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

And we’re back.

Scene 5: Ryan called for Plot, Thompson’s Office, security guard brings Thompson a tape of the Malone/Holloway/Andrew debacle in the alley.
The security guard tries to give Thompson the tape and Thompson peremptorily tells him to put it in his Inbox. The guard does, and Thompson picks it up, asking what it is. The guard explains that the cameras picked it up last night and that he thought Thompson should see it.

They go to a conference room and watch the tape. Black and white footage, no sound, but a good view of Malone giving Holloway a stack of money, then the whole deal with Holloway assaulting Andrew, the present breaking, etc. The guard leaves Thompson with the tape. Thompson hauls Holloway into the conference room and demands to know what Holloway’s doing. “You’re hitting streetwalkers, you’re making children cry; what the hell is going on around here? Are you taking payoffs here?”

“First of all, that streetwalker is my whore of an ex-wife; secondly, the ‘payoff’ was for the ‘97 Corolla I sold him last week.”

Of course Thompson knows Malone and so he knows that Holloway’s lying about the car, a nice touch on Rob’s part, I thought. This is an excellent example of how in this game, a player can screw over his own protagonist better than anybody else can, and have a lot of fun doing it.

The argument escalates and we go to a conflict. We have some trouble establishing stakes on this one and I wasn’t really satisfied with what we ended up using. We didn’t want to put “Holloway comes clean” at stake because next ep is Holloway’s spotlight and we wanted to wait for that. Thompson’s Issue of Control/Obsession came into play and we just went with “Thompson wants Holloway to explain what’s going on so that Thompson can get the situation in the casino back under his control.” I threw in max Budget on my side because I wanted Thompson to have even more pressure on him, and I won the flip.

Thompson calls Holloway on the lie and establishes that he and Malone are friends. “First of all, Ken Malone would never drive an import car.” We then had a brief pause while Ryan tries to figure out what Thompson would do, and Jake spent a fanmail to have Andrew enter the scene. That’s the first time that anybody’s used that rule, and it was perfect for the moment.

We cut to the hallway and see Andrew walking up and knocking on the door, using Jake’s Next Week On snippet. “Mr. Thompson? I have some information you might be interested in,” and walks into the conference room. We have a tense moment with the three of them, then Holloway says “I don’t have time for this. You know how things work in Vegas,” and storms out. Thompson doesn’t get his explanation, and we cut to the next scene.

Scene 6: I asked to go out of turn and called for a character scene, Casino Floor, and took the Producer’s privilege of skipping the agenda and going straight to framing instead.
Rae’s working in the casino, delivering drinks, then returns to the bar with an empty tray. We see a guy standing at the bar carrying luggage and when he spots Rae he drops his bags and shouts her name. It’s Rae’s boyfriend Ty (played by Matthew McConaughey, which pleased Bonita inordinately), a gaming commission agent from Atlantic City. Rae greets him with “Please tell me you are not staying at this hotel.” “Wha? Why not?” “No. You’re staying with me.” We had a brief attempt by Rob to play Ty, but we quickly shifted the role to Bonita who managed to portray McConaughey perfectly. It was a little weird.

Ty tries to convince Rae to cut out from work early, but Rae insists that she has to stay at work. He persists until she agrees to meet him in the lobby after her shift for dinner, and we skip right on to the next scene.

Scene 7: Deirdra called for Plot, Casino Floor, now that Kitty no longer has her father’s protection, she gets threatened by mafia.
Kitty walks into the casino and spots Holloway. We get a short montage of her following Holloway, snapping pictures and trying to keep out of sight. Finally, he turns sharply and to keep from being spotted, she backs quickly around a corner and right into Girardi, the mafia boss. “Miss Conway!” We see that he’s got a gun concealed at waist level. “I hear that you’re working on a new story. I’m very interested in hearing about it.”

Scene 8: Jake (with lots of help from Deirdra) calls for Character, Thompson’s Office, Andrew tries to get Thompson to let him help out.
We cut to Thompson saying “I’ve got some leads on the Holloway situation. Don’t worry about that right now.” He’s trying to get rid of Andrew so he can go over his numbers again. Thompson’s been working the paperwork on the roulette tables for the past week and it’s not adding up right. Andrew wants to take a look at the numbers to see if he can help, but Thompson’s not thrilled with the idea because it’s against regulations. We go to a conflict. Andrew’s stakes: “I want to be involved in the investigation as more than just a dealer.” I dump a ton of Budget because I think it’ll cause good conflict, but everybody else wants Andrew to finally use that math degree and get brought in as a numbers analyst. It’s his spotlight, nobody wants to see him get shot down.

Jake beats me thoroughly on the flip and wins Narration as well. Andrew glances over a sheet full of numbers and starts pointing out anomalies in the percentages and probabilities. Thompson’s impressed, and Andrew starts to explain the math behind it. Thompson holds up a hand and says “Save it. Just have a report in a manilla envelope in my Inbox tomorrow morning. And, fill out these consultant’s forms so I can put you on the payroll.”

Scene 9: Rob called for a Plot scene, multiple locations, Holloway abducting Andrew and warning him. We start in a nondescript room with Holloway snorting coke off a glass table. A gun is slid across the table to him. “Yeah, I’ll take care of him,” he says, and pockets the gun.

Parking lot. Andrew is leaving the casino, and Holloway steps out of the shadows, clocks him over the head with the butt of his gun, and knocks him unconscious.

Warehouse. Andrew is tied to a chair. Holloway is standing behind him, out of his line of sight. Holloway lectures, trying to warn Andrew off the investigation while keeping his own identity concealed. Conflict! We had some stupid difficulty working out this conflict, and it was completely because we were pre-playing the narration when we should have just been establishing the stakes. We got confused over what players wanted and what characters wanted and how it could all happen. Eventually we came down to some solid Stakes: Andrew wants to kick his abductor’s ass. Holloway wants Andrew to back off from the investigation. I loved this conflict and I wanted everybody to know it, so I threw in max Budget, despite wanting Andrew to win his stakes. Everybody else threw in some fanmail, realizing that this was a big one. Jake won his stakes, and Rob lost his.

Holloway leans in to adjust Andrew’s bonds, and Andrew slams his head back into Holloway’s face, breaking his nose and knocking him to the floor, dropping the gun. Andrew rocks the chair over onto the floor, landing on the gun and breaking the arm of the chair. With his freed hand, he grabs the gun and waves it wildly toward Holloway, who flees the scene.

Scene 10: Bonita calls for Plot, Rae’s Apartment, using Deirdra’s Next Week On snippet.
Rae and Ty are in bed at her apartment. This is the first time we’ve seen this set, so Deirdra describes it a little. It’s is filled with books, a juxtaposition from what we expected. Rae determines that Ty is asleep, then slips out of bed and wraps a sheet around herself. We get a montage of her working at her computer, looking through paperwork and drinking coffee. Finally she calls and wakes Thompson up, telling him that she ran the social security numbers on the roulette dealer change paperwork that Nguyen gave him. All the people listed have been dead for forty years. Not only that, but she’s looked up Girardi as well and he’s on the board of directors for a dummy corporation. Also on that board is Bruce Conway. We cut back and forth with quick clips as they bring each other up to speed on all the stuff they’ve found out. Rae wants to bring in Kitty on this, and we’ve found our conflict. Stakes: Thompson wants to go by the book and to keep the reporters out of this. Rae wants to cut through the red tape and take immediate action rather than waiting and gathering more information. Deirdra’s exact words were “My character wants to GO GO GO GO GO!” Bonita threw in fanmail to me, hoping to beat Ryan so that Kitty would get brought into the action.

We flipped and I got exactly zero successes. Both Deirdra and Ryan beat me solidly, but I won Narration. Thompson brings up a Gaming Commission law ruling out any chance of bringing in the reporter, but Rae convinces him that they have enough to move on and says “Where do we start?” Cut.

Scene 11: Ryan calls for Character, Andrew’s Apartment (and parking lot), using the last remaining Next Week On snippet. He also asks for Malone in this scene, something nobody expected but everybody liked. We threw around some ideas on what could be happening in this scene and eventually settled on an agenda: Andrew confronts Malone in his own apartment.

High dolly shot of Andrew’s car pulling into the parking lot of his apartment. Two police cars and an ambulance out front, lights flashing. Andrew flips out and tries to shoulder past a couple of uniformed police officers guarding the door. They stop him and ask him for ID, etc, and he demands to know what’s going on. “An old lady had a heart attack,” they tell him. Paramedics come out with his babysitter on a gurney and Andrew stops them to ask how she is. They tell him that she’ll be fine now, that Caroline called 911 and then did CPR until they showed up and probably saved the babysitter’s life. Andrew stops and we get a good shot of Proud Father as the paramedics roll out.

Andrew and the two uniforms head upstairs to his apartment and when he walks in there are a couple of lady officers talking with Caroline in the kitchenette and Malone is standing in the living room looking at the newly reframed family photo. Conflict! Just to make sure everybody appreciates the situation the way I see it, I lay out a brief flashback montage. Andrew comes out of casino and sees Malone giving Holloway a stack of money. Holloway slaps Andrew’s gift for his daughter out of his hands, breaking it. Holloway slams Andrew against the door. Caroline sits in the car, watching her father get manhandled. Caroline sitting in the alley, cradling the shattered picture and crying while Andrew stands nearby, incapable of comforting her. Holloway knocking Andrew unconscious. Holloway fleeing the warehouse, leaving Andrew tied to the chair waving the gun. The gun. Zoom in shot of the gun now tucked into the back of Andrew’s waistband. The guy who paid off Holloway, the thug who attacked Andrew twice and abducted him, and threatened his daughter is standing in Andrew’s own home with his daughter not ten feet away, he’s fingering the family photo, and worst of all he’s wearing a badge, so Andrew can’t even go to the cops because apparently they’re dirty, and Andrew. Has. A Gun. If it wasn’t such terrible audio quality, I’d post the clip of everybody going “OOOOOOOH.” So there’s our conflict. Stakes? This is where we stumbled. The stakes should have been “Andrew wants to keep from completely snapping,” but we somehow got “Andrew wants to get these cops out of his house right now.” I throw in my whole remaining budget, and I get some fanmail to help me out. Jake gets some fanmail too, we flip, and I win, but he high card and gets Narration. This is where I realize that the stakes weren’t that great.

We talk a lot about how it could resolve, and it comes out that Andrew snaps at Malone, saying he wants Malone out of his house and yadda yadda. Malone is all calm and cool, saying that they’re nearly done, but that the lady officers want to talk with Caroline for a little while longer and then they’ll go. Andrew grits his teeth and goes into his bedroom. He opens his top drawer and puts in the paperwork he got from Thompson. On top of that, he puts the gun. The camera pulls out through the bedroom window and we end with a shot mirroring the end shot from the pilot.