[Primetime Adventures] Pilot episode - Cakewalk
Dionysus:
Quote from: Ron Edwards on June 18, 2009, 06:17:48 AM
It looks to me as if you were playing as follows:
Player asks for scene. Player describes scene. Player introduces conflict. Player and Producer draw cards. Player succeeds or fails. Someone narrates.
Yep, that is EXACTLY how we were doing it. Mainly because we have never played a PTA before and it seemed like that is what its all about. The "player requesting scene" we really really dont understand the limits of that.
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The functional sequence for PTA goes like this:
Player requests a scene. Producer frames scene. Producer and Player develop scene. Conflict arises from both or either's action(s). Producer and Player draw cards. Player succeeds or fails. Someone narrates.
Do you see the crucial difference? The Producer does not sit mutely while the player is forces to generate everything about the scene. The player is not forced to create a whole scene, conflict, issue-relevance, and character actions alike.
Basically, you guys are storyboarding. You're not creating a shared imagined space in which characters move around, enter and exit, do things, say things, react to one another, and otherwise "be." The conflicts are not forming organically from interactions and situational features, but being imposed in the abstract.
I also feel this is the crucial problem we faced. I as produced felt that there needed to be conflict in every scene, but was trying to get that conflict from the moment we started playing. The "fortune" was already decided before anyone even started RPing. I am 100% sure now that i was mixing up "scene framing" and "deciding conflict".
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Conflict arises from choices within all of that. The first and most obvious is that you could introduce an alien stowed away in her stuff. There's her Issue. You say, "What do you do?" Do you know it's time to draw cards yet? Yes, because the answer is no, because we don't know what Kay Bennett does yet. Always draw cards once you know what characters are doing. Is the alien terrified? Ready to bolt or attack, or begging for protection?
That one jumps out at me - Can the producer just come out and put a stowaway alien in the luggage? What are the limits of "scene framing"? Can the producer just decide that characters x,y,z are present on a scene, and can other player's decide that their characters are just present, even if they have no conflict there?
One example was the chief. The player wanted him to be in the background of as many scenes as possible, him wandering around the ship mapping it and learning by heart all the nooks and crannies. Can he just write himself into a scene as a bystander, or does he need to pay fanmail to get involved?
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The Issue is key, but not for abstract debate. It's key because when you put relevant components into place through normal framing and play, characters take action which tap into the Issue. With those actions under way, then you draw cards, and not before.
So when do you decide to draw cards? Is it a case of when someone says "no" thats the conflict start? Can there be scenes totally devoid of conflict?
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Let me know if any of this makes sense. Also, let me know if the tone I've adopted in this post is acceptable to you.
God yes, the tone is perfect :) I'm looking for criticism. I KNOW something was wrong, I just couldn't work out exactly was wrong. I'm really looking for hints on how to make it flow better next time. So coming along and saying "dont do X, do Y instead" is spot on what i'm looking for :)
One big thing - winning "narration" by getting highest number... How does that work? So taking the fixed up scene in the loading bay. What are the limits on what the narrator can state or cant state?
Scene request: Character scene, Kay Bennett, In the loading bay
Question - can other players say their characters are there as well? Or is that up to the GM?
start playing out via characters... player decides that she wants a conflict and states that there is a stoaway in her luggage
question - can she do that, or is that GM decision? Or is that a cause for a roll? Or should it be restated as "can i get it past security? or something else?
At this point the chief's player says "the Chief would definently not like that, I want him to stop it"
Question: valid?
But thanks again for the feedback - helps a LOT.
Kentsu
Ron Edwards:
Hi Kentsu,
I trotted off to get my rulebook in order to confirm some of my points above and also to help with these. I think once you get over the biggest hump, the book turns out to be quite clear about most of your current questions.
I did screw one thing in my above post: the scene-suggesting player does provide the focus, the agenda, and the location. We should examine what those mean, because I think my point about the role of the Producer is still valid.
Focus = development of character vs. advancement of the plot. This can throw people badly, especially when they think advancement of the plot means saying right now what that advancement will be. This statement signals whether we "hang out" with the character vs. "something happens to or around her," and that's all. All you have to do is say which, and nothing about it.
Agenda = general description of what the scene's about, what the likely conflict is. If I had my way, this would be removed from the rules. I know what it means because I've been so close to the design and play from its outset. But textually, it throws people off cliffs. What it means is: don't have your character sitting and doing something totally boring. Propose something that lets us know why it's interesting to see her here now, but ... and importantly, not what happens.
Location = where it is. Here's where I was most wrong; the player says this, not the Producer. No big deal, I hope.
None of these pre-set the contents of the conflict. I say again, none of these pre-set the contents of the conflict. That is left to play itself. Look at the scene creation example on page 57. Pretty minimal, huh?
I'm going to take your questions out of order, to put them into the order we'd see them in play.
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Scene request: Character scene, Kay Bennett, In the loading bay
Question - can other players say their characters are there as well? Or is that up to the GM?
In looking through the rules, I see that if your character is not in a scene, but wants to be there once a conflict is underway, then the player pays a point of Fanmail to show up suddenly (Matt invented this while playing my game Trollbabe! Cool, huh?). But how about starting a scene? I think, based on implications of the phrase "contributing characters," that the featured player and/or the Producer can simply state that other player-characters are there as they wish. And of course, in the general spirit of PTA, "if they wish" can mean a positive response to one of the other players' suggestion that his or her character be there. It doesn't say that if Bob wants his character there and neither the featured player nor the Producer does, that either can say "no," but I suggest that might be the case. Bob can always hop in by spending Fanmail, if he wants and can.
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start playing out via characters... player decides that she wants a conflict and states that there is a stoaway in her luggage
question - can she do that, or is that GM decision? Or is that a cause for a roll? Or should it be restated as "can i get it past security? or something else?
This would best have been handled by a fairly ambitious version of "scene agenda" at the outset. We did that all the time in our Heel game, for instance. During the scene itself, perhaps that would be better handled by someone (e.g. the player) suggesting it to the Producer. Important rule, page 60: "... the final responsibility for introducing conflict into play rests with the producer."
Regarding the roll, see my answer to the next question.
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At this point the chief's player says "the Chief would definently not like that, I want him to stop it"
Question: valid?
As Producer, you ask, "What do you do?" (Also, I am having a hard time following your pronouns, what is the "that" and the "it" in this case?) Note that this is not that player's scene!! So it cannot be about the chief's action vs. the Producer, it must be about aiding and abetting the development of relevant conflict for the xenobiologist. When the player says something like this, ask what the character actually does and says, and then ask what the xenobiologist player wans her character to do.
As currently stated, that phrasing is nearly useless. It doesn't contribute to the imagined space. It doesn't create imagery. It doesn't move bodies and objects. It is pretty much a statement of the character's feelings, at most. It means nothing by itself. You say, "What do you do?"
Never, ever draw cards in PTA regarding what someone feels or wants in the absence of a concrete, shared set of directed actions in the fiction. Same goes for "noticing things" too - the #1 top way to stop a PTA session in its tracks.
My answer is "valid, insofar as picking his teeth or scratching his ass is valid. But not even close to an actual contribution to play, and light-years away from requiring a card draw."
Now let's take this to the previous question, about how the xenobiologist character might prompt a card draw. Basically, it's the same thing. (I hope we've already dealt with "is it here," that's not cards at all, that's framing and ultimately Producer input.) "Can I get it past security?" You say, "What do you do?" See, her phrasing is trying to stay with outcomes, and you need to keep all phrasing in the context of imagined things going on, not what will go on. When she says she'll bundle it into a dead-body bag and get it through security, then you play the security guys, and ultimately - yes, someone will reach for the cards. If no one does and you think they should, you do it (i.e., the page 60 rule).
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One big thing - winning "narration" by getting highest number... How does that work? So taking the fixed up scene in the loading bay. What are the limits on what the narrator can state or cant state?
I should clarify here that the cards do not ever establish whether "something is here," whether "something happened in the past" (exception: conflicts held in flashback, an advanced technique), or anything about what's here and what's happening. Conflicts are always about crisis in motion. The Stakes is a subset of that: whether what the player cares about most is the direct outcome, or some related phenomenon within the crisis like whether they keep their cool. What the Stakes cannot ever do is pre-narrate the outcome of the conflict in detail. The Stakes is a subset: one thing which can go either X or Y but not both, and one of which is what the protagonist wants right here and now and the other isn't.
Drive that into your brain. If the xenobiologist player says the Stakes are to get the alien through security, then the cards say whether it does or not. All else is left to the narrator, up to and including the security chief developing a crush on her because she had the guts to stand up to him (and assuming that this is not out of left field, that during the scene or earlier in play there had been some inkling of emotional tension between them). Whereas if that player had said that the Stakes are for the security chief to fall in love with her, then the cards would say whether it happens, and all else is again left up to the narrator: including whether the alien gets through the checkpoint.
See? The Narrator is huge. The immediate imagined situation (people in motion and dialogue!! not abstract), the formal Stakes, and the cards all have their roles, but what happens is bigger than that and uses all of that as components within it.
Whew. I better email Matt to let him know that he should come in and correct me where I screw up.
Best, Ron
Here are some of the core discussions about Primetime Adventures here at the Forge:
Prime Time Adventures: Moose in the City (August 2004)
Techniques for driving conflict in a scene (October 2004)
Primetime Adventures: Epidemonology, Primetime Adventures: Epidemonology ep2, and [PTA] a very good episode, a very hard session (late 2004-early 2005)
[PTA] Endgame - pilot episode and first time experiment... (April 2005)
[Primetime Adventures] The Heel, [Primetime Adventures] The Heel, episode 2, and Primetime Adventures] The Heel, episode 3 (Summer 2005) (shoot, I never got around to posting about the rest of the season, which we did play)
[PTA] The Tower (August 2005)
[PTA] Nightshade Alley-session 1.5 (April 2006)
[PTA] Players wanting their PCs to fail? (June 2008)
[PtA] How are the narrative authorities working in this scene? (August 2008)
I've missed a bunch, I know, and I was trying to keep from including everything, but please, anyone who can think of or find a thread which really dug into the issues, feel free to add.
Ron Edwards:
Damn. Left out a key point.
Okay, the player has stated the focus, the agenda, and the location. Now the point is that the Producer establishes the actual scene. Not the player. Until this moment, in-fiction play has not begun and nothing is actually established to have happened, or that it will happen. Only when the talking is taken up by the Producer and he or she starts describing things, and when necessary (if no one is active enough), saying "what do you do?"
Pop that in at the end of my answer to the first question I quoted, and the rest makes more sense, I hope.
Best, Ron
Matt Wilson:
Ron's got most of this covered.
I think people sometimes confuse agenda for conflict. Agenda is just what you're up to. It's useful material for the producer to create the conflict, but it isn't the conflict.
Like, say, Cara wants a scene where Nicola's in the lab examining this strange thing she found, and she wants it to be a plot scene.
I'm the producer, yeah? So we don't just say, "okay, draw cards to see if you can figure out what it is."
And Cara doesn't say, "okay, there's something wrong with my microscope. that's the conflict." Cara can introduce that as an interesting detail, but no way is she going to just sit there and be the author of the story.
Say she introduces that detail. Maybe I say, "great, so that slows you down and you're there later than you want to be, late enough that your love interest, the cute lab worker shows up."
"Oh no," says Cara. "He can't find out about this strange thing."
Now we've both agreed on a conflict. There's a pretty defined yes/no question in there, but there's lots of room to fill in details in the narration.
I'm lazy and pulled in a conflict from an actual game I was in, but I bet you can squint a little and see how that might apply to the stowaway conflict.
re: entering scenes. I think of the spending of fan mail as a veto action, as in "oh yes I am in that scene." If everyone's cool with it to begin with, save your fan mail for something else.
Hope that helps.
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