Matt Wilson (1)

http://www.rpg.net/reviews/archive/10/10903.phtml

RPG.NET REVIEW OF PRIMETIME ADVENTURES

Primetime Adventures is an innovative, rules-light system for creating your own TV series through roleplaying. While it’s not for every roleplayer, the clever mechanics and inspirational material will thrill most story-centered players and have something to offer to almost everyone.

What it is
Primetime Adventures calls itself “a game of television melodrama.” Although it differs in some key ways from conventional roleplaying games, it still comfortably fits within that framework, providing rules and guidelines for creating imaginary television series in which all the players but one take on the rolls of “protagonists” (PCs) and the other player acts as the “producer” (GM).

Physically, PTA is a perfectbound 76-page book measuring approximately 5½” x 8½”, with a color cover and B&W interior. It’s a small book, but offered for the relatively small price of $18 including US shipping. It’s done by Matt Wilson of Dog-Eared Designs.

What it is not and who will hate it
Hardcore gamers will not find much here to appeal to their interests. Although PTA is in many ways a game system, it is far too simple to appeal to people who like min-maxing and figuring out complex strategies based on obscure modifiers in the combat chapter of their favorite game. There is no combat chapter in PTA. There are no to-hit modifiers or really modifiers of any kind in the traditional sense. If you’re looking for a complex, realistic set of rules to simulate reality of any sort, look elsewhere. All PTA tries to simulate is how TV shows work.

PTA isn’t a game about acquiring power or possessions, either. There is no method of character “advancement,” although useful instructions are provided for how characters might change over time. If you like taking a character armed with a rusty dagger and a wooden shield and gradually (or quickly) improving your weapons, armor, and skills, play some other game.

Roleplayers who are committed to freeform or diceless approaches may not love PTA either, although they can find material here that’s useful. The general discussions of how to create a series, episodes, scenes, and seasons could be applied to other kinds of roleplaying. Whether there’s enough of that to make it worth the purchase price, I’m not sure. The advice given is useful stuff, but it won’t seem completely new to anyone familiar with how fiction in any medium is structured.

Who will love it and why
I love this game. I think the last time I was this excited about a new game was when I discovered Everway. That probably says a lot about me, but it also says at least a little about PTA. While PTA doesn’t have production values as high as Everway, it also offers a simple, innovative system that can really help players and GMs to tell interesting stories. And really, PTA does better than Everway at this, and at a much lower price point.

Primetime Adventures works because it is designed to simulate good television. If that’s what you want your roleplaying sessions to do, PTA will work better than anything else on the market, because it actually measures what TV measures. The primary statistic (you could say the only statistic) for a protagonist is “screen presence,” which changes from episode to episode and determines your base chance of success in any conflict. So in your “spotlight episode,” everything is going to center around you, and you’re going to be more successful in conflicts than everybody else. The next week, when your screen presence drops to 1 (the lowest), you’ll be a bit player, mostly supporting the other stars. So PTA actually includes a mechanic that guarantees balance between the different protagonists, not by trying to guarantee that they are at the same “power level” (always a tricky proposition, as those of us who’ve seen GURPS or HERO games collapse when someone manages to make an unbalanced character within the rules know) but by allocating how important they are to each episode.

Characters are further defined by five traits, divided in half (two and three or three and two) between “edges” (knowledge, abilities, or history, like “legendary swordsman” or “single mom”) and “connections” (key supporting characters). These traits can help with success rolls, but again, their use is limited by your screen presence. In your spotlight episode, you can use your traits a lot, but you’ll use them less in other episodes. A protagonist can optionally also have a nemesis (somebody out to make your life miserable) and a personal set. It tells you something about the philosophy of this game that there is no advantage (in game terms) to taking a nemesis: it creates additional story opportunities for you, which is its own reward as far as PTA is concerned. Having a personal set doesn’t immediately reward you either, although you get a fairly small in-game reward if you create a scene in your personal set.

Probably the most important part of each character is the protagonist’s “issue.” This is your internal conflict that tells us who you are and what you’re going through, the problem you’ll face head-on during your spotlight episode. Again, this reflects how PTA works: it’s very character-driven, and expects the players to enjoy focusing on a protagonist’s internal struggles even in the middle of an episode about foiling a diabolical plan or killing a vampire.

If you’re starting to get excited about this game, then you will love it, because I still have a lot of good stuff to describe. The mechanics of the game are very simple, so I’ll just give an outline of them to encourage you to buy it for yourself to see the details. In each scene, the players are encouraged to figure out what’s the central conflict. This concept is perhaps not explained quite thoroughly enough in the rulebook, but online support, especially the discussion forum at the Forge, makes up for this problem. The conflict is defined in terms of what the protagonist(s) want and what’s at stake. Then the producer decides how much budget to spend on dice to roll, and the protagonists involved each roll a number of dice based on screen presence plus appropriate traits. Protagonists can also add bonus dice called “fan mail,” which is awarded by the other players (not the producer) for contributing cool stuff to the game. Dice are rolled, with odd results counting as successes and even results as failures. Most successes determines who wins, and the highest single die (success or failure) dictating who gets to control narration for the rest of the scene. That’s right: the protagonist involved, or in some cases a player who’s not even present, may end up narrating the outcome. And it’s pretty much one die roll per scene, not one per attack or per action. Again, strict traditionalist roleplayers won’t like this innovations, but players who are looking for an emphasis on story with some minimal mechanic to add randomness will enjoy it.

This ties in to my personal favorite feature of the game: it takes the burden off the producer (GM) in a big way. As I just explained, other players will end up taking over (or having final say in) narration after conflicts. Also, the players all take turns calling for the next scene. The producer takes turns too, but usually when I GM, it’s up to me to announce every new scene. With this structure, players take turns saying, for example, “I want a character development scene with Ashe and Violet at the watchtower” or “The next scene will advance the plot. It’s everybody searching the graveyard for clues.” And at the end of the session, each participant contributes to the “preview” of next episode by sharing one item that will be part of the next show. This means the GM walks out with a bunch of ideas s/he knows the players are interested in!

These simple mechanics and guidelines also make this a great “outsider” roleplaying game, the kind of tool gamers can use to invite girlfriends and others in our lives who don’t do roleplaying to try it out. Everyone can understand “we’re going to make up an imaginary TV show, and you’re going to be one of the stars,” and since the game terms are mostly TV terms, the jargon level is low.

Flaws you will forgive
By this point you probably have a good idea whether this is a game you would like. If it sounds like your kind of thing, you should order it now. But you will encounter a few small problems that I should warn you about.

First, as I said, it is a small object. Depending on your personal budget and the other kinds of things you buy, that may make $18 seem like a lot to pay. You can offset this by reminding yourself that you are supporting an indie game designer, and you really are getting something unique.

The artwork is solid, especially for an independent product, but probably too much of it is cartoony / clip-art-y. Still, the book is well laid out, easy to read, and just looks professional.

A small number of typos are present, but none prevent understanding, and there are fewer than in many first editions even from big companies. More examples of the core game mechanic (conflict rolls) would help, but the designer says he intends to post those on the website soon.

Probably the biggest flaw is that the game has an odd kind of split between what it is and what it seems to think it is. Most of the examples in the game emphasize adventure-with-character-development shows like Alias, Farscape, or Firefly, and the game explicitly says that it is concerned with allowing players to create that kind of show. (This is probably what the designer means by “television melodrama,” which to me means something more derogatory.) But there is nothing in the game that prevents it from being used for any kind of show that is concerned with character development. The game acknowledges this possibility somewhat, including Gilmore Girls, Six Feet Under, and Sports Night on its list of “model shows” (along with Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Firefly, etc.), but most of its examples imply that you’re “supposed to” create high-adventure, fanboy kinds of shows. More balance in the examples would do a better job of highlighting the flexibility of the system.

Actually, this is the first game system I’ve ever seen that can handle Gilmore Girls or Scrubs as well as it can handle Stargate. I don’t own Now Playing, the game that uses FUDGE to provide “roleplaying in every TV genre,” but I can’t imagine it does every genre as well as PTA. I think FUDGE is great, but what attributes would you use for a show like Gilmore Girls? Wit? Quirkiness? But with PTA, I can put together a character sheet for Lorelei Gilmore in seconds: Edges—-Single mom, entrepreneur, pop culture maniac; Connections—-(assuming Rory counts as another protagonist and not a connection) Suki, Luke; Nemesis-—her parents. Decide on an appropriate Issue for where she is in the series, and we’re good to go. A conflict roll will decide whether Lorelei can get out of a social obligation as well as it can decide whether Buffy kills the demon before it can devour the innocent victim.

Fade to black
If you still need more convincing, do what convinced me: go to the Dog-Eared Designs website, and follow its links (currently under Games—-Learn More) to online descriptions of really cool shows people have created using Primetime Adventures. You, too will find yourself saying, “I would watch this show!” Eighteen dollars and a few days for delivery later, you can be making your own show that everybody will want to see.

I’ve assigned this game a 3 is style, but taking into account that it is done independently and at (relatively) low cost, some might give it a 4. The 5 on substance reflects the excellent quality of the design. Obviously the book is brief, but it truly gives you everything you need to play.… (more)