[PTA] Happy Endings

The concept that really clicked for me (when explained by smart people) was "reincorporation": what distinguishes a "story" from "a bunch of stuff that, y'know, happened" is that things introduced in the beginning come back again at the end, to be changed or reasserted in some conclusion manner. This is Chekov's infamous gun on the wall in the first act that goes off in the third act. A happy ending that just dumps some major story element isn't satisfying reincorporation (good example pending); a tragic ending that reincorporates all the major story elements can be very satisfying. The key is that, of the important pieces you had at the beginning, all of them are there again at the end, appropriately changed or unchanged: "the same only different."

So in my spotlight episode (me being Weiss's player), even though it was a really unhappy ending, it was tremendously satisfying because it brought elements back and dealt with them solidly -- especially Tony's brilliant idea that the last scene of her spotlight should be her heading into the court-martial that was her first scene in the series. All the patricle-antiparticle pairs met back up and annihilated in pretty flashes of light.

But it would have been very difficult to achieve satisfactory reincorporation with a "Mason goes off alone and unloved" ending to the series (not impossible, mind you, just damned difficult). The problem was that the team was as important a character as any of the three protagonists individually. In fact, it formed at the end of the very first scene of the series (admittedly a long scene, with Weiss's court-martial embedded in it). Coming to an ending that said, "well, everybody goes off in separate directions" would have failed to reincorporate the idea of the team.

Now, we could have done it. The way that comes to my mind: That first scene of the series started with Mason and Brigit together on the team, having been abandoned by their prior partner ("Sparrow," an NPC) and needing a new pilot, and then running into Weiss (fresh from her disgrace); so it might have been a good "same but different" to have the series end with Mason abandoning the team of Weiss and Brigit...who then say "well, we need a new streetwise guy" and go off to find a replacement Mason.

I'm not sure if that would have satisfied Jen; it would have satisfied me. Regardless, we would have had to work harder to get reincorporation this way than with the happy ending we actually did, because we hadn't been laying the groundwork for it as well. Of the four previous episodes, at least two followed a clear structure of

1) the team is tenuous -- either newly formed and not sure of each other yet, or getting on each other's nerves, or whatever
2) the team encounters The Threat of the Week
3) the team members have various doubts and self-defeatingness, mostly resolved through formal conflicts (i.e. drawing cards)
4) the team gets it together and overcomes The Threat -- mostly resolved outside the formal conflict system by us "just talking," i.e. the loosely structured Drama, i.e. brainstorming, the fostering of which is PTA's real greatest strength

Note that (4), where the reincorporation pay-off occurs, is too important[/i[ to be left to the mercy to the conflict resolution system -- in part because of our group's particular dynamics, but in part because the PTA rules really don't give you any structural help on how to reincorporate. (Compare Capes, where at least some kind of reincorporation is mechanically rewarded because the resolution of prior Conflicts gives you Inspiration bonuses on later Conflicts). If you consider that the finale episode was basically in the position of phase (4) for the entire season, it's no surprise that (a) reincorporation that didn't involve the team getting it together was a hard sell, and (b) how reincorporation actually happened was dealt with by "just talking," rather than by setting Stakes.

I'd further argue that this experience suggests that "Nobody Gets Hurt" is a fine philosophy but impossible to implement in Actual Play, precisely because two people of good will (i.e. no "dickery" going on) can honestly disagree on what they want to happen and, without realizing it until it's too late, come to want incompatible things. The only surefire way to ensure "Nobody Gets Hurt" is not to care enough to get hurt. Now, not caring too intensely is useful, because it is "only" fiction, after all: Tony was able to sacrifice his desired story outcome to the unity of our real-life team, and his hurt was manageable. But it does strike me that what Ron Edwards has been saying was (as usual, dammit) right all along: real greatness depends on a willingness to get hurt -- and, even, to inflict hurt.