summercomfort (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
summercomfort) wrote2012-10-20 10:02 pm
summercomfort) wrote2012-10-20 10:02 pm
Entry tags:
PTA thoughts -- Producer vs. Player powers over Logistics
So we had our final episode of our most recent PTA game this evening -- our 1980s mecha show ended more "space opera" than "sentai team" due to various twists of fate. (The PTA cards succeeded in turning expectations and making things more interesting.)
I had some trouble getting on the same wavelength as Chris (the other player) and Jono (the Producer) in the early scenes of this show, so on the drive home, I debriefed it a bit with Jono. Some interesting things came up, mostly regarding the handling of logistics in PTA.
In PTA, Logistics often doesn't matter
A bad thing to do in PTA is to think in terms of logistics such as "What should my character do next?" because you get stuck doing boring scenes where there's no conflict. These are scenes that wouldn't show up in TV shows -- they'd just cut to the next interesting scene. What's a better question to ask is "What should we cut to, next?". But that requires all the players, not just the Producer, to think from a more Directorial stance -- framing the scene by deciding the setting, the characters involved, etc etc.
In playing PTA, however, I've encountered some different situations where switching to this "Director Stance" is challenging for me:
1) Getting too familiar with my character
By episode 5, I'm very invested in my character, and as a result, I am more prone to think in Actor Stance of what my character would do, or Author Stance of where I want my character to go. As a result, I get easily trapped in the character's mind-space and find it harder to switch to Director Stance and figure out what the next cool scene should be. I found myself stuck in these loops of "I want this to happen to my character", "But my character wouldn't do this unless he had a good in-story reason", "But do I actually have the power to give my character motivation?"
2) To be or not to be a "Tactical Genius"
When I play a character who is a tactical genius (like in the Star Wars PTA game a while back), I found it easier to enter into Director Stance and manipulate the setting and logistics because that's what my character is good at. I know that "Tactical Genius" is just a trait and should not have extra powers, but playing playing a character who would naturally think about the big picture makes it easier for me to bridge between Actor Stance and Director Stance because my character would think this way anyway.
3) Confusion about what details matter to the Producer
Tonight there was a part where I asked the Producer (Jono) where the aliens were located, how many of the aliens were mind-controlled, and where the evil mind-control aliens were. His response was that the aliens were clustered around 2 locations, 20% were mind-controlled, but the mind-control aliens are not to be found. I took that as the basic setting parameters, and then had a really frustrating time trying to figure out a subsequent scene that would be (a) what would come naturally to my character (Actor Stance), (b) interesting to my character's development (Author Stance), and (c) advance the plot in the direction that I want (Director Stance). Jono later told me that actually, he didn't really care about any of those 3 details -- in fact, he would have been happy to change that to better fit where I wanted to go and do.
I wish I'd known that!!! Or rather, I wish there was a clearer way to communicate that during the game! This tends to happen when both me and Jono are trapped in "Logistics Mode"
So maybe here are some ways to get out of Actor Logistics Mode and into Director Mode:
A) The Producer should be more explicit about what are plot-critical details vs. hand-wavy details. For example, there were times in Night Fragrance (our last PTA game where I was the Producer) where I should have said, "Stop worrying about if you have enough money, that's not plot-critical" or "What I'm interested here is whether or not you can deal with this issue, not how you fight" or "This is totally the market chase scene, but feel free to set up the market as you see fit."
B) The Player can be more explicit in framing the scene. I think instead of being passive-aggressive and waiting for the Producer to provide my character with a challenge, I need to be more proactive in saying "hey, I want a scene about this and focused around this issue. Figure it out, Producer!"
C) Discussion about the Conflict of the Scene is a good way to negotiate what details each side cares about. I'm a little wary of jumping directly to the conflict part without some role-playing first, because in our trial of PTA 3.0, where that was pretty much mandated, it lead to a lot of prescriptive scenes with too much Directing and not enough Acting. However at a moment where I as the player feels uncertain about what is manipulable in a scene ("Can I just say that the aliens are here, or does the Producer already have something in mind?"), or when the Producer isn't certain what the player wants out of the scene, and we're just talking past each other, it is actually a good place to send out Conflict-related feelers. ("Can I have a conflict where I confront the aliens?" "Do you want a conflict about finding the mind-control aliens?") Even if that doesn't end up being the real conflict of the scene, it's a good way to bring both the Player and the Producer out of Logistics Mode.
This brings me back to one of the things I like most about PTA, and one of the things that really makes or breaks the game: being able to come up with good conflicts. Sure, our mecha show ended in a much darker place than we expected, but it was still good because we picked conflicts that we really cared about. The cards forced us to explore what would happen when shit goes down. I like being invested in a conflict both as an Actor and as the Director -- being the Actor gives the conflict more emotional weight, and being the Director gives the conflict more plot-relevance, and I love that mixture of both plot and character development. One of the things that made PTA 3.0 not so fun is that the conflict had to be pre-determined before a scene starts, which made it to Directorial and not sufficiently Actor-based -- I couldn't really get into my character. But playing it loose with the rules like we do (it often feels more like a free-form brainstorming session when we play), make it easier to fall into unhelpful Actor-driven Logistics Traps. So for more successful PTA games in future, whether I'm a Player or a Producer, I need to be able to detect these traps and then get out of them by using strategies to switch back into a more Directorial stance.
I had some trouble getting on the same wavelength as Chris (the other player) and Jono (the Producer) in the early scenes of this show, so on the drive home, I debriefed it a bit with Jono. Some interesting things came up, mostly regarding the handling of logistics in PTA.
In PTA, Logistics often doesn't matter
A bad thing to do in PTA is to think in terms of logistics such as "What should my character do next?" because you get stuck doing boring scenes where there's no conflict. These are scenes that wouldn't show up in TV shows -- they'd just cut to the next interesting scene. What's a better question to ask is "What should we cut to, next?". But that requires all the players, not just the Producer, to think from a more Directorial stance -- framing the scene by deciding the setting, the characters involved, etc etc.
In playing PTA, however, I've encountered some different situations where switching to this "Director Stance" is challenging for me:
1) Getting too familiar with my character
By episode 5, I'm very invested in my character, and as a result, I am more prone to think in Actor Stance of what my character would do, or Author Stance of where I want my character to go. As a result, I get easily trapped in the character's mind-space and find it harder to switch to Director Stance and figure out what the next cool scene should be. I found myself stuck in these loops of "I want this to happen to my character", "But my character wouldn't do this unless he had a good in-story reason", "But do I actually have the power to give my character motivation?"
2) To be or not to be a "Tactical Genius"
When I play a character who is a tactical genius (like in the Star Wars PTA game a while back), I found it easier to enter into Director Stance and manipulate the setting and logistics because that's what my character is good at. I know that "Tactical Genius" is just a trait and should not have extra powers, but playing playing a character who would naturally think about the big picture makes it easier for me to bridge between Actor Stance and Director Stance because my character would think this way anyway.
3) Confusion about what details matter to the Producer
Tonight there was a part where I asked the Producer (Jono) where the aliens were located, how many of the aliens were mind-controlled, and where the evil mind-control aliens were. His response was that the aliens were clustered around 2 locations, 20% were mind-controlled, but the mind-control aliens are not to be found. I took that as the basic setting parameters, and then had a really frustrating time trying to figure out a subsequent scene that would be (a) what would come naturally to my character (Actor Stance), (b) interesting to my character's development (Author Stance), and (c) advance the plot in the direction that I want (Director Stance). Jono later told me that actually, he didn't really care about any of those 3 details -- in fact, he would have been happy to change that to better fit where I wanted to go and do.
I wish I'd known that!!! Or rather, I wish there was a clearer way to communicate that during the game! This tends to happen when both me and Jono are trapped in "Logistics Mode"
So maybe here are some ways to get out of Actor Logistics Mode and into Director Mode:
A) The Producer should be more explicit about what are plot-critical details vs. hand-wavy details. For example, there were times in Night Fragrance (our last PTA game where I was the Producer) where I should have said, "Stop worrying about if you have enough money, that's not plot-critical" or "What I'm interested here is whether or not you can deal with this issue, not how you fight" or "This is totally the market chase scene, but feel free to set up the market as you see fit."
B) The Player can be more explicit in framing the scene. I think instead of being passive-aggressive and waiting for the Producer to provide my character with a challenge, I need to be more proactive in saying "hey, I want a scene about this and focused around this issue. Figure it out, Producer!"
C) Discussion about the Conflict of the Scene is a good way to negotiate what details each side cares about. I'm a little wary of jumping directly to the conflict part without some role-playing first, because in our trial of PTA 3.0, where that was pretty much mandated, it lead to a lot of prescriptive scenes with too much Directing and not enough Acting. However at a moment where I as the player feels uncertain about what is manipulable in a scene ("Can I just say that the aliens are here, or does the Producer already have something in mind?"), or when the Producer isn't certain what the player wants out of the scene, and we're just talking past each other, it is actually a good place to send out Conflict-related feelers. ("Can I have a conflict where I confront the aliens?" "Do you want a conflict about finding the mind-control aliens?") Even if that doesn't end up being the real conflict of the scene, it's a good way to bring both the Player and the Producer out of Logistics Mode.
This brings me back to one of the things I like most about PTA, and one of the things that really makes or breaks the game: being able to come up with good conflicts. Sure, our mecha show ended in a much darker place than we expected, but it was still good because we picked conflicts that we really cared about. The cards forced us to explore what would happen when shit goes down. I like being invested in a conflict both as an Actor and as the Director -- being the Actor gives the conflict more emotional weight, and being the Director gives the conflict more plot-relevance, and I love that mixture of both plot and character development. One of the things that made PTA 3.0 not so fun is that the conflict had to be pre-determined before a scene starts, which made it to Directorial and not sufficiently Actor-based -- I couldn't really get into my character. But playing it loose with the rules like we do (it often feels more like a free-form brainstorming session when we play), make it easier to fall into unhelpful Actor-driven Logistics Traps. So for more successful PTA games in future, whether I'm a Player or a Producer, I need to be able to detect these traps and then get out of them by using strategies to switch back into a more Directorial stance.