GM: Sean Nittner
System: Primetime Adventures
So I ripped it right off from The Office, I know, but it made for a good story. The manager gets some extra money to spend and everyone has an opinion about where it should go. This was the end of the show and I had a lot of fun. Kevin held his nemesis hostage, Mr. Bawls went Rambo to rescue her (reminder of his old football days) and Vern busted the key machine for good.
What rocked
Kevin’s player has really stepped up the game after his experience playing it with kids. He’s brought a lot of energy and creativity that I didn’t notice lacking before but I’m very happy to see now.
We had some nice progression towards Mr. Bawls’ spotlight episode. Eva in danger, rescued by the hero. It will make for some good scenes in the next episode.
The store changed. That is important to me, I want to see change. Little artifacts of previous episodes are really fun. From Vern’s episode we have “Vern’s Way” on the hose isle and never ending respect from the head cook Juan. From this one we’ve got a parking structure for Choshky, a new entertainment center in Mr. Bawls office and no way to make keys at all. I like seeing the cast, store and show grow this way.
What could have been improved
I’m still figuring out how I want to do budget. By starting the game with everyone having 1 fan mail and having 3 in the pot (thus taking 6 from my budget) I ended up running out of budget in the end and had to do something of a run around (pitting the players against each other instead of against me). It worked out ok, but I think I’ll need more in the future. I’ll keep playing with the numbers.
Conflicts with different stakes seems to be somewhat awkward to resolve. I was trying to pit the cast against each other when in truth they had different agendas. For instance in the end, it wasn’t really important to Kevan where the money was spent, he had sewed his chaos, but for the other it still mattered. Hmm… have to think on this more.
I think part of that last conflict is me getting to know Kevin more. I’m trying to figure out his characteristics, since I tried to meld in like 4 different characters to make him. Alec commented that Kevin has never had the same shtick more than once, which I guess is a good thing, but makes for a very morphic character.
And yeah, on your first what rocked, thanks for the compliment. 🙂 I feel the same way, hadn’t noticed it missing, saw what the kids did, and went, “dude…awesome.”