I am an absolute beginner at Primetiem Adventures. I bought it two days ago.

I have a question regardding NPC actions.
Do they have their own cards/edges/connections (with budget added by the producer as NPC version of fan mail). Do they have stakes ? Or the entire NPC action is abstractized in the concept of "Producer generated opposition".

Thanks for any help

luigi

Hi Luigi,

All of that is Producer generated opposition. All the card mechanics of the game and rules that modify them are either specific to player-characters, or contained within the rules for Producer activity.

I want to stress especially that NPCs do not have Stakes in formal rules terms. In fictional terms, they certainly have desires and goals, especially in conflicts, but those do not have any weight regarding card resolution.

For example, let's say my character in an action-suspense TV show is intervening to help someone who being attacked by a maniac, who (the maniac) is screaming, "I'll kill you, I'll kill you!" And let's say the Producer is playing this character as genuinely determined to kill that targeted victim. It's crucial to understand that The Stakes for our conflict are not going to concern that in a direct fashion. They are going to concern whether my Stakes for my character succeed, and whatever the opponent is going to accomplish outside of that is now left for whoever narrates to decide.

So if we determine that my Stakes are to "Save the victim," and if I win, then the narrator must indeed account for the would-be killer to fail in his goal. But that's not because his Stakes were defeated; he had no Stakes. It's because my Stakes succeeded.

Note the subtlety in this rule! It means that if I'd failed, then it's up to the narrator to decide whether the victim lives or dies. My failure doesn't necessarily mean that the victim must die. It only means that my character doesn't save him or her from being killed. Maybe that means the victim is in fact killed. Maybe instead, it means that he or she gets inspired by my intervention, and even though the killer knocks me down, the victim turns out to be tough after all and either escapes or even defeats the killer. It's up to the narrator.

Now let's consider a very different Stakes statement, to "Capture the killer." Can you see that whether I succeed or fail at the Stakes, the narrator, whoever it is, has full authority over whether the victim lives or dies?

Confusion over these points often throw groups into arguments and bewilderment. I think they are pretty clearly presented in the rules and are quite simple and fun to use, so my only explanation for this is that they are so unfamiliar.

Best, Ron

Ron

  Thank you very much for your helpful reply.

  Please correct me if i go wrong by saying that in this system it is impossible to model (in game machanics) a situation where one or more supporting characters or NPCs actually act in favor/unite forces with the protagonists, other that may be the producer spending less budget that he would have, and then having a narration that evidences the NPCs help.

  The elegance of PTA is amazing. It is the first real leap ahead of standard RPGs that I am aware of.

Regards

luigi

Hi Luigi,

Your point about the Producer and the helpful NPCs is exactly right.

Nothing stops the Producer from narrating/describing NPCs as helpful individuals, all the way into the initiation of a conflict. But there is no specific technique that turns that narration into a quantitative support for the player's draw, or penalty to his or her own draw.

It's important to understand as well that the Producer is under no obligation to match his or her Budget expenditure in a conflict to any particular detail of the fiction itself. A particular Producer might like to do that as a personal technique, but that's all.

Players have access to such mechanics, but only in long-term, whole-season sense, by defining individuals or groups as Edges. For spontaneous, immediate-events driven help from NPCs, it will be expressed as narration alone.

I think this point ties into a key issue in playing this game: the Producer is an adverse presence during play. It's true that he or she respects the protagonism of the characters, but in a way which I can only describe as Tough Love. When I'm the Producer, I think of the character's sheet at the start of a season as a kind of beautiful but unfounded idea, which is only good insofar as it actually is expressed well, or becomes good, through the medium of the stories we make. It's my job as Producer to provide focused, even obsessive disaster for the character's Issue.

Another way to look at it is that the player should always like what I do to the character, or if they find it disturbing or upsetting, for that to occur in an inspiring and fun way. But the character hates it. The character finds his or her essential notions of "self" to be under constant threat, whether physically, socially, emotionally, ideologically, or anything else you can name. The character emerges from such adversity far more illuminated, far more relevant, and, in the sense of metallurgy, tempered ... but perhaps less innocent, less complacent, and with a lot of unhappiness either along the way or at the end or both.

What this means, to go to your question, is that there's no reason at all for the Producer ever to help a player's roll, or to want to. Your job is to put the raw metal of that character concept into white-hot fire. You're not there to give the character a back rub. You're there to make that character face their Issue in shockingly relevant terms, and to find what kinds of events make the character erupt into emotion, or make decisions they never dreamed they'd have to face. Every game mechanic you use is turned to that purpose, and helping the character succeed in his or her Stakes in a given conflict isn't part of that toolkit.

Best, Ron

Hy Ron

Your explanation is perfectly clear.
I have one more observation:

On page 11 of the PDF, in the tone example box for the bootleggers, I read the following:

"The show is about everyday people. There's not fantastic elements involved, no big effects budget."

It made me suspect that may be in a previous stage of development the producer was entitled to some kind of "bonus" cards for unusual effects influencing conflicts.

Example: I am walking in New York with my heads up (lloking at the amazing skyscrapers) like any repsctable Italian Tourist in New York would do, when the Human Torch of the Fantastic Four attacks me. Let's assume I have the edge "special force operator" and of course I would use it in such a situation. But still Flaming Johnny is Flaming Johnny !
In such a case would it upset the fan mail economy to give one or two bonus cards to the Producer without he having to spend budget, or it would still be advisable to have him spending his maximum allotment of 5 BP and go like that ? Considering that a character with good presence for that episode can easily match the maximum allowed producer allowance, it would be impossible to give the deserved edge to the opposition to the producer.

I know that I am making borderline examples, but I am currently trying to run a series where normal people as protagonists live and operate in an universe where there are superpowered people. The challenge being to be still the protagonists of the show despite the presence of  said superpowered freaks. That is why the boxed example about the bootleggers' show tone on p.11 cought my attention.

Greetings
luigi

 

Hi Luigi,

I don't think that Tone box has anything to do with protecting the protagonism of characters in the face of superior fire-power. I think it's truly about tone, meaning, what kind of imagery and general sense of physical causes we should have in mind as we make stuff up, either before or during play. This is what I like to call Color, which is integrated with characters and setting, but is itself merely descriptive.

Arguably, the need for that particular Tone box is reversed, due to the audience. As gamers, you and I and everyone else are a bit ... well, over-stuffed on fantastic content. To us, mental powers and future apocalypses and magical artifacts are normal. When Matt wants to talk about a show in which none of this is the case, he's dealing with an audience who has to be slapped a little bit in the face to understand that. Whereas most other people, non-gamers or non-SF/fantasy enthusiasts, see such a show as the default and probably wouldn't need the box. They'd need a little more elaborate explanation for some of the other shows listed.

Obviously, I didn't write it, and although I was close to the process of the game's development, I didn't write any part of it. So this is my reading of it. Oh yes, and I can say that no draft of the game that I read - and I'm pretty sure I read them all - ever gave the Producer advantages based on in-fiction contrasts between characters' power.

Best, Ron