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November 08, 2004
Primetime Adventures: Solo Cast
Not that I've played Primetime Adventures yet, but since when did that stop gamers from making up weird rules modifications and so on? (Especially if you're a freelancer.)
So I was reading Manly Wade Wellman's Silver John stories again over the weekend. (Parenthetically: the Night Shade Books editions are superb and I recommend them to anyone who likes Wellman or Southern fantasy or good writing.) I think a Silver John television series would be great TV series that wouldn't get made in Hollywood. Which is, I think, part of what PTA is for.
But the thing about the Silver John stories is that they only have one recurring character, Silver John himself. You could add more supporting characters; however, this sort of undermines Silver John in that it's important that he's a loner. So how do you do a multi-player campaign?
Well, I noticed that certain character types do show up repeatedly. There's the beautiful innocent, the sinister preacher, the strapping young lover, and so on. So... what if you treated them as recurring themes, and players took on themes rather than characters? In this context, Screen Presence becomes a measure of how important a given theme is for that episode.
It's possible that this gives too much spotlight to the single central character. You could, maybe, remove that character as a PC altogether and have everyone play the themes. At this point you're halfway to Alfred Hitchcock Presents and Twilight Zone -- drop the central character and you've got an anthology series waiting to happen.
I have no idea if any of this would actually work. Let me know if you try it.
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Comments
I think having a central character, and then having the others play "themes" could work ... if you get buy in from the PCs. I don't know if I'd want to run an entire campaign like this, but a 3 or 4 part mini-series, run as an alternatie to the main campaign, would make for a refreshing change of pace.
Players might be more inclined to go for it if the main character rotated among the different members of the campaign. It could end up being something like the RPG equivelent of Dr. Who, with each player offering their own take on the lead character.
Posted by: Ken Newquist at Nov 8, 2004 2:13:48 PM
PTA is in fact designed to run for 5 or 7 sessions, effectively a mini-series, so there you go.
Posted by: Bryant at Nov 9, 2004 5:25:31 PM
Don't know how exactly similar this train of thought is, but I had considered using PTA to do a Doc Savage kind of "sidekicks" thing ... to where nobody actually runs the main, omnipowerful character, but is responsible for their own niche in the team. Doc becomes the Producer's responsibility, and is always conveniently away when the team needs him most to avoid being captured, or meeting their estranged fathers, or whatever.
Posted by: Ivan at Nov 21, 2004 10:12:53 AM
Oooh. That's brilliant. Yeah, that'd work really well... and in fact, that's how I'd run (say) Buffy in PTA.
Posted by: Bryant at Nov 21, 2004 10:50:28 AM
I'd absolutely love to play a Silver John game. Or run one. I know what soundtrack I'd use... I know the voice I'd use...
Damn. Want to play a one-shot or miniseries online?
Posted by: Epimetreus at Dec 23, 2004 11:46:59 AM
Silver John is one of my favorite characters and would make an excellent focus. A little tweaking to allow potent one-time characters to persist past their signature adventure shouldn't be that big a stretch.
I'm new here and haven't looked around much but FWIW I've always thought that the Retief series by Keith Laumer cries out for a good RPG treatment.
Posted by: Melmoth at May 7, 2005 10:45:45 AM
