***cross posted at The Forge***

So I got to play PTA for the first time at Go Play Southeast this weekend. I had an excellent time. The players were me and Lindsey (a young lady who plays in my regular group) and Remi Treuer as the Producer. I've been playing role-playing games since 1989, my freshman year in college (I'm 36 years old). I played a variety of traditional games (D&D, WoD, Palladium, GURPS, etc etc) up until 3 or 4 years ago when I stumbled across The Forge. Since then the number of traditional games in my library has shrunk and the number of indie games has grown. Still, D&D has been the most common game I've run due simply to the dearth of indie players in my area. Lindsey has played 2 or 3 sessions of D&D with my group. That's the extent of her role-playing experience. She's 17 years old and loves theatre and dance and music. She's one of my wife's dance students and she spends a lot of time hanging out at my house. She really wanted to come to Go Play Southeast, which delighted me, so I drug her along. Remi will have to chime in with his own background. I have no idea what it is.

First, let me say that Remi totally rocks at pulling lots of disparate ideas into a cool concept that doesn't seem completely stupid. When we were doing our Pitch Session (I think that's what they call it in PTA. I haven't actually read the rules yet.) I was wondering how we were going to make anything coherent out of all the various ideas that were getting thrown out there. Remi thought about it for about 30 seconds and then came up with an awesome idea that made me go, "Wow. How'd he do that." I've noticed that this kind of thing is common in many story/indie games. Sitting around in the first session (or at the beginning of the game) and taking everyone's ideas and forming them into a coherent whole isn't easy if you've never done it before or haven't done it often. So, hard skill #1. I'll get back to it later.

Our show:

Title: Real Fantasy
Concept: Fictional Sword and Sorcery characters come to life on the streets of New York City.

Characters:

Charles the Barbarian (Me)
Issue: I don't fit in anywhere.
Nemesis: Leon Smith, the author who created us.
Screen Presence: 2, 3, 1

Erin the Elf (Lindsey)
Issue: I have been cursed and can't dance. (The wording here probably isn't exact. Going off memory.)
Nemesis: Bob the Necromancer
Screen Presence: 1, 2, 3

NPC's of note:
Shawn the Police Officer (Erin's love interest.)
Bob the Necromancer (The initial antagonist.)
Leon the Author (The guy who created us. He dies in episode 3.)
Vinnie the Mobster (Becomes a friend of Charles.)
Titania (Well, the actress playing Titania in Midsummer Night's Dream. Charles' love interest.)
Harry Potter (Grocery clerk. Heh.)
Lord Voldemort (Harry's video game playing roommate. Ends up being the antagonist in Episode #3.)

We decided since we only had 4 hours to play that we'd do a 3 part mini-series pilot for the show. The story went something like this (much condensed):

Charles and Erin appear in a bookstore in Manhattan, where the open shot shows Charles throwing a police officer through the display window of the store. The police arrive and apprehend Charles while Erin gets away using her magic. Erin then runs into Shawn, a helpful police officer who is a fan of her books and recognizes her. He shows her one of the books about her and Charles and agrees to help her find the author of the book to find out what is going on. They travel to the author's home where they discover Bob the Necromancer living. He defeats Erin's magic and she is forced to find out what is going on through other means.

Meanwhile Charles is tossed in a holding cell where he gets in a brawl and meets Vinnie, a small time mafia guy. Vinnie recognizes Charles physical talents and gets him bailed out with him. Vinnie wants to use Charles to advance his criminal career. On the way to Vinnie's place Charles sees a poster of A Midsummer's Night's Dream and falls immediately in love with Titania. He bursts into the show, interupts Titania's wedding, and carries the actress away. He is rebuffed in spite of his mighty display of manliness though and thoroughly confused. Vinnie tells him that you need money in this world in order to impress women and he knows how to get some money.

That was most of the first episode and set up the major conflicts. During the course of play Charles starts a tentative relationship with Titania (who turns out to be the real Titania), helps Vinnie further his ambition in the mafia, and decides not to kill Bob the Necromancer or Leon the Author even though he doesn't like either one. Erin grows a relationship with Shawn, threatens Harry Potter with a gun destroys Voldemort's plan to totally break down the barriers between ther Real World and the Fictional World. Lot's of good stuff.

The Point:

After the weekend was over I was chatting with Lindsey about the games (She played PTA, Legends of Alyria, Roach and Capes). She really enjoyed them and had a great time. However, she found being responsible for story ideas and narration and such was hard. She said to me (paraphrased) "I think I still may like D&D better because the DM comes up with the plot and narrates most of the stuff. It's easier." You know what. I think she's right too. I've almost always been the GM in games I've played. I'm used to coming up with stuff on the fly and narration and plot and all that other stuff. Playing story games instead of traditional games tends to spread those jobs around to everyone at the table, making the games easier for me to play, since I'm used to doing all that stuff myself. But that's a set of skills I've learned over my years of playing as the GM. If a player is new to role-playing or is coming from a more traditional role-playing structure, they might not have that skill set and play is then very hard. I've seen this kind of reaction to Capes and Dogs in the Vineyard at GenCon games. The players flounder around with narration rights and exercising plot authority because they've never had to do that before and just plain don't know how. It frustrates them.

Hmmmm... not sure how or what needs to be discussed here but just wanted to share my observation. Maybe I'm off base but I don't think I am.

Landon,

I'm with you on that. Old hand role-players sometimes have an even harder time. I'd like to point out that the people I've introduced to role-playing with Story Games have been folks who haven't developed the skill set for improvizing story-type stuff elsewhere. If you're a writer, improv actor, or some such thing then you might find throwing out improv narration quite easy. Also, none of the people I've introduced have found it impossible or didn't have fun. It just forced them to stretch themselves to use skills they hadn't ever had to use before.

Sydney, over on The Forge, made an interesting observation in that certain games help out with the narration by giving lots of cues and fiddly bits that tell the player what kinds of things to narrate. Traits and such on the character sheet that you are using in the roll can hint on things to add to the narration. Other games are pretty non-specific and just say, "Go narrate a success!" The completely blank slate is probably harder on a newb than the game with a little guidance in there to help out.

~Andrew

Oh yeah. That's what we did for the most part, Matt. Sitting there in complete silence would be complete suckitude. Kibbitizing helps out a lot. I think that's why Lindsey really liked PTA even though it was hard. She had some support going on there. I will note that she got more an more comfortable with this kind of thing as the weekend progressed.

~Andrew

Posted By: lachekDM exclaimed with exasperation, "Why aren't you guys just stating that you find the entrance to the Secret Garden?!?"
I blame years and years of self-policing strict IC and OOC separation on WoD MUSHes.

*shudder* I resemble that remark. I cringe every time I think about all those ICA=ICC* discussions and IC vs OOC* arguments.




*For those unfamiliar with MUSHes.

IC = In Character
ICA = In Character Actions
ICC = In Character Consequences
OOC = Out of Character

Posted By: GaerikSydney, over on The Forge, made an interesting observation in that certain games help out with the narration by giving lots of cues and fiddly bits that tell the player what kinds of things to narrate.

Hey dude, do you have a link to that? Just wanted a peek.

Also, I totally agree with you. It is hard stuff to come up with all sorts of new stuff on the fly, as well as keep firmly in mind things like "I want to be agressive with my character, and yet not shit on others", "I want to contribute to others' fun without hogging the limelight", "I want to roleplay out cool characters but not fall into the 'my guy' trap" etc.

Something I noticed: Back in 1993, 95, 96 I went to GenCon and had a moderate blast. Great highs, severe lows, lots of Mediocres. I had all this crazy energy, too. I could actually play in games from 8AM to 12 Midnight in 4-hour blocks all day, and still get back to the hotel/rest place and shower and be ready for more the next day. Sure, I'd eventually run out of energy but I could for the most part keep up.

Cut to 2004, 2005, where I go to GenCon and play up a storm... and I ended up getting much more tired than I used to. I need naps and shit. What the fuck?

Sure, some of it is age, definitely. I also figure that I was totally in shape and a vegetarian back then, which totally helped too. But even at housecons and the like, playing various games for hours on end, I get abnormally (IMO) tired.

I was thinking about it for a while, and remembered that back in 95, 96 I had this one time where I basically had to retreat and take a nap.

The things that those games had in common: Lots of player input. Lots of solid, real playing of roles. Not just the "roleplay encounter in the tavern and weapon shop, then hit the trail and pull out the battlemat", but actual in your face conflict, fast thinking, engaging play. One of those games was an AD&D game in a faux-Scotland where all the players were on their feet most of the game, the other one was a rip-roaring awesome session of Castle Falkenstein. In both games, afterwards, I just suddenly felt tired, needed a break.

Then I contrasted that to a lot of the other play I was doing at the cons. Lots of RPGA events. Games using systems from Shadowrun, Earthdawn, to AD&D or whatever, where the Actual Roleplaying, that is the Playing of Roles, was minimal. About 30-60 minutes of the con. The rest was rolling, skills, manuvering, etc.

Two thoughts on that matter:

Perhaps it is the interplay of skill-rolling, combat, and taking a backseat for a few minutes at a time (when it's not your turn in combat), interspersed with that Real Playing of Roles, was enough variance to keep my mind engaged in Different ways (rather than the Same Way over and over), which led to me being not as tired as doing the same thing over and over.

Perhaps it was the fact that there was a lot more to concentrate on, no "downtime", and constantly keeping that "roleplaying in-character mask" on, that made me so tired in those events.

Now, at conventions, I pretty much count on playing hard in the AM and afternoon, taking a 1-2 hour nap, then waking up and gaming hard in the evening.

I'm doing the kind of gaming I love, and I've become really good at it, but fuck it's tiring.

-Andy