User summary:
The 2011 Version of Left Coast is a greatly-expanded re-design of the original. The additions streamline play, provide examples, and offer support for the setting. The 2011 Version also is far more structured in the approach to campaign management.
One player will act as GM. The other players generate a character who is a semi-famous science fiction author looking for their big break. Characters have an identified goal for each game session, and have four Ratings: Family, Money, Nuttiness, and Alien with numeric scores distributed from a point array of 2, 2, 4, and 6. The Rating score determines how many dice are rolled in a dice pool when that Rating is used. The Rating score also determines how many Facts and Connections will be place in the Rating's sphere.
Characters select a Type (Hack, Visionary, Radical, etc.) Most of the game involves shared narration of events, where elements of one character's meta-fictional "writing" can bleed over into another character's "real" life. When conflict arises that cannot be resolved with narration the GM may call for an opposed dice roll. The writing Group, to which the characters belong, also is tracked as an entity that develops over time.