Primetime Adventures

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Primetime Adventures
Cover for 1st edition
Designer(s)	Matt Wilson
Publisher(s)	Dog-eared Designs
Publication date	2004
Genre(s)	Indie
System	custom

Primetime Adventures is a role-playing game by Matt Wilson, independently published by Dog-eared Designs. The game master, called the producer, creates a TV-show together with the players. Each player character is a main character in the show that spans five or nine sessions, or episodes as they're called. For each episode the characters have a screen presence between 1 and 3, which says how influential the character is in that episode and how much resources they bring into conflicts.

The first edition of the game used dice to handle conflict resolution, but the second edition uses regular playing cards. A character draws as many cards as they have screen presence, with red cards counted as successes and black cards as failures. The highest number of successes wins the conflict, and the highest individual card gets the final word on what the outcome is. This means that it can be either the winner or the loser of the conflict that narrates the result.

The game suggests the group to draw inspiration from series like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Gilmore Girls or Firefly, but the series the group creates can also be something new altogether.