This Was Over Before … Before It Ever Began
By Mick Bradley on Jan 23, 2010 in Mick's Journal, Play Reports
[ crossposted from The Harping Monkey ]
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… starring Rich Rogers, Chuck Hedden, Arnold Cassell, and Mick Bradley.
I’m writing about our recent pitch session for a new rpg series that the Canoneers planned to play using Primetime Adventures.
Ah, Primetime Adventures, affectionately known as PTA. ‘A game of television drama’, it says on the cover. I find that to be joyfully true, and thus PTA has become a fun and rather frequent part of my rpg experience over the past few years. Practically any type of premise, any type of fiction, is possible with this game, as long as it can be framed within the general boundaries of a TV series. You could play a high-school monster hunters series, like Buffy the Vampire Slayer. You could play a premise like The Office, but make the characters an office full of spies![1] You can play super heroes, sci-fi soldiers, Medieval diplomats, pulp adventurers, school-age emo kids, or an emulation of The Beverly Hillbillies if you want. You could do a show about a time-traveling William Shakespeare and Abraham Lincoln zooming across the heartland of America in a stolen ‘67 Mustang with a goth-chick waitress who’s on the run from the Irish mob in Chicago.[2] In fact you could even play a series about a group of Dark-Age adventurers who go around exploring dungeons, killing whatever monsters they find and stealing all their stuff. As long as it can be framed episodically and the in-play focus is on the characters and their issues, relationships, and QUESTIONS, anything is possible.
With PTA, setting all of these dials is up to everyone in the group, hammered out and determined collaboratively via a pitch session that is supposed to take place before the actual play of the ‘episodes’.
And that, my friends, is both PTA’s shimmering beauty and its potential spiked-pit death trap. In my experience, PTA works magnificently when a proactive, trusting, collaborative group of people gets together to pitch a premise that everyone buys into with gusto. But there’s the rub – everybody has to buy in, and the resulting premise should be fairly clear to everyone. If anyone doesn’t buy in, or has a different notion of what the premise actually is … then once play starts, things often seem to go wonky.
This isn’t just a danger with PTA, to be clear. It happens with other games where collaborative premise creation and/or shared narrative are the norms. Something along these lines seemed to happen in our Lady Blackbird game, too – in my opinion, anyway. And I’ll admit that I’ve heard this sort of complication being put forth as a reason to stick with more conventional “the GM brings most of the premise and commands the narrative” game styles. I get that, and if that’s good for you I’m great with it. For me, even with all the potential pitfalls and in spite of whatever problems I’m bringing up in this post, I remain committed to this type of play because when it works it is utterly wonderful and it works for me with more consistency than any of the alternatives I’ve tried.
So it is of value to me to write about it and try to unpack it a bit when things do go wonky. And the other night, our pitch session went wonky – which is preferable to a game going wonky after four or five sessions of play, but still, even in pitch, it can be frustrating.
First off, we play over Skype. There are inherent pros and cons to that, and I’ll point you to Daniel Perez’ well-written post about this topic for a good rundown of them. But in the end, the bottom line is that I want to play these types of games with this group of guys – and the only way it can work is through the Internet. So, Skype.
But yes, the lack of face-to-face contact complicates a pitch session. Remember, the essential elements (in my opinion) are mutual trust, buy-in and enthusiasm. Not seeing the faces and body language of everyone else can really screw with one’s ability to connect along those pathways. Knowing the people involved, knowing how they think, how they like to play, how you can ask questions in order to get them to clarify something without making them feel stepped on – all this helps mitigate the problem.
But if you don’t know each other well, or don’t have a good understanding of how someone thinks or how they like to play – it can kill the momentum before it even gets going. This can be further complicated when folks involved tends to be really passive and quiet on the Skype call, so you get no hint of what might be going on in their heads.
Unfortunately, that’s pretty much what we had the other night in spades. I for one could not get a read on whether other guys were digging any of the ideas that were being thrown out, or whether an idea was being presented seriously or just as a joke. I’m pretty sure sometimes the other guys were unsure of me, too. So we spent most of the night tossing stuff around, spitballing, and not grabbing onto anything.
Now comes the tricky part. I will probably come off like an asshat for singling someone out, but hopefully you’ll read this with grace and understand that I’m not placing blame, I’m simply saying ‘this is where it became most wonky for me’:
I don’t know Arnold very well. I have very little grasp of what Arnold sockets into in play, we have very little experience with which to be able to fill in unspoken gaps or comprehend each others’ shorthand. I know Chuck really well, and I feel like I almost always know where he’s coming from and/or where he’s going, or I know how to achieve clarity with him if I am unsure. I pretty much have the same thing with Rich. But Arnold remains an x-factor. And he is one of the quietest most passive guys I’ve encountered on a Skype call. So getting a read off of him is challenging. Again, this is an issue between us, NOT me saying anything is Arnold’s fault. He doesn’t have that grasp of me yet, either.
From my perspective, it felt like the night was full of a lot of spitballing that didn’t specifically go anywhere, but collectively, it began to add up to a roadmap of what kinds of issues we were eager to explore. Near the end of the night, we started down a path that – from my perspective – was really cooking for Chuck and Rich and I. It took a long time, lots of goofy and wonky ideas went by the wayside, and we also had lots of frustration with trying to get networked together with our online tabletop, MapTool. That is not the point of this, though, except in the sense that it was a contributor to the stink of FAIL that had crept over our efforts.
But in the end, we had a solid premise that 75% of us seemed clearly sold on. It contained aspects of ideas that all four of us had contributed, and it was different enough but still approachable enough to be fun.
The premise, FWIW, is this: In the late 1800’s, we would play members of a clan of Irish Travelers from the Eastern U.S. who go West in pursuit of an older member of the clan who broke away and was now going about the Old West doing some really bad things to various people in various towns – which has resulted in a curse being placed upon our clan. We would be a group of itinerant mummers/performers/actors (like the characters Billy Zane and Dana Delaney played in Tombstone) who would come into a town and perform but also seek out information about our wayward clan member – and even though we’re con artists and grifters, we end up using our shady skills to help people, ultimately in a quest to undo the damage our family member did and thus undo the curse.
So, like Leverage meets The Riches in the Old West. Rather unique, I think, but entirely plausible in terms of history and playability.
Okay, it had flaws, it was not much more than a draft, but it contained elements of the types of issues that we’d been tickling at all night, packaged in a genre and premise that Chuck and I were pretty excited about and Rich seemed to be bought into as well.
But Arnold felt out of the circle. He gave his assent, I recall, but – at least filtered through all the issues I’ve enumerated above – it was a hesitant assent.
Also, possibly, I’m not sure we had Rich as much as I thought we did. I’ll let Rich speak to that rather than doing further guessing.
We ended the evening agreeing to play with that premise – we would start thinking characters and then quickly pull those together at the beginning of the next session, then start the show. That’s where we left it when we finished the call.
The next day, though, as Rich and I traded some emails, Rich presented some good reasons why he wasn’t really sold on anything we’d pitched, including the Old West grifters thing, and in fact he was thinking maybe we should drop the PTA idea and play a different game altogether. I saw his point, and I was also pretty uncertain about whether Arnold was really plugged in, so I ended up agreeing with Rich even though I did – and still do – like the basic premise and I actually hope we take it up again sometime.
So that’s basically where we are. I’m not entirely sure what to make of all this, even after spending a good deal of my afternoon hacking away at writing it down.
I think we need to be intentional about coming up with some ways to communicate with one another more effectively in spite of Skype and in spite of the fact that not all of us know one another very well or understand one anothers’ styles/sockets yet. I think we need to do some sort of trust excercises like we used to do back in my theatre days. I feel fairly confident we can bridge these gaps – and it’s certainly worth it. So I’m hopeful.
Any thoughts or ideas, dear readers?
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[1] Thanks to Danielle Lewon for sharing this notion – and several other good ones – via Facebook.
[2] This was predominantly my idea and I HONESTLY like it – so sue me. The guys apparently thought I was joking or crazy. But seriously – if you’re out there thinking Shakespeare, Lincoln, and a goth-chick in a ‘67 Mustang would be a cool PTA show, let me know because I’m game if we can make it work schedule-wise and tech-wise.
Hey Mick! Them’s a lot of words. I didn’t know you had so much to say on the subject.
No need to shield me so much, I agree with everything you were saying. I’m not a TV guy, but I thought we could maybe throw an idea together anyhow cause you guys are fun to play with. My inability to chat about shows didn’t help the night at all.
I didn’t know Rich was thinking of canning it? That makes me kinda sad. I wasn’t really sure if I had found a place in the game, but I was working some ideas.
And hey, if you stay at GenCon this year, maybe we can hang out more. Eh? I’m already submitted and committed for 5 sessions. Woot!
Arnold | Jan 23, 2010 | Reply
@Arnold – sorry I didn’t ping you before. It was something that came up near the end of an email conversation with Mick. I sent him the following:
“OK, so here’s the other thing.
Brace yourself…
I think I‘d rather run something else over a PTA game. In fact, I have grown to loathe pitch sessions over Skype. With the MapTools trouble, maybe we should reconsider? There are a bunch of other games that we could run with an already established set-up and easy-to-use dice mechanics that would avoid the needs for MapTools. You can talk me down, but I was really disheartened last night. With Arnold’s non-TV-ness and the flat pitches we came up with, I just gave up early and hoped you guys would pull through.”
Mick then posted on Facebook that we were thinking about switching games and someone prompted him to unpack it, which I assume led to this blog post. I apologize for not keeping you in the loop, Arnold. I just now settled on what I want to suggest as a replacement.
Orklord | Jan 23, 2010 | Reply
I had fun in our pitch session. and am very sad not to play PTA, and I think our last idea was GOLD! I would watch that show.
Chuck Hedden | Jan 23, 2010 | Reply
Mick needs to direct comments to one place or the other when he crossposts.
I thought this was a brilliant post because it was hard to write and in the end dealt with some weighty stuff about playing online and issues of trust. I want to chew on it a bit more and then reply cause there’s a lot of meat here to bite off and talk about at length.
Daniel M. Perez | Jan 25, 2010 | Reply
Oh, and hey Arnold, now I finally see what you look like!
Daniel M. Perez | Jan 25, 2010 | Reply
Daniel,
good point re: comments and crossposting. I’m completely at a loss about that because the juicier roleplaying stuff deserves to be talked about here, but I also want to keep a record of it in my own journal. I realize that writing something in one of the posts saying “If you’d like to comment, please go over to this thread” is pretty much standard – but something about that feels smarmy to me. Of course, just leaving it willy-nilly where comments exist in both places without any connection is also very unsatisfactory.
Ah, well.
Mick Bradley | Jan 25, 2010 | Reply
Ok, you just said a lot but didn’t say anything.
I understand the whole crosspost thing, but then we (those engaged in the conversation) need to be a bit more proactive about keeping both threads linked if need be.
Daniel M. Perez | Jan 25, 2010 | Reply
Anything that involves playing with Rich and/or Arnold and anything that may not involve this group but still might be useful to unpack for our audience should be posted and discussed here on CP.
Also, 95% of the comments that I get on rpg-related stuff over at the Harping Monkey come from Daniel and JJ.
Conclusion: I will shut off comments on this topic over on HM, ask JJ to re-comment over here on CP, and in the future do the same for any relevant posts.
Now I believe I have said something.
P.S. In fact, JJ’s questions may have provided us an excellent structure for discussing this in our main event segment.
Mick Bradley | Jan 25, 2010 | Reply
Sometimes, your lack of the internet version of context (emoticons) makes me wonder if I piss you off regularly by pushing your buttons.
Do we continue riffing off the Will & Abe idea here or there?
Daniel M. Perez | Jan 25, 2010 | Reply
I tossed you and Chuck a comment saying I’ll create a new place at HM to discuss the Will & Abe pitch.
I’ll probably write a new post sharing the idea we’re developing, and then we can continue developing it via comments.
As for pissing me off – no. When I’m in my passive non-confident turtle headspace, stuff like that from you, Chuck, Judd, or Rich usually motivates me and gets me to try harder. When I’m in my creative confident monkey headspace (as I have been most of the time lately) I say ‘yeah, whatevs, he loves me’ and I appreciate having friends who care enough to poke. But in neither case do I get pissed.
As for providing context with emoticons – HAVE YOU MET ME?? Why the hell would I want to worry about clarifying the context?
Mick Bradley | Jan 25, 2010 | Reply
I have some questions, but let me preface these by saying: I have read PTA as well as Daniel’s post on Skype play, but have neither played PTA nor played over Skype. PTA seems to do a little hand-waving over the creation process for pitching a new show. Given that…
What expectations did your group have when sitting down to pitch?
Were there any ‘tools’ to help the process flow?
Is PTA a game that strangers can sit down to play or is it better suited for a closely knit group of gamers?
How much say does the Producer have in the pitch and/or show selection?
Who was going to be Producer for your game?
Is it important to pick Producer first?
What ways do you think this process (pitch over Skype) can be improved for others wanting to do the same thing?
Mick, I know you sent a Tweet before you started the pitch session that you were going to go to it with an ‘open-mind’; why is that important?
Did the group talk about expectations and agendas before the pitch session? If not, do you feel that talking about expectations and agendas before the pitch session have changed anything?
Do you think an approach like Mortal Coil’s theme document would have helped direct the show creation process?
Sorry for soooooo many questions. I’m a firm believer that each of these experiences is a chance to improve personal enjoyment in play.
JJ | Jan 25, 2010 | Reply
@Mick
Sorry, I think that has to do more with my own fears of rejection than with you. Carry on.
Daniel M. Perez | Jan 25, 2010 | Reply
Here’s something else to think about:
In all my PTA experiences, a strong idea brought to the group provided the framework into which everyone bought in. The “pitch session” consisted of tuning the individual players’ dials to the station that was already playing.
There’s something to be explored about this method of setting up PTA.
Daniel M. Perez | Jan 25, 2010 | Reply
Okey dokey, thanks for bringing your comment over here, JJ! I’ll give my answers, then hopefully Arnold, Rich, Chuck, Daniel, and anyone else who wants to will also join in.
What expectations did your group have when sitting down to pitch?
For my part, I expected to be able to figure out a premise we’d all really enjoy exploring and have characters, set pieces, and initial conditions in place to start the series at the top of our next session.
Were there any ‘tools’ to help the process flow?
I think the game text does a good job with explaining process and providing examples. Also, Rich brought a pitch session primer from Lenny Balsera to the group. We never really engaged with that, though – it never got to the point where we had enough of an idea to push through Lenny’s process.
Is PTA a game that strangers can sit down to play or is it better suited for a closely knit group of gamers?
I have no doubt that PTA could be played no problemo among strangers, as long as it’s not a table full of guys like me. I, personally, could never play PTA unless there is at least one person I know and trust in the mix. But for that matter, I would be resistant to play any RPG with a total group of strangers. But PTA, in my mind, does require a special level of familiarity and trust for me.
How much say does the Producer have in the pitch and/or show selection?
I’ll let Rich and others speak to their thoughts on this – for me, in most cases, I’d say the producer has pretty much the same level of input as everyone else. I don’t know if that how the text intends it, but it is how I prefer it.
Who was going to be Producer for your game?
Rich.
Is it important to pick Producer first?
In terms of my personal preference stated above, I’d say no. I think we could do a pitch before picking a producer. But again, I’m not sure that’s the intent of the rules.
What ways do you think this process (pitch over Skype) can be improved for others wanting to do the same thing?
This is totally where we’re going to want to have a larger discussion of the matter.
Mick, I know you sent a Tweet before you started the pitch session that you were going to go to it with an ‘open-mind’; why is that important?
What I meant in that regard was that even though I was asking for idea elements, I don’t like to come to a pitch session with much of a pre-determined notion of premise. Elements, bits, vague stuff, yes. But not a formed idea. I don’t think PTA goes well if one person – or even two people – bring 80% of the premise to the table. If the final premise doesn’t contain elements that were introduced and massaged by everyone at the table, then the risk of failure in-play goes way up. Everyone has to be invested, or the thing could flop.
Did the group talk about expectations and agendas before the pitch session? If not, do you feel that talking about expectations and agendas before the pitch session have changed anything?
In a sense, I think we may have focused too much on expectations and agendas. It’s really kind of all simultaneous in my mind. But yes, I feel like we were actually somewhat hindered by trying to focus on a genre or milieu that all of us would equally enjoy. And there was a lot of “I don’t want to do anything comedic”, “I don’t like zombies or vampires”, “I don’t think anyone would watch that kind of show”, and “I don’t watch TV so I don’t know any of your references”. The fact is, I DO tend to hate vampire stories but I’d be fine doing a vampire story if the main thematic points involved characters exploring different things than the typical angst-ridden machiavellian sexy-beasts going around being angsty, sexy, and machiavellian while trying to control their inner beasts. So I think the key point is to focus on what thematic elements you’ll be exploring and with whom you’ll be exploring them, rather than trying first to find a genre or setting and then look for thematics and character.
Do you think an approach like Mortal Coil’s theme document would have helped direct the show creation process?
In many ways, the two processes ARE pretty similar, in my opinion. Yes, a group could intentionally use a Mortal Coil approach for a PTA pitch, but in general I imagine it would be no more effective – inherently – than following the PTA text’s process.
Also, one more thing that was a big factor that you didn’t ask: in the case of this particular pitch, it turns out that the fact that we tried to get ourselves connected via Maptool before the pitch – and that we were unable to make it work – put Rich in a bit of a gloomy place and thus he was a bit out of sorts. That, plus the stuff I expounded in my OP.
Mick Bradley | Jan 25, 2010 | Reply
@Mick, glad to help. A couple of quick things:
Can you post a link to Lenny’s process?
Also, does the Star Wars AP from GenCon include the pitch process or only the actual play? I’ll be honest and say that I’ve not listened to it, but it seems appropriate to get some more background on what your group has experienced.
Part of my reason for asking some of the questions I did was that, while PTA has lots of example settings, I never got a clear picture of the Pitch. I’ll have to re-read it.
JJ | Jan 25, 2010 | Reply
@JJ
The PTA Star Wars was a case of what I described above: Judd came in with a premise and we merely fine-tuned it. And yes, that part is in the recordings.
Daniel M. Perez | Jan 25, 2010 | Reply
@Daniel, thanks. Downloading now. Also found the episodes with Lenny in the archive. Been running low on ‘casts to listen to during drives to and from work, this should get me through the week.
JJ | Jan 25, 2010 | Reply
I’ll try to tackle JJ’s questions:
* What expectations did your group have when sitting down to pitch?
* Were there any ‘tools’ to help the process flow?
* Is PTA a game that strangers can sit down to play or is it better suited for a closely knit group of gamers?
It can work for both. This is the game where I first met Daniel Perez, really didn’t know him before we played at GenCon. I’ve also enjoyed PTA with familiar gamers and had a great time.
* How much say does the Producer have in the pitch and/or show selection?
According to the book, the Producer acts as a guide, pushing down ideas that don’t seem to sparkle with the group and highlighting and helping to flesh out those that spark some interest.
* Who was going to be Producer for your game?
Me
* Is it important to pick Producer first?
I think so. The Producer has a hard job. They have to guide without dictating, encourage without rolling over.
* What ways do you think this process (pitch over Skype) can be improved for others wanting to do the same thing?
Heck if I know. This is my fourth painful Skype pitch. I’ve honestly given up unless something changes. Not only in the text, but in me. I’m not built to be a good Producer for Pitches. I take most of the blame for these failures.
* Mick, I know you sent a Tweet before you started the pitch session that you were going to go to it with an ‘open-mind’; why is that important?
If you come into a pitch sold on a concept, you could very well push another player into a game they don’t want to play. This will lead to an uneven game and crappitude will result.
* Did the group talk about expectations and agendas before the pitch session? If not, do you feel that talking about expectations and agendas before the pitch session have changed anything?
We didn’t have a preamble, no. It was much more informal. I think some kind of talk might have helped, but I couldn’t figure out how to frame it. So I just got us going and hoped we would work it out. I know, it sounds dumb typing it, too.
* Do you think an approach like Mortal Coil’s theme document would have helped direct the show creation process?
Some kind of document would help. This is the critical flaw of PTA’s text. It relies upon the negotiation skills of a group and the feel of what makes a good show on the Producer. The best PTA game I’ve played was Star Wars PTA and Judd walked in with the pitch done, we only made PCs. I should have done this for the game, would have saved us all an hour and a half of our lives.
Sorry for being a downer, I took this pitch session pretty hard.
Orklord | Jan 26, 2010 | Reply
Rich, you seem to be taking a lot of the blame for the failure, and while I was not there, I still get the feeling you may be too hard on yourself. But you do bring up some interesting points. It seems to me that more weight _is_ on the Producer’s shoulders in the sense that they have to run it. So maybe it is more of a ’sell the producer’ situation.
The Producer’s direction of the pitch could be from a “I’m not willing to put money into this, but I know we’ll get some interest if we add Zombies to the story.” From an actor’s point of view is it then a case of motivation? “I’m not buying this guy’s story. He needs a reason to go killing zombies.”
It does seem interesting that the one game that folks talk about the most was pitched done whole-cloth by the producer (I downloaded but haven’t listen to the AP yet).
I wonder if moving from the general to the specific would help, but I remember someone (maybe Mick) saying that it might be a lot of “I’m not doing X” yet X would be fun if the right spin was put on it.
Anybody got a link to Lenny’s Pitch session primer?
JJ | Jan 26, 2010 | Reply
@JJ I do tend to take lots of blame when I run games, its the trad GM in me.
I like your phrasing of how things could work in a game.
I need to ask Lenny if he is cool with me linking it before I do so.
Orklord | Jan 27, 2010 | Reply
Here’s my best practices as a Producer during the pitch phase:
* At least once, pound the table with your fist and scream “That’s the WORST idea I’ve ever HEARD. You Writer’s Guild pencilnecks are going to be out on the street if you don’t come up with something a LOT BETTER by the time I get back.” and leave for 10 minutes.
* Every so often when someone says something like “It could be like Hill Street Blues.” or whatever, lean back thoughtfully and say, “No…no, it could be like that other show. That other show with Johnny Depp…Hill Street Blues!”
* Blithely make comments about characters and situations that show you have absolutely no clue of what’s going on and are not really listening.
* Every so often say, “We could use that idea, but why don’t you think of a GOOD one instead?”
* Conclude by saying “This is going to be the greatest show since the last show I did, ____________.” Name a show that everyone at the table has identified as hating. “The OC” is my favorite.
Also, always start with a list of things people don’t like and don’t want. Don’t discuss it, just do a list.
Jason | Mar 10, 2010 | Reply