Critique my system - effort pools

[gds]

Hi Tex,

Funny isn't it? Everyones always thinks they've done something cool and new, but then there's always someone else who's had a similar idea. I think there are some differences between our ideas, but the intent is similar. There are a lot of RPGs that share common ideas system wise - for example others have already mentioned shadows of yesterday, and the Dying earth game by Robin Lwas features pools of dice that you spend to attempt actions in a similar style. I've never heard of ORP before, but it looks interesting. Why don't you go for a critique my system too? Mind you, it looks like you've put plenty of work in and got a lot of stuff pinned down. Good work!

Greg

[Ken]

Well, you could go with wound levels or hit points. Maybe wounds cause extra fatigue dice to be rolled, or temporarily reduce characteristics so that you get fatigued more quickly. In fact you could cobine the two as a damage/shock mechanic. The first thing damage does is cause you to lose a wound level or two, which causes you to take on more fatigue dice. Then in the long term, the injury reduces your characteristics so that you get fatigued more often. Hmmm....anyone else have any thoughts?

This is just my first pass at an alternative (and it comes from some rules I was working on for another game): You can use your pools as health ratings. When damage is inflicted, the target applies the damage to the pool of their choice, allowing players to steer the effects of the damage on them. I would guess that most characters would stick the damage in their non-physical pools so they can keep fighting-sure, no problem, very dramatic. Then when combat is over you have a beaten and bruised character than couldn't make friends with a lepur and has forgotten what 2+2 is. Eventually pools will shut down (which might be the onset of onconsciousness) and then they would have no pools at all (death, or whatever).

The way I would suggest following my suggestions would be to have your pool ratings, with a spot for current value and a spot for wounds. The current value is your pool minus points spent for actions/ wounds is points of damage alloted to that pool. The pool doesn't shut down totally until the wounds rating equals the starting value of the pool. When spending points you can't reduce your current rating lower than your wounds score, though eventually it will be after more wounds are applied. Once the wound score is higher than your current score, you can't spend more points out of that pool, but you can continue to put damage there until it reaches your starting score.  Does that make sense. There are probably easier ways to express this.

I like your pool mechanic and am just trying to suggest an organic way to use it in the whole damage/health dynamic.

Let me know what you think,

Ken

[gds]

Hi Ken,

I like that idea for a cinematic action-packed kind of game. I can see players exhausting their 'mind' pools after a hit and describing how a it knocks them spinning so they don't know which way from sunday. Sounds like a nice idea.

I was also thinking that for brute characteristic tests the characteristic would count as the skill - so if you have a strength of 3, then you could spend one effort to get three dice to roll. As a special instance though, you could use no effort and roll up to two dice for free, indicating just how strong you are.

Cool!

Greg

[gds]

Another development on that last idea is if you treat conflicts of any kind - physical, intellectual, emotional, with the same procedure. Now, when you take a 'hit', you have to reduce your effort pool to reflect it. Also, if you lose more than two points you have to knock points off of two pools (split as you decide). Having an argument and losing, have to burn to points? knock points off your mental pool to represent you tying yourself in sophisms and one off your spiritual (or maybe it should be called empathy) pool to represent you losing face etc. Been hit by a piece of wood for two points? Lose a point off of your physical (it hurt!) and mental (what day it is?) pools. Also, for every two points that you lose from a pool, you gain a fatigue point - after all, all conflicts are draining!

Greg

[Ken]

Also, for every two points that you lose from a pool, you gain a fatigue point - after all, all conflicts are draining!

Am I correct in reading that a player could resist gaining a fatigue point by spreading damage to other pools to keep from loosing two points from the same pool. If so, that is neat. I think any time a player is able to help determine the outcome of game events is cool. I think rules flexibility is important, and that allowing players to share ownership of a story or on-going campaign is valuable to having a fun game.

Also, did you have a health score in your head originally, and did you find that you've had to alter damage statistics for various attacks to work with the pool-oriented health notion?

Take care,

Ken