Gaming in another system's Setting

[Aaron Smith]

Just an idea I had, idly leafing through my copy of PTA. Has anyone thought of, or done, a PTA game in an already established setting? A soap opera done in Exalted's Creation for instance? Or an action adventure story done in the Forgotten Realms?

What do people think of such an idea, and how reasonable would it be for many? A lot of the appeal to building a setting is that the players are invested in it, and sometimes players aren't so invested in a random pre packaged setting that comes with another system.

[Matt Wilson]

Somebody did do this, in fact. There was a PTA series called "The Exalted."

Go here to check it out:  http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?t=151974

[John Harper]

PTA Shadowrun. It is my heart's desire.

[Danny_K]

I was thinkng of posting this in Actual Play, but it probably fits better here.  I think it's a great idea, but it has one drawback: fidelity to canon.  I was recently interested in startng an online game of DiTV set in the Star Wars universe, but now I'm convinced that the red-hot fan-love of Star Wars will pretty much preclude me from ever doing this.  As soon as we started talking about concepts, people immediately began to bring up specific locales and events from the movies, the Expanded Universe, and even the computer games.  Exciting stuff for some, but a huge turn-off for me. 

So I think there is a downside to tying a game to closely to a specific setting, particularly if your gaming group is such that people would be purists about the canon.  For example, I can imagine a Shadowrun PTA game going along merrily when someone suddenly speaks up: "Dunklezahn wouldn't do that."  Cue the arguments, butressed with references to supplements, about what the fictional character would and wouldn't do. 

The topic makes me want to play lots more PTA so I can explore the matter further. 

[John Harper]

Fidelity be damned. Or rather, assumed and put in its place.

Consider Deadwood. It has some fidelity to history, but is still a perfect PTA-style show. It takes the "facts" of the setting as given (unless they get in the way) and then explores inside that to find the issues and drama. That's the right note to hit when playing around in an established setting, I think.

Hell, Deadwood is practically a PTA tutorial in every way, now that I think of it.

[joshua neff]

Inspired by Vincent's post about BSG on his blog, I've been thinking of Star Wars, too. Only I'd want to run it with PTA, and canon be damned. I mean, think about it: how many old school Star Wars fans would be happy to ignore most of the Star Wars canon in favor of the original stuff?

So, I was thinking...run a 5-episode PTA game as 5 acts of a Star Wars movie. Which movie? Return of the Jedi of course! With the protagonists being Luke, Leia, Han, and maybe Chewie and/or Lando. Take only A New Hope and The Empire Strikes Back as canon. Nothing else. Do Jedi the way you'd want to do it, rather than strictly the way Lucas did it. I like to think of it as "Episode III: Return of the Jedi (No Goddamn Ewoks)."

[Landon Darkwood]

Funny... I've been wanting to do that with the prequel trilogy instead of ROTJ, given that it seems to be the source of much more flak from the fanboy set. We've been thinking about doing the brainstorm to establish what events we want to hit along the way, if any... an altered version of "Next Week On..." where we decide if anything's sacred. Does Anakin have to turn to the Dark Side, does the final conflict have to be Anakin vs. Obi-Wan, etc etc.

Generally, I'm really curious about using PTA for all kinds of things that normally end up in the realm of pastiche.

[Danny_K]

Well, I'm about to start playing in a PTA game set in the Exalted universe.  Go me!  I'll try to post about my play experiences when I've got enough to go on (i.e., three months from now).

[dyjoots]

Danny, I'd definitely be interested to see what your game ends up like.  My Exalted/PTA (the AP linked above) went well, but conflicting schedules and such tore it apart.  Such is the tragedy of many a game.  Makes me sad really that I can't get any PTA games going on here...

Anyway, many of my group's PTA show brainstorming sessions go from "We like the setting in this movie/book/RPG," to "How can we make it our own?"  I think that working from an existing setting is a great way to get the ball rolling, especially if something is as popular with your group as Exalted was with mine at the time.

[spikexan]

Since I picked up PTA, I've used it for every existing campaign I run.  I've used PTA in its purest form once for a Sliders-style game I ran (it went really well).  Our group really makes PTA shine as a suppliment game.  Here is how we do it.

We were playing Serenity.  I had everybody make their characters as normal.  Once that was done, I whipped out the PTA book and had everyone remake their characters within the guidelines of PTA.  The PTA sheet becomes my GM cheat sheet to me to examine (a) what Episode each player hopes to dominate airtime in, (b) what issues drive the characters, and (c) each player's basic assumption of their character.  The PTA character sheets are wonderful cheat sheets.

We've done this for A/State, Serenity, Vampire the Masquerade, and Unisystem.  The game works like a dream.

We also shifted from the typical 13 or 22 Episode Seasons to the 5 or 9 Episodes Seasons suggested in the book.  Read the related article about this topic.

All in all, I'd say this little gamebook is one of the best buys I've made in a RPG in five years.

Todd

[nellist]

I'm a Glorantha fan boy and have bought PTA specifically because I thought it would be good to run a Gloranthan TV show. Hasn't happened yet but I think it might.

Keith