[PTA] The Cuckoo's Nest - Episode 2!

[JasonK]

The Cuckoo's Nest - Part II

I am the player that plays Douglas in the Cuckoo's Nest PTA adventure. We had an additional player come in to our game this time who wanted to play a beat cop obsessed with Justice. So, we decided to cut him into the story by making him investigate the shooting from the previous game. I felt that this was a great segway into his character.

I'll try not to narrate each detail as it happened, since it was a long session and I probably don't remember everything anyway.  But, from the previous game, I do remember talking to the director afterward about not having enough puzzles to solve in the game itself.  So I decided this session to see if I could help things along and introduce some new and interesting (at least to me) investigative plot puzzles.

We also did one change the the David character, changing one of his skills from "TV Trivia Expert" to "TV Action Hero", which blends more into what he did in the previous episode, saving people from getting shot.

-- Plot synopsis

Scene 1) We start off at the bookstore where David Hornsbey is delivering yet another order of food from his car.  This time, it's Chinese food. After he comes in, he notices that Douglas' daughter, Jamie, is in the bookstore. Douglas tries to greet David as "Dr." to help. David tries tell Jamie that he now had to fire the chef of the restaurant and get a new one, so now instead of making Indian food, he's making Chinese food. Then Douglas starts in about a recent archeological finding in Egypt, a mysterious scroll that has a connection with a strange cult.  He is very animated about it.  (This is the introduction of my semi-Lovecraftian puzzle) David then asks about the unmarked police car outside, but neither Jamie nor Douglas had seen it before. Douglas makes a decision to go talk to the police.  Jamie thinks this is not a good idea, but David tries to convice her to stay.   He loses this conflict and Jamie follows Douglas outside.

Scene 2) Douglas walks up to the car leans against it, taps on the window, and offers the cop some mu shu pork. (This is the introduction of the new character, AJ, a beat cop trying to get to be detective.) AJ has been assigned to watch David Hornsbey. Douglas says "I know why your here, but you have to know that they scrolls aren't here.".  AJ, knowing nothing about the find in Egypt, doesn't know what to say.  Douglas continues on rambling about how the scrolls may not even be translatable, etc. until AJ finally says that he doesn't know anything about any scrolls and is only watching them because he's been assigned to David.  Then a dark-colored car with tinted windows drives by with a strange grafitti symbol on it, just as Jamie comes out of the bookstore.  AJ sees the car as just a car, but writes down the license place number. Douglas imagines that the grafitti says "deathmobile" on it, which cuts the conversation with AJ short.  He rushes to Jamie and ushers her inside saying that the streets aren't safe.

Scene 3) At the police station where AJ is doing some investigation about the Fairbank family and running the plates.  Strangely, nothing is coming back from the plates, even when his partner, Vincent, a senior detective showing him the ropes, does it.  This adds to the mystery - why can we not get anything on a vehicle check of this car?

Scene 4) Back at the Cuckoo's Nest. This was a great initiative and very in character by David. He's a slacker and has to find his own place soon.   So, he goes to the bookstore and tries to convince Douglas to put him up for "a month or 2".  I didn't want this, personally, so I fought it with fan mail and some of my connections and skills, but he ended up winning.  Then the director stepped in to narrate and suggested that at the end of the conversation, I'd say "Ok, you can stay - it'll be nice to have someone around to help run the store".  This was a great twist at the end by the director and prevented David from acheiving his goal of being a total slacker right away, so he still has something to pursue.

Scene 5) A car pulls up (black tinted windows, etc) and a man gets out (blonde, med. build) and yells "Don't contest the ruling!" and opens fire on the bookstore.  Conflict!  David, the now-action-hero, dodges successfully, but Douglas does not.  But, instead of having him be hit by the bullets, we opted for a comedy thing where David, in the same way as last episode, pushes Douglas to the floor, breaking his nose.  I thought this worked very well.

Scene 6) The hospital.  Douglas is in the hospital bed and AJ and Vincent interrogate David.  David, with the help of Chris the imaginary friend, say that the shooter here was the same person as the one that shot Jamie during the speech. Vincent has dug up that David was in the psyc ward and David doesn't want that revealed to Jamie, who's there as well. AJ also doesn't want David discredited since he's a good eyewitness. David loses and Vincent calls us all a bunch of crazies and storms out.  Jamie now has doubts about David.  The symbol on the car also makes another appearance here since David remembers it on the car.

Aside: Scene 6 gave me a really good feel (finally) for the way that conflicts were meant to be played. Even though David lost this one, that doesn't mean that everything is over between him and Jamie; it's not win-or-lose, just a setback.  Also, the symbol spraypainted on the car is another springboard into the conspiracy that is forming, which gives us a puzzle to investigate and toy with.

Scene 7) The captain calls AJ and Vincent into the office and reams him out.  This is because of the fact that AJ got found out and that he set off some alarm bells when he did that licence plate search. Conflict resolution went to AJ, so he made the captain see his side of the story

Scene 8) Berkely, the office of esteemed egyptologyst, Dr. Ibrahim. Douglas convinces Dr. Ibrahim that he should go with him on the dig in Cairo to uncover the scrolls.  He also lies to Dr. Imbrahim saying that the police are investigating a cult in the Berkeley area that is somehow tied to this long-lost cult in Egypt.

Scene 9) Back at David's home, David's father is now very proud of him and even more pleased that he found not only a place to live but a job managing a bookstore.  (The importance of this was embellished by David to impress his father).  Sparky, the little brother, is now thinking that he's moving out with David - Conflict time! David wants to tell Sparky that he's not coming without hurting Sparky's feelings.  He does this successfully and now Sparky is happy to be moving into his hero-big-brother's room... especially since David is leaving behind some of his "erotic art" magazines.  There is also some interaction between Sparky's imaginary friend and David's, which was funny to act out - Big Chris was rooting for Sparky and Little Chris was rooting for David. This scene concludes with David's father and mother happy but worried because they were hoping to get some financial help from David when he started paying more rent.

Aside: I liked this scene for a couple of reasons. Firstly, the conflict with Sparky was handled very well. We decided that Sparky would not be moving out with David, no matter what .  So we changed the stakes instead to be if he would be happy or sad about it.  The other thing that was good is the clever plot twist with the financial problems of the family introduced at the end.

Scene 10) At AJ's home.  This was a character scene with AJ confessing deep feelings about his upcoming promotion to his wife. The wife also reveals that the police were asking her about his behavior. AJ now knows that the police are really getting into the nitty-gritty about evaluating him for this promotion. The wife reassures AJ that he's a good man and reveals that she saved him from some disaster in the past.

Scene 11) On the street.  There has been a drive-by shooting and it was a chinese-food delivery person that was shot. AJ and Vincent are the first on the scene and after questioning witnesses, find out that it was an orange car with a spraypainted symbol on it that was responsible.  AJ is now very interested in all of these connections and begins to think something is up.

Aside: This was the toughest scene of the night and there was alot of backand forth as to what would be going on in it.  I'm not sure why, but I think it was because we were formally in conclusion mode and everyone had a different take on what it was going to accomplish.

Scene 12) At the bookstore. Sparky is helping David move into the basement of the Cuckoo's nest. David is now going to make another play for the affections of Jamie.  Conflict resolves in the favor of David, but because of his cover being partially blown, Jamie is not so interested in the "date" as she could be.

Summary and thoughts:  All in all, I think we got the game down a lot better this time around than before, not only because we knew the rules a bit better, but because there was more comfort with what was expected.  Also, figuring out fanmail properly was a great boost and allowed everyone to be much less stingy with praise of other's gameplay. I loved giving and getting fanmail. Gamewise, there was some new puzzles introduced but that's only because everyone helped drive it that way.

Character-wise, the most difficult thing is to focus on the character's main issue.  Somehow, it seems that this very necessary thing is always lost in the shuffle.  Maybe this will come with more experience playing the game, but I've been also seeing that, on a personal level, my character, Douglas, doesn't have a very strong central issue.  He's supposed to be obessesed with conspiracies and finding out "the story behind the story", but it's not holding up well in play.  Maybe it has to be simpler, like "grief".

PTA will never be an RPG to me, but it does come close sometimes. The biggest impediment to fun that I had in the first session was that I was too passive and found myself "waiting for the adventure to start".  The challenge with this game is not to survive/thrive in the big, bad world, but to create an interesting story.  The characters are a vehicle to that end.

If anyone has any comments, I'd love to hear them!

[REkz]

Jason, awesome!  Thanks for the writeup of Adventure #2!
I'm impressed with your writeup and attention to detail.  I also really liked the parts where you commented on when you liked something, b/c it helps give me insight as well.  Normally in games I have players secret ballot to allocate experience for great roleplay and also hilarious scenes, but this game doesn't use exp as such (I suppose we could allocate a few of the remaining audience pool points as fan mail points using that...?)

2 minor corrections I noticed --
#1 = new character's name is 'AC', short for Albert Choo. 
#2 = I play 'producer', not director, but I got a chuckle out of this b/c I think I've been playing director more!  HA HA    It'll be interesting to step back & let the protagonists take on the game.

Another interesting point (for me):  You and another player commented how this is not a RPG for you.  I'm really curious why this is not an RPG and something else, like "cooperative story telling" game as the other player was saying.  From what I've seen, what is commonly referred to as roleplaying games usually consists more of book-keeping and min-max character stat-block obsession(s) rather than really getting into a role.
For me, this is the closest I've ever come to TRUE roleplaying in a RPG experience, where players pretty much have to act their protagonist's roles and REALLY get into their heads.  I enjoy that it's lighter on rules (but has enough + a 'metagame' story development track) that keeps things QUICKLY moving along.  One of the most interesting aspects of this game for me is that there are no HP or experience.  It's really interesting (for me) how rather than having to scale up monsters or challenges b/c of higher power ratings, this game doesn't worry about that.  Similar with HP <-- how many GM's really kill of PC's in a game?  So the fudge factor must be fairly frequent, eh?  (Sorry for the alliteration, I couldn't help myself.  HA HA)

I noticed that with the new 'raging cop' character in the game, the game tone shifted from dark comedy to more violent suspense action.  Personally, I'd like to discuss this before we begin the next game.  I'm not sure if something new will play out for the cop, but since he hasn't really shown any insanity yet, I was thinking maybe instead of 'blind fury' raging his insanity could manifest in something more in sync for a comedic game, like a split personality, a pension for cursing or talking out loud, or something else of a similar vein.  I'd like his insanity to add to roleplay potential as well, like the other characters (seeing things & make up friend).  I definitely think 'blind fury/ raging' might not be the greatest fit if we want to keep things comedic...

Last point:  I enjoyed your recent strategy last game for playing PTA, which actually caught me off-guard & I resisted at first.  (Bean had a similar strategy too, it seemed.)  I saw your strategy as actively shaping and steering the plot, adding in twists, and definitely taking things to new places -- like a flight to egypt in the middle of the show!!!!   I resisted at first, but now I'm seeing how it could work -- but with some serious twists or something. 
While it is hard to relinquish story control, I'm definitely happy to do it and I think it could make the game far more interesting.  I'd still like to see most threads wrap up in the final act AND the final episode, as they have been so neatly.  If all of us are creating the story jointly AND the protagonists encorporate their issues into play, I think this game & story could REALLY move around! 
As this picks up, it should get even more wild!  I'm looking forward to it, and I have enjoyed the first two games a lot.

[Ron Edwards]

I realized that I hadn't posted in support of this particular game. I like it, a lot. I like the strange combination of insanity and reality, and I like the questions that arise in the threads.

Here are a couple of comments ....

1. My own preferences about play match very well with yours, REkz. I suppose that's not much of a surprise.

2. This scene certainly jumped out at me as being "not like the others."

There has been a drive-by shooting and it was a chinese-food delivery person that was shot. AJ and Vincent are the first on the scene and after questioning witnesses, find out that it was an orange car with a spraypainted symbol on it that was responsible.  AJ is now very interested in all of these connections and begins to think something is up.

Why? Because it's a classic role-playing not-a-scene. It's a way to pass some information along in the hopes of setting up a scene later. Its only value in PTA would be to deliver some characterization for AJ and Vincent.

Jason, does that make sense? Can you see that the reason it floundered a little in play was because there was, effectively, nothing there? For instance, if someone wanted to havd a scene in which Thomas and Vincent found the drive-by shooters because of the orange symbol, they could simply have said so without having to run this scene at all.

My advice: when there's no conflict, don't roll. If the point is to suggest a bit of investigation, show a little bit of investigation, then close the scene without rolling and move on. You can always rely on the investigating characters finding the clue and acting upon it, in PTA - it can be established retroactively, easy as pie.

3. Jason, another thing that makes me crinkle my nose a little, or at least prick up my ears, is this business about the issue. You're right: "fascinated by conspiracies" is not an issue. But I don't see any reason to hunt around for some vague abstraction like Grief, either.

After, the whole point about conspiracy theorists is that they make at least a modicum of internal sense ... as long as you buy into the basic idea that is supposed to be the conclusion. If you are convinced something is true, then what's the point of gathering evidence? Certainty is the death of investigation, and you have an investigative character.

So! How about something like, "my character's issue is self-deception"? That seems to fit. It's expressed by a fascination with the conspiracies, and he can either fall into the trap by getting all hog-wild about the "obvious" culprit, or he can give his head a good shake and say, "hold on, maybe that's not such a big deal" once in a while. It's his issue, see? He can go either way, and either way can be good or bad in a given instance.

Best, Ron
edited to fix a wrong name; I got the person and the character names all mixed up

[REkz]

Ron, thanks for that input.  It's definitely insightful (at least, for me).

This game has been really fun for me to run.  The insanity seems to function more like superpowers (that often don't work).  As producer, I've been 'triggering' them in different scenes as ways to intrigue players, move the plot along, add mystery, etc, and it's been a lot of fun.

In the last game, as a guest character was preparing to burn down Jason's house/business (The Cuckoo's Nest), Jason's character saw a sign change it's letters to "BURN".  He had no idea what to do about it, and played it off.  Then they caught his cousin later in the show for arson.  That really worked well.

** No player so far has USED their insanity to actually DO anything, but maybe they will? ** 
That'd be cool!

I think the gamers in this game are focussed more on roleplay and less on scene design, but Jason DEFINITELY caught on last time (game #3, not posted yet) and got really creative, as have most of the players.

This game DEFINITELY loosens people up for gaming, I think.

PEACE!  -- Ari aka REkz