[PTA] Hi, we're the Replacements!

[dunlaing]

So we finished up our Over the Edge campaign last night (I got the final line of the campaign..."Maybe I'll take them with me to Ottawa!"). We had decided earlier that we would move on to a 5 episode PTA campaign afterwards, so we had a brainstorming session.

Mark had an idea that we ended up running with. The basic idea is that sometimes, when someone dies and the body is not found, something else steps in and takes their place for a time. And that thing is us.

The protagonists are Replacements. Each episode will begin with one or more people dying, but then showing up again. (e.g., four people are skiing. One of them goes over a cliff. They look down but can't see him. They go for the Ski Patrol. The camera shows him, broken and bleeding in the snow. When the Ski Patrol shows up, he's lying in the snow, asking for a little help,...and he's one of the stars of our show). It's a little bit Quantum Leapish, although we're thinking there will be more for the other protagonists to do and we're not at all sure why the Replacements show up. Do they have missions to perform? Is there a higher purpose? Are they good? evil? from the future? We're still working on these things.

I'd like for each of the Replacements to have a name that sounds like a plausible American name at first blush ("Hi. my name is Jay.") but that is obviously not actually a real name upon meeting the others ("...and this is my partner Kay.") Obviously we don't want to use our own alphabet since they already did that in Men in Black. We're casting about now for something to use. Any suggestions?

Jim's livejournal, where he was posting while we were brainstorming http://www.livejournal.com/users/jimhenley/80738.html

[dunlaing]

Sorry to reply to my own post, but I just remembered something that we were struggling with... Connections.

If we're in a different setting every episode, how do we have Connections? I suggested roles that a given protagonist would have a connection with (e.g., Nate has a Connection with The Best Friend, Jim has a connection with The Spouse/SO), and we also discussed (humorously) the possibility of an intern. But we definitely want this to be a drama, not a comedy (and definitely not a farce), so the intern at least is out. Any ideas on how to get Connections for the characters?

[Bret Gillan]

I'd say other (NPC) replacements, as well as Rivals and Antagonists. Or maybe something or someone that isn't a Replacement that can also "hop" and follows you from place to place.

[Jonas Ferry]

What a cool idea for a series. I especially like that you haven't decided on the full backstory, but instead let it develop in play. My own PTA show is unfortunately on hold for another two weeks, but already in the pilot we all agreed that it's a lot more fun to keep things hanging in the air than to decide everything beforehand.

At first I thought that the Replacements would only replace people while they're disappeared, but then I realised that's not what you're saying. The Replacements make people come back from the dead, so then there's the interesting question of what happens when the current mission is done. Will the person just disappear again, or will they have to stage another accident? What happens if someone discovers the body of the real person during a mission? That could be story material, trying to keep people away from looking to closely at what's going on.

As for the names, my first idea was the names of the months, but that's probably best for females (April, June, well Jan could be both, I suppose). Otherwise you can go with the Dark City variant and use things as names, like Mr Book and Mr Spoon. Perhaps limit yourselves to a subset of things, to keep the names similar?

I agree with Bret that it would be cool if Antagonists also followed the Replacements from episode to episode. Perhaps the Replacements only replace people who've died from natural causes, but some rival organization kills people to take their place and try to stop the Replacements' mission? It could be fun if the PCs don't know what the Antagonists and Connections will look like in the current incarnation. Let's say they have Best Friend as a connection; in one episode he might be a ski bum or a ski blonde, in another he can be someone a the General's golf club or something. It could be someone higher than the PCs in the chain of command that decides who will replace who, so that they can be surprised themselves by the people they get help from. That way, the player that chooses "Best Friend" as his Connection would always have a friend helping him.

So will the PCs know everything about the person they're replacing or will they have to act like someone they don't know anything about? If you go for the latter you could have scenes where you both have to hide your true identity from friends and family and have to fight the person's enemies without any idea what you're fighting about. You can go the middle way as well, with the PCs being briefed about the subject, but not knowing everything there's to know.

Please keep us posted what happens with the series as you play.

[Jonas Ferry]

Just something short I thought of after posting. Can you only replace people who've died, or can you take control over the living as well? If they have to be dead it'll be harder to find a Best Friend and stuff like that.

Perhaps there're two different types of replacements? The PC's and their Antagonists replace dead people, because then you have full control over the body. Connections, on the other hand, are only temporary replacements of living people, taking control of someone for a scene (perhaps they remember it, perhaps not). You could still have the connection between the PC and the Connection dictate what kind of help he can get, from "Best Friend" to "Officer of the Law".

[Supplanter]

Just something short I thought of after posting. Can you only replace people who've died, or can you take control over the living as well? If they have to be dead it'll be harder to find a Best Friend and stuff like that.

Perhaps there're two different types of replacements? The PC's and their Antagonists replace dead people, because then you have full control over the body. Connections, on the other hand, are only temporary replacements of living people, taking control of someone for a scene (perhaps they remember it, perhaps not). You could still have the connection between the PC and the Connection dictate what kind of help he can get, from "Best Friend" to "Officer of the Law".

I don't see us going with replacements for the living. Connections who are other Replacements or Antagonists is a possibility, depending on how fleshed out we want to make the backstory in advance. But I think I like Bill's idea of Connectioons to roles better. Say my character is named Rasp and has a connection to "The Wife." The actual wife changes from episode to episode, but whoever she is, she bulks large in Rasp's story. He tends to replace decedents who were married and the wives tend to have a material role in his mission.

We're certainly dancing on the edge of PTA-able with some aspects of the pitch. One of Mark's inspirations is Sapphire & Steel, which is one of the few shows you WOULDN'T really be able to do with PTA. Sapphire and Steel themselves don't have issues. OTOH, they DO have connections! (To the "specialists" like Lead and Silver.) Fortunately, we're not just filing the numbers off of S&S to make The Replacements - the Rs will be recognizably "more human."

Brett's idea of something that isn't a Replacement that "hops" is intriguing.

IF we were going to fairly constrained in time and place - e.g. all episodes set in present-day North America, then we could have Connections who were identifiable individual mortals like any other PTA show. Another possibility is, if we decide reincarnation makes sense, we could have the "same" Connection throughout history.

Best,


Jim

[dunlaing]

If we wanted to get more "meta," we could have connections to actors. For instance, my character's connection could be Alan Tudyk. In each episode, I'd have a connection with a goofy-looking blonde guy. The audience, when they see Alan Tudyk, would be thinking "ok, that guy's gonna be important," sort of like on Law & Order when you see someone you recognize from Oz, you think "ok, that guy's the perp."

[BlackSheep]

Colours would be the obvious one: Mister Black, Miss White, Mister Brown, Mrs Green...

Or you could go for something that's only suspicious as a set: Matthew, Mark, Luke and John or April, May and June.

I'm reminded of Gundam Wing's naming conventions.  The main characters were called Heero Yuy, Duo Maxwell, Trowa Barton, Quatre Raberba Winner and Chang Wufei.  In various languages, these names contain the numbers one, two, three, four and five.

[Clint]

For names, you could go with colors, but by first name instead of last.  Such as...

Rose, Slate, Sienna, Sandy, Forest, Hunter, Olive, Cyan, Sky, Steel, Magenta, Violet, etc.

[Supplanter]

This is all great food for thought. Looks like all of the coming Wednesday session will end up being prep - we only gave it about an hour last week, with a handful of e-mails and web posts since - so we've got some time to spend. We nominally meet weekly, but I suspect that prep, pilot and five-episode season will take us into January.

Best,


Jim

[dunlaing]

Last week the GM couldn't make it, so we didn't play. We are planning to play tonight, though.

My character is Phil and Jim's character is Owen. I'm not sure what scheme that follows (if any), but they are names that are also words. Nate's character is nameless so far.

[Supplanter]

Somewhat telegraphic actual play report available. It's basically my running notes of the session cleaned up and re-punctuated. My subjective impression is that there's a lot of kinks being worked out in the pilot, which is good, since the book specifically makes the pilot a kind of "subjunctive" episode that you can decide to incorporate or not after the fact. The kinks are both esthetic - the group's consensus on the particulars of the show premise - and procedural (getting up to speed with PTA's rules). The story as I've been able to suss it out so far is very American Gods, the Bast-ables appear to be Egyptian deities who have taken over this Florida panhandle town, or otherwise connected with Pharaonic worship. At a guess, I'd say Mr. O's desire for a nuclear weapon is about having a big ol' human sacrifice, though I could be wrong.

My biggest memo to self is to push the action more. There were choices I made for Owen that were dilatory. Had I to do it over again I'd get him up to the Bastable House a lot faster. I'd at least push Scene IV to a conflict, stakes: If Owen wins, sherrif takes him to Bastable House; otherwise, Owen agrees to go to the doctor.

Things that caused at least momentary uncertainty on someone's part during the episode:

1. In the first player-set scene, Bill frames Owen into it as still wearing his wetsuit. My instincts were against this - it seemed both a smidge farcical for how I wanted Owen portrayed and too slow-paced (i.e. why are we spotlighting every little step of the way along the path?) - but it also seemed defensible (in the first episode we should wrinkles of Replacementism we elide later, and broad comedy can make a nice counterpoint to teh spooky). I went along with it with only momentary worry, but some uncertainty where the boundaries were. Rereading the rules I see that the ultimate authority for what Owen was wearing in the scene rested with me, so it worked out. Bill suggested, I accepted and we went on.

2. Nate's coffeehouse scene had no capital-C Conflict. This worried some of us a little ("Are we doing it right?") at the time. Rereading the rules afterward, I see that it suggests "most" scenes should have a conflict, which I think is about right. The scene was brisk and it let Nate's character (called Mark, which is also the real name of our GM) establish his own special degree of weirdness, which is his Issue, and thus fulfilled its agenda of character development. It earned Nate the evening's only fanmail, for his description.

3. Scene VI presented another surprise/dilemma - to wit, can you call a scene for someone else's PC? The rules seem to assume that players will only call scenes for their own PCs but not require it specifically (per my after-the-fact rereading). Bill's agendum, "Doctor gets Owen talking about himself" seemed reasonable," but at this point my "speed it up, Jim!' anxiety was kicking in, so I rather clumsily reframed the scene in a way that tried to make it do double duty - Jim uses Owen's revelations to advance the plot by getting the Doc to provide useful info. On the one hand, this is subverting the announced focus of the scene; on the other hand, I didn't object to the doc getting Owen to talk about himself, so there was no point making that the stakes of the Conflict; (IOW, "if I win I lose.")

Overall, I can't say the evening was fun, but we could see Fun from where we were. Going into the next session we'll have better familiarity with the rules to help us. I'm also going to propose an explicit social contract that "All of us will do everything we can to complete every episode in one evening," and to have the four-act skeleton in front of us at all times, matched to the time on the real clock. (I'm thinking either half an our or one scene apiece per act.) We also have to iron out some divergent takes on the premise of the show

Best,


Jim

[dunlaing]

1. In the first player-set scene, Bill frames Owen into it as still wearing his wetsuit. My instincts were against this - it seemed both a smidge farcical for how I wanted Owen portrayed and too slow-paced (i.e. why are we spotlighting every little step of the way along the path?)

I think the culprit here is that it was the first scene, we didn't really know enough for me to be able to set a scene that would advance the plot, and I was still under the belief that only Owen could interact with normal people. I requested a scene in which we get a vehicle (figuring that procuring transportation would put us closer to getting to the plot--since the only thing we knew about the plot was that it took place in a big house outside town). The GM framed the scene as my character going into a General Store, which flabbergasted me. I had no idea why my character would have any interest in going into a General Store. It's not as if I would assume you can rent a car in a General Store. The only thing I could think of was "finding appropriate clothes for Owen" since Owen had been narrated as taking off his dive mask at the end of the previous scene. I wasn't going for comedy at all (and I didn't think the scene progressed toward comedy in regard to clothing Owen).

2. Nate's coffeehouse scene had no capital-C Conflict. This worried some of us a little ("Are we doing it right?") at the time. Rereading the rules afterward, I see that it suggests "most" scenes should have a conflict, which I think is about right. The scene was brisk and it let Nate's character (called Mark, which is also the real name of our GM) establish his own special degree of weirdness, which is his Issue, and thus fulfilled its agenda of character development. It earned Nate the evening's only fanmail, for his description.

I didn't think it was all that brisk. I felt that, in this scene, there was a lot of wasted screen time. Nate requested a scene where he makes contact with his connection (Jack? John?) and the GM brought in a fairly long dialogue with a waitress before Nate had a chance to find someone he could make into his connection. Once that happened, the scene went briskly.

Overall, I can't say the evening was fun, but we could see Fun from where we were. Going into the next session we'll have better familiarity with the rules to help us.

So far, I'm disappointed with my PTA experience. I'm not convinced that it's the fault of the rules, but there were definitely stumbles based around the rules.

My experiences with requesting scenes were disappointing. I requested two scenes, and each immediately went askew from my expectations and only later (and somewhat tangentially) came back to the agenda of the scene. The first scene I requested that the agenda be that we find transportation and the next thing I know we're in a General Store trying to keep the proprietor from calling the sherrif. The second scene I requested that the agenda be that the doctor gets Owen talking about himself and the next thing I know the Doctor is talking to Owen about the Big Bad. (I know Jim mentions that he turned the fous into "- Jim uses Owen's revelations to advance the plot by getting the Doc to provide useful info" but even before Jim had a chance to do that, the doctor starts off talking to Owen about the Big Bad instead of asking him anything about himself).

In a game where I have no ability to request a scene, I go in expecting scenes that are not what I explicitly want them to be. In a game where I have full ability to set a scene (e.g., Capes, Universalis), the scene is what I want it to be (the action of the scene may proceed strangely, but it at least begins as I envision it). PTA's sort of half-n-half "request" a scene left me cold as I was engaged to the point of wanting a specific scene, but then didn't get it.

I also wanted a stick to go with the carrot of Fan Mail, but I'm not sure that it would actually be a good idea.

We also had some issues with conflict resolution, but those were typical "first-time playing" sorts of things. (for instance, in an early conflict, the GM pretty clearly overestimated how much budget he should spend and blew us out of the water on a conflict that he later seemed not to want to have won).

[Supplanter]

I requested a scene in which we get a vehicle (figuring that procuring transportation would put us closer to getting to the plot--since the only thing we knew about the plot was that it took place in a big house outside town). The GM framed the scene as my character going into a General Store, which flabbergasted me. I had no idea why my character would have any interest in going into a General Store. It's not as if I would assume you can rent a car in a General Store. The only thing I could think of was "finding appropriate clothes for Owen" since Owen had been narrated as taking off his dive mask at the end of the previous scene. I wasn't going for comedy at all (and I didn't think the scene progressed toward comedy in regard to clothing Owen).

Hm. Interesting. Again, first scene, and we didn't specify a location in the request stage per the rules, which I think we did thereafter. But it's an interesting example of assumption clash. My own thought process was, "Bill, asked for a chance to get a vehicle and Mark (GM) put us here," therefore there's a chance to get a vehicle. Since Mark specified the town was named "Lickity," I concluded, "This place is so small the general store is your only source for rent-a-cars" and went from there. And the store owner wanting to call the Bastables seems like pretty straightforward "The GM drives the scene towards a conflict" as specified in the rules.

But the major assumption clash problem was everyone's different notion of whether Phil and Replacement Mark were visible to the mundane world. That was a biggie, and non-splittable. (Someone has to not get what they want on that score.) And certainly discommoding to discover the problem in play.

2. Nate's coffeehouse scene had no capital-C Conflict. This worried some of us a little ("Are we doing it right?") at the time. Rereading the rules afterward, I see that it suggests "most" scenes should have a conflict, which I think is about right. The scene was brisk and it let Nate's character (called Mark, which is also the real name of our GM) establish his own special degree of weirdness, which is his Issue, and thus fulfilled its agenda of character development. It earned Nate the evening's only fanmail, for his description.

I didn't think it was all that brisk. I felt that, in this scene, there was a lot of wasted screen time. Nate requested a scene where he makes contact with his connection (Jack? John?) and the GM brought in a fairly long dialogue with a waitress before Nate had a chance to find someone he could make into his connection. Once that happened, the scene went briskly.

I forgot the waitress part until you brought it up. I still don't really remember it.

Overall, I can't say the evening was fun, but we could see Fun from where we were. Going into the next session we'll have better familiarity with the rules to help us.

So far, I'm disappointed with my PTA experience. I'm not convinced that it's the fault of the rules, but there were definitely stumbles based around the rules.

My experiences with requesting scenes were disappointing. I requested two scenes, and each immediately went askew from my expectations and only later (and somewhat tangentially) came back to the agenda of the scene. The first scene I requested that the agenda be that we find transportation and the next thing I know we're in a General Store trying to keep the proprietor from calling the sherrif. The second scene I requested that the agenda be that the doctor gets Owen talking about himself and the next thing I know the Doctor is talking to Owen about the Big Bad. (I know Jim mentions that he turned the fous into "- Jim uses Owen's revelations to advance the plot by getting the Doc to provide useful info" but even before Jim had a chance to do that, the doctor starts off talking to Owen about the Big Bad instead of asking him anything about himself).

In a game where I have no ability to request a scene, I go in expecting scenes that are not what I explicitly want them to be. In a game where I have full ability to set a scene (e.g., Capes, Universalis), the scene is what I want it to be (the action of the scene may proceed strangely, but it at least begins as I envision it). PTA's sort of half-n-half "request" a scene left me cold as I was engaged to the point of wanting a specific scene, but then didn't get it.

I also wanted a stick to go with the carrot of Fan Mail, but I'm not sure that it would actually be a good idea.

We also had some issues with conflict resolution, but those were typical "first-time playing" sorts of things. (for instance, in an early conflict, the GM pretty clearly overestimated how much budget he should spend and blew us out of the water on a conflict that he later seemed not to want to have won).

I'm not prepared to write off PTA for us yet. I think most of us at the table had some stumbles based on our newness to the rules. That'll improve in the next session. I think all of the following are possible:

o PTA is the wrong ruleset for us (particularly Nate and I);
o PTA is fine for us, but a poor fit for The Replacements as we've conceived it;
o PTA works perfectly for us and our series conception once we get up to speed;
o Something I haven't thought of.

The nice thing about the "pilot" concept is we can always decide not to greenlight the series if we decide the issue is one of the first two on the list.

Best,


Jim

[dunlaing]

I'm not prepared to write off PTA for us yet. I think most of us at the table had some stumbles based on our newness to the rules. That'll improve in the next session.

Nor am I, and you're right in that many of the stumbles may be due to newness to the rules. I wouldn't mind hearing from some people with more PTA experience, though on my issues so far.