Just whose pool is it?

[Jeffrey Straszheim]

In my theorizing about The Pool I've come to consider the dice pool as a player resource rather than a character resource, meaning that a large pool represents a greater influence of the player on the narrative rather than a greater share of power for the character.

In my group I currently only have one player, and I'm considering allowing her to play multiple characters at once.  Now, my question is should she have one pool of dice to manage, or separate pools for each character?  By my theory, she should have a single pool. Has anyone else played with multiple characters per player?  What scheme did you use?

[Mike Holmes]

Interesting. I say single pool. It is a player resource. What The Pool is for is for limiting Player impact such that all players have an even hand. This is Story Share balance as opposed to the old idea of Power Balance which has nothing to do with making good stories, IMHO.

In this way Universalis works identitically, BTW.

Mike

[James V. West]

Yes indeed, what Mike said.

The Pool is the player's resource.

The rules for THE QUESTING BEAST allow players to create not only their main character, but any number of other characters--but everything works from the same Pool.

James V.

[Bankuei]

  Very interesting.  So, if you wanted to, you could run a campaign about a group of characters(Knights of the Round Table) and have them in different locales, doing different things, and still have the heroic turning point affect all the characters.  You could also play a group throughout history, or a single protagonist with a group of followers.  Has anyone considered the premise of a greek tragedy using only one player?

Bankuei

[Mike Holmes]

On 2001-11-15 03:52, Bankuei wrote:
You could also play a group throughout history, or a single protagonist with a group of followers.  Has anyone considered the premise of a greek tragedy using only one player?

This happens in Hero Wars all the time. Also, when playing Primeval, your hero has a retinue that constantly follows him about adoringly. Lots of other games have rules for followers, etc. In Pendragon knights have squires (and even the horses are kinda like followers). In Hero System followers are purchased just like a characters, but cost one fifth as much.

These games all have differing levels of control that the player has over the characters. From full control in Hero Wars (IIRC) to only via character interaction control in Hero. Separate characters in The Pool would be, I'd assume, totally under the characters control.

Interestingly, since you aren't required to purchase any traits for a character all you have to do is write a fifty word summary and you get another character. As long as you don't mind them not having any "important traits" then you can have as many characters as you're willing to write up, presumably. They don't cost anything.

That's cool.

Mike