[Primetime Adventures] "Last Stand" Great pitch... but then what happened?
Sebastian K. Hickey:
I tried running PTA for three traditional role players. Where did I go wrong?
Pitch
Like most first games of PTA, the guys went straight for sci-fi. It started off as 'Bladerunner meets the Wire', which sounded pretty good to me, and mutated into something more difficult to describe. There's a remote planet, industrial and corrupt. One of its two suns, a distant star, goes out, as if someone turned off the lights. People go ape-shit and there's civil war. Humans, among 5 races, take the throne and rule with a pretty heavy hand. There's a lot of suspicion and doom-saying that this is now the last planet, that the rest of the universe is now empty.
The series is about revolution, fear and the rise of a terrible war. A small, buffer police department called the Gang Violence Taskforce gets involved at the beginning. The first series tracks the rise of rebels through the eyes of these cops.
Setting
Violent drama. Projectile weapons. Drugs, sex, violation. 5 races, Human, Rog, Fim, Shroud & Sentient. Rogs are bohemian gorillas with Spanish accents. Think Silverback + Che Guevara. Fim are ancient, plant like creatures, once blooming under two suns, now withered and bedecked with UV fairy lights. Shrouds are cloaked cadavers, a dying (excuse the pun) race that now search for compatible corpses to multiply. Sentients are machines with superseding emotional and sentient intelligence, long since considered a living species.
Cast - Transcribing direct from the character sheets...
Object-718 - A Sentient obsessed with retro, hands-on tech. Wants to be a "robot". Self styled bolts + nuts. No smooth edges. Red flashing light for eyes. Issue: Trying to find out what it means to be a robot. Edges: Street Bot. Connections: Guerto, Rog Activist / Singularity, Builder (Father).
Detective Bob McMahon - Young. Just out of academy, A+ student, questions police actions, naive. Issue: Do I follow orders blindly? Edges: Super Recruit. Connections: Vicky Haru, Hot civil rights lawyer type I love / Professor James Novak, college professor, liberal (Stephen Fry)
Lt. Taka Haru - Policeman from Regime. Issue: Self Confidence Edges: Agent of The Regime / Military Experiment - Part Cyborg Connections: Ex-Wife - Elizabeth Garn
Sebastian K. Hickey:
Intro 1
Camera follows a man's journey through the violent megalopolis. We do not see his face, but he is wearing a suit and carries a suitcase. During his journey, we cut to grand preparations of some kind of political congregation. Eventually, the man arrives at the congregation, puts the suit case on the floor and there is a murmur of confusion. Cut to the exterior of a classical building. There is a white flash and all the windows on every floor explode.
Intro 2
Morning time. Blues soundtrack (Rory Gallagher). Agents are shown getting dressed, shaving, going to work. They nearly meet one another in an elevator, but the doors close too quickly.
END Intro
Sample Scene 1 - Character / To Introduce characters to one another / Located in the office corridor
The new recruit runs up the stairs, becoming late, and spills his papers over the floor as he bumps into his superior officer.
(ED - At this point, the players are all very excited. The PCs roleplay the scene. I'm trying to work in a conflict, so when the superior officer, Haru, starts lording it over the new recruit, I have another officer try to intervene. I tell the player that my goal is to humiliate Taka Haru. He tells me that his goal is to be viewed as the man in charge. I win the conflict, but the player narrates. The player is confused as to what to do. I ask him what happens. He tells me. Then we roleplay it out. At this point, the sense of immersion is weak.)
Sample Scene 2 - Plot / To introduce Object 718 to the bombing / Located in the Last Stand bar
A gorilla's hand picks up a martini glass from a bar and carries it to a table where a drunk robot has passed out in a shady booth. The gorilla's hand slaps the robot awake. (ED - Now the PC takes over the narrative) The camera goes black, and winks open and closed, viewing the gorilla, Guerto, from the robot's perspective. In a squeaky voice, the robot asks Guerto what has been going on, and the bombing is explained. It is established that the Pax Consortium, an inter-racial pacifist collective, has been wiped out. It's all over the news. Object-718 investigates the footage and notices that one of the members of the consortium, before the bomb went off, was someone he knew.
(ED - This scene went well, but there was no conflict. Furthermore, there was no point where Object-718 had to step out of character, and no change from the traditional GM/Player narrative structure)
Sample Scene 3 - Character / To meet the captain / Located in the captain's office
The new recruit McMahon enters an office. There is a high chair with its back to him. Beyond the chair is a TV with details of the bombing being aired and shouts from the reporters that 'this could now mean war.' The chair rotates around and an auburn haired police chief asks the recruit's business.
(ED - Not a very clear agenda as far as character was concerned. I found it difficult to get in a conflict. I told the PC that I wanted a conflict, and that if the player lost the stakes, he would be told he was insignificant and that nobody could make a difference any more. He would get to work on the case but with feelings of indecision. The PC responded that if he won the stakes, he would want to convince the captain that he was good enough for the job... I tried to push for some more interesting results, something that would show off the small conquering of his issues, but I couldn't explain my intentions clearly. We ran the conflict, and the player won the stakes, but the narrative shifted to a player who had spent a fan point. He wanted us to roleplay the conversation, and he described the flow of it, and the outcome (that McMahon brought hope to the Captain). When we got to role play it, it was fun, but it felt more like reading lines than anything else. It ended nicely with the captain watching the door after the new recruit had left the office.)
Summary
Okay, that's enough reading. Well done for getting this far. Here are my thoughts and questions...
1) Next time I run PTA for new players I will enforce that when it is a PC's turn to frame the scene, they should frame a scene with their own character. PCs were shy about getting in on the action, so were framing scenes without their characters present.
2) Do you make PCs frame scenes going clockwise around the table? I think they found that idea scary.
3) How do you avoid a sequence of 'narration followed by the roleplaying of it' (the reading out the lines phenomenon)?
4) In PTA, it describes getting into conflict as early as possible. This means that the scene may reach a situation of meta-gaming (the discussion about how to proceed) before most of the roleplaying potential has been used up. I find that this takes away immersion. Is there a good example anywhere of how to run a conflict without too much discussion? Most of the sessions with people who haven't played the game before, and from podcasts online, involve lengthy discussions about how the conflict should be resolved.
Ciao.
David Berg:
Hi Sebastian,
I've only played PTA at cons and I've never read the book. So, I don't know whether my suggestions are based on the book or not. All I know is I've had a lot of fun when I've played.
The first thing that jumped out at me is how your group defined some really cool setting stuff. This can be good, but it can also be a source of distraction if the character stuff never tops it. Like, if I'm psyched to see how factions of gorillas work a mysterious supernova into their anti-authoritarian propaganda, there's a temptation to say, "I'm ready to play!" with that in mind. But PTA isn't optimized for exploration of setting or backstory for their own sake. Those things will happen only if they dovetail with the exploration of character Issues.
If the beginning of the pitch session gets everyone pumped for supernova-based propaganda, I'd try damn hard to make a character whose issue I can envision interacting strongly with that. Maybe, "How do I know who to believe?" or some such. Even "will I blindly follow orders" could work if I have some idea that ties it in, like, "my character works for the people responsible for the supernova" (which should be communicated to the play group).
I've had a lot of success framing and playing scenes that were focused on character issues, when the character issues were obviously relevant in the immediate context of the fiction. My groups have achieved this via conversations like the following, both during set-up* and during provisional scene framing:
GM: So, what next? We haven't seen Bob in a while.
BP (Bob's Player): It's cool to wait, I saw OP had an idea there after that revelation about the bomb.
OP (Object-718's Player): Yeah, I have a cool cover-up idea! 718's gonna stumble into it!
GM: Uh... well, does that relate to your Issue?
OP: Um...
BP: Maybe if the cover-up involves radical robot-designers?
GM: Who have clear ideas on what robots do and don't do?
OP: Maybe the bomb went off because a robot stepped beyond it's- Yeah, okay, I know where to go with this! (OP censored himself here, which leads into another point, up next.)
Quote
I win the conflict, but the player narrates. The player is confused as to what to do. I ask him what happens. He tells me. Then we roleplay it out.
The way I see it, this is "learn a new skill" time. The player needs to learn the skill of answering "what happens" in his own head and then roleplaying with the intent to produce that.
How is it possible to roleplay toward a target outcome when other people are involved? Because all the other players saw the conflict resolution outcome, know what is "supposed" to happen in a general sense, and can look to follow the narrator's lead. At least, that's been my experience, playing with people who've played more than I have. But this may have been warped by using more explicit stake-setting than the rules call for.
The main reason I'm suggesting this is because I'd never done it before, learned it during one PTA session, and have enjoyed doing it in PTA ever since. (Same with provisional scene-framing.) There may be better-tested alternatives out there. Hopefully someone else will chime in here.
My final observation is that scene goals like "To Introduce characters to one another", "To introduce Object 718 to the bombing" and "To meet the captain" aren't focused on character Issues and don't imply any conflict. In a con game, I'd consider these a complete waste of time. In a regular, multi-session game, perhaps they have value as a lead-in, but personally, I'd keep them short, acknowledging them for what they are: fodder for meatier scenes to come.
Hope this helps,
-David
*in set-up, that example would look different, but the same general strategy of forging interesting connections applies: "We like bombing cover-ups, and I like robot identity, so the bombers will be robot-designers!"
JoyWriter:
You mention the large amount of discussion, I think this game is designed for that to be a feature, not at all meta-game but a part of why it works. In such games "immersion" isn't first on the list of priorities, so much as making interesting things happen between the characters. There's still a high level of involvement, but in a different way. I'm sure someone here has a term for it.
Quote from: Sebastian K. Hickey on October 02, 2009, 04:07:09 AM
2) Do you make PCs frame scenes going clockwise around the table? I think they found that idea scary.
The core thing here is bravery, either that or a commitment to the potential of being rubbish! The most they have to fear is slipping up in a new system, and paradoxically the fact they are experienced at one thing may be why they are less ready to be adventurous here. Ideally you'd have one person in the group more used to this style, and when a player came up to their chance at scene framing, the more experienced one and other players would be able to give them possibilities, but as they still chose which they wouldn't be completely off the seat.
That's one way, just recognise that there is fun to be had in the weirdness, and not try to avoid it but make your way slowly through it. Another way is just to shift the game into something your more used to, which is missing an opportunity. On the other hand, you could play the same setting in another game too now you've made it, something like heroquest, that can be set up quickly to give you a more traditional way to play it. Get them side by side!
Callan S.:
I'm not really seeing a conflict in the setting itself and wondering if that's the problem? What in the setting is actually going to conflict with and confront the PC's? As is, it's kind of like lord of the rings and your a hobbit, but not actually Frodo - so your tending your yard and stuff while there's this huge cool conflict that...has nothing to do with your life. Maybe you'll have a conflict about rabbits eating your carrots - it doesn't seem to sizzle for some reason. This huge setting conflict doesn't seem to be in the PC's faces except at an minor, oblique angle.
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