How game play works

EPISODE STRUCTURE

Each episode pf Star Trek: Entanglement will consist of four acts. As with most TV shows, our episodes will follow this basic structure:

Act 1. Introduce the Problem
Act 2. Complications & Contrasts / B story
Act 3. Second Complication / Epiphany
Act 4. Resolve the Problem / Denouement

Each act consists of one scene per player. In ST:Entanglement, we have five players, so each act will have five scenes.

LEAD-INS AND PREVIOUSLY ONS

For the pilot, I as the producer will create a lead-in narrative that draws from all the decisions we've made during show and protagonist creation to set up the starting situation.

For subsequent episodes, we'll begin with a "previously on" sequence, during which we go around the "table" and let each player recap the highlights of what their protagonist did in the previous episode.

TEASERS

This is the first scene of every episode. As the producer, I will decide whether to make the teaser an expository narrative to set up the opening situation, or play it out as a regular scene. If it's the latter, I will decide what the scene is about and which characters are involved.

So for example, I might decide that I want the teaser to be a regular scene between Capt. McCurry, Cdr. Little, the commander of Gaia Station, and Adm. Hamilton. I'd use this scene to orient the audience to the setting (Gaia Station and the Hodgkin) and illuminate Hamilton's feelings toward McCurry, who was not the candidate for captain he wanted.

SCENES

In gaming terminology, the scenes of PTA are where players take their turns. On their turn, each player will decide where their scene takes place and what characters will be in it. If other players have fan mail, they can spend it to join a scene if their protagonist wasn't included.

Character Scene or Plot Scene?

Here's how the book defines these scene categories:
Even the book admits that the line between these two types of scenes can be fuzzy, but the type of scene impacts the question the scene is asking, so players will need to decide on a type when they set up their scenes.

The Scene Question

Every scene asks a question, and as we play it out the scene, we will answer it.

Character scenes ask some form of Will the protagonist resist their impulse?

Plot scenes ask Will the protagonist get what they want?

My job as producer is to make sure your protagonist is challenged during the scene. So in character scenes, I'll be trying to push your protagonists' issue buttons to try and trigger their impulse. In plot scenes, I'll be throwing obstacles in the way to try to prevent your protagonist from getting what they want.

Steps to Scene-Building

1. Player chooses the Scene Ingredients (location, characters involved, what's going on during the scene)
2. Set the scene in motion (begin to roleplay)
3. Build to a crisis (characters have a conflict or situation creates a crisis point)
4. Deal the cards (protagonists vs. producer)
5. Resolve the scene (roleplay the result of the card tabulation)

Conflict Resolution

When I judge that we've reached a crisis point in the scene, it's time for us to use the PTA mechanism for resolving conflict: dealing the cards. This is where we answer the scene question - first we deal the cards, then we tabulate the results, and finally, we roleplay the result.

If your protagonist is in the scene, you will get to draw at least one card.

If your protagonist is not in the scene, you can spend fan mail to draw a card if you would like to try to influence the outcome of the scene. For example, the scene is between Pleiades (the first officer) and the NPC Zuto Hironaka, who is interested in her romantically and trying to get her to agree to meeting him for drinks at the bar on Gaia. Pleiades' impulse is to reject personal connections with her crewmates due to fear of disappointing them. If you think it would be more interesting for her to push Zuto away (succumb to her impulse), you might spend a fan mail to get a card to add to the producer's hand. If you'd like to see her actually take a chance and accept Zuto's invitation, you could apply your card to Pleiades' hand.

In the next post, we'll look at conflict resolution in greater detail.

WHEN DOES CONFLICT BEGIN?

My research on PTA indicates that, in most games, producers wait anywhere from a little to a lot too long to initiate the card dealing. Basically, as soon as there's any kind of conflict of interest with a protagonist - particularly, the protagonist who owns the scene - we're dealing the cards. So that might be anything from a character trying to convince someone to go on a date with them to who wins a firefight between two starships.

It's your job as the player calling the scene to decide who's in the scene, where it's happening, and what's going on. You'll be controlling your own character in the scene, and any protagonists you include will control theirs. I'll control the NPCs. It's my job as producer to make sure that your character is pressured in your scenes. So if your impulse is that you push people away, expect me to have NPCs trying to get close to you, establish friendships, trying to initiate bonding experiences. If your impulse is that you tend to discard good sense if you think you have a chance to get some payback, expect me to put you in a situation where you have to choose between the welfare of your ship and the chance to take revenge.

It is at the moment where you have to make those choices that we will deal the cards.

HOW MANY CARDS DO I GET?

Your card allotment depends on several things.

1) Your screen presence for the episode determines the base number of cards you get. For the pilot episode, you'll all have a SP of 2, so you'll get two cards automatically in your conflict draws.

2) You can apply your traits for one extra card per trait, - if they apply to the situation. The group will weigh in if your application of the trait seems iffy, and the producer will make the final decision. Bear in mind that you can only use a trait once per episode per point of screen presence. So if your SP is 1 for the episode and you decide that you want to apply your connection or edge in a given scene, you can't use that connection or edge to draw an extra card in another scene later in the episode.

3) You can also spend fan mail - one fan mail for one additional card.

HOW MANY CARDS DOES THE PRODUCER GET?

The producer gets one card initially. If I want to spend budget, I can get more - one additional card for each point of budget I spend. Whether I spend budget will depend a lot on the stakes of the outcome of the scene. If it's your spotlight episode and it's your scene, I might decide that this is a high-stakes conflict and spend four or five budget on this conflict.

WHAT ABOUT OTHER PROTAGONISTS IN THE SCENE?

In some scenes, the pressure on the protagonist might be coming from other protagonists. For example, Capt. McCurry and her first officer Pleiades Hamilton have a built-in personal conflict: Hamilton is the daughter of the admiral in charge of the mission, who did not want McCurry to be the captain. So in Pleiades' scene, it's possible that McCurry is putting some pressure on her to prove that she's loyal to the captain rather than to her father.

In this case, it's Pleiades' scene, the the captain will also draw at least one card. This seems like a character scene, so the question being asked is, Will the protagonist resist their impulse? This means that Pleiades would be drawing to see whether she successfully overcomes her impulse to keep other crew members at a distance and allows herself to interact honestly with the captain about where her loyalty lies.

The captain is also drawing to see whether she overcomes her impulse, which is to act in service for a need for revenge when she should be focusing on other things.

HOW THE CARDS RESOLVE THE CONFLICT

It's simpler than it seems.

The first level of resolution is counting who has the most cards that are of red suits. The second level is seeing who has the highest card (red or black).

The outcome of those tabulations determines whether the answer to the scene question is...

a) Yes, and...
b) Yes, but...
c) No, but...
d) No, and...

If you got more red cards and a higher high card than the producer, you get a). More red cards but lower high card, b).

Fewer red cards but higher high card, c). Fewer red cards and lower high card, d).

It's best explained by this flow chart.

[More to come]

PLAYING OUT THE CONFLICT RESOLUTION

Once we deal the cards and read the results, we play out the end of the scene. This doesn't mean we will necessarily write lengthy posts in character or have lots of back-and-forth dialogue. We might just discuss what we think happens as a result of the cards out of character and not actually "play" it out at all.

But I'm betting that, in most cases, we'll discuss what we think the various characters would feel, react, do, and say, and then act out parts of it.

Let's look at a hypothetical example from a nonexistent game. Sam is a private detective trying to get his former partner Janet, who is still a detective on the local police force, to give him information on an active investigation. Sam is working the case for a client, who happens to be the cops' prime suspect.

Sam's the protagonist and Janet is the supporting character (NPC). Sam's impulse is that he'll abuse relationships to get what he's after, often doing real damage to other people's lives and careers. Sam really needs to know what evidence was found at the crime scene to help him figure out how to prove his client's innocence, but Janet's given him help before and got burned when he failed to keep her contribution a secret from the brass. She's not willing to risk her career to help him this time, no matter how badly he needs the information.

We would roleplay this scene up to the point where Janet tells him that she won't help him because his carelessness last time she did nearly got her demoted. At that point, both characters have clearly stated their interests, and there's an obvious conflict. So we'd draw cards.

Since this is a pivotal scene for Sam, I would probably put at least a couple of budget points into the conflict to get a couple of extra cards for Janet. Sam's player would apply a trait or two - let's say Janet is his connection, and one of his edges is Won't Take No for an Answer. So he gets a couple of extra cards.

Any other protagonists in the scene would also get cards. Players who aren't in the scene but want to influence the outcome of this conflict could spend fan mail to get dealt cards, which they could apply either toward Sam's side or Janet's, depending on what outcome they think would be more interesting.

We deal the cards, and the outcome is that Sam gets the most red cards, but I have the highest card. That's a "Yes, but," and we decide that Sam manages to bully the information out of Janet by threatening to expose an error of judgment she made years ago, back when they were partners and she was a green detective. We further agree that in doing this, Sam is burning a bridge with Janet. Whatever friendship they'd had is destroyed by this action, and he'll never be able to count on her having his back again.

We probably don't play all of this out in detail. Instead, having decided what happens, we skip right to the actual threat.
And we decide to end it there.

Here's one more graphic that does a good job of explaining how the outcome of the card dealing affects your character.

FAN MAIL - WHY IT'S IMPORTANT

As I've tried to make clear, the flow of fan mail is the engine that gives you, as a player, options to increase your character's influence on scenes, so it's important to make use of it. Players often forget to give each other fan mail, which is why I'm introducing the ability of spectators to hand it out, but priority will always be given to players giving fan mail to each other.

Whenever someone does something cool, surprising, inventive, or funny - something that you'd like to see more of - give them fan mail. In addition to giving each other a mechanical boost, fan mail is a means of encouraging others to do the kinds of things you really enjoy in a game.

Additionally, fan mail - which starts out as producer "budget" - goes back into the budget once a player spends it to enter a scene or get a card (if the card ends up being red). That means that spending fan mail fuels the producer's card draws later in the episode, increasing dramatic stakes and tension and making our show a lot more exciting. Plus, it then recycles to give even more fan mail availability.

And, even cooler - you can bank unspent fan mail. So if you just never see a reason to use fan mail to get into a scene or to buy an extra card, you can hang onto it for the next episode.

Here's one more useful graphic from the book that illustrates the fan mail economy:



FAN MAIL - HOW IT'S AWARDED

I've created a Google Form for fans of the show to send fan mail to the players. This was necessary because readers can't post in the game threads. I don't want to make players send fan mail that way, since it adds extra steps and a layer of hassle that's just unnecessary

So to award your fellow players fan mail, I'd like you to simply quote the part of whatever post you're praising and post to the Fan Mail thread.

Let's say that you really like the moment where Sam tells Janet that yes, he did destroy that incriminating letter years ago, but not before saving a photograph as a future bargaining chip and you want to give Sam's player fan mail. Make a quote of that part of the post, copy the quote, and then post in the Fan Mail thread:

"I'm giving fan mail to [Sam's player] for this moment:
"The cold, matter-of-fact way he admitted to making that calculating move years ago just really gave me chills."

It's really important that you follow these instructions and 1) post the fan mail in the Fan Mail thread, and 2) quote the thing that you're sending fan mail for. The first is because the only way I can keep track of player-sent fan mail is by looking at that thread, and keeping an accurate count is crucial. The second is that the only way your fan mail communicates what the other player should do more of is if they know what exactly prompted your fan mail.

You as a player are allowed one fan mail per scene. So you could conceivably award 20 fan mails per episode (four acts of five scenes each). I don't expect you to send that much fan mail, but you could.

WHAT ABOUT READER-SENT FAN MAIL?

I will absolutely be watching the Google Form for any reader-generated fan mail, and I'll be posting it in the Fan Mail thread regularly. If there is available fan mail for the scene (meaning that not every player sent fan mail for the scene), any reader-generated fan mail will count toward the fan mail allotment and be sent back as producer budget. So if we end up with readers who send a lot of fan mail, the first ones that we receive will be applied to the available fan mail slots, until we've hit the five-per-scene limit.

But I'll post the fan mail to the thread regardless, so the players can get the praise they will so richly deserve!

OUR RESPONSIBILITIES

There are two pages in the book that I'm just going to quote verbatim, because I think they offer a perfect summation of what we should all be expecting from each other.

PRODUCER'S RESPONSIBILITY

Create the spark • The producer always kicks off an episode, and that’s a big responsibility. Something needs to happen that the protagonists (and the players) can’t resist or ignore.

Keep the pace • Scenes should all have a purpose, and whatever’s happening in the scene should be meaningful. The producer should keep an eye on scenes to make sure they don’t wander off topic or detract from the spotlight.

Drive the tension • Without tension, there’s no story. When the tension is urgent or immediate, the story blossoms. Give the protagonists problems, and help the players find problems that interest them. Drive the episode toward moments of
crisis.

Say yes to the players • Make a habit of agreeing with the ideas that the players come up with in scenes. As the producer, you aren’t there to judge everyone else’s creative efforts. If you’re dropping the protagonists into immediate situations, let the players resolve it however they like.

Make sure that protagonists shine • To create a terrific story. you need the protagonists to be involved in exciting situations where, even when they’re overpowered or helpless, they’re still interesting and sympathetic. They get the last word (or even just a poignant expression on screen) at the right moment, and so on. The producer should always look out for the protagonists in that regard.

Weave story elements together • The best episodes address multiple stories at once, and these separate threads can deliver a powerful impact when they come together in a scene. Make the most of situations where relationships and goals intersect, especially where two characters may be in conflict with one another.

Take break • Primetime Adventures can sometimes tax your creativity. Players will come up with crazy ideas, and you have to respond to them and keep the story moving. If anyone at the table is stumped, call for a 5-minute commercial break and
think about what you want to do next. Even if you aren’t stumped, it’s a good idea to take a break at the end of every ACT.

PLAYER'S RESPONSIBILITY

Say yes to the scene • Not everything is going to work out the way you hoped it might. Other players are bound to narrate something about your protagonist that isn’t quite right, or the producer will put your protagonist in a position that doesn’t
suit him or her. Likewise, you may join a scene that’s contrary to what you had in mind. The best thing to do in these situations is just to agree with what’s been presented to you and make the best of it. When the group is done playing, explain why that didn’t quite work for you, and everyone will be aware of it next time.

Promote your protagonist’s issue • You know best what’s up with your protagonist,and you’ll have the opportunity to create at least one scene that you can use to further develop him or her. What will your scenes be about?

Support the other protagonists. • Just like the producer, you have a responsibility to the story, and the story isn’t always going to be about your protagonist. Make an investment in the other stories by helping the other players out. Sometimes your protagonist might be the butt of a joke. Sometimes your protagonist stands back and lets another protagonist "handle the situation." If you make the other players’ protagonists look good, they’ll do the same for you.

Build on what has already been established • What you choose to do in an episode, regardless of whether it’s a scene you create, should build upon what has already happened in the episode. At the very least, it should not conflict with what has
happened. If you had a good idea for a scene, but someone has created a scene before you that keeps the scene from making very much sense, it’s a poor idea to go ahead with that scene as you had imagined it.

Seek conflict • Nothing that happens to your protagonist will reduce your ability to participate in the game; you don’t lose cards or play time or any of that sort of thing. So there’s no reason not to get your protagonist involved in really hairy situations. The producer’s going to be pushing the stuff out there. It’s up to you to engage it. Don’t sit still. Charge forward.