I start the game with 1 Resistance, and no Used Capacity, as per the rules. When creating my occultist, I will put 12 dice in Ambition.

When it's my turn, I ask for a scene with a nobody. I'm not sure whether the GM can give a nobody traits, but let's say that the nobody has 1 trait. I'm going to use resolution against the nobody:

Resolution Against Nobodies

Roll Ambition plus Flesh/Voice/Imagination/Memory
Against a target of Resistance plus Used Capacity
Success output is increase in Power
Failure output is increase in Resistance plus narrate dissolution of your identity

O, wait, it is even better: traits don't come into it. At the start of the game, Used capacity is zero, so my target number would be 1. The chance of failing against a target number of one with - say - 10 d8 is a lot smaller than one in a million. I'll put the other two points at Character Creation in Clarity and one Aspect. After I've gotten a million Power in the first round, my second scene will consist of resolution against a Rival. I'm sure of success, because I'm allowed to put Power into it; so without trouble I'll get  the necessary 15 Aspect Increases to become Scourge. Then, in my third scene, I become God and kille everyone else with the 900,000 Power I still have.

Foolproof.

Each success gives me one Power.

I think this is what you're saying, but just to be sure: each successful die roll gives you a one point increase in Power. The only formula that produces more than a one point increase or decrease in any stat is Resolution against Victims, which gives three points for killing the Victim.

So, with your scheme, you'd actually have to roleplay the creative content of many rolls in order to accrue a large battery of Power. But yeah, it could be done. And it would be boring as fuck. How should I preclude it?

Paul

Wouldn't this same strategy work even if you splitted your activity over several turns? Like, get the first 500,000 Power on the first turn, and the second half on the second turn. So the only "problem" here is that one player could monopolize the game by not allowing his turn to end. Solved thus: allow the GM to break between players in the middle of a scene when a scene drags out too long. If your scene consists of 1,000,000 rolls, then you'll be playing it a long time, interceded by other players' several scenes.

Later in the game this strategy would conseivably be controlled by the other players getting pissed and killing the character off by combined Power expenditure. Except even when losing you'd probably be spending more Power than any single opposing player, so you could narrate your survival.

But yeah, that still leaves the question: is gathering Power so rewarding mechanically that you'd want to do long stretches of that instead of other things? Is there any way for other players, including the GM, to interfere and push your character to do something interesting? What do you do in D&D if a wizard character insists on staying in town and doing alchemy instead of going into the dungeon? Is the analogue relevant? Questions, questions...

Scenes end with Status Change, whether it's successful or not, or a failed Resolution. So here we're basically talking about an endless series of Resolution rolls. I've just posted what I'm considering for opposed pool dice mechanics. In light of those mechanics, what do you think of increasing the GM's pool for a Resolution roll by one d6 for each prior Resolution roll by the player in the current scene?

(I really want to get away from the one-roll-and-done scene dynamic that increasingly characterizes a lot of indie RPGs. My only concern here is that I'm making the calculations of the pools increasingly more complex.)

Paul

That might work, though it would need to be playtested.