Producerless games?

[Ry]

Has anyone (besides Ronaldo at the Story Games forum) has played PTA without a producer?

[lighthouse]

I plan to play PTA solo, using Mythic GME.

[scottdunphy]

No I haven't. Who would decide how much budger to spend on a conflict? Would the players not in the conflict take turns performing the producer's duties?

[Ry]

I was thinking of something where different players can bid for a scene like Universalis:

The high bid sets the scene (Focus, Agenda, Location)
The low bid acts as Producer

But I'm not sure what the players should be bidding with.  If the players had "hands" of some kind they could pick a card, but they don't. 

[twilight]

I suppose it kind of depends on what style of set-up you had, player-wise. I know that I've been thinking of trying PTA with just me and one other player - which would require a fairly minor tweak of the Fanmail system, I would think. But if you were playing without a Producer with just two players, you could easily just make both players a Producer:

Agree upon a setting and generate characters per usual. I would suggest generating a Nemesis as well. When the game starts, Player A becomes player; Player B becomes Player A's antagonist/producer complete with Budget. Player A, Scene 1 ends. Player B becomes player; Player A becomes producer with Budget. And continue in that fashion until the session is over. If Player A and B's characters are sharing the scene, whoever is Producer allocates Budget for that scene. Which allows both players to interact with both characters in the same scene without too much trouble.

More than 2 players ... hm. How about something similar to above but tweaking who the Producer/antagonist is? As there isn't any additional "currency" outside of Budget and Fanmail like there is in Universalis, why bother introducing it? Just borrowing from the old game of Jyhad - the player to your right is your "predator" (read Producer). Whoever is requesting the scene gets it framed and Budgeted by the player to the right. As the faux Producer already has a Budget and a Budget cap, it'd be like winning narration: the faux Producer has final authority over how the scene is framed and Budgeted but takes input from everyone else at the table.

[Pyromancer]

I heard of a group where every player took the role of the producer for one episode. The character of this player had screen presence 0 (and basically just walked by in the background or said two lines of dialogue).
This seems to work well with five players and a screen presence distribution of 0-1-2-2-3.
Of course, this isn't "playing PtA without a producer" in the strictest sense.

[Eero Tuovinen]

I included rules similar to Pyromancer's in the Finnish edition of the game, as an optional idea. Works for me.

[Yokiboy]

I was just heading to this forum to ask if anyone has played PTA with just two players, and alternating between being the producer for each scene. I think this could work well. We would then manage a common budget and take alternating turns at being the producer for the other protagonist's scene. It sounds like it is worth a try anyhow.

TTFN,

Yoki

[Filip Luszczyk]

I've been pondering something in the lines of:

Every player can request SP personal scenes and, say, one plot scene per session. Every player has a producer score, starting at SP. The scene is produced by whoever has the lowest producer score at the moment, and the score is increased by one afterwards. In case of a tie, the requesting player chooses the producer.

Possibly, the limit of scene requests wouldn't be needed, or having potentially unlimited number of plot scenes would make more sense. But I've been thinking about some kind of balance between being in the spotlight and producing scenes based on Screen Presence in the episode.