[PTA] Nightshade Alley (long)

[Joel P. Shempert]

The full moon at midnight. Some eerie background noise, but no music. We pan down to gently sloping grassland, mist rising off the dew-soaked blades. There is a distant, muffled howling. Slowly, the camera pans to the side, than races swiftly up a wooded hillside. Gently ominous music fades in. At its pinnacle, there stands a crude thatched hut, it's firelit window the only light for miles. The trees surrounding it are felled, giving it a commanding view of the countryside. We zoom slowly, then cut close, to a man sitting on the doorstep, silhouetted and outlined by the fireglow of the window beside him. He lights a pipe, his face suddenly revealed in the brief glow. It is grim and foreboding, in about its mid-twenties, but seems aged with care beyond its years. The man glowers; is he friend or foe? Then the light is out and he is obscured once more.

A few moments, and howling erupts anew, this time close by, threatening, frenzied, the overlapping crooning of multiple beasts. The music rises in tempo and dynamic. The man snuffs his pipe, and rises heavily, purposefully, and we see he is heavyset (though not stocky) and formidable. He looks, in profile, with deepening scowl, in the direction of the howls. The music peaks and falls off.

*                    *                    *

Cut to the forest. Someone is fleeing, furtively, desperately. Music is urgent, feverish. Trees pass in front and behind as the camera follows jerkily. In a series of jarring cuts, we see her bare feet as they stumble along the ground, her tattered clothing, the briefest of glimpses of her pursuers, furred, sinewy, slavering, the briefest glimpse of a pale, terrified face, and a billowing tangle of silvery-white hair. Cut between girl and pursuers, desperate panting on her part, shorting and menacing growls on theirs.

The girl's pace quickens, her desperation increases, the beasts appear to gain ground. Seeing a break in the trees, the girl makes for them, heaving, straining, making one last push.She lunges forward, but there is a beast at her heals, it lunges as well, there is a flash of teeth and hair and eyes and its bite mauls her arm--she tears free and stumbles forward, clearing the treeline, tottering a few paces, and collapsing in a heap. Music cuts out aburptly. She looks back in terror, scrambles along the ground, her arm is mangled and limp, a bloody mess. Pan around, there are shapes emerging from the treeline, hunched down, and sinister, eyes red in the dark, clearly werewolves. They take a few slow advancing steps, toying with their prey now the hunt is all but done. Music cues up, announcing imminent peril. Pan up past the treetops,back to the full moon. Title fades in:[/i]

Nightshade Alley

So first, let me get this out of the way: I finally got to play PTA! Yay!!

I purchased it a couple of months back, and I've been waiting to find some friends to try it out with. I haven't played it yet with any of my gamer friends. I started a series with a couple of friends, Jenni and Nate, who have never played a roleplaying game in their lives. It was obvious to me as I read the PTA text that it would be a particularly good game to introduce to non-RPers, probably easier than teaching it to seasoned roleplayers.

The group accepted my proposal to play semi-producerless, mainly because I wanted to get in on the protagonist action too. They both agreed that the facilitating role of the producer could be shouldered by the group, with me taking a little extra initiative (as Experienced Roleplayer Guy) if we floundered. And for conflict, we could just have the person to the Conflict-ed player's left set the budget difficulty unless involved in the conflict him/herself. If everyone's characters were in the conflict, we'd just go by consensus.

We spent a long time on series creation, then started an episode, but only got maybe 1/3 through it before we had to quit. I'm not sure if I'm happy with how it went, some aspects were great, others, I don't quite know. I'll get to that later.

We were kind of stuck on a series concept for awhile; I had a sort of direction in mind, but I didn't want to dominate the decision process as the "experienced" roleplayer, so I kept it to myself for awhile. When nothing was emerging, I mentioned that it'd struck me that there really hasn't been a good fantasy series on TV ever--they're all cheesy and don't take themselves seriously, e.g. Zena/Hercules, Buffy, Charmed, and so on. Everyone around the table affirmed that they hate those kinds of shows. So we struck out toward creating a fantasy series that takes itself seriously. I suggested a sort of alternate world where elves and goblins and trolls and ghoulies are all real, and everyone knows about them, they're just a fact of life. But not an over-the-top Harry Potter kind of deal--more gritty and harsh; the world is a slightly nastier place than our own, so everyone is just a bit more fearful, a bit lest trusting, more isolated and callous. "A werewolf's after him? Lock the doors and sprinkle wolfsbane on the threshhold, else he'll get us too." So the series would be about "love among the ruins," the great pain and sacrifice of broken people learning to reach out to one another, and an underlying theme that thought there ARE things that go bump in the night, you still can't beat human cruelty and evil.

Everyone liked this, and we worked out a setting, first deciding between  "roving the countryside" or based in a city. Nate liked Roving, but Jenni and I preferred city. We ended up with kind of a cross between Victorian London and modern times, just enough things like cars and telephones to set it apart from the 1800s, but nothing too hi-tech.

Nate produced Godrick, a gruff young hermit who lives in a hut near the city, he's been in a solitary existence since his family was killed by some kind of nasties, and his Issue was "Extreme distrust of Otherworld beings" countered by an acute sense of justice. Jenni came up with Catlyn, a woman in her late thirties who runs a shop of charms, defenses and remedies against enchantment and the like. Her issue is "distrust of men" due to past relationships, and some unspecified hurt from her father. I created "Wintermere," a young compassionate girl of half-Fae blood who is outcast on both sides, Fae because they're snooty Bluebloods, and humans because they don't trust Fae. Her issue is "belonging and safety." Thinking along the lines of Faerie magic being based on bargaining and obligation, I decided that she was running from some mysterious nasty person ("The whistling man") who was coming to collect on a debt, possibly incurred by her family and passed on to her.

I haven't done much in the way of cooperative character creation before, so this was new territory. Jen was furiously scribbling on her sheet once inspiration struck, and I had to quell that little inner rp-habit voice and actually ask her what she'd come up with. I'm used to the unwritten rule of basically not seeing the bride before the wedding, where everyone guards their characters' secrecy before play. It was really cool to work with the group and create a trio of characters that bounce well off each other.

We ended up deciding to make The Whistling Man a joint Nemesis between Godrick and Wintermere, figuring that he had some connection to the fate of Godrick's family. Then when Godrick rescues Wintermere from the wereolves, she says something cryptic that reminds him of that night, so he sticks with her to follow the mystery even though she's fae-touched and discomfits him. Jenni added the idea of Wintermere being injured by the werewolves, thus Godrick needing to take Winter to Catlyn's remedy shop.

We worked out Screen Presence based on Godrick being the obvious protagonist, but Wintermere's impending doom being a nice, gradually developing arc and a good season finale, plus Cat's issue, as a kind of background character, being best developed quietly and slowly, sort of a "sleeper." Thus: Godrick 2-1-3-1-2, Wintermere 1-1-2-2-3, Catlyn 1-2-1-3-2.

So far this all felt pretty cool and comfortably collaborative. In fact the easygoing consensus style planning was refreshing and exhilerating to me; not only was there no central GM burden to "come up with everything" which leads to so much burnout, but the lack of a need to "Get it right the first time" was also a relief--if we changed our minds mid-stream anytime throughout the session, all we had to do was back up and say, no wait, how about if it happens this way. Very cool.

On the downside, Ithink we may have preplanned too much, rather than jumping right into the scene framing. On the other hand, if we liked the result (and we did),then I'm not sure there's a problem. I'll explain as I go.

I kicked off the opening scene with pretty much the narration I posted here, deferring to Nate to set up the Hermit and his hut. Then I turned it over to Nate for the rescue scene, and we blocked out the quick-and-dirty fight (he's got a morningstar with silver spikes!) with Nate in the lead. Werewolves were dispatched, Wintermere moaned something in delerium about the Whistling Man, and Godrick started in recognition. He then carried Wintermere to the city, reaching it at dawn for a spectacular establishing shot. Jenni then took over scene framing, leading our heroes through the cobblestone streets, and to the titular Nightshade Alley, where of course Cat's shop is located. Jen set up a cool description of the shop and its oddments, plus her tiny Pixie companion who hangs out on a perch by the counter. We had some character interaction to highlight the characters' personalities and establish that Cat and Godrick know eachother--he dumps Wintermere unceremoniously on the counter, Cat says the cure won't come cheap, Godrick shrugs and says fine, then leaves. Catlyn is infuriated but can't just let the girl die, and treats her.

Jenni really stepped up with the whole werewolf cure thing, supplying wonderful on-the-spot details, some rare mushroom to stem the infection short-term, then a full blood transfusion for a permanent cure, and no time to lose. We WILL have to be careful that a cure like this doesn't become too easy; hopefully the one established is drastic enough to prevent that.

So then Cat carried Winter out of the shop to taker to the hospital for transfusion; spotting Godrick still nearby she told him, "the least you could do is help me carry her to hospital," and off they went. We were about out of time, so we cut it off there.

OK, so the session was tons of fun; on my end the experience was totally freeing compared to most of my roleplaying experience, and on Nate and Jenni's end they overcame any "gee, but I've never roleplayed before" jitters they still had and stepped up admirably and imaginatively.

The problem: Well, as you experienced PTA players have surely noticed by now, we played for like, an hour or so, without a single conflict.

There were a couple of times where I said "hey, wait a minute, should we have a conflict here?" once following the werewolf attack, and once during the shop scene. And both times, everyone (including me) was like, well, gee, I like it the way it is." The preplanning may have shot us in the foot, here. It's not like we planned to, er, plan, it's just that by the time we had worked out the characters and their relationships, we had this clear idea of how to intro the story and get everyone to meet. At both junctures that I made a conflict check, there was really no alternate outcome that interested us--we liked it the way we envisioned it, we all knew Wintermere would survive the attack, and we all knew we she'd get cured. As far as we were concerned, this was all a perfectly acceptable preamble.

I'm just worried that this will set a pattern;what if we're paralyzed throughout the series, stuck for interesting conflicts and just narrating a string of uncontested events? Sounds pretty bland. What do you guys think? Are we headed for disaster or is this perfectly understandable for a series opening? The PTA text flat-out says that if you're not getting to conflicts right away, you're in trouble. But couldn't it just be amatter of an individual group's pacing?

Hopefully we'll get to finish our episode this weekend. We'll see if we can't pick up the pace a bit then.

[Glendower]

The Conflicts usually come about as a result of the Producer tossing in some kind of complication.  You know, some event or situation they have to either beat or negotiate through.  The fact that you don't have a firm producer makes things a bit difficult in that respect. 

The producer has to look at the character's issue when in a character scene and push it to the limit.  In order to be an effective producer, you gotta be willing to lay a lot of hurt onto the protagonists.  And the players have to appreciate that protagonists with problems make for an interesting game. 

[Joel P. Shempert]

Hmm, interesting points. It may be too early to tell, but Idon't think anyone in the play group is going to have a particular problem with their characters having problems. But I guess without a producer we'll all have toconentrate on pushing the isues more from scene to scene.

Thansk, that's helpful.