Hi there!

I GMed The Pool for the first time yesterday night. It was all I had hoped for, though I did make some mistakes. Also, I can't wait to see what the players will come up with next.

(The first two parts of the following record were recorded before the game, the last two parts I've written just now, on the morning after. If this report is too long for your tastes, maybe you can skip ahead.)

Except for the beginning of the game and some scenes with multiple PCs in them, I am going to describe the action neither chronologically nor exhaustively, but by player.

Part 1: Our Group

The Group: We have been playing together for several years and have almost exclusively played DSA, a 'low-fantasy' German FRPG. We have rotating GMs. We're friends and share activities outside of the game (e.g. going on camping trips together).

Carl: Carl has played in other groups with me and participated in many of my experimental games. We are often on exactly the same wavelength, whether he GMs or I. Carl's character is a grim hunter of beasts and men. (He originally wanted to play an artiste, but got carried away with character creation and made a whole roster of characters, chosing this one in the end.)

Gary: Gary is a bit peculiar and, friendships notwithstanding, seen as something of a problem player. He often insists on doing his own thing even if it means he'll be out of the action for hours. Gary's character is a druid/witch-doctor. (I think that The Pool will work very well in Gary's case because he could break it with trivial ease, but it would be painfully obvious if he did. I think he won't and I'm looking forward to see how this plays out.)

Hank: Hank usually falls asleep by ten o'clock, but can hold everybody's attention when he goes off on one of his solo missions. Hank's character is a bureaucrat-turned-scoundrel.

Rick: Rick knows relatively little of DSA's rules and game world even after all these years. He misses many games due to other commitments and is usually late. Rick's character is a pre-generated Mowgli-turned-freebooter.

Vicky: Vicky is Hank's wife and a casual player. She knows very little of DSA's rules and game world even after all these years. She often has everybody rolling their eyes when her character tries to do something which nobody can seem to fathom. She has recently GMed a ghost story in a setting of her own (and diceless). (I'm crossing my fingers and hoping this game will fit her better than our usual campaign.)

I, the GM: I've never GMed for this group because I find the accumulated lore of DSA's game world intimidating (I have mastered the rules, though). I've run just about every big RPG under the sun in other groups, plus lots of homebrew and experimental stuff, but only one Indie game (Inspectres). I used to read rec.games.frp.advocacy and have found the Forge about two years ago.

Place & Time: We play at Hank's and Vicky's place and the latter usually takes care of the couple's two little kids. We play Monday nights.

Part 2: Setup & Prep

Rules: The Pool, as written (though with traits limited to +2)

Setting: DSA's game world (medieval 'low fantasy' with Elves & stuff)

Occasion: The current story arc's GM, Kevin, is on vacation and I offered to do a mini-adventure (three evenings). I e-mailed everybody my own translation of the character generation rules and asked for characters four days in advance (and got all except Carl's one day in advance). The characters were supposed to be independent, adventurous (no reluctant heroes) and equivalent to 10th-level characters (in D&D terms this would roughly mean 5th-level in a world where 10th level is the maximum).

I've been itching to run The Pool for a couple of weeks now and have read up on and asked questions about it at the Forge.

Starting Situation: An old wizard has hired the characters and an entire pirate ship and crew to sail into the waters of a kingdom of demon worshippers. In the uncharted jungles there, he hopes to plunder the hoard of one of the last remaining giants. The game picks up on the high seas, several days before the ship will reach its destination.

Trouble Brewing: There are four major NPCs: The old wizard (who is also a bon vivant and wants to seduce just about everyone), his illegitimate daughter (a healer and wizard in her own right who wants to prove and reveal herself to her father), the female pirate captain (a drunkard who holds onto maintaining control of the expedition for dear life) and an elderly male priest of the goddess of sex and pleasure (a demon-worshipping spy who wants to sabotage the expedition so the wizard will be forced to call upon demons).

[Note: This is far more sex-ladden than I had planned it to be. I started out with an illegitimate son and then changed his sex. That's when things snowballed.]

Approach: I wrote up the NPCs and their goals before having any player characters to work with. I also made a list of likely NPC requests for the PCs (spy on this one, seduce that one etc.). Other than that, I made a long, rough list of possible encounters and problems (from savages to a poisoning plot – the usual stuff). I researched the game's extensive material on the region where I set the adventure. Also, I've intentionally left the ending pretty open (i.e., what the wizard is looking for within the hoard and what it does).

[Note: Pretty standard stuff, plus the characters are not tied into the whole thing very well. Part of this is due to the character sheets arriving very late, part of it is the desire to run a traditional adventure with The Pool, albeit one spiced up by interesting NPCs.]

Part 3: Actual Play

Conditions: Vicky had prepared an excellent dinner, even more elaborate than usual. Victor, one of the kids, suffers from asthma and had to use a new inhalator device which made a lot of noise for the first two hours. Rick arrived on time for the first time in my memory (no kidding). I guess he realized I'd have to explain the new rules twice if he hadn't.

Introduction: As dinner was winding down, I explained the rules. The players were intrigued and there were many (teasing) jokes about abusing the rules.

I explained the starting situation (see above) and also added that the old wizard had pulled a fast one, having lied about the real destination (albeit after hiring everyone for a similar one). Carl and Hank pointed out that their characters would be pissed about that. I felt a little defensive here and put a plea to the players to accept the quest for the giant's hoard as the adventure's premise. I pointed out that with the power at their disposal thanks to The Pool, they could easily kill the wizard, stop the expedition etc. However, I need not have worried: Both Carl and Hank good-naturedly told me that they were planning nothing of the sort for their characters.

Next, I asked everyone "Why are you here?" All except Rick were content to have been hired by the wizard. Rick added a twist by suggesting that his freebooter was the old wizard's inside man within the pirate crew and the pirate captain's right-hand man to boot. Good stuff!

The Beginning: Once the situation had been established, I asked the players whether any of them had any pressing concerns as I had had the impression that Carl and Hank wanted to begin acting upon their characters' frustration or portray it a bit more. They didn't, but Vicky contemplated something and Hank urged her on, pointing out she'd be the first to try out the rules. Vicky postponed whatever she had been thinking about.

Next, I had a bunch of fish-people attack the ship to showcase the rules in action. The players stated multiple intents and I asked them to focus, so we ended up with "maintain the crew's discipline", "set an example by charging", "see whether they have a weakness", "see whether the fish-people are susceptible to magic". Vicky seemed to have the most trouble and ended up with "keep in the background and ready my bow to assist anyone in serious trouble". Gary stated that rolling maximum dice and not taking MOVs was the best strategy and went ahead. Everybody followed suit and everybody succeeded and took a die (except Hank). I feared that this would establish taking a die as the default, an impression I had tried to avoid. Hank, however, took the MOV and made me smile and secretly pump my fist (Yesss!) right away. He narrated how his character found a weakness (the gills) and then stunned everyone by describing how his character communicated this to some of the pirates and how they began to form a team, sweeping the ship. He began detailing how his character built a small following among them. I cut him short, but not before enthusiastically approving of him establishing 'Hank's Guys' as a faction on board.

Carl: Carl turned out to be the first for whom "roll maximum dice" didn't work. He crashed his pool and later, when he found it difficult to gain it back, grumbled a bit about Gary's advice. Once his pool was low, he failed most rolls and crashed again and again, even though I granted him mostly three-dicers. I let his character cut a fine figure anyway, but at a price. His character has earned a reputation as fearless, but now owes his life to the captain, is sorely wounded and has made the wizard wary of him. Also, he has earned a reputation as cruel (which Carl seemed to welcome – dunno if I let him off too easily).

Carl took maybe two MOVs, concentrating on the evocative description of his stated intent.

Gary: Gary rolled maximum dice, collected dice for his pool, and stayed lucky throughout the evening. In one situation, the ship was inspected by an evil templar and his team. Gary's witch-doctor character instructed the crew to feign a certain disease. I did not ask for a roll here and instead blindsided him by having the ship's NPC healer trying to expand on his story and getting carried away. Gary rolled to shut her up and convince the templar that she had a lapse regarding a mental disease and was hallucinating. Gary had defused the situation, but I immediately went for a follow-up and had the templar declare that if the pretty NPC healer was mentally damaged, he still had some use for her (in bed). Carl intervened with his character and a cool and tense scene and much bloodshed ensued. I fear I may have stolen some of Gary's thunder, not to mention call for rolls until I got what I wanted (bloodshed). Then again, a single MOV could have resolved the situation.

Also, I may have stifled some player creativity during this part, when Carl declared his intent to "kill the berserking half-demon templar" (after his other ruse failed catastrophically). That seemed a far stretch, as the templars are second to none in combat, and I pointed out that I didn't think his character could take him. Carl immediately suggested "remain his primary target and take most of the punishment while everybody attacks him", but in retrospect, I should have shut my mouth. If he wants to narrate a critical hit, so be it – spectacular events are cool and maybe he had something else entirely in mind. The scene in question was the only one which I found difficult to run because the entire party was fighting the templar and everybody wanted a piece of him. The other players settled for "strike one telling blow", "make myself useful", "minimize casualties among the crew" and "blow him away". I described the scene – checking with the players all the time - and found out only towards the end, when getting to Gary, that he had taken an MOV (his only one all evening). I told him it would have been his privilege to go around the table, but he waved that away, and used his MOV to describe the gruesome manner in which the templar was ultimately dispatched (blown away) by his character.

Gary got an obvious kick out of accumulating dice and seemed to content to watch except for that one time.

Hank: Hank crashed early when gathering information in a hostile port. I let him get the info, but also had him recognized by an old enemy. He killed him before he could squeal (his success, my narration), but was then accosted by a demon-worshipping-sergeant. He failed the roll to make up a cover story, but I let him get away with it, but not without having the sergeant force him to drink some wine spiced with his blood. Who knows what's in it? This was one of the tensest and best scenes, in my opinion.

Hank tried to get MOVs even when low on dice, but only got two of them. He used them to build a following on the ship and I played into his hands even when he failed: Apart from 'Hank's Guys', he tried to insinuate himself with a second group. I let him get away with that, but added that he had fallen in with the ships' malcontents. His overall standing has fallen, but he has quite a powerbase now.

Rick: I had the male priest of the sex goddess try to seduce Rick's character. Rick was obviously not thrilled and I suggested the conflict be "resist his seduction". Seeing how Rick was uncomfortable, I declared that some things were inviolate and that he could veto the whole thing, making the conflict "graciously rebuff him without hurting his feelings". Rick was relieved and opted for this. Hank suggested out loud that on a failure, the priest ought to be rebuffed, but go away with the impression that Rick's character was playing at "hard to get". Everybody had a good laugh at his notion and I wanted to implement it, but alas! Rick succeeded.

Towards the end of the evening, I had the wizard ask Rick's character to make the pirate captain look bad (because the wizard would like to be in command of the landing party). Nothing has come of that as yet, but Rick has mused on the problem out loud, and unselfconsciously. An interesting, short discussion about the problems of double agents ensued.

He never took an MOV and crashed somewhere in the middle of the evening.

Vicky: Vicky had trouble stating clear goals and opted for things like "make myself useful in combat". On the way home, Carl remarked that she hadn't grasped how much power was in her hands. Vicky had some fun heating up things with the male priest and I also had the NPC healer partially confide in her. Vicky's character has found out that the healer looks up to the wizard and wants to make a good impression. She has also asked Vicky's character to find out what the wizard thinks about her, but she has not revealed that she is his daughter.

Vicky took no MOVs.

Part 4: Post-Play Musings

Atmosphere: Lots of animated talking, everybody agitated (though Rick took a couple of smoke breaks), everybody talking at once all the time. I'd say it was more lively than usual, but maybe that's just my imagination or impression due to being in the GM's seat.

Reactions: Judging from post-game chatter (levels of excitement, to be precise), I'd say that everybody seems to have liked the evening. Only Vicky was perhaps a bit more silent than usual.

On the way home, Carl called the rules "really excellent". He also said that they'd probably be perfect for introducing virgin players to the hobby, provided one can find a setting everybody knows (regarding genre expectations and so on). He also wondered whether the Pool could sustain a long campaign.

My take: The session was everything I had hoped for and I'm really looking forward to more MOVs and to the gently developing relationships (one might say 'slowly developing', but I think more speed would have seemed rushed) coming to a boiling point. During the post-game chatter, I mentioned the concept of idea rolls to complicate things for another player or add cool elements. The adventure is pretty much playing out as I thought it might (and I hope I'll be open to unexpected turns) and also I feel that my extensive prep has paid off (and the conflicts haven't even come to the boiling point yet).

I could go on and on, but I'm exhausted, happy and exhausted. The Pool has mesmerized me since I've read it and I'm ecstatic that it is as good as it looks (and as they say around here). Many, many thanks must go to James (and also to Ron for some good advice). The Pool rocks so hard I'm still reeling.

Hooray!!

Vicky is the player who captures my attention in your writeup. Her historical tendency to do weird, unfathomable stuff rings a bell from my experience ... although she might be doing something very different from what I'll suggest, I'm speaking from observing similar things across many instances, so maybe there's some correspondence. Anyway, I've seen this in two contexts.

1. The player is unwilling, usually out of shyness or fear of disapproval, to do anything to change what's going on. They'll play support characters or weirdos so that whatever they do (and they often do nothing, or "look at the pretty birds"), they won't get called on it or have to account for themselves to others. This is often the result of having endured critical whiffs and having seen a character humiliated by the GM's narration, which always seems to happen to the SO in her first try at role-playing.

2. The player is simply not engaged by what's going on and will do weird stuff very much in the same way that a CRPG player will wander around poking objects in the room on the screen, to see if they'll do anything. In some ways, it's as if the player is wondering whether the GM has anything interesting in mind, and is more-or-less desperately, more-or-less casually throwing out prompts.

So when we take the possibility of both or either of these into account, and look at your actual play, then maybe a conclusion might emerge. Perhaps Vicky is simply a little stunned. To either of these outlooks, the whole narrational environment of playing The Pool is alien. For one thing, your input is there for God & everyone to see, as input - kind of like suggesting, "Hey, let's dance around naked." For another, some of the SIS, and potentially important parts, is not just what's waiting in your head for her to discover.

What will happen when she recovers from the stun is way up in the air. She might bag the whole thing as just too weird, and check-out entirely during play. Or maybe this is the first step of a slow, probably exponential series of attempts to do things in this different way.

All of the above should be considered in the proper light, that I am practicing atrocious armchair psychology in this post, and anything I suggest needs to be cross-referenced with and automatically trumped by your actual knowledge of the person and experience of play.

Best,
Ron

Ron Edwards wrote: 1. The player is unwilling, usually out of shyness or fear of disapproval, to do anything to change what's going on. They'll play support characters or weirdos so that whatever they do (and they often do nothing, or "look at the pretty birds"), they won't get called on it or have to account for themselves to others. This is often the result of having endured critical whiffs and having seen a character humiliated by the GM's narration, which always seems to happen to the SO in her first try at role-playing.

Ron Edwards wrote: 2. The player is simply not engaged by what's going on and will do weird stuff very much in the same way that a CRPG player will wander around poking objects in the room on the screen, to see if they'll do anything. In some ways, it's as if the player is wondering whether the GM has anything interesting in mind, and is more-or-less desperately, more-or-less casually throwing out prompts.

Ron Edwards wrote: All of the above should be considered in the proper light, that I am practicing atrocious armchair psychology in this post, and anything I suggest needs to be cross-referenced with and automatically trumped by your actual knowledge of the person and experience of play.

If you really, really want to get people to take more MOVs, you could use the Anti-Pool approach. Give everyone a die when they fail a roll, and when they succeed, let them take a MOV or not - but they get no bonus for not taking one.

Hiya,

So, a minor hit with the Vicky possibilities. Not bad for internet dialogue.

Again with the proviso that this is one man's view, I have a fairly definite response to:

I've been wondering whether I should goad the players to take MOVs - "Hey Rick, if you take the MOV, I'm gonna grant you a three-dicer. How's that?"

Is this a ploy anybody's been using? Do you cut deals, ask for idea rolls ("Hank, I'll grant you a three-dicer if you want to complicate life for Carl's character."), teasingly withhold the die ("C'mon, tell it yourself, Vicky.") or even refuse to give it out ("So you have successfully rolled to find out who killed the settlers, Gary. Well, YOU tell me.")

I've been reading posts about the Pool. I've read the rules before, may times, and I am interested in how it Actually Plays.

One of my many questions is how to do handle group conflicts, like a multi-participant combat? Is the procedure and mechanics for it up to each group and GM? How about some concrete examples?

Darren Hill wrote: If you really, really want to get people to take more MOVs, you could use the Anti-Pool approach. Give everyone a die when they fail a roll, and when they succeed, let them take a MOV or not - but they get no bonus for not taking one.

Ron Edwards wrote:
- "Each person will find his or her comfort level within the options of these very simple, but very global rules."
- It also takes time [...] for a full group to arrive at these comfort levels.
- In fact, if there's one GM task which wins respect for and interest in the game, it's a solid reliability regarding 1, 2, or 3 dice as the base roll, letting everyone take it from there in terms of Pool management.

JamesDJIII wrote: One of my many questions is how to do handle group conflicts, like a multi-participant combat? Is the procedure and mechanics for it up to each group and GM? How about some concrete examples?

Hello,

Rather than hunt down all the posts about multi-participant contests, I'll explain it again here.

The issue that haunts people, evidently, is "what if players want different things?" The answer is so easy that it's painful to explain.

OK, Bob is playing Bartholemew and Sam is playing Sebastian. They're very different characters - Bartholemew is a kindly priest who's decided to guard the crown from agents of the dastardly Baron Hawk. But Sebastian is a sneak-thief who's been paid by the court chancellor to steal the crown, as another means of protecting it from the Baron.

(Or hell, we could be simple and say that Bartholemew is trying to protect it from being stolen and Sebastian is trying to steal it, without all the motivational window dressing. But that's direct opposition, rather than being simply mildly contradictory. Doesn't really matter.)

Anyway, how do you do it? They roll! And now the fear arises, the one that haunts people who haven't played The Pool and leads them to type bewildered posts here, where I find them. What if both players get a 1? What if they both take a Monologue of Victory? They want different things! The system will break! Oh my God!!

The answer, as I say, is simple. They work out a single MoV together. Their only constraints are that the players agree fully in making it, and that both characters succeeded in their goals - the crown is guarded, and the crown is stolen. ... (waits) ...

Come on, guys! Don't you see that this is exactly what GMs are forever trying to engineer in ham-handed, railroady ways? And when they do engineer it successfully once in a blue moon, the players see it coming a mile away and are bored? But now, you can bet that the players will simply and easily arrive at a fun and twisted conclusion based on misperceptions among the characters.

Perhaps they decide that a fake crown is involved. Sebastian the thief sneaks off triumphantly with the fake, and then Bartholemew opens the cabinet to reveal the real crown. Or maybe the reverse! It's up to the players, who get all the possible imaginative charge out of "mixed up understanding" scenes that you ever dreamed of, and it sets you up for framing the next scene full of rich possibilities. Furthermore, they aren't going to bitch and moan, because they had to agree.

It works wonderfully. It's easy. And it's not based on the traditional approach of playing out the situation action by action, skill check by skill check, perception roll by perception roll - which contains multiple opportunities for one participant (player, GM, doesn't matter) to finesse things to come out how he uniquely wants.

Best,
Ron

Ron wrote:

It works wonderfully. It's easy. And it's not based on the traditional approach of playing out the situation action by action, skill check by skill check, perception roll by perception roll - which contains multiple opportunities for one participant (player, GM, doesn't matter) to finesse things to come out how he uniquely wants.

Hi there,

Good questions! Now we're onto the real issues of The Pool, which is to say, potential problem issues, rather than the perceived problem issues (which aren't).

Does the GM assume the task of deciding how and which conflicts are being rolled for? How much do the players contribute to this?

I'm also assuming that the decision to give 1-3 dice from the GM is based on more than just "hey that's really difficult, here's 1 die" versus "that's an easy conflict to win, here's 3". Comments?

Ok!

Good start. I sent an email to James West asking about The Questing Beast, as I can't seem to find a link to buy it.

I can certainly see where people will all caught up on stuff like the apparent lack GM generated "danger". I could see a player who wants a conflict about, say, attacking some orcs to kill them. I can see them balking at the idea that if they roll a 1, the achieve the goal of the conflict, ie, slaying orcs, without a lot of hoo-hah about what kind of armor they have, weapon skills, orc toughness, etc. But, for myself, I just don't see this kind of thing as a real problem.

For me the real problem is figuring out, ok, what the role of the GM looks like in the Pool. I have these notions from other games (even Sorcerer) - but I wonder how much it changes in the Pool.

I see things as a spectrum of games that define how the What-Is-Happening and What-Is-The-Conflict-At-The-Moment specifics are decided, for me it looks like the Pool is over here near the end labelled "Not Defined - You Figure it Out" and something like Capes is on the other end, labelled "The Text is Very Clear on This".

At least that's what I see based on reading the texts - but I'd rather see how it works out in actual play.

Hal, getting back to what you experienced, how much of the DSA background showed up in the MOVs? Did players obey any sort of restrictions on the MOVs? Also, when you cut off Hank and his MOV about the fishmen combat, why did you stop him at that point?

James DJ III wrote: For me the real problem is figuring out, ok, what the role of the GM looks like in the Pool. I have these notions from other games (even Sorcerer) - but I wonder how much it changes in the Pool.

James DJ III wrote: Hal, getting back to what you experienced, how much of the DSA background showed up in the MOVs? Did players obey any sort of restrictions on the MOVs? Also, when you cut off Hank and his MOV about the fishmen combat, why did you stop him at that point?

Halzebier wrote:

Hank: You gotta shut her up, man.
Carl: I've got an idea. I want to ...
GM: No, let Gary handle it.
Carl: Oh, alright.
Gary: I, uh, tell the sergeant that she has these hallucination and it's a relapse.
GM: Roll for it.
Gary: <rolls dice> Success. I take a die.
GM: Okay, you convince him. You handle it just right, not making a big fuss over it, but sorta mentioning her condition in an off-hand way, not alarmed at all. They swallow it, hook, line and sinker.
Gary: Hehe.
GM: The templar turns to you and says: "She be wrong in the head, but right in all the places a woman should be. You have no use for her, but I do. In my bed. What's her price?"*

[* Here, I may be stealing Gary's thunder by inventing a follow-up conflict which makes his success mostly void.]

JamesDJIII wrote: Now, as I understand it, the Pool's conflict resolution effect is just as solid as Sorcerer. I mean that if Gary's goal in the conflict is to snow the evil templar, and he wins, the fact that the evil templar has been snowed is a done deal, right?

Is the source of the concern about the follow conflict? If the player then looses the follow up roll, the first conflict outcome still stands, but now it's just colored by the outcome of the second?

Hi Hal,

thanks for the fun and informative writeup. I really like how you try to preserve the feeling of the setting while still allowing for The Pool to take full effect. Seems to work out quite nicely. Having been an avid DSA player over here in Germany myself when I was still in school, I'd like to know more about the players' reaction when you suggested The Pool. I found that long - time DSA-heads often hesitate to try anything new, exspecially if its outside the illusionist box. Would you say that some or all of your players "learned" the hobby by playing DSA and tended to view it as "roleplaying as such"? In particular, are any of the persons in your group part of the gamer culture surrounding DSA, i.e. fetishizing the setting, following up on the ongoing history, debating political events and such? Were there any initial concerns regarding The Pool, and if so, do you think they somehow stemmed from that background?

Best,
Jasper

Hi Jasper (again) and Welcome to the Forge (everybody forgot)!

We've had our second session of The Pool yesterday, but before I get to that, let me answer your questions.

(1) Two players are experts on the setting of DSA and regularly read the newsletter (i.e., "Der Aventurische Bote"), many of the novels etc. One of them is a true fanatic and knows all the heraldic symbols, genealogies etc. Fortunately, these two have also played various other RPGs with me, including non-standard stuff (diceless, freeform etc.). They were looking forward to another of my 'experiments' and their enthusiasm infected the others (who've never played anything besides DSA). I might add that as a result, I felt under quite some pressure to live up to my reputation.

(2) Last night, Carl repeated his observation that The Pool would be highly suitable to break in new players and also noted, somewhat wistfully, that they'd probably have an easier time than "us old dogs". Kevin, who hadn't been there on the first evening, phoned before yesterday's game and wanted me to explain the rules. I tried as best I could, but even though the technical side was easy enough, Kevin said that it was difficult to get his head wrapped around it. Once he saw The Pool in action, most of these problems simply evaporated (he delivered on good MOV after another).

Finally, I might point out that having a clearly defined and well-loved setting really, really helped us. Everybody had a good grasp of his or her character's abilities (even though that was not part of the write-up for The Pool - I had simply announced that all PCs were roughly 10th level in power) and - to the players' delight - the adventure touched upon plenty of familiar places, monsters, organisations and so on.

*-*-*

Sorry, looks like I gotta go now. I hope to write about yesterday's session later today, though.

Regards,

Hal

Hi again!

We've had our second session on Monday and I have a few, albeit shorter, remarks on the game.

(a) Kevin, who hadn't been there on the first evening, took MOVs on his first two rolls and did a fine job. In both cases, multiple PCs were involved, so he got to tell lots of stuff (sometimes checking back with the players, so it wasn't a monologue, though it was close). I really enjoyed leaning back and seeing what he came up with.

(b) Gary, and to a lesser extent, all the players used the rules to their characters' advantage, i.e. they had them solve all sorts of serious problems with great ease. When a T-Rex attacked and Kevin took an MOV, for instance, I expected him to include at least a couple of unnamed NPCs dying, but he didn't. Even though the players expected the expedition to lose plenty of men (and wondered aloud at the low casualty rate), they tried to preserve them - probably thinking of them as a valuable resource - whenever possible (which was trivially easy with The Pool, of course).

Interestingly, this was *not* a serious problem at all. I think it *did* diminish the atmosphere to some extent, but there was neither a sense of 'power players ruining the adventure' nor of some PCs outshining others. I'm confident we'll get the hang of this.

(c) Towards the end of the game, Vicky took her first two MOVs, back to back: one to spy on a village of savages and one to handle the resulting negotiations. They were perhaps a tad long, but otherwise nice.

(d) Gary grumbled about the rules all night, as everybody had gotten a pool refill before the second session - all except him, that is, because he had had 11 dice left. He took one MOV just to spite Vicky and prevent her from narrating his and her PC's spying expedition. As both had MOV rights, they agreed to have the characters split up rather than work out something they both could agree on.

(e) The relationship-building has begun to pay off: Rick had his character betray his captain in an awesome scene and Hank's character was central to a scene which involved multiple PCs and NPCs and more sex - and kinky sex - than any scene we've ever done. People were not out of their comfort zones, but it was a close one and unprecedented, so that the scene was exciting and tense and funny all at the same time. This has been the high point of the adventure so far.

(f) Rick praised the system for fostering player creativity and pro-activeness (as opposed to putting up one's feet and waiting for the GM to call for a roll) and there were several other positive comments.

Some problems notwithstanding, it was a fine evening. I have a busy week coming up, so I probably won't write up the final session. Also, there are no big problems to discuss, so I guess this thread's function, if any, is to assuage newcomers' fears. For the record: I've had all sorts of worries about The Pool, but, following the rules and some good advice from the Forge, they turned out to be unfounded.

I highly recommend The Pool and would like to point out that the enjoyable play we've gotten out of it so far is *not* due to any mystical GMing mojo on my part (as much as I'd like to think that), but due to an excellent design.

Regards

Hal

Hi Hal,

Well, of course I want to hear more about the sex.

Especially about the "relationship-building", as you call it, and the working towards the sex scene. How did you do this? Did the rules help with this, or was it all "role-playing"? That is, did The Pool make this scene more likely to happen, of could it have happened playing DSA?

--Jasper

Hal,

Ok, so 2 sessions into it!

If you were to do this again, with the same people and characters, would you structure the preperation of the next game differently? I know that if you own a hammer, every problems looks like a nail - but I'd be tempted to apply Kickers as tool for generating the next group of session material. But that's just me, all hammers and nails.

Sure, this question is purely hypothetical and so, not Actual Play. But still, how would you get ready for the next block of games?

Again, thanks for your reports and answering my questions,

James

Jasper Polane wrote: Well, of course I want to hear more about the sex.

Especially about the "relationship-building", as you call it, and the working towards the sex scene. How did you do this? Did the rules help with this, or was it all "role-playing"? That is, did The Pool make this scene more likely to happen, of could it have happened playing DSA?

JamesDJIII wrote: If you were to do this again, with the same people and characters, would you structure the preperation of the next game differently?

Halzebier wrote:

I had prepared kickers, sort of, for the second session, i.e. I had identified some cool conflicts (based on what had happened during the first session) and drove straight towards them.

James DJ III wrote: I just wanted to know if you would employ Kickers. That would mean, essentially, getting the players to generate them as the next stage in the pipeline. Would you do such a thing? Would the players do that? How would promote this to the "traditional" folks who have been trained to expect more spoon-feeding from the GM? Does this work with the Pool?