[PTA] Players wanting their PCs to fail?
morgue:
Lotta good stuff to think about here!
Ron, you wrote about how you didn't think Our-Drifted-PTA is more prone to dysfunction; and you've pretty much convinced me on that point. Your identification of pitfalls in Our-Drifted-PTA seems accurate, although I don't recall them featuring in our play as it worked out. I will say, in somewhat contradiction of your point about character-issue-conflict, that (in my opinion anyway) the constant focus on the issue didn't seem to devalue it much. Not every conflict was at Christmas-tree intensity, and the ones that were in the final episodes were scorching after a long buildup, But I suspect this contradiction is at least partly due to definitional limitations, and perhaps due to me overstating the extent to which we pursued it in play.
Dave (and Ralph), your experience of finding a conflict where one route wasn't compelling was partly what sent us drifting PTA in the first place, I think. We talked about things until we did find one that was rocking our socks in either direction, just like Ralph suggests. But it did have major consequences on authority distribution, as you've read.
(And for clarity, in our play we always ran conflicts by the book as player-vs-producer, resulting in multiple orthogonal conflicts.)
Joel P. Shempert:
Hi, everybody! I've been chewing on this thread from the sidelines, and thought I'd speak up and add my experience to the pool of thought:
Quote from: Ron Edwards on July 29, 2008, 08:03:45 AM
Basically, there are three kinds of play we're talking about: A, PTA by the textual rules; B, PTA as you and I and others have Drifted it in a characteristic way; and C, Chesting-play which cannot really be called playing PTA despite the book being present at the table. As you can see, I'm saying that C is the odd man out, not B & C together. That means that it's not necessary to be concerned with how B might become C. To get see, you have to break with A, B, and any other form of functional Drift of A, as an entire group.
Now, that does leave open the question of whether B play harbors certain pitfalls of its own. I think it does, actually. At least in my experience, it tends to open the door for one or another person to start narrating scene-events more or less as a monologue, telling everyone else what's going on. I've also seen the nominal central player of the moment be steamrolled by a fellow player, which is more likely to happen in B than in A. And finally, speaking for what makes B less fun for me than A (when B becomes really the mode rather than an add-on), slightly-hyper group discussions about what exactly the conflict is happening and what it's about are extremely not-fun when they don't work well. When that happens, it's not a glitch or slightly-lessened moment, it's a brick wall that brings down the enjoyment of the whole session, for me.
So B play, as I see it, works much better as a modifier of A than as a full replacement for it. It seems to me that you, Steve, and the others may have been able to enjoy it maximally specifically for that reason.
This post cleared up a lot of confusion I was wrestling with as I read along: The first and only PTA game i played fell rather flat in a story-conferencing sort of way, but we didn't experience any of the "chesting' phenomenon of power-struggle or undermining each others input in favor of our own, or anything. In fact it was a wholly supportive and safe environment on the social level, even as we struggled through the procedures and fictional inputs on the game level. It all clicks, now--we were definitely engaged in an awkward form of type B play, which had indeed succumbed to some pitfalls as Ron describes. The "what's the conflict about" discussion was a staple of play and was indeed pretty unfun. Also, we had a bad habit f discussing the conflict Stakes to the point where we'd already talked through the possible outcomes and sucked the life out of them come actual narration time.
I take the full blame or this, by the way. Both my fellow players were utterly new to roleplaying (a fact which I can't help but suspect contributed to the lack of power struggle) and followed my lead in utter trust and devotion as I proceeded to mangle the whole procedure. We had a halfway decent amount of fun in between the bouts of brow-furrowed confusion, and we ended up with a story-outcome that was pretty cool to all of us, but it was a rough road getting there and the actual roleplaying wasn't near as engaging as it could have been.
Also:
Quote from: Ron Edwards on July 29, 2008, 03:25:53 PM
It is: all protagonist card draws are compared with the Producer's. Not against one another. Ever.
[SNIP]
All of this is to say that protagonist draws in PTA must concern orthogonal stakes (to use the term "stakes" exactly as defined in the rules), even if two or more protagonists are directly opposed. In this sense, Shock and PTA are very much alike. The only person who is playing direct mechanical opposition to any protagonist is the Producer, even if the characters are narrated to be attacking one another with fireplace pokers with deadly intent.
This was one of the things that tripped us up in our game. We were aware of the rule, and tried to follow it, but often either had a hard time coming up with orthogonal stakes that were satisfying (until we had story-conferenced all the life out of the outcomes), or else went merrily along with mutually exclusive stakes and realized after the card draw that we'd muffed it and had an impossible set of outcomes that we'd have to back up and rework.
So there's my personal data, take it as you will. I call it a great practice run; by the end of the 5-episode Season i feel we were all ready to play PTA in an actually fun and satisfying way. Too bad we had to go through such a muddled experience to get there.
peace,
-joel
Ron Edwards:
Hello,
I think that we should end this thread here and use it as a foundation to start more threads about other PTA games and related issues. I was tempted to split it in the middle of the third page, but since the original discussion did a good job of opening doors, for others, I decided to keep it all together.
Now, however, I think Hal's original topic has been worked out pretty thoroughly, at least for now, so this one should end.
Hal, please post to let me know whether he wants the thread to continue or to confirm that it should end. Everyone else, let's wait for him.
Best, Ron
Halzebier:
Hello everyone!
I was away on a last-minute holiday trip and have returned only yesterday. Sorry about the delay.
A couple of quick points:
(1) I have had players draw cards against each other all the time, so there's a big fat problem right there. Thanks for clearing this up, Ron.
(2) Jesse's Grey Ranks example was beautiful and encapsulates what I want out of such a game: to be taken into directions no one anticipated. Rolling with that can be like rolling with a blow at times but is exhilarating.
(3) I found the discussion very useful. Its successful application to our actual game remains to be seen, but it has certainly helped me.
So thanks everyone and let's start new threads as Ron suggested.
Regards,
Hal
Navigation
[0] Message Index
[*] Previous page