[The Pool] Update: essay available
Ron Edwards:
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
Frank Tarcikowski:
Hi Ron, nice job!
Quote
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.
This was something I struggled with in my first session of The Pool, because the GM back then had the notion that it was basically the whole deal about The Pool that players would make up the back-story as they went along. I think the text of The Pool is a bit problematic here, probably because James was intent on showing how The Pool was counter to habitual “the GM is always right” practice. The MoV example is a bit ambiguous but it should be noted that the player only establishes the existence of the living book, not any information gathered from it about back-story.
The text does state that, in an MoV, you should ask the GM questions if you need to, which I find affirmative of your interpretation above. I do think the scope of how much players can “mess” with the GM’s back-story is also something to experiment with, and arrive at a customary play-style for each individual group.
This also applies to “how often you roll”. I have played very delightful games of The Pool in which players very rarely reached for the dice. The ability to call for a conflict at any time worked like a safety net to a freeform-ish game. This is actually something I find The Pool to excel at.
On the question of Gift Dice and Trait Dice, I’m not sure you are referring to the current version of the text, which reads:
Quote
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.
- Frank
Adam Dray:
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.
Chris_Chinn:
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
Ron Edwards:
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:
Quote
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.
Is that the part you're talking about?
Chris, that point is specifically for The Pool. Since it lacks orienting features such as PTA's Issues or Dust Devils' Devil, or even Sorcerer's Humanity, or the particular combinations of Color found in Dogs in the Vineyard and Trollbabe, the system doesn't handle the fancy-schmancy conflict concepts very well.
Also, as a side point, I have observed some horrible borkings of identifying the conflict at hand in PTA play especially. I talked about this in some detail in [PTA] Players wanting their PCs to fail?, in my Taffy the Lich Slayer example, regarding how content gets parsed before and after the roll; and in [PtA] How are the narrative authorities working in this scene? regarding making up weird shit to have conflicts about for no actual reason. 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.
Best, Ron
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