[PTA] Deep in the Blue, Season Two

[Jason Morningstar]

We started a second season of our PTA game (first season write-up is here).  That was over a year ago!  In the interim we've played a lot of games, but I've always wanted to return to Deep in the Blue. 

The only returning protagonist is Frank Trang, now interim Captain of the Regional Enforcement Narcotics Unit (RENU), played by Clinton.  Joining him are a world-weary old beat cop, Cal Smith, played by Remi, and a young and idealistic new officer, Jim Polewzack, played by Joe.  Joe is a friend of ours from the improv world who has played a few games, including PTA, but is pretty new to roleplaying.  He was excited to try an extended game of PTA and he's getting it, both barrels.

I'd done a lot of research-type prep for the first season, and most of that still applies.  Some of the characters have changed between seasons - Pin "Titty" Chu, boss of the Bad Boy Crips, has been indicted on Federal racketeering charges and is mired in legal woes; Frank Trang is now a public hero tasked with rebuilding the corrupt unit he brought down, and Quang Nuc Tung has re-appeared as a prominent lieutenant of the BBC gang, having murdered a cop last season - he's number one on the list of people the Cincinnati police department wants to nail.  There are also some new characters in the mix - corrupt city councilman Cal "Hot Sauce" Nguyen, who owns an empire of bánh mì sandwich shops, defrocked cop Dallas Ricks and his lawyer wife Darlonna, two FBI agents, and a drug dealing Crip named David Alston thusfar.  There's a crazy tight web of interrelationships - Frank Trang's first partner was Cal Smith, and he's the "uncle" to Jim's Vietnamese wife Saundra Polewzack, who was orphaned during a SWAT operation in which Frank capped her dad.  Got all that? 

Cal's a little racist and a little tired.  Jim's desperate to make more money and a true-blue straight arrow, with a new baby and a year in Iraq under his belt.  Frank's morally diffident and deeply corrupt in all the right ways, but still believes in the system.  At the conclusion of last season he sent his wife to Mexico to keep her safe and she decided not to come back.  His 14-year-old son Tony is a "guest" of Titty Chu, and there's some drama around that.

Our session was a little slow as we found our footing with PTA again, re-learning how to establish good conflicts and relationships.  Joe was great, taking to it like a duck to water.  We realized that his issue - "Jim needs more money" - was really "Jim wants to stay clean", which is much stronger.  He's already a little dirty and his descent is going to be agonizing.  Seeing Joe step up and play the honest guy, who is driven to drunken ruin by that honesty, is fantastic.  Clinton's Frank Trang hit his stride in a nasty scene where he manipulated his son's Guardian Ad Litem.  Remi's on a slow burn with his washed-out cop, and has already shown his amoral violent side - it'll all end in tears.  The three-player dynamic is also going to be fun, and we've established a wider, more free-wheeling set-up outside the first season's undercover world.  I have a feeling that PTA will really reward a return to existing situations and characters, and I'm glad to get the chance to explore this series more! 

[Remi Treuer]

A couple things:
1. I'd like to reiterate that Joe's insistence (and clear pain) that Jim remain an OK guy with lines He Will Not Cross was really refreshing. Jim's going to be in a lot of pain, trapped as he is between his wife's demands for more money, and the machinations of Cal and Frank.

2. I'm really trying to play Cal as a guy who knows everyone, and draws his power from his deep community ties. He might have been a scary guy once, but is on his last legs, and all the jackals know it. Jason nailed it by giving him the street nickname 'Panda'.

3. I don't know as Jason won a single conflict all night long. I think this was part of why the stakes weren't that snappy. Usually when the Producer wins a set of ill-defined stakes and really puts the screws to a character, everyone tightens up real fast and looks for conflicts that have two interesting outcomes.

4. I enjoyed playing in this game a lot. I'm really looking forward to failing with Cal, now that I've established him as a force on the street. I think failing a whole lot right out of the box wouldn't have been as interesting.

5. My assignment next episode? Interact with Frank. Did we have a single scene together?

[Jason Morningstar]

I was a little stunned at the force with which you set about alienating and humiliating the most dangerous gangsters in Cincinnati, Remi.  Joe, too, although his thoroughly upright character can be forgiven - he'll just be collateral damage.  I won't lose every conflict, and I have a feeling that the ones I win next week are going to hurt bad.  Do the math on Quang Noc Tung and you realize he literally cannot accept the beating you gave him.  The only person keeping him in line is about to be emasculated by Federal law enforcement, which ought to get you and Frank cozy!

I agree that we need to tighten up our stake-setting.  I think returning to the actual rules will help, both in terms of framing scenes and defining conflicts. 

[Remi Treuer]

I think you're misremembering a bit, Jason. Dude was trying to shiv me, after failing to repay his debt. He got what was coming to him. I tried to play nice, gave him a chance to make it up to me, and he pulled a knife. I was just defending myself.

[Jason Morningstar]

I was just defending myself.

Memory's such a fickle thing, especially when personal honor has been impugned. 

[Jason Morningstar]

Episode two was last night, and the season is getting hotter.  The over-archign conflicts have largely revealed themselves and it's all spotlight episodes from here on out.

One arc concerns the Bad Boy Crips and their leader, Pin Chu.  Chu is tightly wound around Clinton's character and this season he's a weak leader, indicted under Federal RICO laws and generally in huge legal trouble.  His vicious, cop-killing lieutenant, Quang Nuc Tung, is preparing a palace coup that will elevate the Bad Boy Crips into an uncontrollable force.  Tung has a burning hatred for both Remi and Joe's characters, who humiliated him in the last episode.  Remi and Clinton worked hard to engineer a gigantic drug war that is going to tear the Bad Boy Crips apart, land Tung in jail, and bring heavily-armed Kentucky skinheads right onto Bond Hill.  Frank Trang's son Tony has been adopted into the BBC at the tender age of 14, and we had a great scene where father and son bonded over gangsta gossip - the former undercover narc knows all of his sons friends, and was willing to grasp at anything to form a connection with his sullen boy.  It's looking like Frank is willing to use his son as a mole, which is interesting. 

Another arc revolves around Joe's guy, Jim Polewszack, who wants so hard to be good in a world of brutal moral relativism.  The other protagonists are thoroughly enmeshed in brutal pragmatism and he's an idealist.  His family was threatened by Tung this episode and Jim slipped down the grey path a bit, unwittingly getting involved in drug deliveries for the white power lunatics known as "Unit 88".  He ended up stealing 100 grand from them, in fact, and now has only two friends in the entire world - the other two protagonists - and more enemies than he can count.  This is nicely contrasted with Remi's Cal Smith, an aging and violently desperate sad sack whose wife is pleading with him to go to marriage counseling.  Tragic and awesome in equal measure.

I also introduced a police brutality lawsuit and ensuing publicity and an internal affairs investigation, which has been fun.  That angle has been very "cop show" in a satisfying way. 

As Producer I'm sort of struggling to keep up, actually.  I'm having a hard time taking the elements my friends are requesting for scenes and crafting them into sharp, memorable conflicts that drive the story forward.  I've been relying on the native genius of my friends to make it go so far.  Remi and I discussed this a little, and I'm going to mentally re-tool a bit based on his advice  - next session I'm going to focus very intently on the relationship map and the character's issues.  This story is so free-wheeling and large that it's easy to get lost in the details, so my plan is to ground it a bit in the people and themes we've identified as important thusfar. 

[Matt Wilson]

I'm having a hard time taking the elements my friends are requesting for scenes and crafting them into sharp, memorable conflicts that drive the story forward.  I've been relying on the native genius of my friends to make it go so far.

It seems that when I closed a door where game prep and resource management are concerned, I opened another regarding fly-by-wire responses and intensity. Damn, I have to think on my feet? Definitely uses a specific kind of brain muscle.

But then again, Jason, you and your fellow players wield enthusiasm and energy on a superhuman scale. If we hooked you guys up to a power plant you could light Newark.

[Jason Morningstar]

Episode three last night - Clinton's spotlight episode.  Joe was a 2 and Remi a 1, but everybody got some wonderful scenes.  We opened with a flash-forward, setting up some detail that we'd move toward throughout the episode.  I thought this worked pretty well, although we all agree that we need more practice with this technique and that we probably added too much detail to the flash-forward, which caused us to over-think how to get there, a bit.  As usual I relied heavily on my friends to help me produce, encouraging their input and eagerly accepting good ideas. 

One interesting thing that happened this episode is that it started off extremely low-key, with conflict-less personal scenes that built up relationships.  When we got to the point where over-the-top mayhem and sadistic violence came to the fore, as Joe said, "we felt like we'd earned it".  There were a lot of great scenes - Remi's dissolute, violent, over-the-hill cop in marriage counseling (Clinton played a very creditable therapist).  Joe's guy getting caught in a trap by Unit 88, the skinhead maniacs he'd double-crossed.  Clinton's guy Frank Trang having a road-to-Damascus conversion and handling a crazy press conference with honesty and aplomb.  It was a fun episode, and the real icing on the cake was a horrible prison riot (what we'd been building toward).  Character's were changed forever, it was just great PTA. 

[JoeStanton]

I ended up breaking out of jail with the white power guys. My character just could not catch a break in this episode and I still found it to be one of the most satisfying ones I've played in.

The most rewarding thing about this episode was that we earned the head-bustin' that happened in the climax. We spent a large part of the episode really investing in our relationships (scenes between Frank and Cal and their respective wives were especially awesome) and the choices we made regarding those relationships (Cal finally driving his wife away, Frank realizing his own flaws and screw-ups) were really bold and rewarding.

Coming at games as a newcomer, I've found that what really fascinates me about playing is how we use these games to inform narrativity, and I found that this episode gave us the best story because we really clarified some strong relationships and desires for our characters. It gave all of the violent catharsis at the end of the episode a really defined velocity, so despite the fact that we were splitting wigs in a prison riot, nothing felt senseless. Even when somebody got hit with a hammer.

It was great.

[Jason Morningstar]

Hey Joe, good to see you here!  Welcome to the Forge.

Do you think the fact that those early scenes didn't have conflicts actually aided in that narrative progression you liked so much?

[JoeStanton]

Well, I'm not sure if the lack of conflict drove towards a great end, but I felt that we really didn't need conflict to get where we got. We were fine just playing our relationships and exploring our characters.

[Jason Morningstar]

I agree.  I have to say, though, that I'm hard-wired to look for conflict.  This is probably just a gamer thing, but it always feels slightly wrong when a scene reaches a satisfying conclusion without it.  Like, did we miss something? 

[Clinton R. Nixon]

This is probably just a gamer thing, but it always feels slightly wrong when a scene reaches a satisfying conclusion without it.  Like, did we miss something? 

I think it's interesting and fun that our group is not 100% on this. Having Joe in the mix has been fun for me because both Jason and Remi push for conflict, while I push away from it as long as possible, and Joe's a wild card. I think the payoff can be way more fun once you've built up a few scenes without it, plus I think mechanical conflict is only one conflict option. We had a scene - my first scene - between my character and his ex-wife that was rife with conflict, but cards weren't necessary: I gave in, even as I acted indignant.

[Jason Morningstar]

We played episode four last night and, true to what seems to be a common pattern, it is just getting better.  It was Joe's spotlight episode.  Clinton, Remi and I all agreed to push really hard to give him the Best Spotlight Ever.  His character, Jim Polewczack, had already been through the mill - now a fugitive, running with a white power gang, hunted by the remnants of a murderous Bad Boy Crips splinter group, hunted by a rogue ex-cop with weird ties to everybody, his wife and child in uncertain straits.  It wasn't too hard to frame him into some rough scenes.  The really cool thing was that Joe had said up front that his guy was going to be a good guy - he wanted truth, and he wanted honor.  And Joe fought so damn hard for that! 

At one point, as Producer, I put him in a scene where he had turned himself in to report the outrageous Cincinnati insanity he knew was going down to the FBI, in the form of seedy Special Agent Strozzi.  Strozzi turned it into an interrogation/threat session, and gave Jim the choice of working with them to abet a known terrorist leaving the country or letting his wife and child be murdered by the Bad Boy Crips.  And Joe thought for a moment and said "you know, I don't like either of those choices." And he knocked the guy's teeth out.  Fantastic!  It was a really nice moment that made the character shine. 

The other great thing was that the episode ended with Jim promoted and re-assigned to a desk job - everything he had ever wanted - the result of a lost conflict.  And it's going to haunt him when his friends need help on the mean streets.  Next week we've decided to have a dénouement episode focusing on personal issues for all the characters.  Each has a family in crisis and we're going to explore that as we wrap up season two.

[Clinton R. Nixon]

The other big fun thing that happens last night was that we figured out for real how to play your character at each screen presence level. Here's my analysis:

SP 3: It's your spotlight! Either reinforce a pattern that's been building, or reverse it. Either way, you have little chance of losing, so push hard to make things your character does matter.

SP 2: This is where the real decisions get made. You could win or lose any conflict. Find the pattern for your character, so you can use it later.

SP 1: You probably won't win conflicts, so don't have them. Your character has a personality. Play it up, and establish short, fun scenes to support other players.

I had SP 1 last night, and had many fun scenes, devoid of conflict, that reflected other characters' scenes. My two favorites: Jim's wife and kid were kidnapped, and I, as a big heavy, got myself switched for them. The fun scenes revolved around this. Jim's at the airport, taking down a wanted federal criminal, probable terrorist. He flubs it some, and there's a total mob scene: fire trucks and cop cars all over the tarmac. Cut to Frank Trang (that's me) in a Laz-E-Boy, surrounded by thugs, watching the news, mouth agape.

About an hour later, the hostage rescue guys come through the front door - they don't know I've been switched for the lady. Me and the thugs are playing Monopoly. Everyone stares for a minute. Cut away.

It was a great game.