[First time with PTA] Firewall

[The Mule]

PTA: Firewall
Player Information
I bought PTA on the recommendation of a good friend, but having only a traditional RPG background (DnD3.X, Mutants and Masterminds, Iron Heroes) I want to try out the system and feel like I have a good handle on it before commiting to a campaign.

To that end I ran what I looked at as a Usability Test with a few of my friends.  Several are interested in the system, but for this first session I invited people based mostly on who could show up now rather than who might best click together as a group.

I'll refer to people by the character they played in this session.  We have Stud's player, someone who I've played with for a while in various d20 games who has various longstanding roleplaying groups that I'm just in the past year entering.  He's expressed contentment with DnD3.5, but curiosity at "what all the talk is about" regarding alternatives.

We have Mel's player, someone who has tried several of the games in different social circles and found none to taste, dropping out after a few sessions.

We have Calvin's player, a new entrant to the world of RPGs, having played perhaps 5 sessions total of DnD3.5 prior to this game.

We have me, who I'm most qualified to talk about.  I got into DnD around 3.0 because there was a game my roomate ran, but I made characters that just got in the way; ones with flaws or agendas that I considered the focus of my play.  After some tumultuousness I learned the dynamics of the groups in the area, and adjusted my play to fit, but found my only real outlet of creativity has been in worldcrafting as a DM.

So I approach the game with a hopeful enthusiasm; seeking a medium for character stories that allows for a collaborative creative experience.


Setup
Series: Firewall

Series creation takes two hours, which surprises Stud's player.  The normal procedure has been for prospective DMs to do all the groundwork beforehand and then make a pitch to prospective players.  I and Mel's player seem mostly enabling during this process; we've got ideas but are pretty open to everything that's tossed out.  Calvin's player stays engaged during the whole process, but he and Stud's player seem to have wildly different tastes.

I, already assigned the role of the producer (because I own the book?  Not sure exactly how this responsibility got assigned, but it seemed to be something that we all basically took for granted, even myself), tried to ask questions that would isolate exactly what people wanted and didn't want out of each suggestion.

There's a lot of talk of how much action we want, if we want there to be a "wacky" element to the situation, if we want a strong plot, and a good deal of side jokes.

We start along the path that leads to our final destination when someone mentions "The Office", and all the players' real life experiences with office culture forms a bond.  We go from there, talking about ways to vary the theme, "The Office.. in space!", etc., and we agree on something more serious.

A few more ideas later and we have information technology experts discovering an evil conspiracy.  There's some discussion about the symptoms of this "evil"; are people dissapearing?  Are people appearing?  A lot is ruled out as 'cliche', but we need something that the audience is going to care about, and decide upon "violently surpressing technological advances".

So!

Premise: Three Information Security experts uncover a conspiracy to stagnate technology.
Tone: Serious
Setting: Near Future America (we don't go into further detail explicitly, and after the fact I think we should have, but as the game played out I imagined an urban city environment)

Protagonists:
Name: Stud
Concept: Ultracompetent hedonist
Issue: Temptation
Traits: Bionic Arm, Motorcycle, Janey (female primate caretaker)
Nemesis: Religous Right FBI Agent Robert Rool
Personal Set: Stud's Penthouse

Name: Mel
Concept: Passive Aggressive Code Monkey
Issue: Passive Agressiveness
Traits: Code Monkey, Photographic Memory, Hacker Friend nicknamed "God"
Nemesis: Stud
Personal Set: Bench in a skyway overlooking the freeway

Name: Calvin
Concept: Withdrawn Psychic
Issue: Alienation
Traits: Psionic Ability, Math/Music Aptitude, Pyschic Mentor
Personal Set: Arboretum/Garden


There's some negotiation in character construction; at some point or another everyone has "alienation" as an issue, but Stud's player at this point is impatient and radically alters his character from "disfigured as child, made pretty and now suffering from alienation" to "sex crazed muscle man" in order to get things moving.  There's some eye rolling, but he's not enjoying the creation process and so we let it slide.

Mel stays sorta in the background during this too; a little shallow of a character but he's not getting in anyone else's way, so it goes uncontested.  I have to do a little pulling to get at the issue: He wants to be a normal guy in over his head, and so I ask him, "What's keeping your character in?  Why are you still in the group?" and we hit upon his character's inability to say "no", which he will be trying to overcome.

Calvin has lots of good fluff for the character, but without any issue it rings hollow.  I suggest things that might work off of this initial hollowness; such as "workaholic", where his total dedication to his functionality *is* his issue.  We end up with Alientation, and I ask him what side he wants to take; is he trying to put up barriers or take them down?  He decides on trying to take them down.


Practice Conflict: I state that they're at work in an office environment when some other "team" tries to take credit for some work of theirs.  Some discussion back and forth on proper stakes, and I think I overstress character "Issue", but we talk about it and refined the stakes into something more situationally specific than literally just stating "I want to overcome my issue".

Stud: Resist the advances of the sexy leader of the team trying to steal their research
Mel: Stand up for myself, confront Stud and make him do his fair share of the work.
Calvin: I can't remember exactly how it was phrased, but basically being able to bring the attention of the party to something important, gaining trust.

Stud won, Mel and Calvin lost, and Mel was the narrator.  So we decided collectively that Stud totally blew off the opposing team's leader while ordering Mel around.  Mel sat at his desk and did the codework to try to find evidence their work had been stolen, grumbling subvocally the whole time, while Calvin became too disgusted by both their behaviors to even care. 

I think we actually forgot to decide if the other team succeded in stealing the credit for their work!  I know I had intentionally encouraged the stakes to focus on the character issues and not the task outcome, despite some concern from the players about leaving it totally up to the narrator.
Actual Play
We disscuss, and agree to open the series with the characters being drawn into the conspiracy through the abduction of their fourth team member, "Bob".  So for the first scene I go with
Scene One:
Focus: Plot
Agenda: Hook the characters into investigating the conspiracy
Location: Their headquarters.

I frame the scene, deciding onthat they are all waking up in a daze in their office, which has been ransacked!  They each spring into action, but Stud starts giving orders and I call for a...

Conflict:
Stud: Resist temptation to make Mel do all the work in figuring out what happened.
Mel: Stand up to Stud and make him do some of the work
Calvin: Break through his shell and make contact with Stud and Mel

I go for broke, wanting to get a large audience pool, and spend five budget on the conflict, and they all lose.  I forgot who narrated, but we say Stud loafed around while Mel searched through their computers to see if they'd been tampered with, while Calvin just stood back impassively.  I suggest they discover through this that their files are all missing!

After the fact I note that throughout the show we treated Stud's issue, Temptation, as though it were just a general hedonism, and not a temptation of a specific thing.  I suspect this may be a result of an attempt to shoehorn (on all our parts) his issue into the social conflicts that rose from the other two characters.

Scene Two
Focus: Plot
Agenda: I can't remember.  Find a lead?
Location: Gas Station.  I'm not sure why there, but we thought since it was a new scene we needed a new location and that just the first thought he had.

I start the scene by having their car pull up to the gas station and them jump out.  I have the idea that they're here to try to avoid wiretaps, but I'm not sure how much I can control their characters so I don't know how to introduce the idea (other than suggesting it to the players, which I didn't think of fast enough).

They begin looking for witnesses, and while talking to the gas station attendant the player of Calvin, the psychic, says he has a vision of a gold watch and an alligator wallet. I'm struggling to come up with something, so I leap on this and have the casheir say he has seen someone with an alligator wallet just a little bit ago.

There's a small conflict here as Stud notices the liquor selection and is tempted to get drunk, while Calvin struggles with being able to talk to the cashier.  It seems like a disjointed conflict, but I run with it.

Conflit:
Stud: Don't start drinking
Calvin: Effectively communicate with the cashier.
Mel:  I don't remember.  Maybe nothing?

I don't spend much here, and they go all out with their fanmail, so both win.

Stud's player suggests the cashier noticed an FBI card in the wallet, and I go with it.  At the time the narration was pretty quick and hasty, but looking back it seems like we could have done something more interesting with Stud's struggle there, rather than have it just "pasted on".

Scene Three
Focus: Two plot scenes already, so I suggest a character
Agenda: Highlight how Mel is dealing with the dissapearance of Bob
Location: Mel's Personal Set, the Skyway

Suggested by a player other than Mel, all three characters were in the scene but Stud and Calvin's players decided to take a backseat and have Mel be the focus of the scene.  I narrate some fancy camerawork to establish their presence but irrelevance in the background, and we throw around some ideas about how to communicate Mel's thoughts to the audience.  We decide it'll be a voiceover of the character's internal monologue.

Maybe I should have done some conflict based around how the character felt, if he could have even admitted to himself that he wanted out, but at the time it seemed like the only conflict was "does he decide to quit or does he just fold and do what he's told?" which seemed to violate my rule that "if one outcome of a conflict is bad television, it's not a conflict".

So we I just suggested we end the scene without conflict, mentioning that not every scene needed one, but if we went a while without one something was wrong.
Scene Four
Focus: Plot
Agenda: You know, I can't remember, and maybe that's part of why I was struggling at the time to advance the plot.
Location: Highway

All three characters again, but Stud is on his motorcycle while Mel and Calvin are in Mel's car.  Perhaps this should have been two scenes, as again there's a bit of a disjoint.  The players aren't sure where the characters are going, and they decide their characters are trying to split up so the badguys can't get them all at once.

I have them get a conference call that their caller ID shows is from the FBI.  Calvin and Mel ignore it, but Stud picks it up, for which I was grateful as I wasn't sure what to do if nobody had responded to it.  Just drop it and try a different poke, probably.

I had it be Stud's nemesis at the FBI Robert Rool, there to offer information at a price.  I'm not sure I played him the way Stud's player had in mind for him, so in the future I'll try getting more feedback before bringing in someone's nemesis.

Stud calls for a..

Conflict
Stud: Keep himself from hanging up on Rool.
Calvin, Mel: None

I'm not sure how I feel about this conflict, as if he does hang up it seems like the scene ends before we can do anything that advances the plot, and that seems like bad television.  I run with it anyway as it seems like something the character would be struggling with.

I don't spend anything and Stud wins the conflict, but I win the narration (I think) and have Rool explain that he hates Stud and everything he stands for, but he can't stand by and let corruption fester in the FBI, so he gives Stud the location of a warehouse where the badguys have taken Bob, but warns they don't have much time.
Scene Five
Focus: Character
Agenda: Show how the protaganists handle a life threatening situation.
Location: Mysterious Warehouse

We decide it's getting late and we could use a break, so we're wrapping it up here.  I have the trio pull up outside the warehouse, having made it just in time.  The three try to forumulate a plan of action and WHAM

Conflict:
Stud: Keep himself from just driving in on his motorcycle through the skylight.
Mel: Actively contribute ideas instead of just going with the flow
Calvin: Try to get Stud and Mel to listen to reason

Here Stud's player asks if he can *try* to lose, but as he doesn't have any fanmail to spend on the producer I didn't have any ideas.

In hindsight Calvin and Stud's stakes are a little conflicting, but it wouldn't have been hard to resolve that.  As it was the last scene and I knew Stud's player wanted it, I spent a bunch and beat everyone, so Stud just went racing in, Mel cowering in the backseat of the motorcycle, leaving Calvin behind as he tries to examine the situation rationally.

This conflict the narrator was a little quiet and a lot of ideas were being thrown around by the group, so after we hammered stuff out the narrator just narrated, "Yeah, what you guys said."

Stud's player got to describe some cool action, Mel's player described how he was injured in the crash, and I as producer suggested that they were beating up badguys who were guarding a door that Bob was presumably behind, but when they got to it and Stud kicked it in, the room behind was all dark and then CUT!

NEXT TIME, ON FIREWALL
Stud's Player: Stud is crying out, "No, its all gone wrong!" while gesticulating with his hands.
Calvin's Player: The dark room, now illuminated by a single streak of light from above as a shadowy figure approaches the team, and a glint of light catches a golden watch on his wrist.
(Note: I had some reservations about the episode cliffhanger being continued by the "NEXT TIME", as it seemed like that might be something we could just have be *part* of the cliffhanger)
Mel's Player: Mel being lifted on a stretcher by paramedics, injured but not critically so, groaning about how "This isn't what I signed up for".
(We were drifting away from the "serious" tone)

Observations:
Fanmail:
1. The first question *every* player has when I mention fanmail is "Couldn't you just game the system?", to which my reply is "If you can come up with something plausable, it's good for everyone to get fanmail flowing."
2. MnMs do not make good fanmail tokens, even the large peanut butter ones.  I figured getting to eat the discarded ones would be an amusing way to mitigate the sadness of failure, but people were understandably discouraged by the amount of handling the tokens recieved.

Conflicts:
From pouring through the PTA forums I've really had it drilled into me that Conflict is about the Issue.  In play, however, I think I might have gone a little too far with this, as especially at first it came across as forcing the characters to be one dimensional, where every situation boiled down to "Do I resist my issue?"

There were also a lot of similar conflicts, as everyone's issue involved the group dynamic and so whenever they tried to act together their issues would clash in pretty much the same manner.

Stud's player found his traits like "Motorcycle" to be difficult to apply to situations involving "Temptation".  He was wondering if *any* conflict could really utilize traits like this with my interpretation of stake formulation tying so closly to issue.  My best response was perhaps an issue like "identity crisis" or "self esteem", or basically any issue where how cool the character looks is important.

There was some discussion about why I was discouraging using the conflict mechanics to resolve the outcome of things like battles, which I defended with the notion that this was a TV show; they weren't going to *lose*, and even if they did it would be plot and not central to the character's stories, which is what the conflict mechanics were there to handle.  I think of "do we win the fight?" as a similar question as "Do we go to Maui?"  There will probably be lots of issue related conflicts that arise from either answer, but it's not something to flip a coin over.

I'm not rock solid on this, however.  There *are* examples in the book, such as the Spies for Hire - Car Chase, when one character's issue is "dealing with frustration over painful divorce" and has stakes in a car chase conflict "avoid collateral damage".

It states that the connection is unclear, but she's playing support so it doesn't matter much.  My interpretation has been that if it doesn't matter much, it's not in the hands of the conflict mechanic, which seems at odds with this.

Stud's player pondered perhaps having chosen an issue like "am I strong enough?" which would allow him to use the conflict mechanic to determine the outcome of fights.

I do agree that character development seemed a little one dimensional with my intense focus on "issue", though perhaps that is a result of lackluster plot framing causing repetative situations of conflict.

Plot Development:
Actual play seemed to diverge from the stated show Premise.  With our inexperience at distributed narrative authority and the particulars of creative responsiblity during play, there was a bit of fumbling around.  Hopefully this will change with experience and more careful attention paid to Scene Agenda construction and execution.

Note that I am aware this was not the most cohesive of groups, as we simply assembled whoever was free on the day to try a usability test.  We knew going into it that this wouldn't be a group that would stick together.  Thankfully I believe there are enough people interested in the system to maintain at least one cohesive group, but for now we're interested in learning the ropes of this totally new (to us) type of roleplaying.


I am eager for input from those more experienced with the system! 

[Matt Wilson]

Hey The Mule:

From pouring through the PTA forums I've really had it drilled into me that Conflict is about the Issue.  In play, however, I think I might have gone a little too far with this, as especially at first it came across as forcing the characters to be one dimensional, where every situation boiled down to "Do I resist my issue?"

I think you could dial it back a bit. What works for me sometimes is to create a larger crisis as the producer and let them find ways to fit their issues into it. So the conflict becomes about the bigger thing and about the issue thing.

In the example in the PTA book, the larger issue is catching the terrorist, but for the protagonists their individual goals are "hide from my boyfriend" and "avoid collateral damage."

In your show, you might have something like "interrogate the conspirator" be the larger crisis, but then have her be a former fling of Stud's. Then Calvin will be worried about whether he can use social skills to do the interrogation. Mel might be trying to be direct.

Consider this other option, too: the conflict results as a guide to how the character feels, not necessarily what the character does.  So maybe Stud loses the above conflict. Does he totally let the conspirator free? Maybe not, but maybe he starts flirting and feels like an idiot afterward.

That's all easy to do when all the protagonists are in a scene and all want a similar bigger goal, like not having to work on a Saturday, etc.

Stud's player found his traits like "Motorcycle" to be difficult to apply to situations involving "Temptation".

What you need is a scene where he's actually on the freeway or something. Get them to request scenes where the traits are easy to apply, then put the issue on top of that. He's on the freeway, and he's tailing some conspirators. He realizes he needs to meet up with a hot date in fifteen minutes. There's a bunch of conflicts that can come out of that where motorcyle and the issue apply.

There was some discussion about why I was discouraging using the conflict mechanics to resolve the outcome of things like battles, which I defended with the notion that this was a TV show; they weren't going to *lose*, and even if they did it would be plot and not central to the character's stories, which is what the conflict mechanics were there to handle.

What you can do in those cases is allow the person with narration to decide if they won the fight, using the outcomes as a guide. If only one person beats the producer, then maybe it's a weak victory. They win, but they're beat up. Meanwhile, the individual successes and failures tell you how to narrate each protagonist's battle in relation to their personal stakes.

Not every conflict has to scream ISSUE ISSUE ISSUE for every character. Like you're inferring from the examples, you'll want to apply the issue at least to one person, probably the spotlight character, or else the one whose scene it is.

Hope that helps, and thanks for playing.

-Matt

[The Mule]

Not every conflict has to scream ISSUE ISSUE ISSUE for every character. Like you're inferring from the examples, you'll want to apply the issue at least to one person, probably the spotlight character, or else the one whose scene it is.

Hope that helps, and thanks for playing.

-Matt

So I think my whole problem has centered around what constitutes a "conflict".  I've been treating it like "A conflict is when someone's issue comes up".  Now with your comments and some discussions with the other players, I think perhaps a better way to put it would be "a conflict is when the audience is wondering what will happen." 

This implies two things; first, what I already understood: The outcome isn't obvious (ruling out 'do we all die');  and second: The outcome is something the audience is *interested* in, which *can* be more than just issues.  Thinking about it that way helps me because what the audience is interested in depends on what kind of show it is, so it explains why in an action show certain things will be conflicts that wouldn't be in a drama show.

It seems like an obvious thing that I just missed from getting the wrong idea before actually reading the rules.  The next time I play with new people I intend to loan them the book beforehand instead of explaining the rules myself, and not 'correcting' them about anything, just to see how an uncluttered reading of it goes.

And hey, you're welcome!  Thanks for making!

Eric