Edit: This post was imported from Point of Play, my gaming blog, which I’ve collapsed into this one.

Our group got together Saturday night to talk about what we wanted to do with our upcoming game. I’d already explained Primetime Adventures somewhat and we spent a little time going over how the game works in finer detail. Of course, since I haven’t actually read the game yet, everything I know about it has been drawn from exhaustive reading of reviews and the Dog Eared Designs and Actual Play forums over at The Forge. At first there was some general I-don’t-quite-get-it going around, but it cleared up pretty quickly and everybody seemed really positive about the whole idea. Moreso than I expected, actually.

I came ready with a list of game seed ideas that I’d been working on, but I made sure that everybody understood that these were just some things that I’d come up with and that their ideas were just as important as mine.

It took a long time to settle down on one story idea in particular, mostly because everybody seemed like they were hesitant to say “Yes, let’s play THAT,” and instead just kept saying “I’m okay with any of those, whatever you guys wanna do.” I think that this will probably get easier with more practice. We finally combined an idea that I’d had with an idea that Rob suggested, worked through a lot of ways that they could go together, then eventually started discarding story elements that seemed to be unnecessary to the the direction we were going.

We ended up with somewhat vague idea for show set in a small casino/hotel in downtown Las Vegas. We didn’t actually create protagonists as it was getting late and we were getting tired, but we kicked around ideas for who would be interesting and what players would want to do. The list is looking like this:

Jake – A dealer in the casino. Single father with a daughter.

Rob – Head of hotel/casino security. Rob had actually fallen asleep before we’d completely settled on the final show idea, so he may have other characters in mind now that the setting has changed somewhat.

Bonita – A reporter of some sort. We didn’t get into much elaboration.

Ryan – An agent for the Nevada Gaming Commission, or some other law enforcement agency. There was talk about this character being assigned to the casino and probably regularly butting heads with the security chief character.

Deirdra – A cocktail waitress working with the Gaming Commission agent. Alternately, an agent undercover as a cocktail waitress. I can’t quite recall which it was. Either way, I believe she was also putting herself through school toward a degree in casino management.

The name that we settled on for the show was Oasis, which is also the name of the hotel where it’s set. I have a feeling that with three law enforcement types and a reporter, it’s going to have a strong inclination towards a crime drama of some sort. We’ll hammer out the exact direction that we’ll be going when we get together again to flesh out the characters more.