The Pool: Nyambe

I ran The Pool for my two kids (9 and 14) yesterday. Since my oldest boy had given me a copy of the Nyambe book for my birthday awhile back, I decided to set the game in Nyambe but I asked the boys to create characters that had travelled to Nyambe from elsewhere so they wouldn't need to spend time familiarizing themselves with the background. Everyone liked the rules and the kids made it clear that I will be running it again.

Character creation took a little time as the kids had some trouble creating characters that were sufficiently developed and that made sense within the context of the sort of game I wanted to run. (John, my teenager, felt he needed to detail every weapon skill for his character while Tom wanted to have an army of 7,000 soldiers.) I ended up walking through the character generation process with them to get characters we were all happy with.

John's character was Shawn, a thief on the run because he was involved in a political assasination. He has a pet pseudo-dragon, Norbert, with whom he communicates telepathically. Tom's character was Kai, a fighter with the power to channel his spirit into energy blasts. He is looking for his brother who has the same power but has used it for evil (can you tell he's been watching a lot of anime?).

We started the game with the PCs arriving in Tombo, a city in Nyambe. After a bit of roleplaying with the crowd of people on the docks, they set off to find an inn. Shawn set his pseudo-dragon off with a command to look for the people that have been trying to capture him. I called for a role, John rolled a 1, and I explained how the Monologue of Victory worked. John loved the idea that he had some control over the narrative. He told us that Norbert didn't see the people that had been looking for him but he did see some people in hoods following the PCs. That gave me something to work with and the session kicked into high gear.

I won't bother summarize everything that happened except to say that it involved a group of terkow, Nyambe vampires that can wear the skin of their victims, and Kai's brother. The session culminated with a fight in the sewers with Kai and his brother tossing around energy blasts which caused a cave-in which may or may not have have killed the brother. A sequel is in the works.

As the GM, I had a little trouble knowing when to call for a roll and when not to. I think I ended up calling for rolls too often and the boys didn't call for rolls often enough. I also had to force myself not to immediately take control when the boys had a success on a roll. As we got those minor kinks worked out, the game flowed smoothly.

When the kids rolled a success, Tom always took a MOV and John flip-flopped between taking an MOV or taking an extra die for his pool (but he kept rolling very badly and losing dice from his pool). Both boys gave the system and game a big thumbs up.