Adept Play
Adept Play
Tag: The Pool
The Pool is a content-customizable game by James V. West, composed of several sequential versions, first presented in 2002, published by his company Random Order Creations.
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Laser Duel on Dreni
“Mustering Out Blues” is what I call Traveller using the Pool, slightly hacked so that how many you credits you want to spend and how many you can get as payout is part of the action. I’ve been running it with three players in two-hour-long sessions online via Roll20 about once a week since the…
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A day at the library
One quick point first: almost any available picture of the main library in town frames it to make it as angular and bleak-looking as possible. Yes, it is angular, but it also includes nice trees and a busy street and plaza, so don’t get the idea that it sits in silence except for a nearby…
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In the Face of the Shining Lords
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…
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A Few Sessions Later in the Shadow of the Shining Lords
General Catch-up and Oh Wow We’re a Party Now The game described in this post has made it through to the fifth two-hour session, playing about once a month or so. One of the four players mentioned above never ended up showing up for the next couple games, and when I came to an understanding…
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Hands-on content
I’ll lay this out the way I see it and have tried to present it over the past few years. I think the role of textual setting content is clear: it explicitly drives into playing situations, or it doesn’t. (So-called “scenario seeds” typically don’t.) However, one simply cannot tell by reading. Sometimes it seems overly…
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Inspiration Discussion
For the last few years the topic of inspiration has increasingly become both noticeable by me and important to me. I wanted to talk about it with others. Jon and Claudio wanted to as well, so we recorded it. Note: we focus here on inspiration as the necessary first step that launches into preparation and…
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Hot passions, hot place
Sorry, not those sorts of passions, or at least not much, as we’ve been playing. We’re continuing with my more-or-less faithful extraction of the AD&D 2nd edition Dark Sun, plus a bit of 4E, using The Pool, as described in Dark + Sun + Pool and It always goes to the arena. The six sessions…
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It always goes to the arena
The conventions and events of the summer have interfered with my tidy editing and posting habits, but we have indeed continued playing Dark Sun with The Pool, as first discussed in Dark + Sun + Pool. I’m finally getting around to presenting the recordings here. This link goes straight into session 2 in the same…
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More Mustering Out Blues
“Mustering Out Blues” is an homage to classic Traveller I made by hacking the Pool, James V. West’s decades-old rules system (today we’d call it a “game engine,” I suppose). I’ve run a bunch of one-shots with it, but today I ran the second session of a campaign game, and I don’t want to brag…