Hi,

Here's a follow-up to [The Pool] Ghosts, guns, and bodies. I finally completed the essay I mentioned in that thread, which is intended to restore recognition and interest in The Pool. It can be found at The latest at the Adept Press site; the link to the game is available there too.

Best, Ron

Hi Ron, nice job!

A single example should provide the model for dealing with the issue in any circumstances. A playercharacter is questioning an NPC about something important, it’s judged to be a dice-worthy conflict, and the player succeeds in the roll. He says, “He tells me what he knows!”

Here it is: the player does not get to make up what the guy knows. Instead, the GM tells the player what the guy knows, for the player to use. Again, the player has no authority over back-story. The dice do not suddenly make a player into a co-author at that level.

When you roll, the GM will provide 1-3 GM dice to add to the throw. If you can show an obvious connection between your intention and one of your character’s Traits, you can add Bonus dice to your roll if that Trait has a Bonus.

Still reading. Love what I'm seeing so far. Page 11 starts in the middle of a sentence so I think there are words missing there.

Hi Ron,

Under the part where you talk about not getting arty with the conflicts, is that your feelings just for the Pool or does that extend to other games? 

I've been playing a lot of PTA and stuff like "fist fights to impress others" actually have worked great for stakes - though I'm curious if that's a side benefit of PTA's genre support or something unidentified my game group is doing.

Chris

Hi everyone, thanks for checking it out and for the kind comments!

Frank, my call about the frequency of rolling is based on my point of finding how much the mechanics can contribute to powerful play. I definitely do not want to say that the game is "played wrong" with little or no rolling. In fact, my first diagram is partly meant to illustrate that the players will still able to add to the Character Story in those circumstances. However, that also means that the routines afforded by the dice, and the very fruitful sub-routine of the Pool mechanic itself, won't be providing what they uniquely offer, which is what my essay is mainly about.

Adam, my copy shows this sentence crossing the boundary between pages 10 and 11:

What does winning vs. losing actually mean? It’s all about the player-character’s goal of the moment, under fire, and whether it succeeds or fails in rather definite terms.

Hi Ron,

So even though I agree that these systems can handle such things, I am convinced that people should start playing them with more literal notions of conflict, before branching into the "gee I hope he likes me" conflicts in fight scenes.

Huh. I went back to look at pages 10-11 again, and they're fine. Either there was an Adobe blip, or I misread the comma on the last line of page 10 as a period, or I'm insane. All is good. Nothing to see here.

I haven't played The Pool, unfortunately. It sounds like I need to. It sounds like Verge owes a lot to The Pool, and the latter might give me what I need to solve some of my design issues. Really, Verge play is similar in a lot of ways to Pool play. Players do stuff up to the "Oh yeah?" moment, roll dice, and then modify their record of their characters as a result if they win. Except in Verge, the record of their characters is a giant relationship map that everyone shares.

Some of these things might seem excessively pedantic, but that's not my intention.  I'm merely trying to hew close to the original text.

Traits: They are derived from the Character Story, but are not underlined parts of the Character Story.

This is significant insofar as that while one might edit the Character Story to go from "love" to “used to love but now hates...”, such modification is not, as far as I can tell, allowed on Traits -- they are strictly accretive.

"When to roll" revisited: This entire section has me at a bit of a loss -- I'm can't find anything like it in the original text.  The relevant passage seems to be:  "Anyone can call for a die roll whenever a conflict is apparent or when someone wants to introduce a new conflict. Just broadly state your intention and roll."  I've probably just missed something obvious.

In the main, though, I really enjoyed this and it definitely makes me want to run out and play some Pool immediately, which makes it a success.

Cheers,
Roger

Hi Roger,

I think we're talking about version issues. I'm relieved that the currently-available one follows the original text. I was trying to cope with a version which may be an artifact, in which the text goes:

There are two instances in which dice are rolled: when something is about to affect your character (a sword to the neck, a kiss on the cheek), and when you see an opportunity to enhance the game with a Monologue of Victory (see below). The first instance is called an Action Roll and the second is a Trait Roll. Action Rolls deal with situations usually introduced by the GM that will affect your character while Trait Rolls deal with interesting ways in which you can use your character’s Traits to enhance the game.

Clicking on 'The latest' gives me a 404 error.

Thanks! I spent some time today re-organizing my website and didn't follow up here. The new link is Other Essays; it's at the bottom.
Best, Ron

Hi Ron! :-)

I read your essay about The Pool, and I enjoyed it a lot. Especially where you try to "fill the gaps" in the procedures... Now I really want to play the game again ;-)

A question, maybe a dumb one... How much of this essay does apply to The Questing Beast too? Here in Italy, we still play often TQB, so I'm very interested about it.

And another question: do you think that your essay could qualify as a "guide" about The Pool for newbie indie gamers?

Thanks! Hope to see you soon! (at the next INC, I hope ;-)

Hi Paolo,

After InterNosCon, where I observed people playing The Questing Beast, I decided to re-read the rules. I was quite shocked. I think that they are extremely inferior to The Pool and arguably, bad.

I should clarify what I think is good. The dice mechanics are different from those of The Pool and have some fun, different effects during play. The instructions for constructing the group's unique Arthurian setting are excellent, at the very top of the range for explaining how to use a customizable, thematic game - much better than my efforts along those lines for the core book of Sorcerer, for instance.

The problem is found in the instructions about how to talk and how to roll dice. They are all about stating the outcomes of the rolls, in detail, before the dice are rolled. They are practically a textbook for the problems I've been describing across many independent RPG designs, draining all the drama and inspiration right out of the place they belong.

I will be a little bit harsh here and point out that James was not an experienced user of his own systems. My reading of this part of TQB is that neither he, nor the people closest to him, had any reason to think that people could really play The Pool. Perhaps in writing TQB, with all best intentions, he was writing his "how to play" instructions to make sure the rules could not be applied in unpredicted ways. My view is that this was a fear-response, unfortunately kicking the riskiest (and best) part of play into a pre-roll "negotiation phase."

My apologies to James in advance for psychologizing him, and I do not claim to be correct regarding that; these are all speculations, which I tried to emphasize with my phrasing in the above paragraph.

I stress that without this feature, I think TQB is one of the finest games around. I have had incredible fun with it - but although I was using the QB dice mechanics, I was not following those particular rules about describing the action.

Best, Ron

I forgot to answer your last question. I hope my essay is potentially helpful to anyone who'd like to play The Pool, regardless of their experience with independent RPGs, or with any RPGs. I'm sure there are people who don't need the essay at all, too, but I hope they enjoy reading it.

Best, Ron

Ron,

thanks a lot for the extensive answer. :-) Very interesting:

Just a clarification about this:

Ron wrote:
The problem is found in the instructions about how to talk and how to roll dice. They are all about stating the outcomes of the rolls, in detail, before the dice are rolled. They are practically a textbook for the problems I've been describing across many independent RPG designs, draining all the drama and inspiration right out of the place they belong.

Ron,

great work! I'm running a Puddle game right now, and your essay is giving me a lot of things to think about. Thanks!

Just a very small nitpick: On p. 7, under Teaching trait-based mechanics and action statements, you wrote “How does that actually help you catch the ship?”, but the example is about chasing a guy on a horse. I remember you using an example with a ship someplace else, so I guess that explains it.

I'm glad you like it! Start a thread about the Puddle game if you'd like, too.

Paolo, I apologize for not replying immediately, but I am in the middle of receiving and reading Ronnies entries. When I have the Questing Beast text in front of me as well as a short break, I'll quote the text I'm talking about.

Best, Ron