It’s been a few games since I posted any updates about play in my post-apocalyptic space opera game, in the Shadow of the Shining Lords, so I thought I’d drop in with what’s happened since then. (note: if you’re one of my players, there are spoilers below, please hold off reading this for a couple weeks!)
First off, after watching the “Not Black Leaf!” workshop, I decided to have a talk with the players about whether they in fact wanted death to be on the table. We talked about the death rules in The Pool, such as they are, and about the prospect of making a new character if necessary. They felt that the death rules (it’s not easy to die accidentally, and even if you do die, you get a Monologue of Victory which allows you to give your exit the style and significance you want for it) – made it not a terrible thing to face. And they didn’t think if push came to shove it would be too hard to come up with another good character, given how much we know about the world and the players’ place in it, now. So the consensus was, yes, the kind of death rules we have, we’re conmfortable rolling with that.
The other thing that’s been going on significantly for me as the GM is, that I’ve had the chance and inspiration to fill in some very important details. In the microcosm, there were two NPCs implied by the characters’ stories and traits, who had been given very short shrift. I came up with an understanding of what they’d been up to all this time and why they hadn’t been heard from, and how that was connected to recent events. One (Zankar’s old mentor) made an appearance, and he had a plan to rescue his friend Shalar (Shyla’s absentee dad) from a situation of captivity. This plan was enthusastically supported and adopted by the players, and led to … further events.
In the macrocosm, I came up with a bit of background which explained a lot about the world. It was about power. Specifically, broadcast power, the kind of thing that Nikola Tesla always claimed he was about to do despite it being scientifically impossible. Here, it’s possible. Why hasn’t the world rebuilt from when it was cut off from outer space and civilization? Because the cities were dependent on beamed power from geostationary satellites, and when that went away they went out like a light. Why are the Shining Lords called shining, and lords? Because they or their ancestors had access to machines which had independent power sources — incredibly powerful (rubber science) atomic piles — and they built their cities around them. They guarded these power sources jealously to the point that they were effectively secret underground black boxes that nobody was allowed anywhere near — they just broadcast power in in a ten or twenty mile radius around them, and that radius was where their cities grew up. Why don’t they conquer the rest of the world? Because inside the cities their capabilities are limitless, and outside them, their power drops off quickly. So they guard what they have, and spar with each other, send warriors to fight the other’s warriors but more as a status game than a real war.
I came up with this because, well, the PCs have finally managed to successfully fuck with Shining Lords. In my last post I was worried about the PCs wanting to accomplish things on a world scale that seemed ridiculous to me. But following the logical consequences of their actions, they’ve caused some catastrophic trouble for the Shining Lords, essentially by doing things to one of them which get blamed on the other, because it is so terribly implausible that “random barbarians” could do the damage they’ve done to the Shining Lords’ Chosen Warriors, they’ve successfully deflected blame from themselves. Explicitly by lying, implicitly by hiding responsibility.
A couple games ago, one of the characters, Shyla, killed a Chosen Warrior in an incredibly brutal manner. (The player has kind of surprised me with her bloodthirstiness this game; I’ve been accepting that that’s what her character is like and running with it.) I already knew that that was not just any Chosen Warrior, it was the Shining Lord Zebulon’s daughter. And yes, they did this without anyone knowing it was them, so it would have been blamed on the other Shining Lord (Shanaeth). (All of the characters have historical associations either with Shanaeth or Zebulon in one way or another, and they are the only two Shining Lords who’ve come up in the game so far.)
This was my thinking: Shining Lords are, in general, kinda monsters. Narcissists, sociopaths, until proven otherwise. Only think of themselves and other shining lords as fully human. This particular shining lord, Zebulon, because of events in the game in which the PCS were (mostly secretly) involved, was already feeling disrespected and humiliated by Shanaeth, in the various inter-shining-lord status games that are always played, he was losing badly. But the way his daughter was killed, he interpreted as the ultimate affront and provocation. (I am not assuming he had a proper fatherly affection for his daughter, but he definitely was extremely insulted that she was killed).
So I figured he would do something absolutely unprecedented in (completely misdirected) retribution against Shanaeth. I’m thinking murder-suicide, spree shooting, family-annihilator kind of thing. What he was going to do was go down to the underground location of his power source, which was actually an ancient mecha with an atomic power source. He was going to disconnect it from the city, turning off the power for the entire population with no regard for the consequences to them, and then fly the atomic mecha straight at Shanaeth’s city in the hopes of destroying it.
I spent a couple games knowing this was going to happen soon. And as things worked out, the characters actually decided to enter that city (to undertake the rescue of Shyla’s dad) and they were there when it happened. They understood very quickly that what was happening was the consequences of their own actions, and it was kind of a great moment, them realizing that..
I decided (based on my sense of what was logical in the world) that the city’s force field held, and prevented the suicide-bombing Zebulon from destroying the city but there was massive damage as the impact shook the city. It was kind of a 9/11 level event. The characters escaped in the chaos with Shyla’s dad and got back to their home base without fully understanding what had happened (they don’t yet know that Zebulon committed suicide and abandoned his city, they only know he used some completely unknown and inexplicable level of power against Shanaeth. For all they know this is the beginning of a shooting war they’ll be caught in the middle of — they don’t realize yet that one of the sides of the war is already dead.)
That’s where we stand.
So, thoughts on this… First, I was really happy with the blanks-filling-in that was done as a result of contemplating what should happen next when Zebulon was disrespected. I Invented a huge amount of world background, and somehow it made complete sense. As if it had been there all along. I count myself extremely lucky to have been able to do that. As soon as I came up with it, I started filling in to the players the pieces of it they would be aware of, or could discover. I was open with the fact that I had recently filled in these details. With the microcosmic blanks-filling-in, which I haven’t discussed in as much detail…. I wasn’t quite as successful making it motivated and seamless. There were some questions about timeline and at least piece of missing motivation. I laid this all out for the players too, and was pretty open about the fact that there might be a couple rough edges that don’t bear too close examination. “You know how in Star Wars, if you stop and ask why fairly young looking Ewan MacGregor manages to age into Alec Guiness in the span of young Luke Skywalker’s lifetime, it doesn’t really make sense? It’s kind of like that, you might have to squint at the timeline a little.” Thinking in terms of authorities, as GM, I have authority over filling these things in, and embracing that, I can be transparent with the players about the fact that it is partly being made up over time, but with integrity & consistency with what is already known.
Another thing that came up for me…. In the few days before our last game, when Zebulon was going to take his horrifying revenge, I was honestly not sure I would be up to GMing. I was feeling a bad emotional toll from just… awareness of current events in the US, and as prep I was concerning myself with thin-skinned powerful narcissists causing destruction and the breakdown of the places they control, out of sheer spite and viciousness…. and it hit kind of hard. But in the end I reminded myself that I wasn’t there to dispense and orchestrate awfulness, I was there to play with my friends, create together, listen, reincorporate, build, that good stuff! Whatever the content, the *play* was the good stuff that was going to be happening. That was going to be good for me. The content was grim. But I didn’t dwell on any gory details, and good stuff happened (they helped Morturr rescue his old friend! Shyla finally met her father! Her father was reunited with her mother!). And… we don’t know what’s going to happen next, except that things are changing and hey, the players have wanted the possibility of big changes and their actions have organically ushered in some gigantic disruptions to the status quo.
That’ll probably do for now. Just wanted to bring y’all up to date, and share how things are going. From my point of view: very, very well, and the players all seem to be quite engaged. Next game is in a couple weeks.
15 responses to “In the Face of the Shining Lords”
Because you were in the course Playing with The Pool, I am treating most of your post as a big “yes,” then getting very picky.
I don’t think this is luck at all. It’s a reliable phenomenon given situational play. It’s actually what settings are at a basic and intuitive level. What’s called “setting” textually is really just a bank of possible situational components, and, work with me here, none of it is validated or confirmed as “setting” until we see pieces integrated across situations. So, whether more “stuff” is made up as play goes along (as in your case) or sitting in tomes on a shelf, the process is the same.
Even pickier:
All of which is good, as a phenomenon. But as a possible educational step, I’d like you to consider the oddity of that final phrase. Or, odd in a specific context: a GM’s job being perceived as getting the players to be engaged, and that doing so is an achievement.
For instance, imagine that one of the players had written this post instead of you, with content all from their perspective, and they’d finished with the same sentence, including “… and the GM seems to be quite engaged,” in the same context of the players having treated this as a notable task and its success as an achievement. Sounds weird, doesn’t it? And if it does, perhaps it’s weird to have said it as written by the GM too, and for the same reason.
I think that makes sense – so inductive inference from experience is fine, but we ought to be cautious about how much we generalize: “at our table(S), this is what we experienced, so for us we like/dislike it because of X and Y”, as opposed to “this is what we experienced so game G is not good for gaming in style S for anyone.” That the idea?
By “Rorshach phenomenon”, I’m guessing you mean our tendency to make our own idiosyncratic readings or assessments of game texts or rules?
The general point: yes.
Rorschach: no; here I’m referring to the utility of playing some (“a”) Pool, because it tends to reveal and highlight basic, general flaws in the participants’ role-playing.
I think this discusion has wandered too far from Ed’s topic, and I fear an endless stream of “exactly what do you mean.” I don’t think I can add much from here.
That’s fine, you answered all my questions. Thanks
Big “yes” received and appreciated.
Good callout re: “they seem to be engaged” — that’s a “GM as entertainer” way of thinking. Of *course* they were engaged, we were all doing a thing together, it’s their responsibility to engage with what we were doing, that’s part of doing it.
I hear you about setting only being “real” (validated, confirmed) when it enters into Situational play.
I guess I felt “lucky” because in retrospect, the elaboration of the background of the Shining Lords was *just so perfect* it felt like it had to have “always been that way.” But when I was coming up with it, it didn’t feel like luck, it felt like just working out the logic what would happen next given the actors in the situation. “Zebulon’s going to do something horrific, because that’s what that kind of guy would do. We know A, B, and C about these people. If X, Y, and Z were also true, then events could take the kind of turn it feels like they should take.” It’s only afterward that I’m marveling at how X, Y, and Z make the already-known A, B, and C make even moer sense.
Congrats on being part of such a great game! Sounds like a heck of a lot of fun.
I hope it’s okay if I ask a few technical questions? I’m very interested in how people interpret and apply the Pool’s rules, and since you’ve had such good success with what you’ve been doing, I’d like to learn from you what worked.
First, regarding the death rules, did you use them as written? Or did you make the death roll a regular roll like any other?
Also, did you use an intermediate “injured” stage or the like, or did players have to make a death roll after any failed combat roll? How did you find yourself handling failed rolls in combat?
It sounds like you had a fair amount of action in your game, is that accurate? How did you handle combat as far as the scope of the rolls was concerned? For example, you can use one roll to determine the outcome of an entire fight, or go blow-by-blow with players having to make a roll for each attack, and a defense roll every time they are attacked, or you can use something in between; of course you can vary the scope as well. What did you find yourself doing?
How did you handle giving players more Pool dice and more words (for their PC story) after a session?
Anyway thanks for your post and looking forward to your reply!
Hi Dreamofpeace! I’ll answer as best I can.
To begin with, I’m using Ron’s marked up PDF of The Pool, which we used in the Playing the Pool course. Not because there’s anything magical about Ron’s rules, it just seemed to work OK so I went with it. It’s mostly the regular rules with some sentences crossed out.
I haven’t yet used the death rules because I haven’t yet had someone fail a conflict roll in “a situation that the GM deems utterly lethal.”
When that happens, I’ll use these rules (which are what was left after a whole lot of the At Deaths Door rules were crossed out):
“Your character does not have “hit points” or any other measure of life. But he can die. If your character fails a die roll in a situation the GM deems utterly lethal, you can either accept death and make a final MOV to describe it (no rolling
required), or make a final roll to save his life. If you win this roll your character has survived the incident, If you fail the roll, your character dies. In this case, you get to make a final MOV in which you describe your character’s death in detail. Make it a good one.”
I didn’t tend to frame things in terms of “combat” as a distinct mode/sequence/subroutine of play, since the Pool lacks a “combat system.” If in the course of play somebody did something violent then we called a conflict to resolve that individual violent thing. So far there have only been a few situations where there was likely to be an immediately lethal outcome and they’ve “successful rolled” their way out of them.
So I guess the answer is “there hasn’t been enough extended combats with multiple conflict rolls for me to establish a consistent pattern.” I guess I’m thinking in general that failed rolls would lead down a fictional path to “utter lethality” situations? Like, lose a conflict and if it’s very plausible given the circumstances you’d come out of it wounded, trapped, incapaciated, or otherwise not dead, I’d probably go for that first, and then if in *those* circumstances someone tried to off you, you’re headed for death’s door? I guess I’ve been interpreting “utterly lethal” very narrowly here.
Basically most fights have turned out to be short, where a conflict roll or two or three (maybe one for each player depending on what they’re up to) resolves the whole thing, rather than a drawn out series of rolls. Which is fine, because we’re playing short, two-hour games, so quick combats let us move on and play more.
So *definitely* not attack and defense rolls. They’re more like “accomplish stuff in the face of difficulties or opposition” rolls and sometimes the “stuff” is kill people and/or avoid getting killed.
With regards to increasing dice and stories, they write an extra 15 words after each game, and they get one new Pool die each game. This is another of Ron’s scribbled notes; the original Pool rules had you “top off” dice to nine new ones at the start of each session. Again, nothing special or magical about Ron’s annotations make them better, I just decided to roll with them because I had them handy. This smaller amount of pool dice makes pool dice a little more precious; you’re not encouraged to be gambling all the time; instead you rely more on GM gift dice and you gamble when you really are into it.
Huh. I think in the course of this comment we just covered all of Ron’s annotations. It’s mainly crossing out most of the Death’s Door rules, leaving the ones I quoted above, and crossing out the “your pool regenerates to 9 each game” rule and replacing it with “you get 1 new pool die each session.” That’s basically it. Not that much to it.
Anyways, I think that answers your questions? I haven’t thought through a lot of the combat and death stuff very carefully, I’ve been handling it as I go, so I’m afraid I don’t have a very systematic answer. But maybe that lack of systematicity is the answer.
Let me know if I can add to that or clarify anything!
I’m not sure why you’re using The Pool for this, it seems very ill suited for what you want to do.
It says right there in the text that rolls are not for individual combat actions:
“Dice are cast to determine the general
outcome of conflicts. This is not the
same as rolling when you simply want
to take an action. The swing of a sword
can be achieved through simple
dialogue with the GM, without
throwing dice. The effect of a die roll in
The Pool is much broader than the
swing of a sword.”
But if you want to use it that way, making modifications like a wounds track or something sounds reasonable.
(Whoops, looks like you got tripped up by the interface and posted your last comment as a separate thread rather than an individual reply to this one. Very easy to do.)
Sure the text of the Pool says that, but I don’t see any reason to take that as gospel. The text also has a weird rule for death rolls that I ignore (I don’t see any good reason to use it, and besides my PC got killed by it in the frog pool game, lol), and I also ignore the rule about refreshing the dice Pool up to 9 after every session. None of these are essential to what makes the Pool the Pool imo, and the same goes for this insistence that the scope of a roll must always be as broad as the text insists. I see no reason at all to abide by it, but am always open to persuasion.
What makes more sense to me is that the scope of any given roll is determined by what the players find interesting or appropriate in that moment in play. If we are gathering for a game where the expectation is high action, I see no reason to insist rolls cannot be narrow as we like.
Anyway that’s how I see it right now, until someone shows me otherwise.
(to Manu) Seconded regarding the text. I think both of you recognize that “The Pool” is a scattered set of files, so (to Ed) textual citation isn’t a good key to discussion.
About the topic, I’m not sure whether my input helps or muddies things, but maybe it’s possible to say that the scope or content of rolls using “[A] Pool” (rather than “The”) is wide open for anyone’s use … but it’s also possible that the concepts are in fact limited in practice, we just don’t know yet to what and how much.
To Ron, I’m interested in what you mean by saying the concepts might be limited in practice. Do you mean that, after much experimentation, we would find that in certain contexts a given approach might be too cumbersome or otherwise dysfunctional? I’m trying to think of an example… okay, suppose we try playing with varying scope of rolls in, say, a murder mystery scenario; after dozens of games we could see what kind of effect it had in play. Is that the idea?
“Yes but”
The “yes” is that drawing or inferring any generalized point from a lot of valid and understandable experience is a worthy endeavor (even when a given point is wrong), and also, that being wary of any system’s claim to being an ur-system is also a good thing. For example, saying, “The Pool can do anything!!” would be stupid, just as it applies to any claim of Universal or Compatible With All or any other buzzword laying claim to that status. Since it can’t “do anything,” and if we’re talking about any community of inquiry, then we should be at least a little bit alert to whatever its boundaries might be.
The “but” is that I’m not committed to an eventual grand conclusion which “we would find” upon enough experimentation, which would settle a question for the ages. I’m mainly paying attention to individual tables-in-action arriving at whatever they need and enjoy from the properties I tried to present in the Playing with The Pool course, and also in the Rorschach phenomenon of recognizing one’s own faultlines in the fundamentals of play. I think talking about a larger, pattern-based insight is best left to an anarchic, undirected process, and although certainly people can arrive their own settled conclusions, I prefer not to idealize a “final council” step to “settle the matter.”
That’s fair with regards to “citing the text” in the Pool, Ron. Let me re-articulate that: What I was thinking when I wrote that is that you, Dreamofpeace, seemed to want a specific kind of combat, back and forth, back and forth, rolling and rolling, without sudden major consequences for any given roll…. and I don’t understand why you’d go to The Pool for that, or look for that in The Pool, because it seems like it’s a kind of procedure found in countless other games but conspicuous by its absence in the presentations of The Pool commonly available.
Back to my own experiences —
I had not been interpreting “utterly lethal” to mean “you could possibly die if this goes badly” but more like “obviously you’ll die if this goes badly.”
So in circumstances where wounds (or damage to a gemtech fighting suit) seemed a reasonable outcome I might go with that, even if theoretically they *might* have been killed. I don’t think I *need* to make a death’s door roll any time they could conceivably die.
That’s the kind of assumptions/reasoning I’d been running with so far.
There have been only a couple situations so far where death seemed like the *obvious* outcome, and in those cases they have not failed their conflict roll.
In any case… with regards to something like a “wounds track,” yes, sometimes characters do indeed get wounded or otherwise messed up. That’s something that happens in-fiction and we don’t have explicit rules for how it happens and how people heal. So it’s been a matter of judgement.
Ed, thanks very much for that detailed reply! I really appreciate it. I think it shows just how much can be done with this basic version of the Pool, which you’ve applied very successfully.
Just to show my line of thinking in case you’re curious: I often like running games that have a fair amount of combat, and in that context the Pool makes me nervous, because every PC is just two rolls away from death in every fight. For example:
GM: fighting the goblin is potentially lethal.
Player: I attack the goblin!
(Player fails roll)
GM: you miss and the goblin hits you. Roll to avoid death.
(player fails roll)
GM: take your monologue of death.
See what I mean?
I ran a Demon Hunter game once where a PC died in the first encounter (I wrote a post about this). I dealt with that by making their PC a ghost so they could continue playing that session, and it turned out okay. But suppose a big climactic battle started; I don’t think it would be satisfying to have a PC taken out that quickly, and the same for a Big Boss.
Anyway I’ve tried different approaches to this problem, the latest one being a wound track. But I’m probably going off on too much of a tangent here, so I’ll stop there. Thanks for listening!