We played The Pool!!

[Overdrive]

And My God What Great Time We Had!

I started the game yesterday describing the setting ('darkish fantasy', no more) and the character concepts. The two PC's were a masterthief and an eldery count, both with some traits like 'loves his family' and such. I had really thought of the scenario, but left all important plot items free.

In fact, the only things I fixed was the first scenes. The players were confused about their situation, since I didn't describe *anything* beforehand. The thief was eyeing a largish castle in the middle of the night, winter time. I said he had paid for a stableboy to get him a rope, so there it was -- the thief climbed right at the top of the castle wall. Then I presented some facts like 'the countess is dressing up in the north tower, and there's a huge feast at the large hall' and stuff.

Then I cut to the large hall. There was the elderly count with all other guests. At this point I gave a vague idea what the count was doing there, it was some sort of meeting with other nobles because the king was getting old. There was some great roleplaying describing some old battles, etc; we really liked it. Then the host (count Craghorn) left the room, going to get his wife.

Again I cut to the thief. He didn't find the scrolls he was looking for (the only failed dice roll this evening) in the count Craghorn's tower, but heard the countess conversating with her servant maid. The count was said to be somewhat absent recently. Then he came, strode upstairs, told the servant to go, confessing his love to the countess. When the servant was gone, he killed his wife.

At this point the thief player got the first MoV. He described how the count killed his wife, and how the thief got into a good hiding place in that room. He then resumed searching (initially he was hired to get some 'strange scrolls' stuff..)

The count comes back to the main hall, like nothing happened. Then the guests were getting poisoned. The PC count rolled dice, got a MoV, described how his family ate from the count Craghorn's table, not from the guest's. Great stuff. Then Craghorn called in his trusted guards, said to the PC, 'I need you alive' and left the room again. A fight ensued, where the PC got another MoV, describing how he and his son won the fight but with the son getting badly wounded.

Now it was the thief's turn again. I made the player roll a sneaking roll, which he made; in the MoV he described the count Craghorn walking at the inner bailey, and how the PC got to ambush him. Now Craghorn had no choice but to lead the thief to the wanted scrolls. There was a wizard in the tower, but a MoV again won the match, so perhaps he was no wizard after all.

The most powerful MoV was when the PC searched for the scrolls at the 'wizard's' tower. "The scrolls were easy to find, but there was something extra. Papers describing how lord Craghorn had made certain deals with the Ottomans. This drove him to kill his wife and poison the guests, with von Riedel's lands being part of his reward."

Oo.. I had only thought of a cool start up. The players really liked it. They even thought that the thief was raiding the lord's castle! The two PC's never got to see each other. Most of the plot was decided by the little things in the MoV's, I allowed the players to state things even outside MoV's. Like how the Ottomans were involved, they were apparently near the Ottoman border. I didn't know why the 'evil' count would kill his wife, if the wizard had magic powers, or pretty much anything. Oh how powerful the game is.

Most every die roll was *very* intensive! Perhaps because of the gamble, perhaps because all dice rolls occur at really important plot scenes. If the roll is successful, the player (usually) gets his vision of things, so they gambled a lot of dice. When a PC was low on his Pool, the dice rolls were even more intense! The players went on MoV's rather than bonus dice most of the time.

Oh man I've not had such great time perhaps ever when I've been GM'ing. The game was so cool we went to a local bar and talked about it for two hours. We definitely want more; cyberpunk seems a great setting for the next game.

I probably missed some key things but perhaps the alcohol makes things more difficult %)

[Mad-Eye Moody]

Sounds great.  I've wanted to try the Pool out for quite a while, but gamers in one of my groups refused (we have definite creative agenda conflicts) and I just started a urban sci-fi horror campaign with another group and I'm not sure if they'd like me to switch systems on them just to try out something.  I may give it a go for an hour and then switch back to the custom Fudge implementation we've been using.

[James V. West]

Cool! I love hearing about people playing the game.

Sounds like you approached set-up with the right frame of mind and that your players took to the Mov-ing like fish to water. What always thrills me is when players use MoVs to introduce things that really add kick to the story, such as your Count poisoning his guests. Excellent!

In the famous words of one Hannibal, "I love it when a plan comes together."