On Thu, 12 Jan 2006, Roger Burton West wrote:
RBW>On Sunday at Stabcon I played in a game of Primetime Adventures. The GM
RBW>was a fairly old-school RPGer with a background in theatre (real, not
RBW>amateur). I knew two of the other players reasonably well, and they're
RBW>also fairly long-term gamers. I don't know about the other two.
So was Tim one of the first two, or the other two?
RBW>You've probably heard about the system, but I'll touch on it anyway from
Actually, no, that's what I wanted to hear more about.
RBW>a mechanical perspective. It's so simple it's almost non-existent: you
RBW>basically have one stat, "screen presence", which is a baseline measure
RBW>of how good you are at everything. You have "edges" (broadly,
RBW>skill/advantage/disadvantage packages) such as "run-down detective" or
RBW>"heroic pilot", and "connections" (people you know, though not
RBW>necessarily friends); you can invoke these up to three times each per
RBW>episode (broadly, = gaming session) to get a +1 to your screen presence.
RBW>Also, everyone has to have an Issue, some basic flaw that they're
RBW>working through - commitment phobia, alcoholism, etc. (You can also have
RBW>a Nemesis and a Personal Set, but these didn't really come into play.)
Any of that sound useful to swipe for other games?
RBW>The GM ("producer" - didn't we give up having cutesy terms for GMs and
RBW>PCs a few years back) gets a budget instead - twice the total screen
Yes. Yes, we did. (Heck, I still call D&D DMs GMs.)
RBW>presence plus a bit more, but each point is only usable once. When he's
RBW>spent it, it goes into the "fan mail" pool; that's not directly usable,
RBW>but any player can give points to any _other_ player for a bit of "good
RBW>play". Once you've been given points, you can spend them.
The fan mail thing sounded kind of interesting to me... I'm always looking
for nifty ways to increase the communication of that-was-cool between
players.
RBW>The game runs scene by scene; in each case, the aim is to identify the
RBW>"conflict", i.e. what is going to get resolved in this scene: "will you
RBW>let us into your camp", "I'm searching the room for clues", "we're
RBW>having a duel with swords", or whatever else. This always starts as one
RBW>PC versus the GM; other PCs can take sides. Each involved party draws
RBW>cards equal to screen presence (+1 for an edge, +1 per point of fan mail
RBW>spent) or in the GM's case budget expended; whichever side has more red
RBW>cards wins, and whichever player gets the highest card gets to narrate
RBW>what happens. (Note that about half the time this will be a player on
RBW>the losing side of the conflict.)
This is the part I'm never sure of. On the one hand, I kind of like
narrating things (I like to GM sometimes too), but on the other hand it's
kind of useful to have the gamemaster as the default "truth" of a world,
so that you've got all the players trying (with success, one hopes) to
synch their vision to his, versus all the players trying to negotiate a
shared vision. Less nebulous that way, it seems to me.
RBW>For a single session, th's basically it. For multiple sessions you
RBW>have variable screen presence - every character will have a "spotlight
RBW>episode" where it's 3 (and nobody else's is), and some background
RBW>episodes where it's just 1.
Way back pre-Fudge, when we were disillusioned by Champions but hadn't yet
picked up Fudge, I scribbled some notes for a superhero game (no, really,
I'm *not* a game designer, honest) where the point cost for an ability
wasn't based on an abstract "power level" but rather on how much screen
time it was worth. You could put a lot of points into a really trivial
power, and that meant the GM had to give it lots of screen time. (Or more
tactfully phrased, that indicated to the GM that you wanted to spend lots
of screen time on it.) I had just had the then-novel idea that you'd have
to *spend* points on disadvantages instead of getting points for them, and
we switched game systems. And genres.
RBW>The other slightly strange thing about PTA, of course, is the campaign
RBW>generation system: for about the first hour of play (of the first
RBW>session only), we tossed around ideas about the sort of game we'd play.
RBW>This was quite fun, though I'm not sure how much I'd have enjoyed it if
RBW>my idea hadn't been substantially the one that got adopted; even so,
RBW>everyone had reasonably significant input.
That's not really so strange, it's just that most times we consider that
to be part of picking the game, rather than the first part of the game
itself.
RBW>I think I might enjoy playing this occasionally as a short pickup game,
RBW>particularly at conventions, but I can't see myself dumping the
RBW>mainstream systems in favour of it; apart from anything else, I enjoy
RBW>doing detailed research while preparing a scenario, and in this game
RBW>you're improvising _everything_. Also, all the players need to be on
RBW>their toes; someone who's had a hard day at work, or is just tired, will
RBW>noticeably slow the whole game down. That said, I'll still buy a copy if
RBW>I find one that can be shipped from the UK.
I'm thinking we're going to acquire a copy too, if only to rob stuff from.
--
Karen J. Cravens silver@phoenyx.net
----------------------------------------------------------------
GAMERS Home Page: http://www.phoenyx.net/gamers/
