[PtA] How are the narrative authorities working in this scene?
Arturo G.:
Ron was commenting here: Re: [PTA] Players wanting their PCs to fail? , that he offered some people to post a scene in Actual Play to talk about the different narrative authorities at work.
This scene is part of a PtA pilot episode. I will describe general details of the whole session, describing in detail the key scene.
The players
Pablo. One of the players of my old groups, a lot of experience as player and sometimes GM since end of eighties. He has played to some indie games with me in the last three years.Luis. I met him two years ago in a convention where I was doing some demos of indie games. He finds them really attrative and wants to play more. Thus, I have invited him to join our irregular group.
Ruth. Luis' girlfried. Luis told me she was not interested on some other traditional RPGs they were playing previously. But he has manage to convinced her to try these "new" indie games. I think they have played a couple of times on their own with middle success. It was the first time she was coming to my house to play with us.
Me
I was talking with Pablo previously about my position. As I have been introducing people to many new games, I have been systematically explaining the games and acting as master or opposition. We agreed it would be good for me to play a character and leave from time to time the master position to another one. Thus, as soon as we decided to play PtA Pablo offered himself to be the producer.
The pitch
The series is titled something similar to: "Tempus Fugit".
The characters are time-travelers in a organization more interested on obtaining important benefits from this secret capacity than changing or repairing the past. However, the characters will be tempted to do it. For the sake of the humankind, or for very selfish reasons, we don't know yet. The organization is based on Italy.
The cast
Luis played Vincenzo, a securitty chief hired to protect the team. His issue is Obsesive protector.
Edges: Police and Etiquette.
Relationship with Enzo Savioli the team technician. Vincenzo likes him, perhaps too much.
Ruth played Lucrezia Giovanni, scientific head of the project.
Issue: Leadership
Edges: University degree, gymnast
Relationship with the boss of the project, see has a tense relation with him because of her issue.
My character was Alfredo Savioli. Ex-leader of the Fascio. Minister during the Italian Social Republic in the last times of Mussolini.
Issue: Bring back to life the glory of a past which he kwnos never will come to be.
Edges: Politician, Cars
Relationship with Enzo, the team technician. He is his grandson and he will like to make him participate on his glory dreams.
Pilot episode idea
The mission in this episode was to retrieve a picture of Leonardo da Vinci, lost in a train accident during the end of the Italy campaign in the second world war. The train was transporting some other valuable art objects, rich people, some Fascio politicians and a bunch of soldiers. The Mussolini's power is definitively disintegrating. People in the train are fleeing from the American troops, leading to Switzerland. The atmosphere in the train will be tense, sad and oppressive.
The set is somehow chosen to make possible that Alfredo meets Enzo, and he gets joined to the group of time-travellers by chance.
Before the selected scene
The time-travelers have been sent to the past, arriving to the train station of Lugano, very near the border. They are disguised as rich peasants and a train operator. They caught the last coach of the train after some troubles. Alfredo has watched them and the Enzo's familiar looking has attracted his attention. Some scenes have been already devoted to show the character issues.
The scene proposition
I cannot remember who was proposing this scene. I think it was the producer, but I think everyone also introduced some detail. I only remember it was a plot-oriented one. We wanted to introduce the first encounter of Alfredo with Enzo while the team was preparing their plan to try to arrive at the target coach containing the art objects and the picture.
Producer frames
The time-travelers are in the small platform between the last two coaches preparing their plans. The next coach is full of soldiers singing to avoid thinking in the so near American menace. In the distance, some bomb explosions and airplane engines sound. Alfredo should be prepared to enter the scene at any time.
Action
Ruth narrated that Lucrezia, being the leader of the team, has a sketch of the train to locate the coach where the picture is. The producer added that she surely has exact times of the train accident and other related information. The next obstacle are the coaches with the soldiers and the officers. They are in a hurry, the accident time is approaching.
Some character proposes to let out the last coach of the train to create confusion. The others think it is a silly idea. Vincenzo wants to use his disguise as train operator to try to convince the soldiers that he needs to repair something in the head coaches. But what can do the others to follow him?
They start to argue. Vincenzo complains. He says that Lucrezia is not really having any plan. A conflict was requested by Ruth to show that Lucrezia is the real leader of the team and avoid Vincenzo to start acting on himself. Luis stated that Vincenzo wants to show Enzo he can take care of the situation. Ruth won and Luis lost. Ruth also narrated. Lucrezia stops the arguments abruptly and Vincenzo is embarrased when Enzo ignores him confirming her authority.
At this moment I decided it was the appropriate time for Alfredo to appear. I asked the group if they also thought it was appropriate, and we all agreed on it. I did not need to spend fan-mail, as it was stated at the start of the scene that my character was going to be on it. It was somehow similar as ending the scene and starting a new one.
I described Alfredo's face lit by the cigarrette coal, seen through the window of the coach-door. I described he entering and his imposing uniform and intimidating attitude. The other players described how the characters got nervous and tried to look normal.
However, Alfredo's attention is concentrated on Enzo. Alfredo asks him about his origins, where is he from, his family name. Enzo lies badly. The others try to say something but Alfredo orders them to shut up. I asked for a conflict to detect that Enzo is lying, and I lost. I narrated the confusion and hesitation of Alfredo. At the end he becomes uninterested and orders Enzo and Lucrezia, the ones with civilian disguises to come back to the last coach (some more bomb explosions approaching).
As soon as Vincenzo is alone he tries again his former plan to convince Alfredo that he was a train operator requested to repair something in the head coaches. Alfredo suspects. A conflict was requested. Luis wanted Vincenzo to get his way to the target coach. I wanted Alfredo to detect he was lying and capture him.
As it was an opposing conflict, I should probably have to add cards to the producer side instead. Anyway, Luis lost the conflict and I won mine. I was narrating. Thus, Alfredo lets Vincenzo come into the next coach just to order a soldier to capture him. Alfredo orders to tie him and bring him to a calm place for interrogation: The same coach where the picture was!
I immediately regretted to say that, because I was leading him to where he wanted to go, bringing the action to the target coach, but the others liked the idea a lot. We were also getting short of real time. Thus, after a second thought we confirmed it was perfect and we cut the scene with Alfredo ordering that to the soldier.
After the scene
Alfredo was acting as a film villain, showing proudly the art objects to Vincenzo and claiming the return of the Italian Fascit glory in the near future. As Alfredo thought that Vincenzo was a saboteur, Vincenzo tried to convince him to take away the art objects from the train in order to save them, for the sake of the future of Italy. But he failed. Thanks to Lucrezia, Enzo and she managed, with some troubles and funny scenes, to arrive at the coach where the interrogation was becoming a little hard (some punches and blood).
Finally, all the characters were in the coach. Enzo recognized the family ties with Alfredo to make him hesitate on his idea of shooting them all. Vincenzo managed to break his ties and knock out Alfredo. The team members took the picture and prepared the time-door. In the last moment, Alfredo got conscious enough and tried to catch Enzo, getting into the time-door and disappearing with all them, back to the future.
The last scene showed an American bomber from above, flying over the railway. The camera following one of the bombs flight, down to the train. A last glimpse of the coach were the last energy rays of the time-door were disappearing; the bomb breaking through the wood ceiling into the coach, the empty place where the picture was and a big explosion that funds in white.
Conclusion about the session
Although there were some hesitation and dull scenes in the middle, the start and the end of the session were working pretty well. People enjoyed the game and I think we all want to continue with the series.
Back to this thread purpose
How are the narrative authorities working in the scene described?
Ron Edwards:
Hi Arturo,
I haven't been able to spend much time at the computer for a day or two. I'll be replying when I can.
Best, Ron
Ron Edwards:
Hi Arturo,
I'll have to start with the idea that very little of this account seems to me to involve playing PTA. I'll describe why in detail, which may seem a little off-topic, but I don't want to convey the false impression that I'm talking about PTA in my points about your game. Also, I think it's important to understand the points of divergence in order to see why the authorities are organized (or not organized) the way they are.
One of the fundamentals of playing PTA is the lack of pre-determination, either of plot or of characterization. This is the foundation of why I think your group cannot be said to be playing PTA, because what you describe seems to be a combination of (a) pre-setting the nature and outcome of a scene and (b) pre-setting the important character decisions in that scene.
If you were to imagine the content of a PTA game as a series of boxes, each representing a scene, then (by the rules) none of the following are pre-set: (1) any starting content or conflicts within any as-yet-unplayed scene, (2) the events and most specifically the outcome within any particular scene, and (3) the final number of scenes that comprise an "episode." Whereas in your game, much of 1-2-3 seems to have been negotiated outside, above, and before the session and before scenes are played. Therefore setting the scenes and playing within the scenes doesn't have any of the content that the PTA rules are written to allow creating.
It's as if you were not playing the characters and situations in the scene, so much as playing a group of role-players who were trying do so. All of the effort seems to be about the scenes and events, rather than doing them.
The specific point that highlights the difference is that there is an NPC who is a Relationship to two player-characters, and the episode is primarily about how one of the player-characters joins the team. First, this is odd because it means you're playing a prequel to the character sheets, to show how they came to be the way they are, rather than working with what is on them to create a new storyline out of the unknown. Second, it's odd because two player-characters are partly defined by their charged relationships to this particular NPC, so without him established (i.e. known to the characters) in those relationships, the characters are only partly present. Third, it's odd because the group apparently also specified how it happens, i.e. by chance, so that the whole session begins not only knowing what happens, but how it happens. Bluntly, in PTA terms, there's no reason to play; the questions begin already answered.
Arguably, none of that is an problem if the episode posed its own external threat, but as it was a routine mission whose outcome was never in doubt, there's no conflict, in the basic Literature 101 sense, in the episode at all.
(As a minor point, your character's Issue was not an issue, but a goal.)
All right, all that said, we can look at what you did play and not what you didn't, and see where the authorities are. You asked about the scene, but it so happens that some of the authorities for the scene was almost wholly set up by decisions about the whole session (or episode), so I'll start there.
Content authority: this is essentially back-story - who the characters are (both player-character and NPCs), what they've done in the past, what their existing relationships are, and what has just happened. As far as I can tell, this was settled through a continuous process of pitch, character creation, and most importantly, a kind of group jam about what the episode would include. The part that is most obviously content authority for the session concerns the mission and its features, but you don't say who created that material, although it appears as though it was pre-determined. Since nothing unusual or interesting happened to make the mission more of a conflict situation, that means that content was minimal anyway.
Plot authority: this what happens and how it happens, and as I observed above, it was determined prior to play. Who determined it? You wrote,
Quote
The set is somehow chosen to make possible that Alfredo meets Enzo, and he gets joined to the group of time-travellers by chance.
Which makes it impossible for me to identify who did it. I think by "somehow" you're referring to the fact that the exact events are left open to play, aside from the all-important point that they have to deliver the result "by chance." Was this decided by the group in open discussion? This can be hard to decipher without having been there, because although one person may have proposed it, it may have been a group decision; but also, although the group may have discussed it, it may have been one person's idea and that person was acknowledged however tacitly to be the boss over such things.
Both of the above points apply to the whole episode, but also to the scene in miniature. Unless I'm mistaken, in which case I hope you correct me, it appears as if the content and plot of the scene was essentially decided in free-form, non-authoritative discussion prior to play. That effectively negates all meaningful talk of content and plot authorities in that scene. (a) You can't have authority about X if X is already established for everyone, and (b) free-form discussion means no authority and a kind of meandering uncertainty during the process of decision-making.
Now for situation authority - it appears to lie with the Producer in terms of the scene, and we can also hop to the conflicts.
1. Characters bicker about who's in charge. (Out of curiosity, when Ruth and Luis drew cards, did they compare totals to one another or to the total of the Producer?)
2. Alfredo enters, as it appears on your authority, but as it turns out, you're just enacting something that's been previously agreed upon. The conflict itself is entirely bizarre to me - unless Alfredo excites your character's suspicion and/or interest, the agreed-upon elements (including decisions made during character creation) stall out. There seems to be no earthly reason why cards were drawn at this point at all ...
... until I realized that the way your group played, you simply kept creating conflicts until the cards fell into the right configuration for the pre-arranged plot to be fulfilled. Any failed conflicts or non-consistent outcomes along the way simply served as delays. Old-school illusionism, as practiced upon the group by the group as a whole. In this case, since the cards failed to deliver the required plot, your character simply becomes uninterested (!! if that were possible, then why was it a conflict?) and the story moves on to a point where the cards can be put to the test again.
Of course, since no one can admit that you guys are basically just going through the motions until the cards give you all what you want, the next conflict is even more halting and muddled. I can hardly even bring myself to dissect this one. When conflicts start to be about who believes whom, that's a dead giveaway that there simply isn't a conflict at hand, just struggling with trying to make the plot go toward a desired end. This one is compounded by the fact that although you had agreed not to be the Producer, your character is actually more like an obstructive NPC.
In this case, the pre-determined plot is rendering any situation authority meaningless. There isn't any situation to be created. What's happening here is that everyone knows Alfredo is going to join the team "by chance," so effectively, anything anyone does doesn't matter much. This car, that car; you think he's lying, you believe him entirely; Enzo gets captured, doesn't get captured; whatever. It does not surprise me at all that the situation is resolved simply by getting everyone into the same car with the damned picture, because at least that means that the mission can be over and "chance" can be invoked to get Alfredo through the time-portal with everyone else. It didn't "feel right" because railroading never feels right - just because you all did it to yourselves doesn't change that.
That brings us to narration authority, and as it turns out, that lies with the high-card person (you, in this particular case), which means that you can establish that very point - let's get to the point where the pre-determined outcome is made possible, and get this whole ordeal over with. What I'm saying is that none of the card mechanics meant anything in any conflict in this scene, except for the high card, which permitted someone to repeat, basically, what everyone already knew had to happen. Saying it meant that the scene could finally be over and stop delaying the established plot.
So, those are my comments about authorities in the scene. To repeat: Content and Plot authority were already established before the entire session even began; respectively, that the whole team had to be involved along with Enzo, and that the events had to lead to everyone being interested in Alfredo, and especially to getting to the point where the team grabs the picture in Alfredo's presence. Situation authority was irrelevant throughout the scene because nothing that was proposed could possibly create new situations (conflicts) under those conditions of Content and Plot. Therefore Narration authority had to be relied upon, in a weird way divorced from the conflict resolution mechanics (because there were no real conflicts), to satisfy the conditions of the pre-set Plot. In this case that authority lay with you as drawer of the high card, but the fact is that somebody would have been in that position no matter what, in this not-really-conflict or the next one or the next one, simply to get everyone into the same car as the picture.
The mechanics and authority-rules of PTA are predicated on Plot authority lying solely with the outcomes of conflicts, and the essence of such conflicts is that they cannot be pre-determined - not even in what they might be about, much less how they are supposed to turn out. Since your group started with a very different paradigm, that of dictating plot ahead of time, you basically had to invent an entirely new set of authority rules in which using the cards and narration mechanics of PTA was irrelevant. Set Content and Plot ahead of time, then waffle and shuffle through empty conflicts (bickering, who believes whom) in which Situation is effectively absent, until someone who's landed with Narration authority takes the opportunity to get the group to the next pre-understood step in the plot.
As with all Illusionist play, the idea that someone, anyone, actually has authority over plot has to remain unspoken. In your case, this was achieved by constant discussions to arrive at consensus. This occurred before play, before scenes, and within scenes. It is a symptom not of a particular sort of authority, but of the unwillingness to acknowledge the need for any authority.
It may help to state that lately, I have been specifying that by authority I do not mean the ability to order others around or make them obey, but rather "by the power invested in me," or responsibility.
That's what I see. I don't think it could have been pleasant to read, but I hope you understand that this was not an attack on you or your group.
Best, Ron
Arturo G.:
Wow! Thanks a lot, Ron.
I posted about this specific play because I had a very strange feeling about it. It was not like other times I was playing PtA and I didn't know what was it. I was blind, thinking that the problem was in a completely different place.
I would need a couple of readings to digest all the details, but I agree with your main interpretation of what was going on. I am a little ashamed not to be able to notice it on myself.
I will post later, trying to elaborate on some questions that worry me.
Ron Edwards:
Hi Arturo,
I'm very interesting in your remaining questions, but I also thought it might help the thread, eventually, for you to post about a scene in some other PTA experience, so we can show how the authorities operate in that case.
Best, Ron
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