[PTA] All Together Now (Protagonists acting as a group)

[drnuncheon]

So my players and I have decided to try out PTA.  The elevator pitch for the series we came up with is "John Woo directs the X-Files" - it's a Hong Kong cop drama with heavy doses of conspiracy and the supernatural.

Note that none of us have played PTA before - I'm going completely off of the book, form posts, etc.  As I tried to describe the mechanics, there were a lot of questions along the lines of "but what if we all have the same goal?" or "how do I help player X get his goal?"  For the most part, they're used to more traditional roleplaying scenarios, where a team of characters goes into a situation and working together as a group is essential for success.

I hemmed and hawed with stuff like "people should have differnt goals" and "you don't all have to be in each scene" but I don't think they were satisfied.

Hypothetical Play situation: I've got four players, X, Y, Z, and Q, and it's X's turn to request a scene.  He says: "I want to have a raid on Mr. Big's gambling den".  It's a plot scene, the agenda is "the team tries to arrest Mr. Big".  The protagonists are all four players.  (Aside: does everyone other than the scene requestor have to pay a fanmail to enter, or is that only to enter later: i.e. if they were not conceived of as part of the scene to begin with?)

So I've got four players, all with the same goal: arrest Mr. Big.  How do I handle that?  Do I need to manipulate the situation to present alternate goals (save the hostage, save your partner, something relating to their issue, etc) and hope that the players bite on them?

If the answer is "split them up" then the players are going to want to know how they can help each other out.  The obvious answer is spending fanmail, but are there any other ways?  For big scenes like this we would probably be using the three-segment flip described in the car chase example.  Would it be out of line for players to be able to choose (before flipping) to apply a card towards one of the other conflicts?  That gives a bit of tactical decision - do I use this card to help X arrest Mr. Big but possible endanger my own goal? - but without playing I'm not sure how it'd affect the flow of the game.

J

[Thenomain]

How about make Mr. Big so big, his resources so complex, that they may have to split themselves apart in order to be effective.  What if Mr. Big turns out to be a benefit to one character's contact; will the characters still stick together?  What if two characters' contacts start fighting and threaten to pull things off-course?  Any early season of Buffy is filled with good (if incredibly straight-forward) clues on how even people with a single goal are not always completely unified.

[Alan]

Hi J,

In a multiple Protagonist conflict, there's no splitting of cards between agendas. Each player matches their cards against the producer's single hand and each player wins or loses whatever agenda they declared. The the highest single card has final say (but can ask for help) on how that all comes about.

Players can give each other Fan Mail, but they can't give them their own cards.

The following might be a brain bender for your group: each protagonist in the same conflict should have a different goal--eg. the spotlight character, Alex, might be aiming to arrest Mr. Big, but her tech guy, Bill, just wants to prove himself to her, while Chuck wants to make sure no one finds evidence in Mr. Big's car that might embarass him. If the group's having trouble thinking how this works, suggest they find something related to their Issues as a goal.

If you know Buffy, think of the scenes where Buffy's doing some routine vampire slaying while bantering with her gang. Often the slaying is just a context for another conflict -- between her and Giles, or Zander, etc. If that were a PTA group, they might have agreed that killing the vampires is a given and doesn't require card draws. Instead they focus on other conflicts.

So, in some cases, your group might even agree that Mr. Big will be caught in this scene, so that isn't at stake in the card draw. Instead, the protagonists can address whatever other conflicts are happening (like concealing that photo of Chuck and the hooker).

[Speaking of important rules: a recent discussion on Story Games mentioned that the scen framing rule is easy to miss. It's worth mentioning here before you go into play: the players request scenes, but the producer frames all scenes. That's how the producer puts pressure on protagonist issues.]

[Harry the Dirty Do]

What Alan says is a good example.  I ran a quick-and-dirty PTA session, largely designed to figure out exactly how this conflict business works.

We found any number times that we'd say "Obviously everyone is going to head up out to the old cemetary tonight, so that's not the conflict, the real question is..."

The way PTA conflict is structured so that every player pits their conflict against the narrator.  That almost means that you can't really have players with completely opposing stakes in a conflict.  Each players pits their cards against the producer independently of the other players in the conflict.  For the conflict to make sense, you have to be able to have a situation where both players win the conflict.  If two players are opposed, then one has to win and the other has to lose, so you effectively push the producer out of the conflict.

We also found very quickly that you can easily re-phrase a directly opposing conflict between two players into two individual conflicts which are probably much more interesting and in-depth anyway.

> Stef, playing Charles:  "My stake is that I want to have it out with Josie about why she set us up"
> Pete, playing Todd "No, I don't want that to happen, because Todd has the hots for Josie."

Not a good conflict, the players are directly opposed to each other, effectively leaving the Producer out of things.  Note that the conflict is about Josie, but doesn't involve Josie.  Pete re-phrased his conflict as follows:

> Pete, playing Todd "Actually, I'm trying to chat up Josie and I want her at ease with us so that she joins our group so that I can put the long-term moves on her"

> Me, summarising "Right, so Charles' stake is that he wants to confront Josie about the set up and Todd's stake is that wants to put Josie at ease".

This one worked much better because each is a personal conflict between player and producer.  Each player can win conflict independently of the other player.  It is possible for Todd to put Josie at ease and come out looking like a good guy while Charles has it out with her about the betrayal. 

Win or lose, you can construct interesting further scenes for any of the protagonists.

Hope this helps,
Harry

[Standback]

I've got a related question, so I thought I'd tack it on here.

In a common-goal scene, it's easy to imagine that players who grok the system will easily come up with all kinds of different stakes while aiming at the same goal.

But what about cases where one character's focus is clearly and wholeheartedly helping another character?

Peter's a shy nerd; he's been gazing wistfully at Mary for months. Peter's pal Paul has finally convinced him to buck up some courage. At a party, Mary comes walking by, and Peter strikes up a conversation, hoping to impress and interest her. What's Paul doing? He says he's supporting - saying things to make Peter seem like a great guy, trying to steer the conversation to topics Peter will be comfortable in...

In this case, Peter's stake is impressing Mary; Paul's stake is helping Peter succeed. I think that's a very legitimate stake, but I'd be hard-pressed to resolve this conflict if one of the two succeeds and the other one fails.

Thoughts? Suggestions?

[Alan]

Maybe you're mistaking "help Peter succeed" with affecting the outcome of Peter's stake.

The outcomes I see are these:

Peter impresses Mary; Paul helps him. -- Result: Peter talks to Mary, Paul interjects with hidden guidance that helps Peter succeed.

Peter impresses Mary; Paul fails to help. -- Result: Peter talks to Mary, Paul says something that undercuts Peter and makes him nervous, but Peter rallies and impresses Mary anyway.

Peter doesn't impresses Mary; Paul helps him. -- Result: Peter talks to Mary, Paul interjects with hidden guidance that helps,  but Peter still stumbles.

Peter doesn't impresses Mary; Paul fails to help. -- Result: Peter talks to Mary, Paul says something that undercuts Peter and Peter stumbles and fails to impress her.

Now, after writing all that, I notice that Paul's stakes don't have a lot of meaning to Paul or the audience unless Paul has an problem with helping people or Peter in particular. If Paul's issue is "Can't control his cynical smart mouth" or "Jealous of Mary's romantic life" then we've got some depth.

[Standback]

I'm seeing Paul's Issue (or at least what's crucial to him at the moment) as being something about caring about his friend. "Paternalism," for example, or "Putting Others Troubles Over His Own Good." Or you could easily have an Atonement or Debt issue which would drive a characters primary stakes to be the success of another character, or something to do with Friendship or Loyalty.

Maybe I misphrased that, then - what if Paul doesn't care whether he does the helping or not, but only whether or not Peter succeeds?

I agree the situation is probably far from common, but it doesn't seem too far-fetched to me. I suppose we could just reduce "A wants B to succeed" to "A wants to help B succeed," in which case your answer certainly stands, but surely we've all been in situations where we really wanted to see somebody succeed in something, regardless of our own involvement in the matter?

[Alan]

Maybe I misphrased that, then - what if Paul doesn't care whether he does the helping or not, but only whether or not Peter succeeds?

First, consider: who cares about Peter's success? Paul's player or the character? It's just an important distinction to keep in mind. If the character has no important stake in the conflict, he should not be in it. If only the player cares, the the character only has a small involvement, then the player has a few options:

Paul's player can sit out and make narrative suggestions about how Paul contributes (just like any other player any time there's a conflict).

Or Paul's player can spend Fan Mail to buy a card in the conflict (or more if the rules allow [I don't remember]). He gets no screen presence, edge, or connection cards, but his card counts for Peter's success and he has a chance at high card narration -- and he can also make normal narrative suggestions as above.

[Standback]

My intention was very much the Paul's character is the one who cares about Peter's success (otherwise obviously the player's preferences don't come into play in the stakes, but via PTA's other mechanisms...). After some thought, I've got to agree that such an event is not terribly likely- in most cases, the player will be able to identify some personal stakes more prominent their desire to see their friend succeed. And when their character's primary desire is for their friend to succeed, those are also most likely to be the situations where the "rooting for his friend" character is least likely to be able to be active to do anything to gain his stakes.

I don't think it's impossible, though. Consider a spotlight episode on a character, in which his friends have resolved to try and help him overcome some aspect of his Issue - shyness, addiction, fear of commitment, or another such easy example. A specific example - Sarah is trying to charm and calm Adam into overcoming his fear of commitment and propose to her. Since Sarah's aware of Adam's issue, and actively trying to help him overcome it, we might easily have a conflict where Adam's stakes are "overcoming my fear of commitment," while Sarah is helping him, calming him, encouraging him, and her stakes are "Adam overcoming his fear of commitment."

You are right in that this difficulty could be sidestepped. For example, if we "force" Sarah to change her stakes to "Adam proposing to me," or Adam changing his to proposing, then he can propose without overcoming his fear, or overcome and yet refuse to propose. But in the rare case where the issue is explicitly addressed, that feels a little bit unfair. No?

[Alan]

You are right. There are times in stories where one character does want another to succeed. My point is that declaring stakes and drawing screen presence cards, etc., is not the mechanic that the helping character uses for this. PTA provides the two methods I mentioned above.

So if Sarah wants to help, the player doesn't declare the same stakes as Adam, or any stakes at all. By the rules, if Sarah doesn't have her own stakes, she doesn't play directly in the conflict. Instead, the player either makes narrative suggestions to the conflict that Adam plays out or buys cards for Adam with fanmail -- also describing how their character is supporting Adam's success.

Please let me know if this makes sense to you. I'm not hearing acknowledgment of my point.

[Standback]

Thanks, Alan, I understand what you're saying now, and it makes a lot of sense to me. Until the last post, I thought you misunderstood my question, because you talked about the player's goals when I was talking about the character's goals. Now that we're clear, it seems you're saying A) no, there's no direct method for one PC to help another acheive his goals, but B) one can view Fan Mail and other such mechanisms as a way to express the PCs help.

It's an interesting viewpoint, because I've always seen Fan Mail as being entirely based on the player's enjoyment, and not something the character can "affect" by in-play actions or desires. But in absence of a direct helping mechanism (when one would even be appropriate), Fan Mail makes a good substitute.