Okay, today was the vulgarly-named F*#k-Around Night at my place, where we try out different things. Today we tried The Pool.

The background I used was a bit odd. The current issue of Pyramid has a background with a bunch of AI toys in a boy's room and a girl's room, which have developed a culture after the boy and girl (and the family) died during a disaster.

If you're not a Pyramid subscriber, you can still get a peek at the very start of the article here: http://www.sjgames.com/pyramid/sample.cgi?2726

Okay, so they all decided to be boy toys, so they start out in the boy's room. The idea was the culture in the boy's room (a violent area known as the Clan Lands), have opened a closet and found the PCs in containers, and the PCs activate when the containers are opened.

I had three players, Emily, James, and Russ. James played a teddy bear that the boy had "toughened up" by making watch violent war-oriented cartoons, a sort of "black ops bear". Emily played the "token girl" from an action figure set, which the boy had put away because he didn't like girls. And Russ played a blob of sentient play-dough, sort of a blue toy version of the T-1000 from Terminator 2, though with a more friendly demeanor.

Well, the closet had been opened by the clan controlled by the Dark Knight (think of that literally, don't think Batman), in conjuction with HEX-BLOCKS, a set of Legos controlled by a hive mind. I was using the "limited resources" option for the setting, which means the Dark Knight's Clan was trying to find other toys to drain for energy. They opened up the container that had Emily's character (Lt. Meg) in it and overpowered her and drained her batteries. I had Emily roll for that, but he failed. This was going to be a trend for the whole night.

Fuzzy Wuzzy (the teddy bear) was next. He leapt into the fray and got a success, which he used for a Monologue of Victory, leaping past the Dark Knight Clans (whose guns didn't work on him because, unlike Meg, the bear didn't have the sensors to detect and adjudicate weapon hits), he leaps on the gigantic Lego contruction and beats it into pieces with its own leg.

(Most of the MoVs in the game were used in combat. This was less because the players liked combat (Emily particularly loathes combat) but because the setting, and where they started out -- the boy's room -- sort of encouraged violence.)

Well, the next out was Clayface, the sentient pile of clay. While the Dark Knight Clan was draining energy from their erstwhile ally (the Lego blocks), he jumped them and he and Fuzzy Wuzzy, with the aid of Meg (revived with some energy from Fuzzy Wuzzy's batteries) and the enemies of the Dark Knight Clan, the "Action Clan", they managed to utterly destory the Dark Knight Clan, without using any MoV, just choosing to let me narrate. (I decided the Action Clan won because the PCs tipped the balance that had been held in the Clan Lands (the boy's room) for so long.)

To make a long story short, after getting used to the Viking-like culture of the Action Clan, and a raid on the bathroom for water and soap, Fuzzy Wuzzy convinced the Action Clan to go over the "Glass Desert" to the girl's room, which he knew about because one of his Traits was "Knowledge of the House".

Several fights between the fashion dolls and plushes in the girl's room and the PCs, with their Action Clan allies, broke out, and MoV got used several times: Clayface knocked out a whole bunch of plush toys by bouncing all around the room and onto their heads, and later killed Queen Caw (a "Baby Wet 'Em Doll") with a MoV where he crawled down her throat and exploded Queen Caw's head by pushing in all directions from the inside. Emily even used a MoV to rip the seams of several rebellous plush that had been captured in the raid, in a sense disembowling them, stuffing everywhere.

I don't know if it was our bad luck or what, but my players didn't succeed very much. James, who is by nature very reckless, lost all of his dice early on, and was very upset that he couldn't seem to do much anymore... I suspect the way someone on the Forge would phrase it is he was upset that his character had been de-protagonized. This seemed to be a general trend -- even when rolling upwards of six or eight dice, the players often failed. They like the MoV concept, but they hated the "whiff factor", which seemed to be strong; admittedly, none of them ever tened to gamble their whole pool, like other desciptions of Pool games I've seen. I tried to describe their failures creatively, but they generally seemsed to feel they were failing too often. Emily, whose first RPG was Mage, missed the "difficulty" concept of Storyteller: "At least then more than one number counts as a success."

The only silver lining for this for me is I described the Pool-like mechanics in Faster, Better, Cheaper to them and they thought that sounded a lot better. Frankly, I dunno if were were doing something wrong or just unlucky, but the group pretty much hated it, and I can't blame them... They seemed to fail at the strangest times, and I was careful to only call for rolls when the tension was high and things were difficult.

Hi there,

I'll be interested to see James' reaction to this. I think that perhaps the most important addition to The Pool (and I mean The Pool, not TQB or any other derivation) would be concrete, inspiring instructions for how to GM a failed roll. If I'm not mistaken, the way you handled it is so different from the way I do, that we might as well have been playing different games.

Best,
Ron

Ron Edwards wrote: I'll be interested to see James' reaction to this. I think that perhaps the most important addition to The Pool (and I mean The Pool, not TQB or any other derivation) would be concrete, inspiring instructions for how to GM a failed roll. If I'm not mistaken, the way you handled it is so different from the way I do, that we might as well have been playing different games.

Based on my own experiences with the Pool I think the whiff factor has a way of scareing players away from calling for die rolls. If you have a small die pool (in my experience anything under 6) you're better off trying to roleplay your way out of a bad situation. Taking the die roll is more likely to make things worse than save you. And when you do manage to pull off a successful roll, you're more likely to add to your pool than take the MoV.
I played four sessions of the Pool and I think I took 2 MoVs the whole time because my pool was either empty or very small.

The whiff factor is very depressing for me because I really really like the Pool otherwise.

,Matt G.

Also, I was a touch unclear about what happens when a player runs out of Pool dice. I assumed that they couldn't request rolls (no dice to gamble), and so only could get rolls when the GM asked them to make one, but that didn't feel right to me. I was also unclear if Trait bonuses counted for rolls requested by the player.

Something about these Pool anecdotes doesn't sit well with me. Allow me to ruminate for a bit.

You start out with the GM handing out 1-2 dice. You have a character Trait worth another 1-2 dice, and then you throw 4-8 dice from your pool into it...you're rolling 8-12 dice. The odds of not rolling a single one on 8-12 dice is pretty durn small. Its not zero, but it should still be happening far less then these anecdotes seem to indicate.

I'm going to speculate a little bit here and suggest that this higher than expected whiff factor is influenced significantly by 3 things:

1) The GM isn't handing out enough dice. I can't imagine in anything other than a climactic scene a situation where the GM would NOT be handing out at least 1 if not 2 dice. No scene but the climax should be so hard as to not be worth any additional dice. In fact, in someways I view the game play of the pool as being a number of encounters which allow the players to build up their die pool so they can throw down at the climax.
---Related to this, if you have someone floundering at the bottom of the pool, throw him a rope. Call for several small rolls which involve his key Traits (allowing him to protagonize himself by performing in his chosen arena) and give him some freebees so he can begin to accumulate adidtional dice.

2) The GM is calling for rolls that don't involve player Traits. Times where players are called upon to roll something that they don't have a Trait for should be few and far between. The Traits describe exactly what the player is interested in as his character's arena...those are the areas that the majority of his rolls should come from...meaning additional free dice that aren't at risk. There should be few situations where I as a player feel compelled to make a roll in an area that is not my AOE.
---For instance: A roll is called to scale a cliff which is some manner of significant obstacle for the story. I have nothing that would serve as a Trait, but another character is the wilderness survival guy, and he does. Fine. Let HIM make the roll. He can use his MOV to describe how he led the party up the cliff and it was only through his assistance any of us made it to the top. I nearly fell, but fortuneately he saved me, etc etc. You've just shown the spotlight on the survival guy (whose declared that this is what he wants to shine at) and I make it up the cliff without needing to roll.
---If NO ONE has an appropriate Trait, then I'd have to question what the roll is for to begin with. For instance, if none of the characters had a Trait that would help us get over the cliff, I'd say that the cliff is a non suitable obstacle for the GM to present to begin with. If we chose to try the cliff anyway, and we fail, then we drew our own poison.

3) Players not taking advantage of the gambling mechanic. Related to #2, as a player I'm not going to gamble dice on a non climactic event which is not my AOE. Say our group is in a fight. My character is a decided non combatant. I gamble NOTHING. I use whatever free dice the GM provides, and I expect the member of the group who IS a combatant to have suitable Traits and risk suitable pool dice to save the rest of us. If I get lucky and get a "1", hey great...free dice for me, or maybe the opportunity to narrate a cool "heh, I just saved the warrior's butt" moment. If I fail, then so what. I'm not likely to be killed in a non climactic scene. Maybe I get beat up, or embarass myself by hiding in a cave until the bad guys are gone, or maybe I'm captured and taken prisoner. Either way...interesting story development. But the last thing I'm going to do is rely on my Pool dice.
---Further I'm going to ask for rolls in areas where I have a strong Trait. If my requests are good (and I deliver the occasional compelling MOV) and the GM isn't overly anal about it, he'll probably throw an extra couple of dice anyway. If I can get 3-5 free dice and then gamble another 4-8, I can come up with a fairly steady supply of die earning.

Now I don't know for sure how any of your games went, but it just seems to me that the stories of whiffing seem to be occuring with greater frequency than statistically expected, and the above are some possibilities as to why.

Hey,

I agree with Ralph in full, and shall add my own take on the matter.

My version of The Pool has the GM handing out up to THREE dice, plus there are no restrictions on either (1) asking for a roll when your Pool is empty or (2) using a Trait when your Pool is empty.

In other words, if your Pool is empty, state a task (and request a roll) that's easy, hence three dice, and dovetails well with your best Trait (at least one, possibly two dice). That's up to five dice, guys.

There's no penalty for failing the roll (you're not gambling). Take the die addition to begin your Pool at one, instead of taking an MoV.

Repeat until you feel like gambling.

This works very well and I'm continually puzzled about why people seem to "thrash at the bottom of the Pool" as Paul or someone called it.

The other big issue is the Whiff, which also puzzles me. The Pool is blatantly Fortune-in-the-Middle - you state a goal, not a task, and the conflict is narrated near-start-to-finish following the role. The effect of a failed roll should be treated as a story-changing event! It's not just a failed task!

In my first game of the Pool, Dav maxed a huge Gambled roll in order to seduce the princess. He failed stupendously. Total Pool emptiness. What happened? Hell man, that's a GM's dream. She accepts his embrace, but then armlocks him, and marches him (ouch! ouch!) to daddy the sinister wizard, and asks if she can marry him instead of the guy she's supposed to marry tomorrow. Cue outraged daddy the sinister wizard.

See, he failed to seduce her and the results landed him in very, very, very hot water. That's conflict resolution. If I'd done it as task resolution, he would have spilled wine on her or done something stupid and the scene would have stalled, instead of developed.

This is a big deal. If both players and GM are not thinking in these terms, they cannot play The Pool.

Best,
Ron

MattGwinn wrote: Based on my own experiences with the Pool I think the whiff factor has a way of scareing players away from calling for die rolls.

Valamir wrote: 1) The GM isn't handing out enough dice. I can't imagine in anything other than a climactic scene a situation where the GM would NOT be handing out at least 1 if not 2 dice. No scene but the climax should be so hard as to not be worth any additional dice. In fact, in someways I view the game play of the pool as being a number of encounters which allow the players to build up their die pool so they can throw down at the climax.
---Related to this, if you have someone floundering at the bottom of the pool, throw him a rope. Call for several small rolls which involve his key Traits (allowing him to protagonize himself by performing in his chosen arena) and give him some freebees so he can begin to accumulate adidtional dice.

2) The GM is calling for rolls that don't involve player Traits. Times where players are called upon to roll something that they don't have a Trait for should be few and far between. The Traits describe exactly what the player is interested in as his character's arena...those are the areas that the majority of his rolls should come from...meaning additional free dice that aren't at risk. There should be few situations where I as a player feel compelled to make a roll in an area that is not my AOE.

3) Players not taking advantage of the gambling mechanic. Related to #2, as a player I'm not going to gamble dice on a non climactic event which is not my AOE. Say our group is in a fight. My character is a decided non combatant. I gamble NOTHING. I use whatever free dice the GM provides, and I expect the member of the group who IS a combatant to have suitable Traits and risk suitable pool dice to save the rest of us. If I get lucky and get a "1", hey great...free dice for me, or maybe the opportunity to narrate a cool "heh, I just saved the warrior's butt" moment. If I fail, then so what. I'm not likely to be killed in a non climactic scene. Maybe I get beat up, or embarass myself by hiding in a cave until the bad guys are gone, or maybe I'm captured and taken prisoner. Either way...interesting story development. But the last thing I'm going to do is rely on my Pool dice.

Now I don't know for sure how any of your games went, but it just seems to me that the stories of whiffing seem to be occuring with greater frequency than statistically expected, and the above are some possibilities as to why.

Ron Edwards wrote: In other words, if your Pool is empty, state a task (and request a roll) that's easy, hence three dice, and dovetails well with your best Trait (at least one, possibly two dice). That's up to five dice, guys.

There's no penalty for failing the roll (you're not gambling). Take the die addition to begin your Pool at one, instead of taking an MoV.

the Pool rules wrote: If you ask for a die roll, you must name a Trait you wish to use and announce how you plan to use it (generally). This type of action is called a Trait Roll. In order to make a Trait Roll, you must gamble at least one die (see below).

the Pool rules wrote: Anytime you make a gambled die roll and succeed, you may give up the two dice earned for the roll and opt for a Monologue of Victory instead. In the case of a successful Trait Roll (a die roll requested by you), you always get a Monologue of Victory but never earn any dice.

This works very well and I'm continually puzzled about why people seem to "thrash at the bottom of the Pool" as Paul or someone called it.

The other big issue is the Whiff, which also puzzles me. The Pool is blatantly Fortune-in-the-Middle - you state a goal, not a task, and the conflict is narrated near-start-to-finish following the role. The effect of a failed roll should be treated as a story-changing event! It's not just a failed task!

This is a big deal. If both players and GM are not thinking in these terms, they cannot play The Pool.

Hey,

Yes, we're using different rules, but ease off on that "Ron's changing them" horn, eh? I'm using an earlier version, not a modified one.

James, it looks like a strong re-write is in order. I submit that a couple of your changes have been counter-productive.

Best,
Ron

Ron Edwards wrote: Yes, we're using different rules, but ease off on that "Ron's changing them" horn, eh? I'm using an earlier version, not a modified one.

James, it looks like a strong re-write is in order. I submit that a couple of your changes have been counter-productive.

valamir wrote: The odds of not rolling a single one on 8-12 dice is pretty durn small. Its not zero, but it should still be happening far less then these anecdotes seem to indicate.

Ron wrote:

Ron wrote: The other big issue is the Whiff, which also puzzles me. The Pool is blatantly Fortune-in-the-Middle - you state a goal, not a task, and the conflict is narrated near-start-to-finish following the role. The effect of a failed roll should be treated as a story-changing event! It's not just a failed task!

MattGwinn wrote: That's not the problem. The problem comes along when you roll that many dice and still manage to fail the roll. Once your pool is emptied the chances of getting back up to 4 or, god forbib, 8 dice is a long road that is completely deprotagonizing.

I don't know about everyone elses games, but haveing a GM narrate 3 failures and 4 normal successes is time consuming. I don't understand how anyone can expect to roll so many times.

On a related note. It's my belief that a narrativist game shouldn't require you to roll so often to be empowered. I feel die rolls should be limited to important events and you shouldn't have to call for a roll to do something trivial just so you can do better when it counts.

Hey everyone,

I played in the same game Matt did, and in defense of The Pool, it eventually righted itself over the long haul. By the final session, most of us (Matt being the exception) had enough dice to do whatever we wanted, and we used so much authorial and directorial power that the endgame was almost anticlimatic. We almost never failed at anything, and even when we tried to narrate things to make it seem like our heroes were struggling, we had all observed the die roll and knew full well who was going to come out on top.

Of course, we were playing the game wrong too. We were freely loaning each other dice throughout our four sessions, and if a success was rolled, everyone who loaned dice got to keep them (I think that's in violation of the rules, yes?). And by the third session we playtested a mechanic for James where we could opt out of a MoV and instead add dice to our Pool equal to the number of 'ones' we rolled. That became pretty important leading up to the final session.

For the record, I only felt deprotagonized once in the early going of the game - a moment in the second session where my character failed to do something trivial - climb a robe up to a waiting airship. He fell to the ground and basically looked like a bumbling idiot. The rest of the time I took my adversity with a grin and liked it. Maybe I'm a masochist, or maybe Paul just intuitively understood what my character needed to come off looking like a protagonist. I guess you'd have to ask him, but in any case, I think hosing players in The Pool does require a certain technique - one that I think James would be well-served to document.

I'm rambling now...more later.

- Scott

Steve has run three sessions of our pulp game using The Pool now and we've had some similar experiences.

For example, in the last session, we had considerably more MoDs than MoVs (we added MoDs from TQB). By the end of the session, 3 players had 0 dice and I had 2.

Another example, in 3 full sessions of play I have never had more than 4 dice. I had 4 dice only twice and then very briefly.

Over the three sessions, I have narrated probably twice as many MoDs than MoVs. Failure is so high that I would find it extremely frustrating if I didn't get to at least narrate what happened (and it isn't always "failure" per se, of course, but I can never build up a decent dice pool because of it).

I'm wondering if the odds of success need to go up. What about using Fudge dice (made for Fudge). These are six-siders with two blank sides, two with "+"s and two with "-"s. We could say a "+" is a success. The odds of success would be:

1d - 33.3%
2d - 55.5%
3d - 70.1%
4d - 80.2%
5d - 86.8%
6d - 91.2%
7d - 94.1%
8d - 96.1%
9d - 97.4%

Obviously in this case the GM would give fewer dice.

It all comes down to the question: how often should the players narrate what is happening? Or perhaps: how easy should it be for a player to take control of the action?

Another issue is character advancement. When one tends to end a session with 0 dice, one can't add traits. Should an unlucky roller not have the opportunity the lucky roller does?

Michael

Hey,

Three threads you should read if you haven't:

1) This thread is a discussion of the "thrashing at the bottom of the pool" phenomenon you're noticing. I seriously considered using four-siders instead of six-siders when our play group was struggling with this issue. Mike Holmes does the math for four-siders on the thread. I rather thought when James clarified Trait rolls that the thrashing problem had been mitigated nicely, but I haven't actually played The Pool since he rewrote the Trait roll text.

2) Prompted by my concern with thrashing, Mike Holmes proposed an alternative he called Anti-Pool. Someone should play this thing.

3) And this is a thread about negative return on investment with The Pool. There's some discussion about why it might be generally a good thing.

Paul

Hey everyone, sorry I didn't get in on this sooner.

In case there is any confusion about what version of The Pool is current, this is it:

The Pool

I apologize that the really junky version was still up on the geocities page. I'm taking it off right now. The current version is far from perfect, but its much, much better and easier to read. I shudder to think that people have been looking at that old version and going "Egads!". Then again, you might look at the current version and go "Egads!" as well...

The funny thing about this game is how it tends to spawn either high praise, or serious hammering.

I'll just list the few points I want to talk about in random order (of course):

1. I'm notably mutable when it comes to changing rules if I feel a change is in order. That's why I altered the rules to give 2 dice for a success instead of just 1, and I ditched the rule about requiring a gamble on a player-requested roll. Right now the only rule I am unsatisfied with is the cost of Trait bonuses. I like the way they are simple, requiring no chart or funky math. But I would like to make it easier to get bonuses of +3 or +4 to help with the common failed roll.

2. A successful roll means story-control, a failed roll means lack of story-control. Its as simple as that, no matter how unecessarily complicated I make it sound in the rules.

3. I never did any math when designing this game. All I knew was that I wanted a pass/fail system and the gambling rule seemed like a good way to avoid any kind of rating system. And I definitely didn't want any counting of successes or tallying of any kind except the counting of dice as you lose them (ok, that was a joke--sorry).

4. The rules for TQB came about as my own response to certain concerns about The Pool. I knew how I wanted TQB to work and I knew I needed more stability to make it happen, thus the variations. If you don't think The Pool works well for your style and your group, try TQB. The players have more control and their die pools tend to be more stable.

5. When I run the game, I rarely give only 1 die for a roll. Most often I give 3, sometimes 2.

6. As others have pointed out, I think its of extreme importance that anyone playing The Pool understands point #2 from above. If a player is still in DnD mode, they will not enjoy this game. The Pool works best when there are no pre-set goals in mind and when players can roam free with their MoVs (and MoDs if used), even if those are few and far between. But even then, if the player is still thinking in terms of skills, equipment, and task res--he or she is simply not going to get what they want.

James V. West wrote: In case there is any confusion about what version of The Pool is current, this is it:

2. A successful roll means story-control, a failed roll means lack of story-control. Its as simple as that, no matter how unecessarily complicated I make it sound in the rules.

4. The rules for TQB came about as my own response to certain concerns about The Pool. I knew how I wanted TQB to work and I knew I needed more stability to make it happen, thus the variations. If you don't think The Pool works well for your style and your group, try TQB. The players have more control and their die pools tend to be more stable.

5. When I run the game, I rarely give only 1 die for a roll. Most often I give 3, sometimes 2.

6. As others have pointed out, I think its of extreme importance that anyone playing The Pool understands point #2 from above. If a player is still in DnD mode, they will not enjoy this game. The Pool works best when there are no pre-set goals in mind and when players can roam free with their MoVs (and MoDs if used), even if those are few and far between. But even then, if the player is still thinking in terms of skills, equipment, and task res--he or she is simply not going to get what they want.

Hey,

Something is horribly wrong with whatever version of The Pool is kicking around out there.

James, what structurally seems to be preventing people from (a) calling for rolls in easy conflicts, (b) largely succeeding with them (given that they're using 4-5 dice), and (c) building up their Pools by adding dice for successes?

I also strongly recommend that the second part of your point #3 be heavily emphasized in the rules. There are no "fumbles" in The Pool. I truly fail to see why people have glommed onto the idea that somehow, this game is about "hosing" players who fail rolls.

Best,
Ron

Ron Edwards wrote: James, what structurally seems to be preventing people from (a) calling for rolls in easy conflicts, (b) largely succeeding with them (given that they're using 4-5 dice), and (c) building up their Pools by adding dice for successes?

I also strongly recommend that the second part of your point #3 be heavily emphasized in the rules. There are no "fumbles" in The Pool. I truly fail to see why people have glommed onto the idea that somehow, this game is about "hosing" players who fail rolls.