Primetime Adventures Pitch Session complete
March 28, 2008
It wasn’t as easy as it sounded on the Sons of Kryos recording of a PTA session for Life on Mars, but we completed a pitch session for our upcoming PTA game.
We began with an idea for a space opera setting, but previousy, Norwood had made a statement about wanting to play something not based on combat (not necessarily non-violent). I also wanted to push our limits a little, so I shot the idea down. It was a weird feeling, just saying no. I’m often big on saying “yes” or “yes, but” and trying to rework my ideas to facilitate the desires of players. But on space opera, I just said no, let’s try something else.
The end result is pretty interesting and definitely a stretch for us. The show is a next food network star-type show where the PCs are the leading competitors. I plan on starting a few episodes into the season to give a feeling of action, plus I love in media res.
I hope this game cooks half as good as the SW PTA game from GenCon ‘07. I hope I’m half as exciting as Judd as a Producer (aka GM) for PTA.
April 2, 2008 at 4:24 pm
It did feel odd having you shoot it down. What’s even odder is that you didn’t immediately shoot it down so I tried to back up the ideas we had thrown down narrowing the scope of the series.
It worked out well that you said no. No feelings were hurt. I liked that you pushed for something non-combat oriented. I kinda got swept up with the dueling cooks… but it feels odd doing it as a reality tv show. I think I would have preferred it more as a drama set in a kitchen, but this was a good compromise.
Also, don’t know if you saw this posted on slashdot, but they had a good article up about baseball: Alternate Baseball Universes
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/30/opinion/30strogatz.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
Jamie found a NYTimes op-ed by a grad student and a professor from Cornell, outlining some research they did into alternate baseball universes. The goal was to find out how unlikely in fact was Joe DiMaggio’s 56-game hitting streak, played out in the 1941 season. No one since has even come close to that record. The math guys ran simulations of the entire history of baseball from 1885 on — 10,000 of them. For each simulation they put each player up to the plate for each at-bat in each game in each year, just like it happened; and they rolled the dice on him, based on his actual hitting stats for that season. (Their algorithm sounds far simpler than whatever the Strat-O-Matic guys use.) The result: Joltin’ Joe’s record is not merely likely, it’s basically a sure thing. Every alternate universe produced a steak of 39 games or better; one reached 109 games. Joe DiMaggio was not the likeliest player in the history of the game to accomplish the record, not by a long shot.
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ps - I really like the new look.