My group played the Pool for the first time Sunday afternoon with some mixed (mostly good) results as far as I'm concerned. I'll go over the players, the characters, the setting and a brief foray into what happened for everyone.

The Setting

I'm most comfortable with a medieval fantasy setting and no one seemed to object so we went with a low-magic, fantasy a la Ladyhawk or 13th Warrior style. The game was centered around a small village, Midridge, that was nestled in the mountains along a trade route. What was at either end of the trade route didn't enter the game so we never defined that. It just didn't seem important.

Midridge was ruled by a Baron Grayson Halgraeve and his Lady, Alyssa Halgraeve. In the village was The Laughing Willow Inn (run by Kaitlyn and Darin), Heryn the Smith, The Old Mill (destroyed), The New Mill, Barrett's Dry Goods, Farrier Shop, Temple to the Lords of Light (burned). There were several NPCs I created associated with the village and I had a relationship map drawn out. It was sketchy but covered the basics, I think.

The major thing going on (at least in my mind) was related to the Baron and his wife. Several years ago, his wife had gotten very sick. The Baron had always been a righteous and faithful supporter of the Lords of Light (a largely undefined religion) but all his prayers seemed to be goin unanswered and his wife was dying. Desperate, he made a pact with dark powers to save his wife's life. In return, he secretly had the Temple burned. Everything seemed fine for a while but soon he discovered that his wife, although alive, was also cursed. On some nights (tied to moon cycles, I think. I hadn't worked it all out yet) she was transformed into The Crone, a tall, gnarled, hag-like woman. She remained in this form until a blood sacrifice to the powers that had extended her life had been made. At first she only turned on the Solstices but the times between her changes have been getting shorter and shorter. Now they are close enough together that people are starting to notice the missing folks that are being sacrificed. Okay... at this point our heroes enter the story.

Like I said, I didn't hash all this out in detail and I didn't tell the players what was going on behind the scenes here either. I know that some games require complete disclosure to the players but it didn't seem appropriate here, at least to me. I thought they would enjoy uncovering some of the mystery themselves and since the details were certainly not carved in stone, I could change things to fit with whatever direction they seemed to want to go.

The Players and Characters

After the players arrived, I let them read the rules and explained the setting. They then set about making characters. I thought they all did fairly well. The only non-standard thing I added to the character creation was the concept of Kickers. I stole this from listening about it in Sorcerer games. Below are the players and they characters:

Trey - an experienced gamer who I've played with frequently for the last 12 years or so. He leans towards Gamist play with strong story and character development. I think he would drift easily into Narrativist play (and it seemed to work out that way).

He played Tomas.
Tomas the Smith is cursed. At 15 he was cursed by a gypsy to turn into a monster when he gets angry. Tomas (20) searches for a counter-curse. He has learned to control the Beast somewhat and has found the Beast's claws and regeneration a boon at times.

Turn into a monster when angry +1
Searches for a counter-curse +2
He's a blacksmith +2
Beast form has powerful claws and regenerates +1

Kicker: Sitting in the Laughing Willow in a back corner, Tomas is taking a rest. A man sitting next to him at the table hands him a talisman and says, "If you can puzzle out the mystery of this talisman, your quest will be over. Be forewarned, it may cost you more than you are willing to give up." Tomas studies the talisman for a few seconds and when he looks up the man has disappeared.

Camerron - an inexperienced player. He first played in a D&D game of mine and is currently playing in an Alternity Campaign. He always plays tough fighter types who are monsters in combat. He's a min / maxer who likes to count his bonuses and play with powerful toys. I think this puts him firmly in the Gamist camp and I figured he might have the most trouble with the Pool.

He played Fagan
Fagan was a Knight from the Castle's contingent. He was kicked out after losing his temper with his Commanding Officer, Antwoine. Fagan patrols the lands around his hometown ridding the countryside of any dangers he comes across.

Has a temper +1
He is an ex-Knight +2
Seeks to protect the village +2
Doesn't like Antwoine +1

Kicker: Fagan is heading to the Laughing Willow after a patrol when he runs across a band of men, scouts recognized as enemies of the village doing recon.

Alex - a new gamer who started with Camerron. I haven't really been able to figure out which CA he goes with yet. He typically plays some non-combat oriented character: a rogue in D&D and a Free Agent in Alternity.

He plays Drake.
Drake lives in Midridge in a small log cottage. He lives with his sister Allison. Their parents died in a riding accident several years ago. Ever since then, Drake has taken care of his sister, his house, and his father's sheep. Drake is generall quiet and a good listener.

Loves his sister +2
Responsible for sister and homestead +2
Listens well to others +1

Kicker: It's late and Drake is reading by the fireplace when he hears a commotion in coming from the stables. As he steps out onto the front porch, he sees a dark-hooded figure riding off into the night with his sister kicking and screaming across the saddle.

The Session

The players arrived and made their characters and it didn't take long before we got right into the Kickers.

I discovered that Drake's kicker was better than the other two. It led to a horse chase where Drake pulled the cloaked figure off the horse. Unfortunately that left his sister disappearing off into the dark across the back of the horse while the cloaked figure retreated into the mountains. Drake caught up with his sister and the horse, which seemed to have come up lame, explaining how he caught it on his old draft horse. The horse was black and of good breeding with an expensive saddle. His sister was fine, except for a fright. She had been feeding the livestock in the barn when she was taken. Drake took his sister home and then went to the village to report the incident and see if anyone else was having this sort of problem.

Fagan stayed out of sight of the scouts he had come across and overheard their discussion. It seems they were scouts from Baron Rathburn's holding, which bordered with Baron Halgraeve. They had been having problems with people disappearing from their lands and their Baron suspected Halgraeve. After hearing this, Fagan approached the men and dialogued with them. He offered to investigate some in the village for them if it would help keep the Baronies from open conflict. The scouts agreed to the offer of help and said they would wait 48 hours for him to come back with some information.

Nothing much happened with Tomas's Kicker. I think its problem was that the WHOLE scene was spelled out in the Kicker. He's in the tavern. He gets a talisman. The guy gives him a cryptic warning. The guy disappears. Poof. Nothingl left to do.

Well, lots of stuff happened next. The whole group happened to be at the Laughing Willow (I know... I know... cliche. But I didn't even plan to have them all there. They just all gravitated to the place.) when I started throwing things at them.

A scream split the night from outside. The group runs out to discover that the black horse that Drake had brought to the village to ask about is missing... along with Kaitlyn and Darin's small son, Davin, who was the stableboy. Fagan and Tomas hop on their horses to look for the boy. Drake stays behind, being horseless now.

Drake notices a glow over the treetops in the direction of his home. He runs off in that direction to find his house and stable on fire and his sister nowhere to be found. He did find tracks from what seemed to be a large group of horses that hadn't been there earlier and a scrap of cloth that seemed to be from the uniform of a soldier from the Barony of Rathburn. As a note, Drake failed a roll in this scene and lost all but 2 of his dice. There was a collective groan around the table and a noted tension whenever someone gambled a large number of dice after that. Very cool.

Fagan and Tomas end up a the Haunted Falls, a pool and waterfall that had an eerie reputation. Here's where someone actually chose to do a MoV for the first time, instead of taking a die. Tomas rolled to find signs of the missing boy. His MoV stated he walked into the waterfall and found a small cave behind it, which he and Fagan couldn't explore fully, having no torches which them at the moment. They marked the spot mentally as a possibility. Well, Tomas wanted a bit more certainty so he rolled with the intention of turning into his monter form and attempting to track the boy by smell. He failed and I narrated him actually turning into Wolfman Jack and running off into the night. Fagan and Drake meet back at the Inn and Drake thinks that the boy's kidnapping has something to do with his missing sister and burned farm so joins with Fagan the next morning to look into the cave.

Tomas wakes the next morning in the forest. He's covered in blood next to the remains of what used to be a young woman. He leaves the scene quickly. Being naked, he doesn't return immediately to the village. Instead he goes to the Haunted Falls and washes. Fagan and Drake find him there and Fagan loans him some clothes without questioning his nakedness too much. They explore the caves. Tomas again chooses a MoV after rolling and describes walking deep into the caverns. Down one tunnel they find a large room with light shining from an opening far up in the ceiling. They find an arcane circle etched into the floor of the cavern and Davin's dead body within the circle. A small foot trail leads up to the opening above. Following the trail they come out above Baron Halgrave's castle.

This is where we called the game due to time.

My Ruminations

I am a Gamist. I'm sure people have heard me say so before. So, this game was a bit out of my comfort zone. Don't get me wrong. I had fun. It just felt kind of like the first time I decided to DM a D&D game. Except that I had the advantage in D&D of having watched someone else run that style of play before. I've never seen or participated in anything like the Pool before. So, the game was a little uncomfortable for me. I'm sure this will work itself out if / when I play some more.

Although, I explained it more than once, no one roll for a conflict unless I called for the roll. Towards the end, Trey seemed to be doing more MoVs rather than taking dice so perhaps that will lead into him actually calling for his own rolls later. It seems to me that rolling in the Pool isn't about succeeding or failing at whatever you are doing but rather whether or not you want to be the one that determines what direction the story is going to take. If I were a player, not the GM, I think I'd be asking for rolls whenever I could come up with an excuse for them, just so I could inject stuff into the story. I didn't get that from my players though. If I didn't ask for a roll, rolls didn't get asked for.

I ran into a place where I didn't know how to handle a situation according to the rules. Unlike most of the Pool games I read about here, my players went out of their way to stay together in a group. I think it's a holdover from D&D and such games where party coherency is important. Thus, when they were searching for clues, I didn't know who to ask to roll. Everyone? Pick a random one? I ended up just asking them who they wanted to roll. Is this typical? Are there better ways to handle this?

I had a hard time with Bangs. Of course, I didn't know what the characters were going to be beforehand so any Bangs had to be off the cuff. I think I might do better with this if we continue the game into another session. After all, I can see the characters and think of some possibilities beforehand. Bangs just aren't something I've really thought about too much before and I don't have the technique down yet.

I also had problems with when to have the players roll. If I waited too long into a scene or dialogue, it seemed more like task resolution rather than conflict resolution. However, task resolution is what I'm used to so I was finding it hard to know when the right moment was. Of course, I had thought my players would be asking for rolls more often which would have removed this burden from me to some extent. If anyone has any thoughts on how to know when the right time to ask for a roll is, I'd like to hear them.

I have a question. Do most of you play the Pool primarily in Author / Director stance or do you play in Actor stance and then switch to Author or Director stance for a MoV? I'm used to playing (especially in dialoguing with NPCs and such) in Actor stance and when to switch or even whether we should ever be in Actor stance kind of confused me.

Well, this post is plenty long enough now. I'll let folks comment. Thanks!

Hi Andrew,

Ah, so these are the players who were listening for the "beep" of the electric fence.

I've only played the Pool once, so I'll leave it to others talk about rules specifics, but I do have some general impressions about what you've written.

First off, especially since you are fairly new to this type of roleplaying, it seems like you made an excellent choice in starting the game with a well-defined setting which included a situation primed to hook the player characters into action. From what you describe, you got them all involved and motivated to uncover the mystery--though it sounds like they are ready to participate in following the action (eg sticking together, ending up at the Inn). That part of their habits of play worked in your favor, other parts, ie following your lead, are more challenging.

I think you're dead on about Tomas's kicker. Actually, what you used were 'bangs', as kickers are hooks in a character's back-story. For example, Tomas' search for the counter-curse is a kicker. Drake's care and responsiblity for his farm were a kicker too--or rather a perfect set up for a dynamic situation to be created for him by a well-placed bang. Your bangs were more successful--at least in the short term--in proportion to how much was at stake, and how invested the characters were in the choice involved.

There's a post by Andrew Morris about some very successful bangs here which put the characters in situations compelling to them in the way that Drake's was. I suspect that the other Andrew was at somewhat of an advantage in his game for getting the players to step into greater authorship due to the fact that his setting is contemporary--they may be less inhibited "creating" the world if they think of it as just being like this one, whereas making things up in a fantasy setting might sound like it could step on the gm's toes. Though, in essence, Tomas' player did so in character gen--unless you told him there were shape-shifters--he felt free to put that into the character, and thus it became an aspect of the world.

You might want to think about what kinds of clues the players need to know when they might want to call for rolls. Maybe every time they say they'd like their character to be able to do something, or are curious about some aspect of the action or setting, say "That's a great thing to roll for, would you like to?". Get them into the mode of looking for things to roll for, and transition them into doing it themselves.

Anyway, hope it continues to go well. Good for you in taking this step off your beaten paths.

Best,
Emily Care

I have to agree that my game taking place in a contemporary setting led the players to feel they had a freer hand at resolving their Bangs any way they wanted to. (I think it helped that most of my players knew more about Miami than I did, as well.) I've personally run into situations where players held back on introducing even simple elements of setting because they felt that doing so would be infringing on the GM's creation.

When I first introduced Monologues of Victory (which is an odd contrast with D20, which I was using as the main system) I noticed players limited their description to what they did. They were comfortable with narrating success, but not directing the rest of the scene. I had to start doing things like saying, "Okay, you pull off a perfect high-speed skid turn... but what does the road ahead look like?" I guess they're more Dialogues of Victory then.

When I finally run The Pool, I will make it a point of explaining how much of the setting is uncreated at game start. (Something like saying "here are the religious and political faction in this village, but it's not yet been decided what the population is like.") It's funny -- some of us as players are so used to picturing a GM with notebooks full of setting notes that even when it's more obviously semi-improvised, it feels hard to jump in with something in their domain.

Hello,

Andrew (Norris), you wrote:

When I finally run The Pool, I will make it a point of explaining how much of the setting is uncreated at game start. (Something like saying "here are the religious and political faction in this village, but it's not yet been decided what the population is like.") It's funny -- some of us as players are so used to picturing a GM with notebooks full of setting notes that even when it's more obviously semi-improvised, it feels hard to jump in with something in their domain.

Thanks, Ron, I am duly chastized :) I'm still trying to kick these old habits, and obviously my readings of The Pool haven't been enough to do that yet.

Hey Andrew (Cooper),

Glad to hear that the game went well.

I did cringe as I read Tomas' kicker. It's definitely lacking urgency, the need for immediate action/decision making. I'd suggest to you that it is completely within your purview, not only as GM but as a fellow participant, to suggest to a player that their kicker isn't much of a kicker at all. Emphasize the need for an urgent and unavoidable situation to be presented in the kicker and assist them as necessary (with ideas or suggestions) in making it so.

There's a technique I've used a couple times when dealing with players that are hesitant to call for their own rolls. Basically, when their character is in a situation of conflict where I would normally call for a roll (as GM), I don't. If the player doesn't call for a roll either then I just narrate partway through the resolution of the situation, making sure that the hesitant player's character ends up in some disadvantaged position. So far it hasn't failed to elicit a "shouldn't there have been a roll for that?" response. I smile mischieviously and say "shouldn't you have called for one?". No guarantees, but it's worked for me so far.

It's been a while since I've played a game of The Pool where the characters were together for any length of time. I do vaguely remember us using an "augment" method where one player could add dice to another player's roll if their character had a trait that was applicable in the current situation. Besides just giving the players the information they sought, the other solution I'd use is what you actually did. I'd just ask the player with the character that I thought was most likely to find the clues to roll the dice.

-Chris

Ron Edwards wrote: I tried to get this across in Andrew's (Gaerik's) introductory post to the game being discussed, Giving it a shot ..., but I'm just going to have to call it louder here: The Pool does not, as written, explicitly encourage massive Director Stance on the part of the players, not even during Monologues of Victory. If the group wants to go there, they can, but that is strictly left up to Social Contract.

Hi Andrew,

It's a matter of group Social Contract, and always will be.

You see, in that example, just how "solid" the Director Stance is in terms of in-game impact is left up for grabs.

Everyone knew, prior to the roll, that the guy is looking for a book which tells him X. So naming and describing the book as an MoV is really no more than Color, utilizing Director Stance to be sure, but without much impact. Maybe the guy leaves the library and we never see the book again; it's provided the FX guys with a few moments of fun, that's all. Director Stance in a nice wing chair, busy knitting socks and smiling pleasantly.

The neat thing about The Pool is that it offers mechanics for letting such things have impact - in the reward system (of course). If the player spends the dice for it, he can now have "Magic book" as a Trait! And what it can do will be left up to future conflicts.

But all of that, even at its most extreme, is very different from something like ... the player or GM narrating the outcome of the information-hunt as "then ninjas leap through the window!" Or, if the characters are walking through the forest, getting an MoV against a bandit and announcing that there's a huge blue mountain overlooking the whole scene. These examples are Director Stance wearing nothing but an open trenchcoat and a couple of sneakers. It's that difference in degree and scope that I'm trying to emphasize in this series of posts.

Best,
Ron

Ron Edwards wrote: The Pool benefits from focus and emotional investment in conflict, and those in turn rely strongly on a sense of Setting/Situation grounding.

Emily Care wrote:

Ron Edwards wrote: The Pool benefits from focus and emotional investment in conflict, and those in turn rely strongly on a sense of Setting/Situation grounding.

Sounds like there's been a lot of ground covered in play of the Pool that might be helpful to include more explicitly in the game text.

--EC

Making a Monologue of Victory (or MOV) is the only way to ensure that the conflict results in what you want. Giving an MOV is like taking control of the game for a few moments. You can describe your character’s actions, the actions of those around him, and the outcome of those actions. You can even focus on less direct elements of the conflict such as what’s happening in the next room or who’s entering the scene.


You can do just about anything. In fact, these are the only real limitations you must observe:


1) Don’t make alterations to the characters of other players (such as killing them). You can add complications for them and affect the things around them, but don’t intrude on the creation of a fellow player.
2) Keep your narration in synch with the established facts and tone of the game. If you need to ask the GM questions or prompt the other players for responses during your MOV, do so.

3) Keep your narration reasonably short.

I don't think I'm explaining what I really want to know very well. Let me try a different tack. In my example where one of the players, Trey, narrated a cave behind the waterfall, I really didn't have any plans for that being there or that being where the person they were chasing was supposed to be. But he asked for a roll "To find signs of the figure in black.", rolled a success, and then chose to narrate the results. The point is that he could have been in the forest or on some other mountain trail or back at the Inn or standing outside the Baron's Castle and the outcome would have been the same. The trail would have led anywhere he narrated it after the successful roll, since he didn't break any of the stated rules on using a MoV. He could have narrated the trail headed off towards the neighboring barony or towards Baron Halgraeve's castle or further into the mountains or whatever.

THAT is adding significant things to the plot that aren't just color. If MoVs are mostly just to narrate color into the game, how do I avoid what happened or should I even worry about it? I didn't care in this particular instance but what if next time I do care?

One thing you can do is something that we've done in other games that have this sort of directors stance capability.

Before the dice get rolled the definition of a success and a failure get decided. That way everybody at the table gets some say about what the scope of this roll is.

Trollbabe has this in a 'Fair and Clear' phase.
Shadows has this explicitly where you decide the What my character wants, and What his Shadow wants.

For example
But he asked for a roll "To find signs of the figure in black.", rolled a success, and then chose to narrate the results.

If before he rolled the dice he said
"Ok a successful MOV means 'There is a cave behind the waterfall where the person went'" you as GM would be able to say "Well there's no raised land around...How about you find a trai' leading toward the baron's castle?"

The GM could also tell roughly what the results of success but not taking the MOV is...which may not necessarily be the same as a Player MOV, and he could state what failure will result in.

not all the flowery language of description but the bare bones.

anyway after all sides agree on what the roll results can be ...
then you roll>

I'm sure this is something Ron does very easily, since it underlies Trollbabe's mechanics. (another game you may want to check out)

Anyway, I hope some of this helps.

I just thought of a question I had about running the Pool that I had forgotten earlier. What if a two players are opposing each other over something? How do you handle it? Who gets to roll and how is the intent handled? For example, Player A wants to render Player B's character unconscious but Player B obviously (or not) doesn't want this to happen and so wants to render Player A's character unconscious instead (bar brawl anyone?). Who gets to roll? Player A or Player B? Also, if Player A rolls and succeeds does he just get to narrate Player B's character being unconscious and Player B no longer get to roll? I really wouldn't like this type of situation to devolve into a contest to see who called getting to roll first.

I know I picked an example that was combat oriented but the conflict could really be anything. Player A could be wanted to intimidate some information for Player B. Player A could be racing Player B to a location. Player A could be hiding and Player B trying to find him. Whatever.

Gaerik wrote: In my example where one of the players, Trey, narrated a cave behind the waterfall, I really didn't have any plans for that being there or that being where the person they were chasing was supposed to be. But he asked for a roll "To find signs of the figure in black.", rolled a success, and then chose to narrate the results....

THAT is adding significant things to the plot that aren't just color. If MoVs are mostly just to narrate color into the game, how do I avoid what happened or should I even worry about it? I didn't care in this particular instance but what if next time I do care?

Ron Edwards wrote: It is no surprise to me that you are speaking from no actual experience playing the game. Bluntly, since such Setting-input has no structural support in the game, it tends to diminish enjoyment of playing The Pool - because it disperses Premise into improvisational "and then!" multiplied complications. The Pool benefits from focus and emotional investment in conflict, and those in turn rely strongly on a sense of Setting/Situation grounding.

For some review of all these issues, I recommend reading all threads in the Random Order Creation forum begun by Cassidy.

Hi Andrew,

The thread for you is The Pool question.

Best,
Ron

Thanks Ron and Emily,

Those were the answers I was looking for. I've really enjoyed trying out the Pool and talking about it. I think I'll head over to Random Order Creations and read some more about other people's experiences with it. Thanks again.