[The Pool] Update: essay available
Chris_Chinn:
Hi Ron,
Quote
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.
That makes perfect sense. This seems like a case where I'll need to do some more play and reflection and maybe do some writing on what those lines look like for folks wanting to get into more complicated stakes and narration without getting widgey and stupid. As it stands, we're finding occasional patches of rough-ness and I suspect this essay will be good reading for my PTA group to talk about.
Chris
Adam Dray:
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.
Roger:
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
Ron Edwards:
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:
Quote
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.
With any luck, this phrasing is indeed a design artifact only available on my hard drive, and we only have to deal with the original version, which I think is better phrased and structured.
Best, Ron
Whoops, forgot & editing this in: My comments about modifying the Character Story was only supposed to apply to the Story, not to Traits. I'll review the essay to make sure I'm not saying something I didn't intend.
David Shockley:
Clicking on 'The latest' gives me a 404 error.
Navigation
[0] Message Index
[#] Next page
[*] Previous page