Splitting the players

[chrisn]

My first PtA game begins this Saturday (we're revamping Land of the Lost as a stark modern sci-fi/drama series to trial run the game) and I have a question even before we begin:

How do you handle splitting the characters up into geographically distinct groups and still maintain sense of the spotlight? Take Battlestar Galactica for instance, when Helo and one of the Sharons were back on Caprica, it only made sense to focus on them every episode until they rejoined the main plot. In game terms, is that a caveat of giving split-off characters a spotlight of 2 each game until they rejoin?

[Matt Wilson]

There's a lot of hypotheticals going on there. You can explain BSG in all sorts of ways, but it wasn't a game of PTA, so there's no definitive answer. It also doesn't always map perfectly to a five episode arc. It's also not a perfectly balanced ensemble cast. Starbuck, Apollo and Adama are going to be in every episode, but budget and other constraints will limit the cast of characters for a given episode. Sometimes Helo doesn't show up in an episode, or he gets all of one line, but you can't do that if Helo's a protagonist in your game.

As far as splitting up goes, scenes don't have to take place in chronological order, nor do the interactions of various protagonists have to take place in the present. Your protagonist might be actively part of a scene with another protagonist even though in real time he or she is physically elsewhere. Characters can remember things that happened, and they can imagine things that haven't happened.

Hope that helps.

[Bankuei]

Two thoughts- first, the spotlight has to deal with the character's Issue, not necessarily who's around them, so being split off might be the perfect way for that character to be highlighted (see Apollo in the Black Market episode).

Second, BSG probably could best be seen as each player having 3 different characters, and the players choosing to focus on a particular character for the episode, leaving the others with Screen Presence of 1 ("Hey, I haven't really done anything with Tigh, here... let's focus on him!").

Chris