conflict, its the one bit that I cant 'get'

[Alan]

4) The player who wins narration rights can (optionally) give a rough direction for how they would like the scene to go. Not much more than a sentence -- something like "Hey,it would be cool if the bad guy recognises Bobby, and attacks him on purpose!" or whatever. Really short -- not 'mapping out'.

Ooh.  From the way things sound, it looks like this has worked out really well for you.  I'd be interested in hearing more examples of this.  The reason being that I'm in this tough spot where I recognize just how important narration rights are to the whole way PTA works, but I'm starting a series with a group where at least one player gets totally freaked at thought of having to "GM" anything.  Been trying to think of what to do about that, and maybe your method could prove a good compromise...

Hi SabreCat,

Just emphasize to this player that he or she can call for other people's suggestions and need only approve them. There's no need for a solo performance.

[stefoid]

I think Matt said something along of lines of "Finish the scene while the ink is still wet on it" -- in other words, once the conflict has been resolved one way or another, don't linger, but cut it, and move to the next scene. (Which can be related to the fallout of the conflict in this scene, obviously).

In our example "cop/bad guy/Bobby" scene, I would cut as soon as it was clear that we had shown that:

1) The bad guy has escaped.
2) Bobby has been injured (or not, depending on the outcome of the conflict.)
3) The initial reaction of the cop to events 1 & 2.

Once those have been "revealed" in play, this scene has done it's job, and hanging onto it to serves little purpose when you consider that this is taking time away from the next (hopefully conflict-loaded and awesome) scene. Like maybe the cop is at the station, explaining what has happened to his superiors. Or the cop is in hospital when Bobby's angry & upset mother turns up. Or the cop giving CPR to Bobby in the alleyway. Or you cut away to another character doing something cool. Or whatever.

This is just a way of keeping TV-style pacing (and one which works for my group). It's not a hard & fast rule or anything.

jump to the conflict quickly, resolve the conflict, and cut to the next scene quickly. 
that means theres not a lot going on except resolving conflicts.  thats OK, but I find the whole card thing fairly laborious.  we'll give it a try, but I think dice would move it along more quickly.  didnt the game used to use dice?  how did that work?  I imagine if people rolled a number of d10s equal to the number of cards they would have have had, and the high total wins the resolution, and the highest single dice wins narration?

[SabreCat]

didnt the game used to use dice?  how did that work?  I imagine if people rolled a number of d10s equal to the number of cards they would have have had, and the high total wins the resolution, and the highest single dice wins narration?

I think it was d10s, but odd numbers counted as successes the way red cards do now.  Since red cards are such a strong visual cue, versus even/odd or addition requiring mental arithmetic, I'm not sure you'll get a handling time improvement by using dice.

Plus there's something very satisfying, tension-wise, about the snap-snap-snap of a set of cards getting laid down as the group wonders how it's about to turn out...

[Shymer]

Everyone playing PTA should be familiar with conflict in all of its variety. A good book to refer to might be Robert McKee's "Story", which introduces a lot of elements of conflict, turning points and other areas that are relevant to PTA games. It's a highly recommended book if you need to understand more about conflict in narrative flow.

Conflict can operate on any of three levels - external (characters against the world), inter-personal (character against character) and internal (character's against themselves). Climactic moments in stories is when conflict is occurring on all three levels at once. The external conflict is probably best to be common between players to create a unifying force - beat the empire, make the TV station a success - secure the family fortunes.

Meaningful conflict then arises on two levels - interpersonal and internal. The producer's role is to create DISPUTE between characters (inter-personal conflict usually about a difference of opinion in the pursuit of a joint external goal) and DILEMMA (internal conflict) when a character has to choose between two good results, or two bad results.

In dramatic stories, the character is placed unexpectedly into conflict in what would otherwise be a straightforward journey towards their object of desire. An expectation gap has to be opened between what the character expected to happen - and what actually happened. Of course, complex characters have conscious desires AND unconscious ones. The unconscious desire is the strongest, the conscious desire changes, usually in mistaken pursuit of the unconscious.

Let's look at the cop chasing a criminal. The cop might have a conscious desire to catch criminals - but why? Perhaps his "issue" is that he has a son who has gone off the rails and he is desperate to reclaim him. He is under the (possibly mistaken) impression that if he reforms criminals then his son will be safe. His unconscious desire is to see his son on the right tracks with the right friends, doing legal things.

As a producer I can create a DISPUTE- ie. two cops chasing the same criminal, but with radically different methods that are opposed. Perhaps the cop has a rival who is a "gun them down and sort the bodies out" kind of guy. They both agree that crime is to be fought (external), but the cop wants to catch and reform the criminal and his buddy wants to gun him down. This is a DISPUTE - and is an appropriate conflict to resolve a scene around. Only one of the two protagonists can "win" and the loser has to take the consequence.

The conflict is more pronounced if the producer or more likely the players can introduce internal conflict (DILEMMA) in a DISPUTE (which is the producer's role to introduce). Perhaps the criminal they are chasing is a friend of the cop's son, perhaps the criminal has, unknown to the cop, done something awful to a decent law-abiding family that is a model of the life desired by the cop for his son. Perhaps the rival cop is up for promotion, needing another bust to tip the balance, but owes his buddy a favour for saving his neck previously. DILEMMAs create for more powerful conflict in conjunction with a DISPUTE.

The maximum conflict level (perhaps reserved for a scene with a protagonist on a "3" screen presence) would be the cop and his partner having to chase his son down for a crime against the perfect family. The son threatens a nephew of the police commissioner (or connection), the rival cop can take the shot and earn his promotion, but he might kill his partner's son - the partner that he owes his life to - the cop himself has to confront his conscious desire and realise that his unconscious desire will not be fulfilled by letting the boy go.

Now - that scene has potential... *

Summary

Producers need to help introduce DISPUTES - forces antagonistic to the character achieving their conscious desire.

Players need to help introduce DILEMMA - situations where there is a potent character choice between good-good, or better bad-bad. This is sometimes tricky if you haven't got a strong handle on a character's unconscious desire and how it relates to their current conscious desire. PTA perhaps lacks a little in modelling the characters in this regard because of the limitations inherent in the single "Issue" characteristic.

The more layers of conflict you can put into the scene, then the more important the scene is to the character's journey. When the character is in a reconcilable dilemma, in dispute with everyone they love and trust and has to make the biggest decision of their lives, risking everything in pursuit of their unconscious desire - that's when you have just found the turning point - and a peal pinnacle in your game.

Enjoy it *

Shymer

[stefoid]

Hi everybody, thanks again for your contributions to this thread. 

We had a practice session a few nights ago, taking into account the advice from this thread, and it went really well.  We stuck with short, sharp agendas and then we tended to roleplay our characters for a little while before finding a conflict, but people were comfortable with that.  It became apparent that choice of stakes was absoltuely crucial for the conflict to be meaningful, as everybody suggested.

I think theres a bit of an artform to recognizing and selecting stakes for a conflict.  we'll get better as the game progresses.

cards didnt end up being a problem.