Bob's Supers Playtest Con 1 - Pool/TQB

[Bob McNamee]

Bob’s Playtest Con

I have been looking into running a Supers related game…but not using Champions (which we used in the past).  I created the same characters for each of 4 games Powergame, Paladin, SuperKind (my OtherKind variant), and the Pool..  

I decided to go pretty 4-color with the tone… Bill played Captain Wonder “The Greatest thing since Sliced Bread”, and Chris picked Doughboy “The Boy Wonder”.

“Heros on Ice”
TQB/Pool

Same characters…Bill ‘Captain Wonder” , Chris “Doughboy”

Ok, first off… I messed up… I let them use more than one Motif on rolls.
This had the effect of giving them about 2-3 extra dice on every roll.

As a result they only gambled out of the Pool about once a piece…

I never narrated a Guided event, or a failed roll.  They each had at least one failed roll, but it was always a Monologue of Defeat!  

We had great fun!
The action was Very 4 color cinematic! Narrating it yourself will do that!
Doughboy’s MOD ended up with him wrapped up in the drive shaft of a Giant Zamboni going across the bay,  just before Captain Wonder created a  huge travelling crack across the ice the sink the Zamboni.

Bill / Captain Wonder narrated some cool stuff you would never do in Champions, like building up speed by flying up around the bay,  making sure to pass close to the news ‘copters, making sure they get your good side (Motif: Media Darling), then plunging down at full strength to create a huge running crack to sink the Zamboni (and several towed skating Penalty Boxers) before it reaches its target (a cargo ship trapped by the manmade Ice in August).

Let’s just say Chris / Doughboy made several good uses of his “Captain Wonder’s weak spot” and “youth,16”  Motifs! ( he ended up having to be rescued from the icy kiss of the frigid Ice Princess)

Lots of fun!
We all agreed that we should have limited things to one Motif… then Pool gambling could have come into play more.

Question: on purchasing +1d6 Motifs?  Is it 2d6 as indicated in the rules, or 1d6 as indicated by the example character in the Questing Beast rules?


For my Supers Games.

Right now my players have suggested using the Pool-style rules for cinematic action, with the ability to use a Monologue to shift to “Blow-by-Blow” action  using PowerGame (with the possibility of spending a PowerGame XP or something to shift to a POOL-style combat ending Monologue during a PowerGame combat)

Paladin WILL be used… maybe for a completely separate Supers game (my player Bill wants to run Fantasy with it).
You’ll be getting a few new customers Clinton, they were shocked when I told them the price! That’s quality!


Now I see Universalis is out……..I like the sound of it on the website!
Looks like I need another Playtest day.
Bob

[James V. West]

Sounds like you had fun with MoVs!

To answer your question here is the exact text from The Pool:

The cost of a bonus is the bonus times itself. Therefore, a +1 costs one die, a +2 costs four dice, and a +3 costs nine dice.

It sounds like you might have been mixing The Pool and The Questing Beast. I suggest not doing that--at least not for a first run. They are separate games even though TQB is based on The Pool. The rules are slightly different for getting different effects. If you had been using The Pool, there would be no MoDs, only MoVs.

I hope you do get to try it again and limit the Traits to one per roll. Gambling dice from your pool is where all the real chaos comes in.

And it sounds like your players latched on to the idea of Monologues pretty easily. I like the tv helicopters being tied to the "media darling" Trait. See, that's cool. It has nothing to do with winning or losing! It probably didn't advance the character's standing in the contest at hand, right? It was purely an aesthetic use of a winning die roll. Awesome.

[Mike Holmes]

Wow, Bob, that sounds like a pretty cool session (after reading all the posts). I was worried that you'd have problems with the later games because of fatigue, but given your review of The Pool, it seems like you all stuck in there just fine. Or perhaps that just speaks to the strength of The Pool that it could follow al the others and still do well.

Pithy notes; I'm sure people will benefit. As far as the OtherKind variant, perhaps it was just too far from the designed setting to work properly. OTOH, there are thematic similarities.

I like the sound of your scenario. Sounds like something that I'd foist off on my players. :-)

And I hope you do try Universalis. I guaruntee it will be a pretty different experience than these other systems. I'd love to hear what you think.

Mike

[Bob McNamee]

I was using TQB as the rules set...

but the example in TQB, or the set I DL-ed recently has an example
fox... the dice costs seem to equal spending 1 die for +1, 4 for +2, etc...althought the rules talk of 2x Motif bonus... which would be 2d6 for 1+

Bob

[Bob McNamee]

Universalis is ordered.

I've been following comments on it for a while, like the sound of it!

Bob McNamee

[James V. West]

I was using TQB as the rules set...

but the example in TQB, or the set I DL-ed recently has an example
fox... the dice costs seem to equal spending 1 die for +1, 4 for +2, etc...althought the rules talk of 2x Motif bonus... which would be 2d6 for 1+

Bob

Thanks, Bob! You just spotted a serious glitch in the document. I've fixed it and updated the page, so get the right version http://www.randomordercreations.com/tqb.html">here.

This is what the rules should have said:

"You start with 15 dice in your Dice Pool. To add a bonus to a Motif, just multiply the bonus by itself and subtract that number of dice from you Pool. For example, a bonus of +2 would cost 4 dice, and a bonus of +3 would cost 9 dice.

Every Motif must have a bonus of at least +1.

Later in the game, you may increase a bonus by paying a number of dice equal to twice the new bonus. For example, if you have a Motif with a +2 bonus and you want to increase it to +3, it will cost 6 dice from your Pool."

[Bob McNamee]

cool...
thanks for the quick update!

Bob