Would these mods work, or cause problems?

Quality of Success:  The more you beat the GM by, the more complete your success.  Win by 0 cards (by having most hearts, or lowest card) = barely successful; win by 1 card = significant success, win by 2 cards or more = complete success.  Likewise, failure can work the same way: Lose by 0 = barely, lose by 1 = setback, lose by 2 = utter failure

Example:  Billy is trying to get his Dad to respect him more, to stop treating him like a boy and to start treating him like a man.  Here are the possible outcomes:
Lose by 2 or worse:  "Son, I am very disappointed in you.  When will you grow up and stop acting like a child?"
Lose by 1:  "Son, I know you are in a hurry to grow up, but you're just not ready yet."
Lose by 0: "Son, give it time - if you don't force it, it will come."
Win by 0: "Son, good job - you are heading in the right direction."
Win by 1: "Son, I am so proud of you - good job!"
Win by 2 or more: "Son, you have left behind the boy you were for the man you are, and I couldn't be more proud."

Thoughts?

Fan Mail Trait Use:  A small mod - right now as I read the rules, any red card that comes from Fan Mail directly returns as budget, but spending a Fan Mail to gain an extra Trait use does not turn into Budget if it comes up red.  I wonder if it wouldn't be better and more straightforward to simply say that ANY card that comes up red that was gotten with Fan Mail (whether directly or through Trait re-use) goes back into the GM's budget?

Fan Mail Awards:

I am still entirely convinced that the current Fan Mail system needs modification.  The problems I would want to solve include:
- fostering resentment if one feels one is being underawarded for one's cool plays because one is not the popular one - creating interplayer discord.
- player collusion in the face of a threat to all, such as going into a major showdown scene soon, so they begin awarding each other FM like mad
- player collusion pre-game to award out evenly all FM, because 1) they care about the outcome of their conflicts and 2) they are smart enough to use the mechanics of the system to their advantage

Now, personally, I *want* the players to care about the outcome of the Conflict.  What makes *any* narrative game engaging is three things:
a) there is drama
b) there are outcomes to that drama, that the players favor or disfavor
c) the actions and choices of the players can affect the likelihood of the outcomes that they favor or disfavor

If you don't have the above three things, you do not have an interesting and compelling experience, IMO.  If you *do* have those three things, you have a situation in which tactical play becomes the primary method by which the rational and intelligent player tries to interact with the game.

This demonstrates the problem that the current Fan Mail distribution system presents me.  Here is a thought for a replacement system:

At the end of the episode, the GM gives each player a score.  Let's say that Alice gets a 3.  This means that *next* episode she gets 1 Fan Mail awarded to her at the start of each of the first *three* scenes.  If Bill only gets a 2 this means that next episode he gets 1 Fan Mail at the start of the first scene, and one more at the start of the second.

Now, I would love feedback specifically on what the minimum, maximum, and average GM award should be.  I would also love feedback on the criteria that anyone feels would be good to decide the rating each player gets.  Also, what rating should the players start with in the first episode?

(Perhaps a rating of 1-5: 1 for being there, 1 for MVP (let the players vote on this one?), 1 for character growth, 1 for special success, 1 for player contributions?  Or maybe 1 for being there, 0-2 for overall player contribution, 0-2 for compelling character play?)

I am slightly open to ciritcisms of the idea in general, if well and thoroughly presented, but mostly only if alternative ideas are also presented that removes the current system of player-distributed resources.

Thanks all.

A small mod - right now as I read the rules, any red card that comes from Fan Mail directly returns as budget, but spending a Fan Mail to gain an extra Trait use does not turn into Budget if it comes up red.

Perhaps its more of an implication - I would copy and paste the relevant bits here but the pdf doesn't seem to permit it and there doesn't seem to be a way to post images here.

In brief, under Spending Fan Mail p32 of the pdf it says you can spend Fan Mail directly for additional cards.  If these come up red, they go back to the budget. 

On page 8 of the pdf, it says that traits are used a number of times equal to the Screen Presence - any use of a trait after that number has been reached must be purchased with fan mail fo each additional usage.

While buying an additional use of a used-up trait may give you an extra card, if it wasn't a different act mechanically, then why would you include it when you can spend aFan Mail for an extra card without even dealing with your traits?  Therefor, the key difference must be that while you spoke of the chance for the GM to win back budget when spending FM for cards directly, you included (as far as I can find) no such limitation otherwise.  In fact, as I recall, when using your traits to get extra cards, the GM does not get the chance to add t his budget.  Therefor, the rule that permits you to spend a Fan Mail to use a used-trait again would be expected to be used as it normally gets used - no chance for added GM budget.

In fact, the game would potentially be better off (and less confusing) to remove the idea that Fan Mail has anything to do with traits at all, and just have 1 Fan Mail buy 1 card, which if it turns up red, goes back to the GM as budget.

Why even have Fan Mail used to re-use spent Traits? 

Confused, me.

Also, there a lot more in the first post on this topic that I made I am hoping for constructive thoughts on.

As to the 'broken' Fan Mail mechanic?
In my opinion, there is absolutely nothing wrong with the players, in order to achieve their stakes, awarding FM as much as they can to each other, in order to spend it all thereafter on extra cards/ trait refreshes, whatever.

In my view, as the Producer, my role is not to promote MY stakes over the players.  I do not lose if they get what they want.  I'm going to repeat that, because it is so fundamental to the way I play, either as Protagonist or as Producer : I do not lose if another player gets what they want, I only lose when I propose something lame, and the cards give it to us.

So if the players spend a lot of Fan Mail, get a bunch of red cards, and narrate favorable outcomes for each other, and direct the story the way they want it to go? How is that not "Teh Awesome" ?    Isn't that why we all sat down, to make an episode of this show together? Player Collusion is exactly what I want.  I want my players to Collude like crazy.

As to a player who is stuck never getting FanMail?  This is social interplay made manifest in the game.  What is he proposing, and why do other people think it's not cool?  Do they just forget to spend FanMail?  Is his character out of sync with the rest of the protagonists?  I should maybe think like a real TV show producer, and try and increase my ratings.  If the character isn't getting any Fan Mail, retool it.  In the fiction of an imaginary TV show, the more FanMail that my show receives, the 'better' my show's ratings.

FredGarber wrote:
As to the 'broken' Fan Mail mechanic?
In my opinion, there is absolutely nothing wrong with the players, in order to achieve their stakes, awarding FM as much as they can to each other, in order to spend it all thereafter on extra cards/ trait refreshes, whatever.

In my view, as the Producer, my role is not to promote MY stakes over the players.  I do not lose if they get what they want.  I'm going to repeat that, because it is so fundamental to the way I play, either as Protagonist or as Producer : I do not lose if another player gets what they want, I only lose when I propose something lame, and the cards give it to us.

So if the players spend a lot of Fan Mail, get a bunch of red cards, and narrate favorable outcomes for each other, and direct the story the way they want it to go? How is that not "Teh Awesome" ?    Isn't that why we all sat down, to make an episode of this show together? Player Collusion is exactly what I want.  I want my players to Collude like crazy.

As to a player who is stuck never getting FanMail?  This is social interplay made manifest in the game.  What is he proposing, and why do other people think it's not cool?  Do they just forget to spend FanMail?  Is his character out of sync with the rest of the protagonists?  I should maybe think like a real TV show producer, and try and increase my ratings.  If the character isn't getting any Fan Mail, retool it.  In the fiction of an imaginary TV show, the more FanMail that my show receives, the 'better' my show's ratings.

The quality of success thing seems to me like it'd work without problems for a group that liked that sort of attention to detail. Might be too much trouble for what it's worth in this game the way I and apparently several other people play - PTA in our hands tends to be a pretty aesthetic instrument where we lavish plenty of attention on the visuals and rhythm of an individual scene. In that context we don't really want the rules to constrain us too much in pacing play; it's enough for the rules to tell us the direction we should go next, but not a speed limit. Also, ambiguity doesn't work in television, you need to be able to wrap things up and provide concrete issues for characters; having a character only kinda-sorta triumph is not so good when you want resolution. Ambiguous outcomes that are needed at the beginning of stories are mostly handled by not making them conflicts or just making the conflicts small and ambiguous in the first place. It seems something of a hazard to leave a pacing issue (which this ultimately comes down to) up to the cards.

As for fan mail and traits, I never used the rule about spending fan mail to use traits. What's the point, isn't the outcome exactly the same (another card for the conflict) anyway?

And finally, brokenness of fan mail; I'm not seeing it, and I suspect that I know why: you're projecting negative issues on a system that is normally only used in a positive and cooperative atmosphere. I can understand how somebody might consider this a design flaw, but the fan mail mechanics simply are not intended to work with the sort of scenarios you project. Two friends excluding a third in distributing fan mail is a perfect example of the sort of callous, shallow behavior that is the very antithesis of the sympathy and interest that should permeate a functionally creative group; if you're just interested in sucking up to your girlfriend, say, instead of giving your attention, interest and fanmail to good ideas, the whole point of the system is already lost - the fan mail rules are nothing more than a concrete way for the players to show their appreciation for each other's ideas. We can talk about how this can go wrong until we're blue in the face, but that doesn't change the fact that the application of the system already went wrong the second you chose a play dynamic where the fan mail was not distributed according to this criterion. Simply put: if the group cannot play in the mindset of earnest cooperation that the game presumes, then all those rules that expect such cooperation will of course fail.

In reality, of course, it's pretty difficult for a minority of the game group to start doing their own thing with the fan mail mechanics, as the peer pressure keeps an individual honest. Only a major breakdown in goals and expectations will make the system go awry, but that's true of most rpg rules systems. Anybody who's experienced a D&D adventurer group that doesn't want to go to the dungeon knows that a game simply can't operate if the group is not on board with what the game presumes as the baseline agenda.

Practically speaking my own strategy for playing with a group that doesn't have the commitment to drama creation that PTA expects... I wouldn't play PTA with them, truth be told: there are other games out there that allow players to be more self-centered, tactical or victory-oriented without messing up game mechanics. If I had to play something PTA-like and nothing else would do... I think that your system is a bit too inflexible, in fact; the GM could just take on the fan mail distribution duties himself, but otherwise play the game exactly according to the rules. Perhaps even remove the fan mail pool and just award 1 fan mail each time a player participates creatively in a scene and 2 when he does something that makes the group go wow. There are games that work like this, such as Sorcerer, and it works just fine; the key is for the GM to realize that he is there to interpret the group's communal appreciation, though, and not his own alone.

Still, there's probably little that I or anybody else can say to convince you on this point. You either have to believe your own impression over the designer's, or play the game as is and look carefully at what works and what doesn't, and why.

Yeah, I wasn't really asking whether other people thought the existing Fan Mail system was broken - since I do, and I am good with that, I was already on to the next topic:  whether or not one is OK with the Fan Mail Distribution in the book, how do you guys think my replacement system for distributing Fan Mail would work?  Any numbers you think would work with it?

In other words, I was hoping for feedback on the proposal for the alternate system, not on what prompted me to want one.

Thanks. :)

Sindyr wrote:
Yeah, I wasn't really asking whether other people thought the existing Fan Mail system was broken - since I do, and I am good with that, I was already on to the next topic:  whether or not one is OK with the Fan Mail Distribution in the book, how do you guys think my replacement system for distributing Fan Mail would work?  Any numbers you think would work with it?

In other words, I was hoping for feedback on the proposal for the alternate system, not on what prompted me to want one.

Thanks. :)

Hey, if Sindyr wants to mess about, more power to him. Not going to ruin the game for me, whatever he does. I'm pretty fond of my own suggestion, above: don't overcomplicate it unnecessarily, having the players only gain rewards during the next session seems too long a wait for it to rewarding.

As for the system you suggested, I find it problematic in that it seems to give out too little fanmail, and it clumps the gains strangely to the beginning of the session. If I tried something like this, I might just tie it to commercial breaks: whenever there is a commercial break, give the players a couple of points of fanmail. Same amount to everybody perhaps, so as to avoid having anybody feel bad about it. Assuming a 4-act structure with three commercial breaks... I'd go with 3 points per player per act. Of course this is really dull and predicable, but I understand that to be pretty much the point here; security comes with predictability.

Ah, I explained the alternate system badly, I'm sorry - it's doesn't clump the awards at the start of the session.  Let me try to explain better:

At the end of the episode, each player gets a rating/score from the GM.  This rating should be a number that on average equals the average amount of fan mail one would expect to get using the old system.

Let's say that would be a "3".  If you get rated a 3, then *next* episode, at the start of *each* scene you get a point of Fan Mail, up to your rating.  So if you had a rating of only 1, then yes, your only Fan Mail would come at the start of the episode, but if you had a rating of 3, you could expect to get a point of Fan Mail at the start of the first three scenes - well into the middle of the episode, if an episode has 4-5 scenes on average as has been suggested.

Perhaps to better model the pattern of the old way slightly, we could use a somewhat more complex chart of when to award Fan Mail:

Fan Mail: Scene you get one at the start of
1 FM : Scene 3
2 FM : Scenes 2 and 4
3 FM : Scenes 2, 3, and 4
4 FM : Scenes 1, 2, 3, and 4
5 FM or more : Every Scene until end of Episode or until you get all you should.

That way it's more distributed if part of your thought was that you thought that getting your 3 FM one at a time at the start of the first 3 scenes wasn't spread out enough.  However, I do want to make the case a little for *not* spreading it out too much, which is that it *is* spread out *some* already - we aren't just dumping 3 FM on the player at the start of the episode, and that as a player, I would rather have my FM come to me *not* spread out, but sooner rather than later.  I was thinking the whole "a rating of X means getting one Fan Mail at the start of the first X Scenes" idea would be a workable and fairly simple drop in alternate rule.

Here's a big concerns of mine:  how much Fan Mail does the average player get per episode in the normal way?  Please don't reply with "it depends on the players and how much they inspire the other players to give them FM" - I *know* that, but obviously it's not random.  I need to figure out the guidelines for the award as given out by the GM and I want to have roughly the same chance for players to expect about the same amount of Fan Mail as in good PTA game.

Question: How common is it for a player to do something cool, and get multiple FM for it?  That is, if a player does some really spiffy narrating and another player gives him a FM token, is it common for the third (non-GM) player to chime in and also give the narrator a FM token?  Or is it usually the practice that when a player in a group awards FM to another player, the third player tends to *not* "pile on", because the thought at the table is that one can only give out on FM per player per scene, and the narrating player has already been rewarded, so the third player refrains from "piling-on" to be able to reward a different thing later in the scene?

The answer will help me try to calibrate the award guidelines for my GM-distributed FM system.  Of the cuff, we know that at *max* the players can only hand out Y tokens every scene, where Y is the number of players.  If the episode is Z scenes long, that's a max of Z*Y tokens awarded per episode.  If all players were equally "cool" and appreciated, then they should tend to expereince the same amount of FM rewards.  Therefor, in such a group, the max award per player where all player are equal would be (Z*Y)/Y, or Z, the number of scenes in the episode.

Therefor, if all players are equally "cool", they should each expect a number of FM tokens from 0 to Z.  If one player is "cooler" than the others, he would expect to see that range raise somewhat - say from (Y-1) to Z*(Y-1), or probably closer to Y-1 up to (Z*(Y-1)/1.5)

Anyways, that's the kind of math I am turning over in my head, but before I take it further, I guess I need to know how common or normal it is for a player to get multiple (more than one, anyway) tokens in a single moment of award?

Thanks.

Matt wrote:

Sindyr wrote:
Yeah, I wasn't really asking whether other people thought the existing Fan Mail system was broken - since I do, and I am good with that, I was already on to the next topic:  whether or not one is OK with the Fan Mail Distribution in the book, how do you guys think my replacement system for distributing Fan Mail would work?  Any numbers you think would work with it?

In other words, I was hoping for feedback on the proposal for the alternate system, not on what prompted me to want one.

Thanks. :)

Have you played the game yet? Your concerns about fan mail sound like they're based in hypothesis rather than actual play.

Syndr,

I have played PTA with groups of people at numerous cons who had never met each other and never met and PTA ran well, out of the box.

I have played it at a bachelor party where me and Jeff were hired because the gamers were fans of our podcast but had never played an indie RPG before and while it wasn't as wildly successful as it could have been, it worked.

I have taken PTA to the local games club and played with strangers who had never heard of indie RPG's or the Forge, just thought it sounded fun.

I have played a complete season at home with my buddies.

For a while PTA was me and my friend's con game of choice and there are issues that can come up.  Mostly, what we have found, is that everyone at the table has to enjoy television shows.

But the problems you hypothesized about fan mail, about players handing it to one another in order to face a threat just hasn't happened across hundreds of gamers and dozens of tables.

Hope that helps,

Judd

Judd, thank you for sharing with me your experiences - I appreciate it.

Any thoughts on the questions I have asked re: the alt system?

Anyone? Thanks.

For what it's worth, Sindyr, I don't mind your stance on theory, but I find it mildly amusing how we fail to convince you that there is some validity in the design of a game we've been playing for literally hundreds and thousands of hours, combined. You're not exactly alone in being addicted to messing about with houserules, so I do think that pretty much the only explanation for why you're the only one here who sees the fan mail system for the obviously unbalanced thing it is is that you're trying to make the game do something it doesn't do in normal operation; apparently we're just not being very satisfying in our explanations of how and why the game is supposed to work.

As for normal gains of fan mail... I'd say that a typical quiet player gets 3-5 points per session, while a dominantly participating one will get 5-10. I wouldn't be that worried about this matter in your stead, though - the fan mail in PTA is a pretty flexible resource, the game won't be hurt much by giving out slightly too much or too little. The game already features lots of differences in how players spend the fan mail, which normally counts for more in the feel of resource scarcity than how it is gained. I'd imagine that if you ended up giving out too much, the players would just blow it more readily in smaller conflicts. It's self-correcting in that way.

Sindyr wrote:
Would these mods work, or cause problems?

Quality of Success:  The more you beat the GM by, the more complete your success.  Win by 0 cards (by having most hearts, or lowest card) = barely successful; win by 1 card = significant success, win by 2 cards or more = complete success.  Likewise, failure can work the same way: Lose by 0 = barely, lose by 1 = setback, lose by 2 = utter failure

Example:  Billy is trying to get his Dad to respect him more, to stop treating him like a boy and to start treating him like a man.  Here are the possible outcomes:
Lose by 2 or worse:  "Son, I am very disappointed in you.  When will you grow up and stop acting like a child?"
Lose by 1:  "Son, I know you are in a hurry to grow up, but you're just not ready yet."
Lose by 0: "Son, give it time - if you don't force it, it will come."
Win by 0: "Son, good job - you are heading in the right direction."
Win by 1: "Son, I am so proud of you - good job!"
Win by 2 or more: "Son, you have left behind the boy you were for the man you are, and I couldn't be more proud."

Thoughts?

Paka wrote: Your fan mail reward hack is taking what works so well in PTA and shooting it in the knee.  Players being able to give tangible mechanical applause and attaboys to one another at the table is a powerful and subtle thing that should not be taken from the game.

Sindyr wrote:
What about the above did you think would be helpful to me or even polite?  Calling the idea a "hack"?  Telling me what I "ought" to do?  Just how were you planning to persuade me this way?

Eero - thanks for your input, I am still gravely concerned with fairness and abuses, and think I have reason to be.  It may just be that while a dominating of popular player may be getting extra FM, maybe the difference between the FM they get and the FM the quieter less outspoken and less popular players gets, while being a disparity, is not a huge one.  This could explain why in theory the abuseable nature of the existing ruleset stands out, while in practiced it may be muted by both the possibly small spread of points, and the other thing you mention - the "self-correcting nature" thing.

Food for thought.  In any case, thanks for the all the feedback.

Did anyone have any responses on the multiple FM question I asked?

Sindyr wrote:

Paka wrote: Your fan mail reward hack is taking what works so well in PTA and shooting it in the knee.  Players being able to give tangible mechanical applause and attaboys to one another at the table is a powerful and subtle thing that should not be taken from the game.

What about the above did you think would be helpful to me or even polite?  Calling the idea a "hack"?  Telling me what I "ought" to do?  Just how were you planning to persuade me this way?

That's a good point, Welkerfan. What you describe is a phenomenon that I think is quite common with new PTA players, infinitely more so than unfair strategizing with the FM tokens. My solution is basically the same, although I never give out the fanmail myself - I just hit the table and call for "fanmail!" whenever somebody does something the others smile about. Essentially, the Producer might need to remind the other players about this rule during the first session, which is no wonder at all, considering how different it is from most games. Usually people have learned to smile, laugh, clap their hands or otherwise show their appreciation of what others do in the game, but it's not nearly so easy to remember to do that and give out tokens. Folks do tend to learn it in one good session, though.

Also, Paka essentially speaks the truth - or rather, my opinion agrees with him. The fanmail system is integral to the game and easily one of its top two innovations when it comes to this game design tradition of ours. It's of course still no skin off my nose if others want to hack the shit out of it, but I won't blame anybody who looks at the endeavour strangely in face of the number of people who have found the system so thoroughly enjoyable.

If I myself were both absolutely convinced that the game wouldn't work with a given group, and also forced to play with them, but held some hope that the people in question were actually human and not some sort of cyborg monkeys sent to ruin my play - if these were the conditions, I might both choose to play PTA and hack the fan mail system, but I'd do it in a manner that would make it really easy to scale back into the defaul system once I'd taught the players to play properly. Thus I'd probably use a system wherein the budget would go into the fanmail pool just normally, but I'd tell the players vaguely that "we all distribute it together". Then if it proved that my players were actually atavistic children and unable to play fairly, I could at least hog the fan mail and keep them out of it while I'd take care of reasonable distribution myself. And if the players proved just timid, I could show them how it's done. And finally, when I'd have found out that these players are actually human and capable of appreciating the same things I do - at that point it'd be easy for me to simply fade into the background from the fan mail thing altogether, all without having to explain to the players anything about variant rules and whatnot. So it seems to me that the best variant for control-freak GMs is actually to change the system as little as possible, as this provides the best flexibility and least bother in balancing the resource system anew.

Sindyr,

PTA is trying to foster a positive atmosphere, where people are freely offering suggestions and riffing with each others ideas. I find that your suggestions, while excelent in many other games, wouldn't work so well in PTA.

The quality of success thing would IMO be an unnecessary complication. The player with the high card has the authority and part of the fun is that you get to decide how to synthesize all the suggestions offered by the other players. A much more important thing is to get everyone involved in the narration and in this case I find that additional rules would limit creativity.

I see the producers main responsibilities as follows: 1) Start the action and if the game cools down, 2) find the conflict in the scenes, 3) encourage the protagonist players and give positive feedback. As far as fan mail is concerned, I often give positive feedback and then someone gives fanmail. Sometimes I've also reminded other players that they can give fanmail if they want. This I've done especially after the whole group has broken in laughter.

The key thing about fan mail is that it's system level feedback from equals, unlike the many experience systems where a GM grades their roleplaying or something. Taking away that positive feedback mechanism that let's your fellow players reward you immediately and let you know that they are having a good time because of you is a major mistake in my mind. The point of this exercise isn't to evaluate the players roleplaying skills, but to encourage the group to participate.

However, I do agree with you on the spending fan mail to use traits additional times thing. As a matter of fact the whole rule is reduntant. I don't see how depriving the producer budget points or offering players this choice enchances the play experience. I ignored this rule myself, if you wanted extra cards, you just used fan mail in my game.

I also think that you are often able to see how a system works without observing how it actually works. Theoretical models are cool and all, but if you want to be scientific, you should also believe in testing theories. It's cool that you have the balls to say that you know how PTA actually works despite the experiemental evidence that we have on the contrary though. I do hope that you get the chance to play, so you can test your assumptions. However, if you don't test the original system, then you still won't know if the game/model really behaves as you thought.