X-Games Update (1)

[Blake Hutchins]

We finished the characters and played our first session of The Pool: Irongate yesterday.  Wow.  VERY cool experience.  I have a lot to relate, so let me get started.

Characters
Unfortunately, Marion had to drop out for personal reasons, so we're left with three players.

Some notes:  (1) I have fairly verbose players, so rather than have 'em sweat on parsing things down, we decided to loosen the reins on the initial story paragraphs.  (2) I gave everyone a free die to spend on a Trait attached to the group backstory, which appears in the second paragraph of each character's story.

ARTUS (Matt) --
Formerly an apprentice to a Shadow mage, Artus fled after his master betrayed him and tore off his right arm.  He became an artificier and tried to put his past behind him, but he harbors deep hatred for the Shadow.  His new master gifted him with a mysterious clockwork arm, and Artus has constructed a clockwork raven as a familiar.  He struggles with Shadow-taint that stains his soul.

He fled the fall of Karakallas with Joram and Kooren'Dar, and now serves the latter in Irongate.  He has made several highly-placed contacts with Irongate's Artificiers' Guild.

Former Shadow mage apprentice (black magic) +1 (1)
Artificier +1 (1)
Hatred for the Shadow +2 (4)
Mysterious clockwork arm +0
Clockwork raven as a familiar +1 (1)
Struggles with Shadow-taint +1 (1)
Contacts with Irongate's Artificiers' Guild +1 (free)

Starting Pool (4)


JORAM (Jeff)
Joram, now a mercenary in Irongate, was once a mighty paladin in the Order of the White Hart.  He suffered a crisis of faith in the final battle against the Shadow.  Tormented by guilt, he searches for redemption while fighting the forces of evil with his own Shadow-tainted magic.

He fled the fall of Karakallas with Artus and Kooren'Dar, and now serves the latter in Irongate.  Two refugee boys work as his pages.


Mighty +1 (1)
Paladin +2 (4)
Crisis of faith +1 (1)
Mercenary in Irongate +0
Searches for redemption +1 (1)
Shadow-tainted magic (White and Black magic) +1 (1)
Two refugee boys work as his pages +1 (free)


KOOREN'DAR - Dennis
An Irongate sorcerer who served as ambassador and spy in Karakallas, Kooren'Dar penetrated the heart of the Shadow and went insane. He now suffers a constant delusion that he has been exiled in the land of the Dead.  Only his focused will lets him survive the horror.  Kooren'Dar spends his nights screaming in torment; by day he quests to destroy the Shadow.  Cryptic visions plague him.  Uncontrolled magics surge and crackle about him when he becomes agitated.

He fled the fall of Karakallas with Artus and Joram, who entered his service in Irongate.  As a Master Sorcerer, he has status and wealth at his command, including a large house in the city.

Insane: believes he's in the land of the Dead +2 (4)
Sorcerer of Irongate (red and blue magic) +1 (1)
Focused Will +1 (1)
Suffers cryptic prophetic visions +1 (1)
Driven to destroy the Shadow – 0
Uncontrolled magic - 0
Status and wealth in Irongate +1 (free)

Starting Pool (5)


Comments on character generation: The players had fun, though we still went through some parsing to get the stories to stand up and mesh with each other.  Someone commented that these certainly weren't first level characters.  Despite the dearth of stats and skills, they felt more fleshed out than many characters at the start of play in other games.  Jeff wasn't sure whether he liked not having clearer limits on what a player could or could not do.

Much discussion went toward choosing the right words for traits.  Jeff went through a few other terms before settling on "crisis of faith" to describe what he wanted to play.  He kept the "tormented by guilt" I suggested, but made a trait of the redemption seeking aspect, going with a pull rather than a push as a primary motivator.

The biggest discussion pre-game went into trying to define how magic worked, and what the limits were.  I told them that aside from sticking to the colors' themes and the necessity of a cost for each spell or ritual, magic would work loosely, and players would define how magic actually functioned during gameplay.  Again, I see this as initial discomfort at the lack of bright line rules.

Creation of a common backstory worked well, though they changed the mercenary band concept to more of a standard adventurer band, adding the codicil that they served Kooren'Dar.  The idea is that they met in the White City and fled in the wake of the Shadow's victory, accompanying a host of refugees to Irongate, where Kooren'Dar (now insane) took up his old residence and plotted against the Shadow.

Creation of a group kicker didn't go so well.  I'd suggested they incorporate elements of smoke, a black pig, and a tower into the scene, but they started getting silly about the black pig part, and in the end we decided simply to start in Kooren'Dar's house where he received a message from a mysterious patron: go on mission outside city, get McGuffin.  I used the smoke, black pig, and tower in the message to give it the requisite high fantasy riddle flavor.

And so they set off.  Comments welcome.  I'll post a report on the play session later today.  I'm still digesting it.

Best,

Blake



[ This Message was edited by: Blake Hutchins on 2001-10-29 20:53 ]

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Blake,

Great post!

I know what you mean about the group Kicker thing. I tend to do a lot better if the characters have personal Kickers and then see how they might be integrated with the other stuff.

Paul and I had a good dialogue about the tendency to "pre-play" during character generation or pre-scenario organization ... people often tend to create convoluted stuff that really doesn't contribute much to the potential of upcoming play.

It's in the Art-Deco thread on the Sorcerer forum.

Best,
Ron

[Blake Hutchins]

Thanks, Ron.  That's been a very enlightening thread.

Here's my take on our first play session.  Be warned: it's another very long post.  I've asked the players to post their opinions if they care to do so, so you may also hear from them.

I'd like to thank the players, by the way.  They offered excellent feedback, and we had no rules disputes or hitches in the game itself.  They've been good sports about testing this funky Narrativist system I've pushed on them.

STORY SUMMARY
The characters ventured after the McGuffin.  Right off, Kooren'Dar used Gate magic to get them out of Irongate unseen.  During the travel scene, Joram suffered a minor flashback when he failed an Action Roll I called on his Crisis of Faith trait.  Then they arrived at the location and discovered a host of bad guys and innocent refugee captives.

Here is where it got interesting.  Kooren'Dar teleported to the far side of the hollow to get a better vantage point.  I called for an Action Roll and he succeeded, but took dice instead of the MoV.  Since he uses red and blue magic in one trait, I've decided this means his magic is especially volatile and hard to control, thus he appeared successfully at his desired spot with a flash and loud bang, alerting the bad guys.  Battle ensued.  Joram charged the black knight.  Artus conjured a shadow magic effect.  Kooren'Dar started using elemental magic: cyclonic whirlwinds, storm summoning, etc.  Everybody asked for Trait rolls.  Joram lost his charger but slew the intervening mooks before confronting the main antagonist.  Artus lost control to his shadow taint and his shadow magics tore the refugees to shreds.  Kooren'Dar caused a lot of flashy damage to turf and tower, accidentally turned himself to stone, turned back to flesh, fought the black magician in the camp, and ended up being swallowed in a mad hallucination (?) of the Shadow's presence confronting him with the abyss.  The session ended there, with Joram on the ropes and Artus clinging to control of his dark urges, having the deaths of a good score of innocents on his hands.

SYSTEM THOUGHTS
1. My Impressions:
First off, let me say I had a blast.  The story started slow, in large part because the players began in Kooren'Dar's residence and went through some low-key roleplaying to settle into their characters.  Once they got to the meat of the confrontation, everything moved like greased lightning.  I didn't have to do much; when the players shed their initial timidity, the dice started to fly.  I didn't keep precise count, but I'd guess we made about eighteen to twenty rolls over the course of the evening.  And virtually all were Trait rolls.

We heard a lot of Monologues of Defeat. (James asked me to try this rule.  It's the inverse of the MoV; if you roll no ones but any sixes you may choose to take a Monologue of Defeat.)  The players seemed to relish the ability to narrate outcomes.  In fact, the MoD use resulted in more vicious hosings than I'd have dealt out.  When Artus "deep sixed" a Trait roll on his trait of Shadow Mage Apprentice, for instance, he used his MoD to declare that his Shadow-tainted side took over and turned his magics to evil.  He tried to regain control, calling for a Trait roll on 'Hatred of the Shadow,' but failed again with a six.  This time, he used his MoD to describe how his shadow spirits ripped the refugees apart and devoured their souls to feed his dark appetites.  Whew.

Dennis used an MoD to save himself, but he timed it perfectly, turning himself to stone at a point where it took him out of events for awhile but kept him from being torn apart by a pack of Dauthi Jackals (I used Magic cards for inspiration).

All in all, the evening turned out to be one of the most fun, unpredictable sessions I've ever run.

2. What Worked:
Clearly, the MoV and MoD mechanics work very well to generate and propel story.  It felt like strapping the narrative to a jet engine, and I as narrator had long stretches where all I had to do was nudge folks or update small matters in the scene.

Every roll moved the story forward.  Every roll was significant.  That's a far different feel from other systems where you may achieve a number of "nothing important happens" or "something incremental happens" results, stuff like one hit point damage in DnD, to use a hackneyed combat example.

Players felt free to kibitz and offer suggestions for each other's MoV's and MoD's.  That was nice.  Everyone was engaged throughout the session; no one had a long stretch of dead time, and it looked as though everyone was equally excited about the other players' stories.

Die rolls felt exciting.  Whenever someone rolled, everybody perched on the edge of his seat, and I don't remember ever hearing so many cheers or whoops 'n hollers at dice results, especially with the MoD's.  Matt took an MoV at one point when he was out of Pool dice, which had a nice story twist.

Jeff adopted Actor stance for the most part, Dennis was mostly in what I'd call Author stance, but with a very character-centered perspective.  Matt seemed to flick between Author and Actor stance.  I think the Stances impacted the way they used their Director power.  This isn't a critique, merely an observation.  The cinematography differed depending on the player.  Basically, Jeff's MoV's and MoD's felt very much like critical successes or critical failures, and his descriptions of combat were fairly specific.  Dennis carried more emotion with his declarations and included personal backstory asides with some of his narrations.  Matt took a more low-key, impressionistic approach.  Both he and Dennis fell into the crit success/failure perspective, but to a much lesser extent than Jeff (despite the fact their successes and failures were MUCH more spectacular).

Handling time was next to nil.  Players made decisions quickly and reading dice results couldn't be easier.  When faced with an MoV or MoD, some pondering occurred, but given the helpful attitudes that prevailed, this pause didn't amount to a delay.  In no case did a player's narration take significant time to think up or deliver.

3. Quibbles:
As players, we clearly need to triangulate to a better sense of the middle ground.  Though exciting, the story did seem to veer between extremes.  Players had few guidelines to help them judge how far to go, and the tendency to see Traits as Skills and Attributes rather than narrative character hooks added a degree of confusion, as did the critical failure/success view of MoD/MoV results.  I don't see this as a problem so much as evidence that The Pool represents a radical shift from most RP system thinking that takes getting used to.

According to the rules, gaining dice depends on Action rolls, not Trait rolls.  Since most of this session revolved around Trait rolls called for by the characters, following the rules strictly would have meant no opportunity to gain dice, leaving the players in perpetually dire circumstances.  Moreover, once out of dice, the players would no longer be able to call for Trait rolls in the first place, leaving the onus on the narrator to provide plenty of Action Rolls if we want to use the Fortune mechanic.  As it happens, we'd forgotten these points, so players took dice on successful Trait rolls, and this outcome worked fine.  I'd suggest this rule be modified to allow dice gain as well as MoV's – if you want to shoot pool in your game, that is.

We used Trait rolls like rounds/exchanges, which I think is a relic of experience in other systems.  I'm the only one who has played in purely or mostly Drama based games, so I think there was a certain ingrained reluctance NOT to take Trait rolls.

The dice gain ratio seemed fine.  Two dice felt like a good reward without being too large.  However, the potentially quick loss of dice compared to a slow gain made players reluctant to gamble large numbers of dice.  Jeff points out that the mechanic reinforces a strategy of gambling one die at a time, in hopes of gaining more than you risk.  Once you build up enough dice, it's worth it according to his reasoning to invest Traits so they eventually play a significant role in rolls.  One or two dice, he says, don't represent enough of a factor in terms of player characteristics affecting the outcome.  My feeling is that these observations probably stem from confusing Traits as Skills/Attributes, but I wasn't participating from a PC's point of view.  Jeff adds – and I agree wholeheartedly on this point – that The Pool would make an excellent superhero game with true four-color rollercoaster potential.

Jeff made another observation I agree with, though I dispute the conclusion he drew from it.  During play I told him the Black Knight antagonist could not be killed on the first pass if he took an MoV.  Fine.  Jeff notes that it felt as though he couldn't achieve anything significant if he took an MoV in that situation.  MoV's then become analogous to hit points.  How many MoV's do I need to kill the Black Knight? he asks.  To him, it feels limiting not to have the potential to succeed right away.  I agree with his point that NPC plot immunity can be measured by the number of MoV's required to overcome a particular NPC.  However, I don't see it as disempowering to require several MoV's for the defeat of a major villain, since most other games confer various types of resilience on significant adversaries.  DnD uses Hit Points.  Hero Wars uses Action Points.  WW and Story Engine use the "damage ladder."  (By the way, I use these physical combat/damage examples because they're the simplest.  The same principle could equally well apply to a significant NPC's defeat in a courtroom drama or political intrigue.)  Nevertheless, what Jeff is really addressing appears to be the degree of arbitrariness in The Pool with respect to NPC abilities.  It's certainly true that outright telling the player that "you can't kill the Black Knight in this scene" may come across as restrictive to players who at least want the illusion of being able to achieve a quick victory via daring action and luck of the dice.  In other words, the statement acts as an intrusion into the story, almost as if you outright told a DnD party, "This red dragon has 350 hit points.  You're going to be here awhile.  Roll initiative...."

Possible solutions for this intrusion might be to have the narrator start play with 1d6 tokens.  On an MoV, the narrator can only set limits by spending tokens, perhaps equal to the number of ones rolled by the victorious player.  Instead of tokens, the narrator might have to give a die to all players if she seeks to limit an MoV.

I'm curious to see how The Pool works in a long-term game.  It seems to offer a lot of potential for character development and its open-ended improvement methodology seems quite promising.  Players used to the traditional "start as wimp, build up to demigod" paradigm may find themselves without objective standards to demonstrate their character's progress.  The long-term significance of MoD's and MoV's depends utterly on players and narrators remembering the particular events and working them into the story.  The reason this isn't a self-evident observation is that the system offers no objective consequences in terms of character stats and numbers.  I'm not bothered by this, but I can see how other players might be.  One suggestion might be to offer an on-the-spot pool die or even an improvement point (dedicated to the Trait in use) to players who undergo emotionally significant successes or failures.  By "emotionally significant," I mean the kind of emotional hit that goes to the core of the character concept.

4. Final Thoughts:
1.   Everyone had fun.
2.   From a Narrator standpoint, The Pool was easy to set up and terribly easy to run.  Not much to keep track of in terms of objective numbers and rules, though you still have to conceive of your NPCs enough to know their motivations and capabilities.  The lack of rules and hard numbers means you have to develop your own best method for sketching out your NPC material.
3.   I'm curious to see how it stands up to a more complex storyline, not just fast-paced action.  From an action perspective, though, it handles very well.  The Pool is like an unexpectedly fast sports car which can be tricky on corners.  The speed and power take some adjustment, but the driving experience is amazingly cool.

We may not be able to play this week.  Next report will deal with the resolution of the story and further observations on the system.

Best,

Blake




[ This Message was edited by: Blake Hutchins on 2001-11-01 17:56 ]

[Bankuei]

  I understand about the nebulous combat/extended contest rules...It seems pretty harsh that players are giving up 2 dice to the pool(taking the MOV) AND still have to keep making tests...  

Maybe the MOV can go up to the point of "and I finish with a mighty swing" to which you reply,"beating him down to one knee..." indicating the battle is not yet over, or ,"cleaving into his chest..." indicating the battle is over.

Any other ideas?

Bankuei

[Mike Holmes]

How about a number of successes to defeat, not MoVs. Or combinations. So a player can be required to roll two successes and an MoV for a particular villain. This means that the player may take dice or do an MoV for two of the three successes required. For really baddies, you would require two or even all three of the successes to be MoVs. If any MoVs are required for defeating a villain the last one is required to be an MoV.

Anyhow, the idea is that the player doesn't have to blow a whole MoV on the standard "Our swords clash and after a few exchanges the villain is pushed back" description of a partial victory. The GM can just come up with that sort of thing, and the player can take his dice.

Mike

[Paul Czege]

Get thee behind me Mike Holmes!

How about a number of successes to defeat, not MoVs. Or combinations. So a player can be required to roll two successes and an MoV for a particular villain.

Every step down this path with the mechanics is a step away from conflict resolution, toward task resolution.

Blake, I think your players will get used to the occasional, "You can't kill him in this scene." They already seem to have an understanding of how adversity drives protagonism. An understanding of "you can't kill him yet" isn't far behind. Plus, as your scenario progresses, there's less need to preserve your key NPC's for future scenes. The power of the MoV increases for them from session to session.

Great thread, by the way.

Paul

[Blake Hutchins]

Thanks for the suggestions and feedback, gents.  I was a tad concerned that these posts of mine were too bloody long. :smile:

Jeff and I discussed allowing a larger number of ones on a successful roll expand the MoV for purposes of overriding NPC plot immunity only.  In other words, if he attacked the Black Knight, and the Black Knight had a Plot Immunity Threshold of 4, Jeff would have to score 4 ones on a single success roll to have his way unfettered in narrating the outcome.  I would use the PIT as a very general guideline to how many MoVs might be necessary to take out the Black Knight.  This estimate would be subject to being lowered depending on the events of the story.

We also discussed allowing the players to use the number of ones or sixes rolled as a non-binding guideline for expanding the scope of their MoV's or MoD's.  This kind of guideline could help players triangulate away from a seesaw bipolar set of outcomes.

Thoughts?  We're thinking about trying some of these ideas in the next session.

Best,

Blake

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Blake,

Your posts are not too long. They are superb. I am finally, FINALLY getting to read discussions of real play without them being breathless litanies of "and then, and then, I rolled a 20!"

My goal is for someone new to the Forge to be able to come to this forum in particular and see intelligent, engaging accounts of play that lead to solid discussions. It ought to be the conceptual entry point.

As for Pool comments, I confess to being a sullen purist. I don't even like the Monologues of Defeat, and the idea of any granularity based on the number of 1's, or even the number of successful rolls, does not sit well with me at ALL for this game.

(This opinion is specific to the Pool; as Elfs owners know, I used a "cumulative successes" approach to combat in that game.)

Best,
Ron

[Blake Hutchins]

Ron,

Thanks for the kind words.  They are much appreciated.  Interesting point you have about the MoD, as I felt it added an enormous dimension to the game.  As I said, James told me it was in his early version of the rules, and he wanted to get some playtest results on its use.

I'm of mixed feelings about the granularity, though I want to stress that I conceive of it as a guideline, not a rule.  Paul may be correct in saying it's purely a question of players acclimatizing to The Pool and its use of delegated Director power as the central engine.  Given that the only thing rolls determine is who narrates outcomes, I can certainly see and agree with the concern that adding granularity to the mechanics constitutes a shift toward vanilla task resolution instead of scene resolution.

My primary issues with The Pool remain as follows: (1) Would some kind of die parsing help players understand the scope of an MoV/MoD?  (2) Is there a less intrusive means of conveying the plot immunity of principal antagonists to the players than breaking into the narrative with a warning?

Best,

Blake

Quickly edited to add: OK, rolls also determine success/failure as in every other Fortune system, but IMO the success/failure is less important than the determination of who exercises Director power.



[ This Message was edited by: Blake Hutchins on 2001-11-03 19:23 ]