Hi, Ive visited this forum before asking about this aspect of PTA.  I love nearly everything about the game, except this bit.  I just dont get it.

Specifically, I dont get when the GM is supposed to call for a conflict resolution.  In the games I have GMed, everybody gets on a roll and agrees that it would be cool if such and such a thing happened, and they all agree and the person whoose turn it is narrates it.  There doesnt seem to be any cause to use the conflict resolution mechanism. 

Often I let scenes go without introducing the conflict mechanism, and other times I am thinking to myself - the rules say that most scenes should have a conflict resolution, and its up to me to introduce it... so I try to pick something and have it 'resolved' but it mostly serves to interrupt the flow of the game and seems very contrived.  because it is contrived.

But it occured to me that maybe I was looking for conflict (in all the wrong places).  I was of the opinion that the conflict being resolved is an in-game thing between characters....  But is that true?  it might actually start making sense if the conflict being resolved is  between players.  a meta game conflict?  am I onto something, or do I still fail to get it?

Perhaps it will make sense if someone (matt?) can tell me why the game has a conflict resolution system at all.  ?

Nope, you should resolve player-disagreements by negotiation and leave the conflict mechanics for in-game character disagreements. If players are genuinely disagreeing about something, drawing lots about it doesn't exactly help resolve anything.

Now, what you should be using the conflict system for is structure, inspiration and pacing for the game. Here's what the conflict system does for you:
- It helps the group pinpoint important turns in the fiction.
- It helps the players make decisions about arbitrary matters.
- It allows players to concretely invest resources according to what they consider important.

The latter one is probably the most important one in your case, considering that you seem to be quite happy playing without a conflict resolution mechanic at all. So consider this: one of the great enjoyments of playing PTA is that players have an opportunity to choose an issue for their character and declare their stance on that issue. This is premise-full roleplaying, narrativism, if you will. However, the actual action and activity of the game happens when the players make hard choices about how their characters stand upon their issue in any given concrete situations they may face.

Now, you can get a lot of game out of the above ideas even without a conflict resolution system, but regardless, that's what the system is there to faciliate: when you spend fan mail in an important conflict, you're saying that the outcome of this conflict is important to you. Likewise, when you choose to use your "soldier" edge, you're saying that this is something your character is willing to grab a gun for. All these crunchy decisions in the conflict resolution system are intented to highlight the values and choices of the character and the player in ways that support the players in creating engaging drama.

You could think of the conflict resolution system as a kind of a frame or spotlight in an important event: when the cards are drawn, everybody knows that a character is doing something important. It's like a distinct ritual space inside the play activity, helping players focus on a key point of play.

Now, how to find that conflict: my suggestion is to start simply and always give your NPCs motives that are directly tangled with the issues of the main characters of the episode. This way the conflict is always just a hand's width away.

Whether any of the above seems compelling to you is another matter; some people genuinely like freeform play, the reasons for which I won't go here.

I can't give you any definitive answer as to how conflict and the resolution mechanisms are supposed to work together, but this has been how I've come to handle it.

Let's say my group has a scene in which a cop character chases some criminal. The first question that I pose is: does he catch him or not? This is what we build the conflict on. Then we look at the character's issue and determine how it might be tied to the conflict in the scene. Let's say the cop has the issue: Self-worth.

The follow-up question then is: does the character prove he's worthy of being a cop? We use conflict resolution to answer this directly. But the fate of the criminal (which served as the basis for the conflict) isn't determined by the cards, but by the narrator instead.

It doesn't matter whether everyone at the table agrees what should happen to the criminal beforehand. The narrator gets to decide what happens to him and his narration is constrained by the result of the cards. So if the player won the conflict, the narrator explains how the cop proved himself worthy of his job. If he lost, he'd explain how the cop failed to do so.

The cop might catch the criminal and this might boost his self-worth. But it'd be perfectly alright to have the criminal get away and the cop still proving himself, by maybe rescuing a passer-by, that the criminal has endangered during his escape. Or the cop might catch the criminal through sheer luck and happenstance, and therefore feel like he doesn't deserve to wear a badge. But this is just how I handle it and I don't know how close this is to how the game is designed to be run.

Hi G, thanks for your reply.

Ive thought about it some more, and in the way we have been playing it, I think our problem comes from collectively mapping out a scene, rather than winging it.  By that I mean, when the scene is being set, when it comes to hammering out the agenda, it generally involves the whole group kibutzing for 10 minutes :

"wouldnt it be cool if the cop was just about to catch the bad guy when an old woman stepped out from a doorway and was knocked to the ground and the cop had to stop and help her"  and
"yeah, because later, back at the preceinct, he could catch some heat from the seargant for failing to catch the criminal", and so on...

basically we would be almost mapping out the entire scene at the agenda stage, even to the point of seeding future scenes.  So having gone through this process, we end up with a good story, with lots of group involvement in concocting it, but really nothing much left to resolve conflict or naration-wise.

having re-read the rules for scene-setting, basically all we should be saying is more like "in this scene which is character development for the cop, he chases the criminal on foot through the back alleys of china town"  and leave it at that?

is that more like it?  if so, how would you proceed from that point?  Who says what and when?

Yes, that sounds like a problem. Your latter example of "in this scene which is character development for the cop, he chases the criminal on foot through the back alleys of china town" is right on mark; nothing more is needed, just establish who is doing what when the scene opens and continue playing from there.

As to how to play, it's easy: every player tells the others what their own characters say and do in the scene. Not as conditional suggestions with ample justification like you'd need the other players to agree with you, but as direct declarations of intent: my character runs fast, wanting to catch that criminal, my character looks everywhere for a hiding place, and so on.

When these declarations of intent by players cross with each other or become otherwise outrageous, throw in the conflict resolution. That's what it's for. Conflicts are resolved when characters struggle to achieve their aims.

The whole "kibitzing"-thing is pretty much what we do as well. It's just that we do it as part of the scene, instead of the agenda. The other difference is pretty small, but I've seen it have big consequences. Once the kibitzing (what a fun word) starts, we don't talk about what could, might, should, would possibly happen... but everybody pitches in with descriptions and explanations of what is going on. It'd be something like this:

"He chases after him and turns around a corner..."
"...almost running into a cart..."
"...music is pumping and he's muttering under his breath..."
"..."Why don't they ever stop when you tell them to?"..."
"...and then the criminal pushes an old woman aside into the street..."
"...right in front of a moving truck..." And so on.

Since the scene sort of belongs to a player, he gets a kind of veto to how his characters fairs in the scene. So if another player suggests, that the Cop stumbles and causes a big Clouseau-esque scene, the player could just object and it'd be considered to not have happened. Although, this is a bit simplified, as in my group player's enthusiasm for a scene, group dynamics and the like have an effect on this as well.

This back-and-forth goes on until the Producer (but sometimes the group) picks up on a conflict. As a Producer I can in theory turn any of the lines above into the scene's conflict and try to built the character's issue into it.

a) Does he chase after the criminal or not?
b) Is he muttering under his breath or not?
c) Does he catch the criminal or not?

It's obvious that (b) is not only trivial, but it also has no interesting connection to the character's issue.
(a) is only a little bit better, but so small in scale that it feels like a waste of a scene. Though other groups might find it perfect for their series' style.
(c) is the obvious choice in this case. Its scope feels meaty enough to warrant its own scene and you can easily tie the character's issue into it.

So basically, it breaks down like this:
Player requests a scene (Focus, Agenda, Location).
The Producer sets the scene and gets the ball rolling: the obligatory "what happens then?"-question.
The group kibitzes and develops the action in the scene through description.
Producer picks up the conflict of the scene and ties the issues into it.
Cards hit the table.

When it comes to recognizing the scene's conflict, I ask myself what is the important decision or action that has to be made in this scene? What does the group want to see happen, so the story develops wherever they want it to go? That's the conflict. Tieing this back to my earlier post, the Narrator still gets to determine if it happens or not, but now the issues was tied into it and the cards revealed more about the character.

A potential drawback of this approach is that the story can feel predictable. But that's easily fixed, by tieing a specific outcome of the conflict into the character's dealing with their issue. In this example, you could tie the criminal getting caught, with the cop boosting his self-worth. So if the player's cards are beaten by the Producer's, the criminal gets away and the cop feels worthless.

I find that playing a couple of those "safe" conflicts (where the cards only determine how the character deals with his issue) first really helps to focus everybody on the issues, instead of the plot which is what almost every group I've played with naturally leaned towards. Once this has been seen in action and the players *click* into it, I occasionally switch the conflict-types back and forth to spice things up. It's been my experience that the story can get very erratic and unpredictable, if you only play "hard" conflicts (where the cards determine both issue and action). Some groups like that, some don't. I like to use them sporadically and only for big decision points, which usually occur towards the end of an episode.

ah yes, kibitz is different from kibutz, isnt it...

Lets pick on the cop scene some more.  What if the whole group recognizes that the cop failing to catch the criminal because he stops to help the old lady  is the best way for the scene to play out.  What if everybody feels it would be lame if the cop just caught the criminal?  then when you make a 'conflict' out of it, you have the situation where everybody, including the player of the cop, wants it to go one way, so why bother with the cards?  Everybody is going to stack the cards to get the desired outcome anyway....

but then we're back to the situation where in most scenes, everybody generally does agree with a particular scenario... a collarborative writing experience to produce the best script.  and so we're back to the situation where any kind of conflict seems contrived. 

I feel like there is conflict within the game rules (not just PTA, but RPGs in general)... the conflict between

a random decision that turns the story in a direction that none of the players wants , or
turning the game into a collaborative script writing session with contrived conflict resolution

perhaps there is a fine line there that I havent maneged to find yet.

stefoid wrote:
What if everybody feels it would be lame if the cop just caught the criminal?  then when you make a 'conflict' out of it, you have the situation where everybody, including the player of the cop, wants it to go one way, so why bother with the cards?  Everybody is going to stack the cards to get the desired outcome anyway....

stefoid wrote:
Lets pick on the cop scene some more.  What if the whole group recognizes that the cop failing to catch the criminal because he stops to help the old lady  is the best way for the scene to play out.  What if everybody feels it would be lame if the cop just caught the criminal?  then when you make a 'conflict' out of it, you have the situation where everybody, including the player of the cop, wants it to go one way, so why bother with the cards?  Everybody is going to stack the cards to get the desired outcome anyway....

stefoid wrote:
What if the whole group recognizes that the cop failing to catch the criminal because he stops to help the old lady  is the best way for the scene to play out.  What if everybody feels it would be lame if the cop just caught the criminal?  then when you make a 'conflict' out of it, you have the situation where everybody, including the player of the cop, wants it to go one way, so why bother with the cards?

I'm going to butt in and make a suggestion.

Do the kibbitzing after the conflict. I wouldn't decide all that stuff before playing the cards. I'd decide what you want to resolve, as Eero points out in his last post, as in does someone get hurt, etc, before the conflict. But not anything else. That's all part of the narration.

So there's a chase going on. Jump right to conflict. What's most important to each character? Resolve that. Everything that's left is kibbitzing with final stamp by whoever got the highest card.

So the scene setter says "this is the scene where the cop chases the bad guy through the alleys - its a character development scene"

The director frames the first shot - alleyway with fire-escapes coming down the wall, garbage cans at the back of restaurants, cobbles stones, etc...

cop player:  I take out my gun and draw a bead on the bad guy "stop or Ill shoot"

director: an old lady steps out from a doorway ahead of the bad guy - her attention is focused on feeding a cat.  if you shoot, you might hit her.  the bad guy turns to see if you really are going to shoot, and careens into the old lady, and stumbles on.  the old lady is knocked against the wall and seems out cold...

------------------------
NOW at this point, lets say the cops issue is he has tension between getting results for his superiors - arrests and so on, and being a bit of a softy - gives kids a second chance rather than pushing them through the system, is often 'wasting' his time with non-official duties, etc...

people are seeming to indicate that its not WHAT happens that is important - stop or dont stop - thats up to the narrator.  whats important is the fallout of this scene that probably flows into future scenes.  is that correct?  can you give me a good example of what you would use as the stated conflict in this scene, and what the progression of the rest of the scene might be - who says what.  because at the moment, following Matts advice, this scene has jumped straight to the conflict and has only taken a minute or so of real time to create.
----------------------

Glendower wrote:

stefoid wrote:

What if everybody feels it would be lame if the cop just caught the criminal?  then when you make a 'conflict' out of it, you have the situation where everybody, including the player of the cop, wants it to go one way, so why bother with the cards?  Everybody is going to stack the cards to get the desired outcome anyway....

The conflict is to determine who gains narrative control.  The producer has to ensure that the players don't want him to get that control, otherwise there isn't any tension in the conflicts.  Then it becomes "collaborative story time" which is cool, but not what you seem to want.

OK, this is how I would handle this kind of situation if I were Producing this game. This is only my personal viewpoint, but I hope it helps:

stefoid wrote:
So the scene setter says "this is the scene where the cop chases the bad guy through the alleys - its a character development scene"

The director frames the first shot - alleyway with fire-escapes coming down the wall, garbage cans at the back of restaurants, cobbles stones, etc...

cop player:  I take out my gun and draw a bead on the bad guy "stop or Ill shoot"

stefoid wrote: lets say the cops issue is he has tension between getting results for his superiors - arrests and so on, and being a bit of a softy - gives kids a second chance rather than pushing them through the system, is often 'wasting' his time with non-official duties, etc...

What Warren says is awesome.

Warren wrote:
OK, this is how I would handle this kind of situation if I were Producing this game. This is only my personal viewpoint, but I hope it helps:

stefoid wrote:
So the scene setter says "this is the scene where the cop chases the bad guy through the alleys - its a character development scene"

The director frames the first shot - alleyway with fire-escapes coming down the wall, garbage cans at the back of restaurants, cobbles stones, etc...

cop player:  I take out my gun and draw a bead on the bad guy "stop or Ill shoot"

(Notice I've dropped the 'old lady' part; I tend to put the conflict close to the start of a scene, and you'll see why in a bit).

Now how does this situation intersect with this character's Issue, and what does everybody think is best for the story? Let's assume that having the bad-guy get away at this point in the episode is what everyone thinks is best. So the conflict can't be "Do you catch the bad guy?" -- we already know the answer to that one (No, he won't).

Now let's recap on the cop's Issue:

stefoid wrote: lets say the cops issue is he has tension between getting results for his superiors - arrests and so on, and being a bit of a softy - gives kids a second chance rather than pushing them through the system, is often 'wasting' his time with non-official duties, etc...

You've got a guy who wants to reform criminals, rather than just arrest them. Shooting a bad guy goes pretty heavily against that, I reckon. You could have a conflict like "Do you shoot the bad guy in the back?", but as a producer, I think you shouldn't really dictate PC intents, so let's drop that one too.

So it has to be an action the bad guy (or other NPC) will take as/after he gets away from the cop. The cop is not really the violent, arresting type, and there is conflict over his superiors about results. One thing that springs to mind is: "Does the cop's boss think that the cop didn't do everything he could do to catch the bad guy?" But that could be another scene, maybe? (You could cut straight away back to the police station and cop explaining what happened to his boss, I guess.)

If we wanted to stay in the alleyway scene, you could have a conflict like "Does a bystander get hurt as the bad guy makes his escape?", as I'm guessing that the cop wouldn't want innocents to get harmed. But that only kinda ties into the cop's Issue. Maybe if instead of bystander, it was a streetkid who he was trying to straighten out (one of his Connections, even!). That would be neat! So I settle on:

"Bobby, your 'reforming streetkid' Connection, will get caught up in this situation. The conflict will determine if he gets hurt as the bad guy makes his escape."

And then instead of introducing the old lady, I introduce Bobby instead, and maybe have the bad guy grab him or something.  Anyway, that's my thought process for this kind of thing. And although it looks a lot, it actual play, I haven't found it too bad. Having clear, focused Issues helps a lot, as it makes it easier to find where the Issue and the situation "collide".

Hey:

Conflicts are always producer vs. player. There's no other possibility.

Unless I'm misunderstanding you.

Matt wrote:
Hey:

Conflicts are always producer vs. player. There's no other possibility.

Unless I'm misunderstanding you.

Hey Stefoid:

I think I understand what you're asking. Ideally, a conflict should have investment from all the players. You'll want to find a conflict that has potential excitement no matter how it turns out. The player acts on what the protagonist would want, and the producer acts on what would oppose it. So it's opposition in that sense, yes. As producer you draw against the characters, even if sometimes you're secretly rooting for them to win. I think if you polled some actual play, you'd find reports of the producer shouting out, "come on, gimme bad cards!" at times.

In the situation described above, what does the player of the cop do and say? 

stefoid wrote:
thanks , warren.  A few things to clear up...

In the situation described above, what does the player of the cop do and say? 

stefoid wrote:
also, does this conflict put the producer and player in oppositon, and is that neccesary?

stefoid wrote:
but from a 'stakes' point of view, where is the opposition?  What makes the producer and players care whether their cards win or not?

Matt wrote:
Hey Stefoid:

I think I understand what you're asking. Ideally, a conflict should have investment from all the players. You'll want to find a conflict that has potential excitement no matter how it turns out. The player acts on what the protagonist would want, and the producer acts on what would oppose it. So it's opposition in that sense, yes. As producer you draw against the characters, even if sometimes you're secretly rooting for them to win. I think if you polled some actual play, you'd find reports of the producer shouting out, "come on, gimme bad cards!" at times.

thanks again warren, for your example.  Its not quite clear, but maybe just a typo, and  I have a further question.

you said the cop player looses.  I presume you meant the cop player won, because otherwise the kid would get hurt, right?  thats the typo (I hope, otherwise I am confused)

secondly, the producer wins narration.  what exactly does narration entail?  in your example, the cop player plays his character some more, but is it according to some narration that is not represented in the example, or what?

Hi Stefoid,

In PTA winning narration rights means winning buck stopping power on how the conflict plays out. The narrator can listen to suggestions from other players, but has final say on how the results decided by the cards occur.

In games I've played, usually the narrator brainstorms a resolution with the group and most of the "acting" quality of interactions just drop away.

In a really skilled group I can imagine an exchange like the one Warren described. The players would continue to describe actions and dialog for their characters -- with the understanding that they're just making suggestions and the narrator can take back or adjust things. I imagine that each statement would be made with eyes on the narrator to verify approval.

So it seemed like "why bother with this conflict stuff - everybody at the table wants this to fall a certain way, so why bother making a random event out of it?"

stefoid wrote:
thanks again warren, for your example.  Its not quite clear, but maybe just a typo, and  I have a further question.

you said the cop player looses.  I presume you meant the cop player won, because otherwise the kid would get hurt, right?  thats the typo (I hope, otherwise I am confused)

stefoid wrote:
secondly, the producer wins narration.  what exactly does narration entail?  in your example, the cop player plays his character some more, but is it according to some narration that is not represented in the example, or what?

Alan wrote:
In a really skilled group I can imagine an exchange like the one Warren described. The players would continue to describe actions and dialog for their characters -- with the understanding that they're just making suggestions and the narrator can take back or adjust things. I imagine that each statement would be made with eyes on the narrator to verify approval.

stefoid wrote:
So it seemed like "why bother with this conflict stuff - everybody at the table wants this to fall a certain way, so why bother making a random event out of it?"

OK, thanks everyone for helping with this.

Matt, I think this is a VERY important part of your game and it could probably do with more time in your ruleset, just my opinion.  Perhaps it is because Im new to narrative play in general, this being my first narrative style game?

warren: the reason I asked about narration, is because it seems to be a case where things dont flow as expected, again, for our group.  Back at the start of if this thread, I mentioned that instead of just a one-liner agenda, our group kibitzed the agenda in detail for some time, and this kind of defused the 'acting' part of the scene, because protaganists had their moves mapped out ahead of time?  everyone here agreed that was the wrong way to go. 

So I see the same type of problem with the narration - if the narrator maps out in detail the resolution to the conflict, then it defuses the acting out of that resolution.  Thats not neccesarilly a bad thing I suppose, if there is more 'scene' to come after the conflict resolution, where the players are free to act for their characters once more?

this is my summary:

1) a player chooses location, focus and agenda (1 liner agenda)
2) players with characetrs in the scene act out those characters, while the GM acts out the NPCs
3) when a meaningful conflict is recognized, the GM calls it.  generally, the protaginists involved in the conflict should be rooting for what their protaginists want, and the GM should be concerned with opposing that.  The conflict should be framed in such a way as to result in a good story occuring either way
4) the player who wins narration maps out the resolution of the conflict
5) the players with characters in the scene act until the end of the scene is reached

???

stefoid wrote:
this is my summary:

1) a player chooses location, focus and agenda (1 liner agenda)
2) players with characetrs in the scene act out those characters, while the GM acts out the NPCs
3) when a meaningful conflict is recognized, the GM calls it.  generally, the protaginists involved in the conflict should be rooting for what their protaginists want, and the GM should be concerned with opposing that.  The conflict should be framed in such a way as to result in a good story occuring either way
4) the player who wins narration maps out the resolution of the conflict
5) the players with characters in the scene act until the end of the scene is reached

Warren wrote:

This is the big difference (again, I stress this is how we play, not exactly how the book puts it):

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'.

5) After resolving the conflict the players and GM continue to act the scene out, abiding by the result of the conflict (Bobby gets hurt, or won't, and so on.) The narrator can tell the rest that they want things to go in a certain direction, or veto another player, or whatever. We also allowed the narrator to take on the roles of some NPCs sometimes too.

6) The scene continues until the conflict has played out, and someone (usually the Producer or Narrator, in my experience) calls out "Cut!".

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.

Warren wrote: 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'.

SabreCat wrote:

Warren wrote: 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...

Warren wrote:
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.

stefoid wrote: 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?

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... *8)

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 *8)

Shymer

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.