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Primetime Adventures
The game of television drama.
paperback
First published January 1, 2004
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
March 22, 2017
Tras doce años siendo una de las más interesantes propuestas de juegos de rol indies, la tercera edición de PTA se ha superado a sí misma. Con un texto y mecánicas mucho más clarificadas, esta tercera edición presenta una estructura de juego clara y estructurada e incluye consejos y mecánicas adicionales para narrar mejor las historias. Un juegazo.
October 27, 2017
Primetime Adventures is another seminal game from the early 21st century that affected everyone into indie RPGs at that time. It was one of the games that I knew I needed to read from very early on in my study because it seems to be a touchstone for so many people. Thankfully it is still available in print from the author’s own press, Dog-Eared Designs. I have the 3rd edition, which seems to have be printed in 2015. The original game became widely available in 2004.
As with my other RPG game reviews, I am reviewing the text itself and the game at a technical level rather than as a played game. I have not been able to get the game to the table for actual play.
The text itself is beautifully presented, with a great layout and examples of play throughout. The order of play and the rules of play are succinctly and clearly presented, with charts and sidebars to further clarify. All the charts and references likely to be consulted during play itself are reprinted at the rear of the book in one easy-to-find place so that game play is not hampered by time spent searching the book. It’s a great model for how an RPG book can be organized and designed.
The game itself requires a lot of work on the front end. Like Universalis, it can tell any type of story, though Primetime Adventures is designed to present that story as a serial television show would. There is a lot of work required at the front end, though it is clear that Matt Wilson, the designer and author, has trimmed away all the fat so that the players have precisely what they need, nothing more and nothing less, to get the game rolling. Even though there is a GM of sorts, called the Producer, the players are responsible for a lot of scene framing and dramatic content. To prepare them for that role, there is a lot of detail about the characters created during character creation. Players know their character’s relationship with the other characters, their own story arc issue and the way they express themselves when they are pressed on that issue, and what sort of scene presence they will have in any given episode. This last bit of information allows the players to know whether they are framing a scene in which they are acting as a foil for that episodes “main” character or whether they are building to their own climactic episode. The GMs role is sort of like a head writer or band leader, making sure everyone is working together toward one goal. GMs play the minor characters and the NPCs standing between the protagonists and what they want.
The main resolution mechanic uses a deck of cards. The players draw a number of cards in accordance with their importance for the scene and play their hand against the GMs hand. The results of those cards yields one of four narrative options: yes and, yes but, no and, and no but. Players then work together to narrate the fallout of the scene.
The economy of the game is a set of tokens, budget tokens for the GM and audience tokens for the players. Audience tokens become fan mail when any player wants to signal to another player that they did something awesome. Fan mail can be spent to bring your character into scenes or add cards to the hands during the drawing phase. Spent in certain ways, fan mail can become budget tokens after they are spent, giving the GM more dramatic gas.
It is, not surprisingly, a tight and well-constructed game. The thing that everyone buzzes about (at least, everyone I hear talking about the game) is the fan mail mechanic, and it is a brilliant and simple technique to have the players interact with each other about the way they are playing and having that interaction become a spendable currency to influence the game.
The budget token system is reminiscent of 3:16 (though of course, Primetime Adventures came out a good 4 or 5 years before 3:16). Gregor Hutton gives pretty good guidance on how the GM can manage his alien tokens to control the pacing of the game. Wilson is a lot less explanatory, leaving it to the players to figure out their own preferred usage. It is unclear from reading the game, how much mental space the GM is going to use up trying to decide how many tokens to spend in any given scene.
I read Robin Laws’s Hillfolk long ago, and Primetime Adventures had me thinking about it a lot as it’s clear that Hillfolk either draws a lot from PtA or it stumbles into a lot of similar solutions for the same problems that faced both games. I’ll talk more about those similarities in my review of Hillfolk.
As with my other RPG game reviews, I am reviewing the text itself and the game at a technical level rather than as a played game. I have not been able to get the game to the table for actual play.
The text itself is beautifully presented, with a great layout and examples of play throughout. The order of play and the rules of play are succinctly and clearly presented, with charts and sidebars to further clarify. All the charts and references likely to be consulted during play itself are reprinted at the rear of the book in one easy-to-find place so that game play is not hampered by time spent searching the book. It’s a great model for how an RPG book can be organized and designed.
The game itself requires a lot of work on the front end. Like Universalis, it can tell any type of story, though Primetime Adventures is designed to present that story as a serial television show would. There is a lot of work required at the front end, though it is clear that Matt Wilson, the designer and author, has trimmed away all the fat so that the players have precisely what they need, nothing more and nothing less, to get the game rolling. Even though there is a GM of sorts, called the Producer, the players are responsible for a lot of scene framing and dramatic content. To prepare them for that role, there is a lot of detail about the characters created during character creation. Players know their character’s relationship with the other characters, their own story arc issue and the way they express themselves when they are pressed on that issue, and what sort of scene presence they will have in any given episode. This last bit of information allows the players to know whether they are framing a scene in which they are acting as a foil for that episodes “main” character or whether they are building to their own climactic episode. The GMs role is sort of like a head writer or band leader, making sure everyone is working together toward one goal. GMs play the minor characters and the NPCs standing between the protagonists and what they want.
The main resolution mechanic uses a deck of cards. The players draw a number of cards in accordance with their importance for the scene and play their hand against the GMs hand. The results of those cards yields one of four narrative options: yes and, yes but, no and, and no but. Players then work together to narrate the fallout of the scene.
The economy of the game is a set of tokens, budget tokens for the GM and audience tokens for the players. Audience tokens become fan mail when any player wants to signal to another player that they did something awesome. Fan mail can be spent to bring your character into scenes or add cards to the hands during the drawing phase. Spent in certain ways, fan mail can become budget tokens after they are spent, giving the GM more dramatic gas.
It is, not surprisingly, a tight and well-constructed game. The thing that everyone buzzes about (at least, everyone I hear talking about the game) is the fan mail mechanic, and it is a brilliant and simple technique to have the players interact with each other about the way they are playing and having that interaction become a spendable currency to influence the game.
The budget token system is reminiscent of 3:16 (though of course, Primetime Adventures came out a good 4 or 5 years before 3:16). Gregor Hutton gives pretty good guidance on how the GM can manage his alien tokens to control the pacing of the game. Wilson is a lot less explanatory, leaving it to the players to figure out their own preferred usage. It is unclear from reading the game, how much mental space the GM is going to use up trying to decide how many tokens to spend in any given scene.
I read Robin Laws’s Hillfolk long ago, and Primetime Adventures had me thinking about it a lot as it’s clear that Hillfolk either draws a lot from PtA or it stumbles into a lot of similar solutions for the same problems that faced both games. I’ll talk more about those similarities in my review of Hillfolk.
May 4, 2018
Very clear and precise. It is a clear improvement on the already great second edition. The structure of play is much clearer in this version of the game and the reader is thereforegiven much help with creating the kind of stories that the game strives for.
May 4, 2018
Fantastic game. Inspiring and focussed. Unfortunately, the structure of the book is a bit confusing.
February 18, 2014
Besides the game as such, it has some interesting insights into the structure of television series.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews