[The Pool] Ghosts & guns & bodies
Motipha:
This was a fun fun fun little game, even given the very limited timeframe (one session of maybe a couple hours). It was really interesting seeing the Pool at work, having seen it referenced here and elsewhere but not having any familiarity with it.
A couple quick corrections about AP: My character Agatha had the trait "She could go" as one of her starting traits at 2. The rest were correct, save that her son Lucas was at +1 during the session, I only bumped it up to 2 as part of my end-of-session point spending. Other than that, spot on.
it was interesting that none of us made any claims about our host, as I assumed at least one of us would make some sort of claim. I think that what happened was the limited length of the character blurb meant we were more interested in describing our ghost characters than we were our hosts and so gave up that decision. it put Ron in something of a tight spot because there were no immediate triggers/descriptors for setting.
The Pool makes for an amazingly dynamic system. you're constantly winning and losing dice from the pool, and with time/experience we would have had larger pools to spend on expanding our list of traits. That you can choose anything from the blurb as a trait is pretty amazing, it means a great deal of flexibility in responding to situations: Just find a phrase in your description that might help, pop a die in to it (since that first die is basically a free one: one squared cost for one permanent trait die) and you're ready to roll.
I think the single biggest confusion I had was the one Ron mentioned, of how to use a person as a trait. I was attempting to narrate in a situation where my traits might help, and the only one who worked was the General Brickmilton (who in my blurb is mentioned as having murdered me for finding out about his war crimes, so there's the link Frank). I was confused as to how much authority I had for introducing him, and we debated it a little table side, to see if we could find a way that was not only fictionally satisfying but still within the bounds/limits of my narrative powers PRIOR to the roll. After all, the rules explicitly state who has what authority as an outcome of the dice roll, but prior to that the relationship seems pretty traditional: the GM running the world, the players playing their characters. But in this case, I was unsure as to whether I could only use those traits when the GM explicitly created the situation in which those NPC's were present? I think we came to a satisfying point with that in the end, but it was an odd little discussion.
Stopping there for now, I'm a little scatterbrained due to work right now. But all in all a great time, I'm disappointed I won't be able to make it to the store tonight to meet up with Ron again.
Frank Tarcikowski:
Hi Timo, I think it‘s a feature of The Pool that the group needs to figure out on their own how they want to handle these things. I always encourage to go with the gut feeling and not over-analyze. In particular, The Pool does not ask you to unlearn the way you are used to negotiating fictional content in other RPGs (outside of game mechanics). This can be a good or a bad thing, but I have found it to be great for the most part. It has only ever caused trouble with players who were used (trained?) to looking for strong guidance by the rules / the game designer. Such guidance is completely absent in The Pool, and therefore a group playing The Pool will be establishing its own conventions as they play.
A perfect example is the roll itself. The rules are perfectly clear on who can call for a roll, and under what circumstances. But there is nothing in the rules about mandatory rolls. A roll is strictly something a participants calls for because they want to roll. Different groups will build very different conventions of how often they roll, in what kinds of fictional situations they roll, how large the scope of what a single roll resolves is, how far (if at all) the MoV usually touches on things outside the immediate stakes, how bad the GM will twist it when a roll fails, based on what the GM awards GM dice, and so forth. But I’m sure you will notice, in a group that plays for some time, that a certain pattern evolves of how they handle these things, and odds are this will be the way that suits them best. Had James undertaken to provide super-precise guidelines on all these questions, it’s likely that his solutions would have been different, and less fitting for that group.
- Frank
Callan S.:
Hi,
Quote
In our case, Julia/Zoe manifested her ghost-gun and shot at Brickmilton point-blank, and boy would it have been satisfying in all kinds of ways, both concerning her character and his, for it to work. Brandon had something like seven or eight dice rolling for it ... and not one fucking 1 came up. At this point, I think it's incumbent on the GM to use the failure well, both in narration and in consequence. In this case, I narrated that one of the spooks hurled himself at her, taking the bullet instead of Brickmilton, which sprayed Brickmilton with his brains. In terms of consequence, it was a big deal - effectively, at this point, Brickmilton had seen all his plans come crashing down and totally became a loose cannon, which had everything to do with Horatio deciding he was much better off getting away from this loon.
What comes to my mind as a critical method is to compare what might have happened with a control group who didn't use, have or refer to the pools or it's texts at all. Of course we don't have that, but in terms of estimating. Brickmilton would have, I imagine, been shot at this point with a group that's not using the pool (lets call them group b). But he was shot latter with your group, regardless. How much difference would there be in the end result between the this group and the hypothetical control group?
Also this raises the question to my mind, which applies to many RPG's as well, of whether the initiation of useage of the mechanic was related to the game text in question. It's like if a painter takes a brush and canvas and paints a fruitbowl, did the brush and canvas somehow guide him to do that? No. So did the game text have anything to do with the start of using the game mechanic? In many RPG's such mechanics seem as detached as the paintbrush and canvas are from the painting - certainly involved in the making, but not actually a guiding factor.
So that's a couple of lines of enquirey that might be useful to apply somehow.
Ron Edwards:
Hi Callan,
I see a couple of points in your post with which I profoundly disagree.
1. Brickmilton getting shot by Zoe/Julia at that particular moment is not the same as Brickmilton getting killed by Agatha/secuity-guy later. Not thematically (in terms of justice), not narratively (in terms of tension and character psychology), and not in terms of plot (the actual killing was not by ghost-gun, hence Brickmilton might become a ghost, whereas if the first attempt had worked, he could not). The failed roll resulted in a wholly different story.
2. Your point about paint/canvas vs. painting is nonsensical to me. As I see it, the nature of the paint and canvas deeply inform the process, content, experience of creation, and experience of viewing the subject of the picture.
Or to put it differently, for this RPG, and for this group, yes, the initiation of useage of the mechanic was related to the game text in question. More than related - synonymous. We interacted with the game text in the way that (as I see it) the painter, and in fact viewer of the painting too, interact with the paint and canvas. Because, that is actually all they interact with in terms of producing and seeing the picture of the fruit bowl.
Best, Ron
Ron Edwards:
Hi Roger,
No one worked with the possibility of ghosts preying upon one another. It's certainly something I'd bring in if I played with this setup again, which I think I might, starting with a picture this time. It's pretty clear that my recent brief mention of Ghost Light is having some effect on my inspirations lately.
The essay is near completion, so I'll hold off on the Gift dice topic. I also recently discovered something in the posted version of The Pool which I either never understood or totally forgot, which is relevant to that issue, so I have to process that a little bit as well. It's James' distinction between Action rolls and rolls. The first is basically a Push in Annalise terms, i.e. a GM-called roll, and it's here that James talks about the options of +1 Pool die vs. Monologue of Victory. The second is basically a Seize in Annalise terms, i.e. a player-called roll, and James presumes that doing this (a) automatically calls in a Trait and (b) is synonymous with going for a Monologue of Victory. Gift dice are granted (or not) for either, with no distinction between the two.
All of that is a tad more structured than I recall or than I typically play, so I'm revamping a bit of the essay in that light, and don't want to answer your question based on a premature understanding of what I want to say.
Best, Ron
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