Primetime Adventures
Primetime Adventures is a roleplaying game by Matt Wilson of Dog-eared Designs. What's it about? Well, I could say "TV Shows" but that's not quite true. I could say "anything you want" and that would be close. What it's really about is gripping drama the likes of which you see on your favorite television shows. Have you ever played your favorite RPG, especially a licensed one like "Buffy" or "Serenity" and thought, "Well, that was fun, and things happened like they they're supposed to in the setting and I got to be cool and talk to popular NPCs, but something just wasn't the same"? Think about it. Yes, lasers and vampires and space-ships and martial arts and magic and robots are cool, but that's not what makes the show intersting. Believe me, there have been plenty of science fiction TV series that weren't "Battlestar Galactica" or "Babylon 5". So what's that missing spark? Drama. Character drama. And that is what Primetime Adventures is all about.
So, the game is about television drama? No, not really. It's about the drama like television drama, using the same conventions as a television show to achieve a similar effect. There aren't booms in the shot and cue-cards off-camera, but there are epsiodes and story arcs and fan mail. How does this work? Well, to begin with, the players get together and decide what they want to do. Maybe they straight-out want to play "Firefly", maybe even playing the actual characters from the show. Maybe they want to play in the "Firefly" setting, but with their own characters. Maybe they want to play a game like "Firefly" but instead of "old west" trappings, it's very "gothic medieval" instead (like Fading Suns, one of my favorite settings that comes with a poor system). Whatever. It can be anything. If you're a bunch of girls or something, you could even set up a game similar to "Desperate Housewives". Or it could be a "show" unlike anything you've ever seen.
Next somebody has to be the Producer. He's kind of like the GM, but not as powerful. Really he's just another player but with different responsibilities. Everybody else creates a Protagonist (that is, a "character"). The players should work together to create characters that makes sense together. Obviously, there's alot of working together in this game. Each Protagonist has an "issue", some personal problem that they struggle with. It could be atonement for a past misdeed, romantic troubles, temptation, self-destruction or something else. Then there's "Screen Presence". A "season" of the game lasts for 5 or 9 episodes, and during that time, your character's Screen Presence will vary from episode to episode. If it's '1', then you're kind of a bit player, supporting the other characters and working on the plot. If it's a '2', your role is more prominent, often acting to showcase by contrast the Screen Presence '3' character. A Screen Presence of '3' means this is your "spotlight" episode, and all of the drama and character development focus on you as your issue is hammered until it is resolved one way or another.
All characters have three Traits that represent things that they are good at or people that they can call on for help. These can be used to increase the odds of a scene going your way, but only once per point of Screen Presence. Another way to boost your odds of winning a conflict is to use "Fan Mail". As the Producer complicates the lives of the Protagonists, points are added to an Audience Pool. Once per scene, each player can award one of these points of Fan Mail to another player for being entertaining. Maybe they came up with a cool idea for a scene, or they roleplayed impressively or something. Later, these points of Fan Mail can be used to boost your odds or enter a scene that you weren't in originally.
Conflicts are resolved by drawing a hand of cards. The most red cards wins. But here's a neat twist. The person with the highest individual card gets to say what exactly happened, though it has to give the winner what he wanted. Everyone gets to contribute of course, this happens alot throught the game with people tossing out cool ideas, but the person with the highest card has final authority and gets to narrate the results, choosing what he likes from the suggestions or making up something of his own.
The producer only has so many points to spend on making things difficult for the whole episode, so eventually he's going to run low, and the players will bring the episode to an end. They'll probably successfully solve whatever dilemma they encountered, but that's the way it works on TV. Of course, they might not solve it, but only if the ending is cool in its own right. Then the "spotlight" player might narrate one of those quiet reflective moments where they stare into the sunset or look at an old photograph or talk to themselves in a mirror about what they've learned or something.
THEN, and this is cool, THEN everybody gets a chance to do a "next time on the show..." scene. They describe a tantilizing little clip of drama, somebody hanging on a ledge, a friend holding a gun on another friend, somebody tearfully saying "He's dead", or something like that. Next episode, you have to work those into the game. Built-in dramatic coolness!
So how do you level-up? Well, you don't, really. Much like characters on a TV show, they develop, and might even become more "powerful", but that doesn't really affect how much they control the story. At the end of a season, or after his spotlight episode, a character might choose to replace his Traits and Issue with different ones, but they don't get any extra.
This looks like a really fun game if your goal is to tell cool stories with your characters. The books is $20 US, paperback, about 106 pages and digest sized (8.5 x 5.5 inches). It's well made and flexible, with plenty of examples. You can also get just the PDF for $12 US. You really should check it out.