Limitations: I Like 'Em!

So last night, due to the unfortunate lack of Matt at our PTA game, we decided to play a one shot Fantasy dungeon crawl using the PTA system. The three of us played demi-human creatures on a world fast being abandoned by man. Not a such a bad thing, but the men were taking the sun with them, little by little they were draining our world of it's life giving energy and the end result was going to be our worlds destruction. Pretty gnarly i know.

We explored racism and classism, the concepts of nobless oblige, hedonism, evacuation based terror and chaos, and manipulation. From my point of view it was a truly fantastic game and it all came about entirely organically and quickly. I had a great deal of fun. It felt like Battlestar Galactica, but with satyrs.

When playing two seperate games within a single system it's almost impossible not to compare them. I am really enjoying the Super Hero PTA game, but this fantasy game really struck a chord with me. Upon thinking about it i realized that it's a matter of limitation.

PTA largely lacks the mechanical structure to enforce limitations. Also, it's really not the point of that system. It's less about knowing what each piece can do, than going with your gut and doing what is cool. Less like chess, more like poker. Super Heroes since their very inception have been as much about their limitations as their abilities, Superman has Kryptonite, Daredevil is blind, Iron Mans an alchoholic, Captain America is anachronistic, Reed Richards is socially awkward, etc. Certainly these are all things that PTA supports and perhaps could even thrive in, i think though the nature of roleplaying a superhero makes you want to do all the things they can do, and sometimes that leads to not realizing the potential of their limitations. Fantasy however is about no limitations, anything is possible, even probable. What limitations there are, seem less important. Thats why i think thematically the PTA system speaks more clearly to fantasy.

Also there is a question of shared language. A superhero is a different thing to almost everyone. The world of superheroism is incredibly diverse whereas the world of high fantasy has concepts almost every one can agree upon. Some people like Batman instead of Plastic Man, some people like John Constantine instead of Captain America. Some people like Impy the impossible man instead of James Bond. The super hero (some may say bond is, some may say he isn't and thats the point.) wears many different cowls. But the fantasy archetypes are closer and their achetype speaks to a type of play. If you want to play a ethernaut with a propensity for gear and steam based wizardry it's clear there is a steam punk element to your game. If you want to play a sylvan elf swordsman it's clear there is a high fantasy element to your game. For me the combination of heroes in our hero PTA game are just all speaking a different language. That's not to say it isn't cool, it's just to say it's a little less relateable. We have a human solar engine, a walking sculpture, the physical manifestation of all things marine, and a super combatant cum wise guy (pardon the pun). While all of them are very cool and it is interesting to see them together, sometimes, especially in a shared story telling experience, i feel as though the languages don't always sync up. One player speaks latin, the other speaks pig latin, and a third speaks latin american spanish. It sometimes results in my feeling like we're playing four different games.

I think the greatest strength that PTA has is it's shared storytelling methodology. I really love that idea. I think though, that when playing it there should be guidelines that we lay out with each other. like are we playing four color, black and white indy, or grayscale? Perhaps it's because this is the first experience for the four of us with this type of roleplaying but i feel like with the superhero world we never really managed to create a world we all shared, but in this fantasy setting i really feel at home, which is odd for me because i don't really like traditional fantasy roleplaying. I guess when it's in PTA i do.