The Forge Archives

Seeing how versatile The Pool (and of course to a certain extent TQB) I have been just wondering what different types of games (genres, etc) have people used it for?  I am wondering about campaigns and one-shots.  Look foreard to your responses!

-Shane

Hey Shane,

Last summer I ran a four session scenario of The Pool, using the dark fantasy setting from the Sun & Storm game. The situation for it was that a mercenary company in the hire of a clan of technomancers had been dramatically disadvantaged by a surprise assault of the Kriedetempek (an army of undead). Only a portion of the mercenary company and a small number of the technomancers escaped. The technomancer lord was dead. The queen was with child. And the encampment of technomancers and mercenary escapees was exceedingly vulnerable and short on supplies.

The commander of the mercenaries had been trying to negotiate the marriage of the pregnant queen to a clan of creepy technomancers known as The Awake. They were a low status clan, because of their use of death magic, and ordinarily wouldn't have an opportunity to improve their status through marriage like this. But the situation was unusual. However, when the game began, word of whether The Awake would accept the marriage proposal, in exchange for taking in the surviving technomancers and providing supplies to the mercenaries, had not arrived. It was rainy night, and the Kriedetempek scouts had found the refugees' encampment.

The scenario had pride, sexual tension, a technomantic android, flashbacks, betrayal, a cast of mercenaries, and a chance for people who died to not stay dead for the whole scenario :)

It was a lotta lotta fun.

Paul

Hey Shane

I wish I could have played in Paul's game. All I've heard of it sounds awesome.

I used The Pool to run anthropomorphic Arthurian adventures before I wrote TQB. I haven't used it for any other setting or genre. It worked out very well for me. It was just the kind of loose system I wanted. I have always more or less ran my games in the style that The Pool produces, but using the various rules.

What kind of game are you wanting to run?

I am thinking about something along the lines of Stephen King's The Dark Tower series.  Basically a desolate wasteland where there has just been a gigantic "peasant revolt" against the "lords and knights," the Gunslingers.

It is kind of an Arthur legend in the Old West where the lords and knights where six-shooters instead of swords.  The other part of it though is the Dark Tower itself - a mysterious structure that the Gunslingers are searching for.  It is the linchpin between dimensions, holding them all apart and seperate, but a powerful being - The Crimson King - is trying to break it down.  As such sometimes people from the realm of the Gunslingers fall into the minds and bodies of people in our dimension, and sometimes people from our dimension find themselves there.  Death is not a constant, for some seem to die only to find themselves in another dimension.

There are spirits, demons, and some magic.  But there are also mutants roaming the plains and technologies far beyond our own that lay rusting away--long forgotten.

This is kind of where it is right now and I am looking at both The Pool and The World, The Flesh, and The Devil, though after reading some posts I am going to give Dust Devils another look over.

My knowledge of the setting is not extensive because it has been like 9 years since I really read much of the series.  But I am also thinking about keeping it that way - allowing the players to make up the world as we go along - filling in the parts that are missing.

To facilitate this I have a plan of sorts...  I have been thinking about the role of memory in RPG's and the use of external forms of inspiration.  I am thinking that somehow all Gunslingers (since for the time being that is what PC's will be) have somewhat lost their memories.  As they play the game they will begin to "remember" things from their past, and the world's past, based on inspiration from the Tarot deck.

When they get into a situation wherein they might recal something they draw a Tarot card and remember something about themselves or the world's past or how the world works, based on either the varied meanings of the card, or the picture, or the name of the card - just something to knock the narrarator.

Thinking about it, maybe I should look into that mechanic a bit more - maybe as an add on for a system, or maybe the basis of a system itself!

-Shane

Hi there,

I GM'ed The Pool the first time for a fantasy-adventure run concerning the wedding of a powerful wizard's daughter and a few attendant complications. I have yet to play it over a series of sessions and stories, although I very much want to.

I also ran The Questing Beast several times, in one case using one of my scenarios from The Sorcerer's Soul ("The Forbidden Pool") in a more Arthurian context, and in another case using a highly modified scenario from Pendragon.

Best,
Ron

Hello,

I ran The Pool in a more-or-less generic high fantasy setting.  You can read how it went here and here and here.  It's a lot of reading, but gives a pretty detailed rundown of my experience.

Best,

Blake