We're for the most part a fairly traditional gaming group. Been playing together for decades. Our favorite RPGs are Champions, D&D3, d6/Star Wars, and Talislanta. Occasionally I've run some of the more "rules light" games (Theatrix, Everway, Fudge) with somewhat less success. We've never run an "indie" RPG before. Any oddness wrt my interpretation of PTA is no doubt my fault, having never watched nor played the game before. Our latest GM said he needed a few more weeks to get his campaign up and running, so I suggested in the meantime we try PTA. Folks agreed, and we were off. That was the Friday before New Years.

Friday after New Years we do the series pitch thing. Took most of the night. Set the game on a semi-terraformed Mars, 200 years after Earth had its apocalypse event. Earth kept the colonists on a short leash, technologically speaking, so much of the high tech has been failing since then and the world has a bit of a Western feel to it. Oh yeah, and we found the original reptilian Martians in underground caves, and thanks to their help, have accelerated the terraforming with Jurassic-era plants and animals. We're calling it Red Sands. It'll be mostly about the tensions between the lizards, Dome-living humans, and Wilder (outdoor) humans.

We made up characters, too:
PP made a Domie anthropologist --daughter of the Dome director.
DP made a Wilder hunter -- young, hot, and not ready to settle down to his arranged marriage.
DM made a Lizard prospecter, in love with the (Lizard) schoolmarm.
MK made a Wilder shaman -- herbalist, counsellor, pacifist.
I'll be producer.

We're all excited about playing something none of us would ever have dreamed up on our own. Lizards, zeppelins, sword fights, martians, dinosaurs, romance, woot!

It's mid-February when we all get together again. Bleah. DP has lost his character, wants to recreate him. MK changes his shaman's issue from pacifism to finding out what happened to his village while he was away. Both edits wind up being for the better. No one can remember what the mechanics are, so we go over some sample scenes. And by the time we're done with that, it's too late to begin the Pilot and we're done for the night.

It's end of March when we get together next. Illnesses, vacations, conventions, miscommunications have prevented us from convening for 6 weeks. The energy is just being sucked out of this campaign and we haven't even begun yet. PP has decided to change chars from Domie anthropologist to world-destroying Earth combat robot. Or something. After an hour of messing around, he settles instead on being DP's brother, tired of living in his shadow. After that, we get sidetracked into a discussion of Life On Mars, since it's clear when talking about the world-destroying robot idea, that we all have a very different view of what the campaign world is like. And that's it for the night.

We get together the next week (OMG!) except for PP who's dropped the bombshell that afternoon that he's giving up RPGs for good. So we just go for the Pilot anyway without him. We managed to finish 6 scenes that night -- we feel like we've barely started the Pilot -- maybe we're somewhere in the middle of act II. It's getting late so we call it a night.

The next week we reconvene and only get 3 scenes finished, due to missed bus connections and lateness of the pizza delivery guy. Feels like we're almost halfway done with the pilot, perhaps. The enthusiasm for the campaign seems really low, but people are still willing to give it a fair shot. From my perspective, it's not the best campaign I've run, but it isn't the worst, either. We're still running up against our lack of familiarity with the rules and "feel" of the game, which isn't much different from our Shadowrun experiences. (Trying out new games that is, not that Shadowrun and PTA are similar!)

Some questions about the game.....

(1) The players keep wanting to suggest scenes that only have NPCs in them. By rules, there's no conflict possible if there aren't any PCs in the scene. Which means I would just play out the scene myself until I'm done. This seems kinda boring? Any suggestions for how to handle this?

(2) As a follow-on to #1, some of the scenes players are asking for are just simple cut scene type things. "I would like a scene showing that one of the bandits got away. No players involved." Is it really necessary to blow one's whole turn for this? Seems somewhat expensive for what you're getting out of it...

(3) Plot vs Character. We're all having a tough time deciding what the difference is between these when setting the scenes. "The agenda for this scene is for MK and DM to find a reason to travel together" Is that a plot scene because they'll be travelling together now? Or a character scene because they're bonding or something? Mostly we just flail and pick Plot.

(4) When picking stakes for the conflict, is there a preferred order? In particular, do I have all the PCs pick their win-stakes first, then I pick the lose-stakes for everyone? Or do we pick win/lose stakes for player 1, then pick win/lose stakes for player 2, etc? I would hope it doesn't matter, and would worry that it does...

(5) What do you do if you find the scene doesn't satisfy the agenda? There were a couple scenes where, when we got to the end, we realized we hadn't really satisfied the scene's stated purpose. We did have a conflict though, and it all flowed okay. It just... didn't do what it was supposed to. We just kinda shrugged our shoulders, said "well, that didn't do what it was supposed to", and moved on to the next scene. Pay more attention, I guess?

(6) The rhythm of scenes is not quite what I expected. I somehow expected a player to suggest a scene, the producers sets the scene in motion, and then the players and producers do some improv theater kinda thing until a Conflict arises. At that point, you press the Pause button. Set stakes, play cards. Narrator sketches out how things work out. You press Resume button, and everyone jams to finish the scene. (Unicorns bring us snax and mountain dew whenever we want in this idyllic world, too). Our scenes don't work like that. Probably the biggest difference is that the Narrator works *everything* out, so finishing the scene feels kinda like a lame rehash of "what he said". Any tips?

Sorry for being so terse on my first post. Writing well takes an order of magnitude longer for me than is convenient, and I'd like to finish this in under two hours. I've kept notes on what the scenes were (agenda, characters, stakes, who won), in case anyone wants to know more. But that two hour limit is looming quickly.

Cheers,
Roger B

Roger:

Thanks for posting. I'm glad you tried it out. Games are always hard to get into when you have weeks that pass in between them.

Here's some specific responses to your questions:

1 and 2. I think when players want whole scenes about minor characters, something's amiss. I'd be like, dude, what about this cool character you spent all that time on? Why isn't this NPC your actual character, if you're so interested? If it's just a matter of "can we say this happened?" then it's not worth a scene. If the NPC in question is a connection, they don't really need to ask. They can just say it. If it's a producer-controlled NPC, it's the producer's call.

3. Plot vs. character is all about setting up the conflict. If it's a plot scene, and it's a courtroom scene, the conflict is gonna be about whether someone's guilty or not. If it's a character scene, it's gonna be about how the character develops amid the cries of objection and the questioning and all that, or maybe about will the character risk being in contempt of court in order to stand up for what he or she believes is right.

4. I can't see how it'd matter offhand which way you approached it. Everyone should have a chance to edit their stakes upon hearing everyone else's.

5. If it didn't go right, everyone has to buy a fresh copy of the book and read it again. No, seriously, shit happens. Roleplaying is a work in progress. Everybody has games that didn't quite work out. Just talk about it afterward. It's everyone's responsibility to make a scene work.

6. Can you explain what you mean by "Probably the biggest difference is that the Narrator works *everything* out." Maybe can you provide an example of how a conflict went in play?

I've run into similar problems when dealing with the difference between plot and character scenes. This is how I now explain the concept to new players:

"The Agenda of a scene tells you its purpose as far as the story of the episode is concerned. This shouldn't be confused with the result of the scene. The Agenda doesn't say what will happen in the scene, it only says what function it has in the overall structure of the story. Think back to your basic drama set-up: Introduction - Complication - Resolution. To which of these does your scene belong? Once you figured it out, place it into the context of your episode. So instead of saying "Agenda: Introduction", you could say "Agenda: we meet with a client to talk about her case". Instead of "Agenda: Complication", you could say "Agenda: we find out who's sending these threats". Instead of "Agenda: Resolution", you could say "Agenda: we have try to catch the culprit". Obviously during the game this descriptions will be a bit more evocative.

The distinction between plot scene and character scene serve to focus the scene. By picking one or the other, you choose what you want the scene to deal with. If it's a character scene, the scene's conflict will be build around or at least heavily informed by your character's Issue. If it's a plot scene, the conflict will deal with the direction the story will take and how the plot develops. But feel free to let your character's Issues shine through in plot scenes as well. Just remember that conflict and its outcome in those scenes will still be plot-based."

As for the role of the Producer: one mistake I've made in my first games was to act like the DM in D&D. My PTA games work much better, when I adopt more of a Moderator role. I collect suggestions from my players; we bounce ideas off of each other and once we've found something that gets those involved excited, I make my call and establish the scene that way. You should also remember, that this job is often handed over to one of the players, after a conflict has been resolved. Whoever gets the highest card, also gets to play Producer for the remainder of the scene. He collects the suggestions, picks the ones he considers best or most exciting for the group and establishes them. What the Producer (or the player with the highest card) shouldn't do is shut the group out, and try to come up with an ending to the scene on his own. At least, whenever I do this the game freezes instantly, and it takes a while to get into it again.

6. Can you explain what you mean by "Probably the biggest difference is that the Narrator works *everything* out." Maybe can you provide an example of how a conflict went in play?

Hey:

I'm totally baffled. How did a conflict about who's the alpha male suddenly involve bandits? It seems like something went wrong there, or else part of your post was lost.

I'm totally baffled. How did a conflict about who's the alpha male suddenly involve bandits? It seems like something went wrong there, or else part of your post was lost.

Georgios wrote:
If it's a character scene, the scene's conflict will be build around or at least heavily informed by your character's Issue.

I would say that the Issues your players have picked are too narrow. You gave the Issues as:

RogerB wrote:
Jameth's Issue: avoiding the responsibilities of being next in line to rule his village, including an arranged marriage
Chames' Issue: proving his love for the schoolmarm by getting enough money to provide for her
Televanni's Issue: finding out what destroyed his village and his family's fate during his years-long absence

On a side note, I thought we were allowed to introduce stuff as part of resolution.