ideas, and try to find soemthign within that scope..  It's _doable_ but it's definately a different set of choices and options than will be available for the player than if the choice set is "What the player wants".

Now, ideally, it seems then that we've got a little Venn diagram action going on, with circle one beign the range of choices the protagonist wants(call them 'valid' choices), and circle two is the range of choices the player wants('appealing' choices), and I figure most of the time there's probably sufficient overlap between the two to mean there's still a reasonable selection of choices which are both valid and appealling.

But where I'm seeing divergence is that, given a situations where there is minimal or no overlap between the cricles, such as the case where the player is most interested in seeing the protagonist do something clearly contrary to what the protag wants, it is sounding like you propose choosing from the appealling set of choices, and the text of the rules seems to say you must chose from the 'valid' set.  I _want_ it to be the former, every instinct I have leans that way, but I'm still nto seeing how it doesn't violate the rules.

Now, the solution to this is, of course, don't allow sitations where this is no overlap to evolve.  The problem with that solution is that those situations are ones where there is still plenty that appeals to the player - the 'appealling' choice set has not necessarily dwindled in size, so they still have plenty of things they'd like to explore - so we're removing a wing of directions that appeals to the folks that like to be mean to their characters.  Not _every_ option to do so is beign removed, of course, and how important this wing is really probably varies from game to game, but for players who, say, would be inclined to spend fanmail against themself rather than have the outcome the protag wants (because they find the _Conflict_ interesting, but they favor the outcome going against the protag)* it's an important one.

So I'm not saying the protagonist can only want one thing, but I am saying that sticking to what the protagonist wants really seems a much more limited set of options.  I don't think this is necessarily desireable. And I should also note, if I weren't setting up to be a stickler, this is one of the first thigns I would aboslutely loosen up the literal interpretation of, but the point of doing this as by the book as possible is to not make those decisions until after I've tried being literal once. :)

Of course, in one of those bitter twists, the game I'm being so anal in preparation for may now not be happening, because the heavens mock me.

-Rob D.

* And just to skip ahead ont his point, and yes, they'll enjoy playing it either way, otherwise they wouldn't go to dice/cards, but they definately prefer one outcome over the other, which does not seem a horrible abuse of things.

[Matt Wilson]

Ok, I was a bit unclear in asking, but this still sticks a bit for me - I don't think that "What the proag wants" needs to be something unalterable and cast in stone. Doing something lame "because it's what my character would do" is no more welcome here than in any other game.

Hery Rob: I totally agree. That's why I prefer stakes that can be described in many different ways. If it's "earn the respect of his father," there's a lot of options for the narrator (and the group).

Stakes, by the way, should still be about what the protagonist wants. In the example above, that's definitely the case. Where there's stuff like flaring tempers, the stakes should be "can I keep my act together" and not, "can I let loose with a rage and kill all these innocent people." Deep down the protagonist doesn't want the latter, unless you're playing a stone-cold psychopath, and they aren't generally protagonists.

And you can't spend fan mail against your own protagonist. You can definitely use fewer traits in an attempt to skew the odds, but that's okay, because either option should make you go, "whoa, cool story stuff."

[Rob Donoghue]

So would it be more accurate to say that the stakes are about what the protag wants than being specifically what the protag wants?

Specifically, if the protag wants to, say, not do that horribly self-destructive thing, but the player thinks he completely should, can the player say that the stakes are that he makes the _wrong_ choice?  In this case the stakes are still about that act of self destruction, but the player's been freed up to take it whichever direction he wants.

Basically, I'm just trying to nail down how to run that scene where the player wants the protag to "lose" because I expect to see a lot of it.

-Rob D.

[iago]

Yeah: What I'm hearing here is that the text ""The stakes are what the protagonist really wants out of the conflict" (p. 61) should instead be "The stakes involve what the protagonist wants out of the conflict, but are described in a way that's most appealing to the player."

For a smidget of real play example -- in the game of PTA that I was in, there was one point at which I started out from the point of "Okay, what my character wants here is to keep the situation under control, but what I want is to see the situation devolve into one of greater chaos.  So if I succeed here, I'm going to say that indicates that all hell breaks loose."

That sort of thing doesn't seem at all consistent with the sentence from the text, but it does seem quite consistent with the modified sentence I'm proposing.

So would it be more accurate to say that the stakes are about what the protag wants than being specifically what the protag wants?

[Matt Wilson]

"Okay, what my character wants here is to keep the situation under control, but what I want is to see the situation devolve into one of greater chaos.  So if I succeed here, I'm going to say that indicates that all hell breaks loose."

That sounds more like action to me than the actual stakes, but it depends on the issues at work. I'd set it up so that if you really want to see chaos, that can happen independently of what the protagonist wants.

Let's say the protag's issue is a bad temper. In this conflict, I'd have stakes maybe be "can I keep from freaking out while trying to control the situation." Then you're free to have the narration (or whoever has narration rights) include the situation falling apart. If your protagonist gets the stakes, then cool! That's a really big milestone in the story arc.

If the issue is "about being a control freak," maybe the conflict is, "can I avoid taking all responsibility for everything that happens?"

Does that make any sense? So really what you want in this case is narration rights just as much as you want stakes, or maybe more.

[iago]

Sure -- and I can see stakes negotiation as taking things there -- but what I said above would probably still be what I'd open with, because it's a way for me to get out there that, as a player, it's important to me to see chaos in the narration that follows.  I get how that's not exactly the "right stakes", but if I have a basic starting point of "what do I want to see?" -- which at least has some validity in this, the Greatest Television Show That Never Was That I Want To Watch -- then I'm pretty clear on what I want to say in my opening volley.  I'm pretty clear now, however, that at that point the Producer or another player should pipe up and say... pretty much what you said.  "Hey, those aren't stakes, so much as situation. Can everyone agree that chaos will occur regardless of the stakes?  Okay.  Let's figure out the real stakes in light of that."

[John Harper]

"Hey, those aren't stakes, so much as situation. Can everyone agree that chaos will occur regardless of the stakes?  Okay.  Let's figure out the real stakes in light of that."

Yes, Fred, that's it!

For those cases where you, as a player, have a strong desire to see a certain thing happen, it's best not to set it as the stakes. Just go ahead and say that your protagonist gets screwed or loses her cool, or whatever, and look for something else that will make for good stakes in the (perhaps different) conflict.

I think we're drilling down to another core point of PTA play, which is that the resolution system isn't meant to be used for every single thing. Just the key protagonist moments where the story can turn several different ways and everyone is eager to let the system throw them a curve ball to spark a whole new sequence of events.

But "does the cheeleader shoot me down?" may not even be a conflict at all if your Issue isn't keyed into that. If you want your protag to suffer a humiliating rejection, then go right ahead and just say so.

A lot of games tell you to use the resolution system when "the outcome is in doubt." That's not how PTA works at all.