[PTA] Deep in the Blue

[Nicolas Crost]

An observation about PTA: the ability to set up conflicts so both outcomes are really great, and not necessarily directly about what's in the scene is fun. For example, I had a conflict with my wife about whether my kid gets to have an after-school job in this post office where I know gangsters will be. I knew the story would be better if he did have a job there, but I wanted a conflict. So, even though I was arguing against the job, I set up the conflict with Jason as "I win: my wife knows I still care and has sympathy for how hard it is to be in my position, but I give in on the job to show I care. I lose: my wife's pissed, thinks I don't care, and possibly finds solace in the arms of a Mexican gangster."

I made the same observation in my PtA games. PtA also (as in your example) leads to more "internal" conflicts. Most of our PtA conflicts are social or psychological in nature. Lots of conflicts that don't seem that way at first turn into "does X manage to impress Y", "Does X convice Y of...", "Does X manage to spark affection in Y..." or something like that (just like your example, where am argument wasn't really about the argument itself, but about the relation between the two people). Also many conflicts turn out to be purely internal to the character, e.g. "Does X manage to forgive himself", "Does X regain his self-worth" etc. This is stuff, that would normally (in more "classical" games) fall entirely into the domain of the player, being decided purely by him. But internal struggles make great conflicts and PtA is great for facilitating that.

On a more technical note: How long did the episode take? How many scenes did you have? Could you estimate how much of the playing time was deciding on focus and agenda, setting stakes, mechanical resolution, suggestions by other players etc. (stuff usually described as "meta talk" or "out of character") and how much was in-character dialogue and describing shots? I would really be interested in the way the distribution was in your game.

[Jason Morningstar]

Gosh, the minutia of the session eludes me a bit.  We figured out that we had about eight conflicts (6 from Remi, screen  presence 2), and I bet we had at least twice that number of scenes, some as short as a played-out phone call and others quite complex.  This took place over 2.5 or 3 hours. 

[Clinton R. Nixon]

I can't remember if this is PTA advice, or just something we do, but we go around the table, with each person - including Jason, the Director - having a scene. I like to think of Jason's as "audience choice," tying in story-lines.

We probably had, yeah, about 15-18 scenes.

[Roger]

Could any of you speak a bit about how the Fan Mail mechanic was (or was not) used?


Cheers,
Roger

[Remi Treuer]

Could any of you speak a bit about how the Fan Mail mechanic was (or was not) used?

I know that Clinton's pile of unused fan mail definitely had an effect on me handing it out, although he still killed me hard with a couple scens, I think I gave him 3 this session. I was burning through the stuff pretty fast (I had none left at the end of the session), and I think I got 5 in all. I probably would have had a couple left, but I had been losing pretty brutally all night, and so I blew all my fan mail in the last scene. Good thing, too, because the extra cards just barely put me over the top against a terrifyingly solid hand from Jason.

We also did the GM cards correctly this time, so Jason automatically got a card in each conflict. We use fake gold coins for fanmail, and the ecology of that asserted itself. Jason always seemed to be able to spend two or three Budget without worrying he'd run out.

In all, I'm feeling fanmail. With two players it does feel like we're maintaining a bit of equilibrium between us that might not be possible with more. Also, since I think a good chunk of stuff both Jason and Clinton do is awesome, it's easy to hand it out for a cleverly turned phrase or a painful character moment. Clinton is the only one who gets the fanmail of course, there have been a couple times where I've wished I could give Jason fanmail, and I generally make some exclamation to that effect.

Does that answer your question?

[Jason Morningstar]

Session three was last night and it was the best one yet, as far as I was concerned.  I think there is a critical mass, maybe some building momentum with PTA where everyone can really get invested in issues and events after a few sessions and the game just sings.  So we hit the ground running for Remi's 3 screen presence episode and the bodies got stacked like cordwood.  He pushed his nemesis out of a Cessna 206 over the Ohio river, for example.  It was insano. 

One thing I've noticed is that the game has gone nowhere I expected.  Before we began, I prepped a bunch of stuff detailing many factions, with ideas for sub-plots depending on how the players interacted with them, and about 50% of that stuff has surfaced.  Much of it never will, but that is not a big deal at all.  Last night the two protagonists, who had been estranged personally and were deep under cover in vicious rival gangs, came back together and worked as partners.  This was a conscious effort by Clinton and Remi and I supported it - it really demonstrated how effective keeping the protagonist stories tightly intertwined is.  By bringing them back into each others spheres of influence, it ramped up the interaction as well as the tension.  It also allowed an unbelievably tense scene in which Remi's connection, leader of the Flacas gang Miguel, got turned into a paid informant.  It was cool and unexpected - none of us saw it coming, and it couldn't have happened had the two protagonists stayed apart. 

Also of note - we really brought the improv again.  There was a bunch of object work and Remi initiated a crazy cool scene where he had a conversation with his nemesis in the airplane, creating an elaborate backstory that brought all the pieces together.  I saw his game and just "yes, and"-ed him until it was time for a conflict.  That was fun. 

[Jason Morningstar]

Last night was Clinton's spotlight episode and Remi was 1 screen presence, the reverse of last week.  I thought it went well but perhaps not as well as it could have - the energy was a little lower and the conflicts less intense from my point of view.  I think we all still had a good time, but there was more discussion of appropriate stakes, where last week it seemed almost instinctual where the lines would be drawn.  And in a couple of cases, the scenes progressed quite far without conflicts, which came almost as an afterthought.  In addition, none of our "next week on..." scenes happened.  I tried to put the pieces in play for Clinton's, but it just didn't come around.  Experienced PTA players - is this common? 

Almost all the plot threads have been at least elucidated if not resolved, and we can all see where next week's final session will go, which is fun.  I had a lovely moment where they realized their dowdy, desk-jockey boss, Captain Katy Thomspon of the Regional Enforcement Narcotics Unit, a peson they dismissed and gave endless shit, was hand in hand with the most vicious gang in Cincinnati and had been playing them like a fiddle.  Another positive note - Clinton lost a conflict and was genuinely upset about it, which was cool.  We realized that while having equally compelling outcomes is great, having outcomes you, as a player, absolutely dread is even better. 

[Roger]

Does that answer your question?

Absolutely -- thanks for writing that.



Cheers,
Roger

[Remi Treuer]

Two things about this week's game:

1. I wasn't paying attention during a scene in which Clinton's character, Frank Trang, was pretending to be a California drug smuggler. I was putting up my dishes, and accidentally said, "Frank," instead of the assumed name he was using. Everyone lit up for a minute, but I protested. I should have just rolled with it.

2. The reveal of the Captain being the Big Bad was awesome. I almost cheered. It was the best bit of 'plottiness' we've had in any of our games. Bravo again, Jason.

[Jason Morningstar]

Something that was intensely interesting to me about revealing Captain Thompson as the Big Bad - it really, really worked, and it is the most hoary cliche in cop shows ever.  I didn't plan it that way, it just seemed to fit based on the way you guys were calling for scenes.  I think when everybody is invested in the series, genre tropes don't seem at all tired or silly - they seem right. 

[Jason Morningstar]

We had our last episode in the first (and only planned) season last night and it was superb.  Both protagonists had screen presence two, and both got to do some cool stuff.  This episode got big fast and had a very over-the-top John Woo vibe, in contrast to the rest of the season.  Particular elements of note:

- Remi's protagonist choosing his Mexican gangster lover over everything else
- A showdown with the leader of the Bad Boy Crips in which Clinton's tough as nails dude knuckles under and gives up his son Tony as a hostage
- Two briefcases, one crammed with chemically pure methamphetamine and the other with half a million dollars
- Phonetheu "Parkey" Phouangsouvanh, leader of the Tiny Rascal Gang, bleeding out in the trunk of Clinton's character's wife's Ford Taurus
- A gun-on-gun standoff in a University parking lot, surrounded by dirty SWAT officers and AK-toting Ecuadorean hatchet men
- A crazy cool ending I'll let Clinton and Remi describe, that perfectly set up a second season for all the interesting characters.

I think my favorite moment was a small one:  Frank Trang (Clinton's guy) was about to do something suicidally crazy, and he knew his social worker wife Evey would be in danger, so he sent Hugo Valle (Remi's guy), along with Miguel De Rozas, his lover, to go pick her up and leave town with her - to take her all the way to Mexico, actually.  So she's been warned that some shit is going down, and not to answer the phone, etc.  Hugo rolls up and walks into her house.  She's called 911, she doesn't know him from Adam, and she's threatening to shoot him.  It's tense.  And then Clinton (as Miguel) says "Mrs. Trang, this is Miguel de Rozas.  You know my sister Carlita.  You helped her out when she was pregnant.  My family owes you everything and I swear to you before God we are here to help."  Then shazam!  Conflict, players win, it's awesome. 

I really felt that all the elements were solidly in place for a tremendous finale, and as producer I just got out of the way.  Clinton and Remi made some really solid choices early on and betrayed each other, then overcame their betrayal to work together when the hammer fell, and it was cool.  All the conflicts felt right, and there was a lot of tension.  It was a very satisfying conclusion and made me an even huger fan of PTA. 

[Clinton R. Nixon]

I'll describe my side of the ending. Ok, Frank's lost every conflict recently. He's super-fucked. He's the sort of guy who always gets some big plan, and all of them failed. He thought he'd trick some gangsters into selling him drugs, and they screwed him. He thought he'd get his boss on tape indicting herself, and she shot him - in the recorder (or so he thought.) He thought he was done as a cop and he'd be the right-hand man of Titty Chu - who laughed at him. He thought he could get the drugs and money back - a cool million - and be set, and he lost it.

So he had one more desperate plan: go all hostage-holder style right to the commissioner, holding a knife to his corrupt commander's throat. We're in the lobby of police headquarters, SWAT guys all around and the hostage negotiator trying to get Frank to let her go. And Frank's old partner talks him into checking the wire, and it was actually not busted. Frank let the captain go, SWAT guys tackled him to the floor, and we see a newspaper a week later proclaiming his innocence and his new position as interim head of narcotics.

So, by failing the whole time, he managed to do the right thing: redeem himself as a cop. But at what cost? Well, his son is being held by Titty Chu, the notorious gangster, and will of course grow to hate Frank. His wife was sent by him to Mexico with his former partner to stay safe. He's alone in a city full of people who hate him, with the hardest job around. Man, season 2 would be a blast.