I was just reading through the forums, and buried in the thread 'two sessions in: how it's going for my group', I saw what seemed to be a consensus about what stakes are supposed to be.  I don't quite agree with what I saw, so I thought I'd try starting a discussion about it.

The stakes in particular were posted as, "In protecting the crystal, many bystanders are killed, despite the efforts of the protagonists".  The consensus of the discussion (only one part of a much broader topic) seemed to have two parts.  First, that the stakes should relate to the character.  That I agree with.  The second seemed to be that the stakes should be about the character getting what they want, or coming out ahead on their issue, and that as a result, the posted stakes were not 'good'.  That's the part that doesn't quite mesh for me.

It seems to me that, depending on the character's issue, these stakes are perfectly suitable.  For example, a character who's issue is that he feels like he needs to protect everyone can (and likely will) fail at that any number of times.  It certainly seems dramatically appropriate to have stakes where you explicitly fail, even spectacularly, at living up to your issue.  I mean, you probably shouldn't be aiming for 'failure' stakes all the time, but in the right situation, you can really expand on a character (even one who has a low screen presence at the time) by having them fail, and if you want them to fail in a certain way, it seems reasonable that those are the character's stakes for the scene.

Thoughts?  Opinions?

I made the mistake of setting complicated stakes in PTA for a long time.  The system doesn't need you to do it.

You get to a point where there's a conflict, state what the character wants to do and go to the cards.  After that, it isn't about the stakes that were set but about who get's narration rights with the high card.  Setting stakes in a complicated way with detailed descriptions of what happens with success and failure actually kind of neuters the high card's power.

Hope that makes sense, it is an PTA error I made for a while before I properly acquainted myself with the rules text.

Hi,

I've been doing a monthly PTA game and recently posted some thoughts on it:

http://bankuei.wordpress.com/2010/08/31/advanced-conflict-stake-setting/

I've been finding with PTA that generally aiming for the Issues is a good overall rule of thumb, but, more precisely the two questions are:

a) Would this actually be a challenge/conflict in a tv series?
b) Are the players invested in the outcome?

Issues serve as a general direction, but often there's a lot of things which aren't the Issue directly, but make for great conflict material that you often find in the process of targeting the Issue.

We've very often had Stakes like, "Of course you're going to get there in time- that's not at Stake-the question is how many people die in the process?"  It requires a certain reframing of mind, but if you keep reminding yourself to think in TV genre tropes, it becomes very intuitive and second nature in play.

Chris

Theo: your suggested stance could be interpreted in two ways:

• You should be able to state that your goal as player is now to collect sufficient numbers of red cards to cause your own character to fail in this conflict.• You should be able to state that the failure of a character is up as stakes.

The former is not entirely logical, while the latter is mandatory. The reason for both is that those cards in front of you are in the system for the purpose of measuring your character's success rate, not yours as the player. You get those cards for your screen presence and they're only bothered with because we want to set the character against his opposition; if you take those cards away from the character and insist that they're also being played against his interests, then there is nothing standing in the game for the character's best interests. If you want to play against your own character, spend your fan mail to give extra cards to the opponent, but allow your base hand to speak for the interests of the character you're supposed to be playing.

As Judd says, the purpose of stakes is not to delineate what happens if you win, but rather to give the topic of the conflict. In fact, we can split down the fictional substance of the conflict into three boxes here:

• Stakes tells us what we're running a conflict about, the topic.• Winner tells us whether the character triumphs in his struggle regarding the topic as defined by the stakes.• Narrator tells us the details of how the favourable or disastrous results indicated by the winning hand come about - what was won and what was lost, as constrained by the stakes.

If you'll meditate for a moment on these three boxes, you'll notice that stating the topic of the conflict does not actually require anybody to say anything about what characters want or what a given player would like his hand of cards to represent outcome-wise; those cards just tell you whether a character succeeds or not, and the narrator tells you how that success comes about and what it means. At no point are you even invited to vote on whether this conflict should be about your character succeeding or your character failing; all conflicts are about both of those and the sides are fixed - the character's side is his side, not yours as the player.

The reason for why the above points are often confused is that most stakes-utilizing games use a particular stakes-setting heuristic that does involve character motivations. Indeed, some games even involve player motivations! PTA does not particularly require this sort of thinking, though, as its conflict rules are so generic and scope so fluid that you don't need to query the player carefully about whether his character is drawing a gun or not (to pick an example of a fictional detail that can change a lot regarding stakes in many games); we just need to recognize a topic for the conflict, and away we go.

Also, regarding the dramatic necessities of failure: if your character concept requires failure, often PTA accomplishes this by the "of course clause" already referenced in this thread: of course your medical doctor character failed in saving the patient, the real stakes is whether he managed to hide that it was his delirium tremens that did the poor wretch in. This is really no different than a character concept that requires triumph: of course yours was the fighter plane that took down the enemy aircraft carrier, the real stakes is whether you manage to protect your clumsy wingman Bennet from dying in the attack despite his gypsy curse. The conflict rules are only taken up when there is a character struggle that is both interesting and credible as a swing point in the stylized television framework of the game.

Eero, you said, "The reason for both is that those cards in front of you are in the system for the purpose of measuring your character's success rate, not yours as the player."

I see it somewhat differently.  I would have phrased it as "...those cards in front of you are in the system for the purpose of determining whether you get your stakes."  Success for a scene doesn't *have* to be the same as success for the character.  Take a character whose issue was that they felt they needed to protect the weak and/or innocent.  During the course of a season, and especially during the pilot, there is a great deal of dramatic and character value in showing how the character is impacted by a failure in that regard.  Playing only a single card and hoping for narration rights is a fairly weak way to go about ensuring that your character has the opportunity to be exposed to that 'on camera'.  Setting 'negative' stakes, and playing to 'win' does two things.  First, it makes it clear to the other players what (and probably why) you are shooting for in the scene.  Second, it makes it more likely that you will actually *get* that result.  Just like if you were aiming for 'positive' stakes.

Let's take Spiderman as an example.  At the beginning of the story he's got Spider Powers, The Bugle, and Aunt May as his traits (one edge, two connections).  Why doesn't he have Uncle Ben, a very central person in his life?  Because in one of his early stakes (late in the pilot or maybe the first 'real' episode), his player puts Peter in the situation where a mistake he made earlier is going to drive home Uncle Ben's "With great power comes great responsibility." speech.  The thief who he didn't stop earlier kills Ben, for no good reason.  In response, we end up with a scene in a warehouse where Peter confronts the robber/killer.

So called 'positive' stakes in the scene would almost certainly result in Peter capturing the murderer and turning him in to the police, making him a beloved hero.  Instead, because of the dramatic and character value, his player opted for 'negative' stakes of Peter accidentally causing the death of the robber and won.

Looking at it from a mechanics stand point, here's my reasoning:
In a 'main character' show like Spiderman, the hero has a screen presence of 3 most of the time.  That means he's going to have at least 3 cards against the producer's 1-5.  If he only ever goes for 'positive' stakes, there's not going to be much risk of anything bad happening, and the bad stuff is what drives the drama and provides hooks for future conflict.  If you allow for 'negative' stakes, the player can fight for the dramatically appropriate 'bad stuff' he wants to happen as well without having to win narration rights.  That becomes even more important in an ensemble cast, where you might have another player who wants to put up, "Billy Joe is responsible for keeping the villains from killing or injuring any of the bystanders."  If you've got more than one character in the show whose issue drives stakes like that, you need to be able to put up 'failure' as stakes so that you can actually have a chance of getting them when you think your character needs it.

Or at least that's how I see it.

Theo wrote: Setting 'negative' stakes, and playing to 'win' does two things.  First, it makes it clear to the other players what (and probably why) you are shooting for in the scene.

Not at all.  The producer plays the role of the 'world'.  As I understand it, the producer doesn't even put up stakes.  What I'm saying is that the needs of character development outweigh always wanting to 'win' in that world.

You're up against the villains, and the fate of the world is at stake.  Obviously, since we're modeling a TV show here, the villains will lose in the end.  If exploring the character's issue requires 'failing' at a dramatically appropriate way, even when you 'win' in the end, you should be able to put that out there as your stakes, otherwise you end up in a situation where you not only have to fail at your goal of saving everyone, but also win narration rights in order to ensure that you have that dramatically appropriate, and character-defining moment in the game.  It's entirely possible that those two events will never coincide.

The number of cards you put in the scene should reflect how important the stakes you've put in are to your character's issue(s).  We know, in advance, that we're going to 'win' at the end of the session (or season, depending on how long-term you decide to work with), so I definitely see making sure your character fails when appropriate or needed is a perfectly valid way to define your stakes.

In this case, the 'failure' *is* the win toward exploring the character's Issue(s).

Hi Theo,

Theo wrote: We know, in advance, that we're going to 'win' at the end of the session (or season, depending on how long-term you decide to work with), so I definitely see making sure your character fails when appropriate or needed is a perfectly valid way to define your stakes.

Ok, I can see where you're coming from, but what's the difference between the following stakes:

"I manage to get the civilians out of the building before it collapses."

and

"I screw up and don't get the civilians out, they die when the building collapses."

In either case, the Producer could just as easily say, "Ok, yeah, then that's not at Stake."

It seems that there's three ways to get what you think needs to happen to happen.
1) Convince everyone at the table that it should happen, thus no conflict.
2) Win narration, when nobody's won stakes conflict with it.
3) Win it as your stakes, and let the Narrator work out the details.

There's a difference between "needs to happen for the overarching show to continue" (we get out of the base before it blows up), and "needs to happen to explore the character's issue (whether or not he succeeds at saving the civilian lives).  You need to explore the character's relationship with his/her issue over the course of the season.  That doesn't mean that nothing that explores the character's issue should ever be a stake.  On the contrary, unless I've completely misunderstood something, your stakes are *always* supposed to tie into your issue in some form.

Hi Theo,

"I manage to get the civilians out of the building before it collapses."
and
"I screw up and don't get the civilians out, they die when the building collapses."