Angels & Operators Post-Game Analysis (Part II)
While devising choices I didn’t try to strategize too much or predict which choices the group would make. I simply tried to come up with the five most likely choices Steve might make given the narrative circumstances. Often it became apparent to me minutes after voting opened how it was going to go. “Of course!” I would think to myself, suddenly seeing how blindingly obvious one of the choices was, given the previously demonstrated proclivities of the group process.
Although the storyline was extensively improvised, the basic reality of Steve’s situation was determined from the start. I decided that he was crazy, but also that his hallucinations had a validity to them, in that they gave him a sort of Detect Evil power. Once Pierce and Judy became central to the storyline it became clear to me that Pierce was the primary antagonist, and protecting her the goal of the story. That he was a serial killer, rather than just an abusive boyfriend, became apparent after his heart attack. Judy had to still be in jeopardy, and Steve needed some sort of concrete mystery to penetrate, in order to have a satisfying climax to build toward. If I had, at any point during the phase when I was trying to bring the thing in for a landing, suddenly seen some other potential climax that would have been consistent with the facts revealed so far, I would have seized it, setting aside my pre-existing backstory. But no such direction presented itself.
At no time was I tempted to make Steve’s delusions objectively real. You will have certainly noticed that I wrung considerable mileage from the group’s desire to be engaged in a genre piece, with genuine aliens and abortion guns. If anything is aesthetically interesting about the piece, it’s that. You wanted the Operators to be real, and so did Steve.
Loose ends: the dealer dudes who appear earlier in the story are unrelated to Pierce. There was a chance that Steve would have been drawn into their storyline, and that their boss would have been the main antagonist. But the group’s decisions took him elsewhere, leaving these plot threads untied. Hey, it’s roleplaying. If you’re not willing to railroad like a fiend, you’re going to have loose threads.
The number of voters per poll went down when the decision was purely tactical in nature. Readers were clearly more interested in deciding what Steve was doing, as opposed to how he was going to do it. This leaves me feeling that a future play-by-blog should be less procedural in nature, perhaps revolving around a character’s moral choices. Perhaps it could assume that he always succeeds in what he attempts-but that the consequences of his success are not always especially predictable.
Another thought would be to create a truly plotless play-by-blog, perhaps one in which the protagonist is trying to build something, or complete an exploration, or engage in some other open-ended task.
Part of me is tempted to do another Steve Ziffer story, for the sheer challenge of finding a new context for that character. Especially now his fundamental sanity, or lack thereof, has now been definitively established.
I’m not going to jump into another PBB right away, if at all. One of the reasons I tried it was to always have at least one guaranteed idea per week for the blog. This was a double-edged sword. Always having material meant always having to write an installment, and sometimes this proved time consuming. I rarely suffer from writer’s block in general but some weeks I was kind of stumped all weekend waiting for the thought that would spark the next turn.
I’m following with great interest a few of the other games that have been inspired by A&O. In discharge of karmic debt, I always vote for the most adventuresome, plot-forwarding option available.
Last year I was asked if I was planning to turn the Angels & Operators experiment into a book, perhaps through Lulu.com or whatever, once it was done. A couple of folks expressed interest in seeing such a thing, perhaps with detailed behind-the-scenes thoughts on each episode. It would surprise me if there was actually enough demand for this to make the extra work worth my time. If this is something you’re dying to see-and more to the point, pay Lulu type prices for-feel free to disabuse me of my skepticism.