Hi all!

I was wondering about character flaws in PTA. The book says one can use a flaw or a weakness as an Edge, but that doesn't make much sense IMO. Edges give bonus cards, and bonus cards help you in succeeding the tasks. How will having a missing sword arm, being short sighted before the spread of correctional lenses or being addicted to opium or booze help you succeed in tasks?

How have you modelled flaws and weakness in PTA?

Hiya,

I think that you're being tripped up a bit by the concept of "succeeding at tasks." The mechanics in PTA aren't about succeeding in tasks, they're about winning conflicts. If my character gets hit in the stomach by the bad guy, falls to his knees, then watches in pain as the bad guy goes to pour the molten lead onto the kittens, and my guy struggles to get up, but his lame leg buckles under him, and then the bad guy turns to laugh at him, but in doing so, forgets to pay attention to what he's doing, and is suddenly engulfed in the molten lead himself ...

... then my guy won the conflict. Even if he failed in every task in the above account, he won. The bad guy didn't pour the lead onto the kittens, and that's all that the mechanics in PTA will tell us. Most of what I wrote above would have been stated by the narrator following the card draw, but we definitely would have known, going into the draw, that it was about whether the kittens got boiled in lead or not.

So you use an Edge not because it helps you to succeed in particular (or any) actions, but because it's involved in the conflict in a way which affects your character's options or behavior.

Another relevant point is that the card draw concerns quite a bit of fictional content. A whole fight, or even a whole space battle with a thousand different ships; or in time, a week of diplomatic negotiations or a whole campaign season for an election, might be accounted for by a single conflict in game-mechanics terms. So "an action" or "a task" is merely a detail of what happens in a conflict, when playing this game.

Let me know if that helps or makes any sense. It might be useful to describe to me what you see as a moment, during play, in which we'd pull out the deck of cards. In other words, tell me what characters are involved and what kind of crisis they're facing at that time.

Best, Ron

Thanks for the reply Ron!

Your lame leg example shows very clearly how a disabling Edge can be brought in to win a conflict, but in summary, I think that's my whole problem. When I'm picking a flaw for a character, I'm seeing two main reasons to do it:

a) for colour, with game-mechanical influence mild to none, like having an eye-patch on your pirate captain
b) to have an actual impairment, with serious game-mechanical drawbacks, like having the captain of the king's guards being an old man with weak constitution straining himself to the limits each day even before a crisis emerges

PTA handles the first reason well, but I'm not seeing a good way to model the second... I mean, I'd want the flaw to be able to contribute to losing the conflict, not only to winning it. I think you'd have to build your whole issue around the flaw to make it work in PTA.

Another option I thought was to expand the "Nemesis" into "Nuisance" and that would work opposite of Edge, meaning the Producer could activate it a couple of times in a session to give himself a free card. And the nuisance could be anything, it could be your nemesis making an appreance if the nuisance is your nemesis, or if the nuisance is your lame leg, it would actually make it harder for the character to win a conflict as the producer's hand is larger. On the other hand, having the producer's hand being larger would contribute to the overall difficulty of the scene, not make it tougher for that single character. Perhaps removing one card from the player instead for tagging a nuisance?

I hope I'm making sense. =)

Hiya,

Sorry about taking a while to reply.

I think that one key word you're using isn't well-suited to thinking about PTA - "model." The rules don't model anything, not even an Edge which is an unequivocal advantage in fictional terms. The rules are a means for developing and resolving crises, in ways that are entertaining to make as well as to listen to.

If you want some feature of your character to be a genuine disadvantage, then the rules-based way to do it is to focus on that feature when you get the chance to narrate, especially when you're narrating a failed resolution. So you do the draw, and the Producer wins, and you get the high card ... so you say what happens, constrained only by the fact that the immediate concern was unsuccessful. In your narration, you bring in that feature as part or all of the reason for the failure. You will probably see other people do it too when they get a chance to narrate, whether for the character to overcome the flaw or to be betrayed by it again.

You can do that whether the feature in question is an Edge or not. If it really bugs you to gain any mechanical involvement from an in-fiction flaw, then don't make it an Edge and let it be a Color feature alone ... but what I'm trying to explain is that Color of this sort can come to be treated as a causal feature via narration.

This isn't traditional RPG advantage-disadvantage thinking. But in practice, it is surprisingly more effective in emphasizing character flaws than the traditional methods, and I'm speaking as a very experienced veteran of both Champions and GURPS from the 1980s, the systems which introduced and standardized those methods.

I should ask you - have you played the game? My impression is not, but correct me on that if necessary, and if you have played, tell me a little bit about how it went.

Best, Ron

Ron wrote: I should ask you - have you played the game? My impression is not, but correct me on that if necessary, and if you have played, tell me a little bit about how it went.

Ron wrote: If you want some feature of your character to be a genuine disadvantage, then the rules-based way to do it is to focus on that feature when you get the chance to narrate, especially when you're narrating a failed resolution. So you do the draw, and the Producer wins, and you get the high card ... so you say what happens, constrained only by the fact that the immediate concern was unsuccessful. In your narration, you bring in that feature as part or all of the reason for the failure. You will probably see other people do it too when they get a chance to narrate, whether for the character to overcome the flaw or to be betrayed by it again.

You can do that whether the feature in question is an Edge or not. If it really bugs you to gain any mechanical involvement from an in-fiction flaw, then don't make it an Edge and let it be a Color feature alone ... but what I'm trying to explain is that Color of this sort can come to be treated as a causal feature via narration.

Ron wrote: This isn't traditional RPG advantage-disadvantage thinking. But in practice, it is surprisingly more effective in emphasizing character flaws than the traditional methods, and I'm speaking as a very experienced veteran of both Champions and GURPS from the 1980s, the systems which introduced and standardized those methods.

Hi,

I apologize for dropping out of the discussion for so long. I'm drafting a reply and will post it as soon as I can.

Best, Ron

Hello,

... I went over the PTA one last time and tried to predict some of the pitfalls I might run into when presenting it for a group which has (a TROS one-shot aside) exactly zero indie-game experience. I don't see an issue in explaining to the mechanically inclined how both "my trusty red pen-knife" and "excalibur" yield equal combat benefits in the mechanical terms if one would start pulling hair, but I don't want to say "no" as far as the character concept is concerned. I want to be able to say, "sure, and this is the way you do it..."

Ron wrote: If you want some feature of your character to be a genuine disadvantage, then the rules-based way to do it is to focus on that feature when you get the chance to narrate, especially when you're narrating a failed resolution. So you do the draw, and the Producer wins, and you get the high card ... so you say what happens, constrained only by the fact that the immediate concern was unsuccessful. In your narration, you bring in that feature as part or all of the reason for the failure. You will probably see other people do it too when they get a chance to narrate, whether for the character to overcome the flaw or to be betrayed by it again.

You can do that whether the feature in question is an Edge or not. If it really bugs you to gain any mechanical involvement from an in-fiction flaw, then don't make it an Edge and let it be a Color feature alone ... but what I'm trying to explain is that Color of this sort can come to be treated as a causal feature via narration.

While that's one way to do it, I think this method doesn't pack enough punch to qualify as a true flaw in my book. I guess all I'm saying is that edges pack a punch in PTA, but there is no reverse flaw mechanic that would do the same. Perhaps it's intentional as it encourages the flaw that's important to the character to be made your character's central issue? I think that's how I'll handle it if someone wishes to have a significant flaw -- by making it an issue.

Can you bring me an example how treating flaw as colour can be more effective than a true flaw? Or am I asking too broadly here?