Roger Burton West wrote: > On Sunday at Stabcon I played in a game of Primetime Adventures. The GM > was a fairly old-school RPGer with a background in theatre (real, not > amateur). I knew two of the other players reasonably well, and they're > also fairly long-term gamers. I don't know about the other two. Being one of the 'other two', I supposed I should put in my 2p's worth :) > The other slightly strange thing about PTA, of course, is the campaign > generation system: for about the first hour of play (of the first > session only), we tossed around ideas about the sort of game we'd play. > This was quite fun, though I'm not sure how much I'd have enjoyed it if > my idea hadn't been substantially the one that got adopted; even so, > everyone had reasonably significant input. I get the impression that this is supposed to be a key part of the game, especially when what gets adopted is an amalgam of ideas from several people. Certainly riffing off each other's ideas can produce something more interesting that the players could have come up with individually. It wouldn't had occurred to me to make my character German rather than British, for example. > In theory, the players should in some way rotate the choice of what > scene happens next (and do the initial narration, up to the point of the > conflict). I don't know how that's meant to be determined, but we were > all traditional enough gamers that we tended to lean on the GM perhaps > more than we "should" have. I think it would take a few sessions to really get my head round the whole scene framing/conflict determination thing, because it's very different from a traditional RPG. > Overall, it is very much a collaborative story-telling game rather than > a conventional RPG: I don't know how much protection you have for your > own character, but with other people potentially narrating events any > characterisation will have to be in fairly broad strokes. In a longer campaign I think characterisation will be very much develop-in-play. > I think I might enjoy playing this occasionally as a short pickup game, > particularly at conventions, but I can't see myself dumping the > mainstream systems in favour of it; apart from anything else, I enjoy > doing detailed research while preparing a scenario, and in this game > you're improvising _everything_. Also, all the players need to be on > their toes; someone who's had a hard day at work, or is just tired, will > noticeably slow the whole game down. That said, I'll still buy a copy if > I find one that can be shipped from the UK. Same here. Only a Forgeite elitist would that consider games like this should completely replace more traditional allegedly 'incoherent' RPGs. Saying that, it is a game I want to play again, something I can't honestly say about 'Dogs in the Vinyard' which I played at Consternation last August. I think it's a game I need to play a couple of times before it 'clicks'. ---------------------------------------------------------------- GAMERS Home Page: http://www.phoenyx.net/gamers/
