The Pool - Videos and Thoughts

I wrote an RPG called The Pool back in 2001 or so when I was a regular at The Forge. Ron Edwards promoted the game through discussion because it was among the only games at the time that explicitly explored what I would call shared narrative control. That is, an RPG in which the GM and the players both have some authorship of the game's shared creative space. The Pool allows for this by controlling the creative powers. That is, it has rules for who gets to author and when they get to do it.

Anyway, the game has enjoyed a lot of discussion over the years and I'm proud to have created it. I'm glad that it might have influenced other designers to create even more impressive games. Because frankly, nobody creates anything new. I certainly don't. I'm the guy who assimilates ideas over time. I hear or see something that leaves an impression and it eventually shows up in something I create. The more impressed I am by the thing, the more obvious it is that I'm channeling it. That's why people often comment that my art reminds them of Vaughn Bode or Richard Corben.

Anyway, here's a video of Ron Edwards talking about The Pool to a class inMilan. Strange, but true. And very cool!

Also, here's Ivan talking The Pool as well.

And the game itself got a tiny facelift recently from my friend MattHildebrand who put it into a printer friendly digest PDF.

I'm working on a new game. For the past few years I've focused 100% of my efforts on doing OSR material, which I dearly love. But in January I had a bit of a break from it as an OSR project I was working on kind of fell apart in my head. Possibly this was more related to my mother's health problems and less to gaming. But still, it caused me to step back and start looking at all my junk. Which caused me to flit back and forth between projects. And now I'm at this place creatively where I have an old, potent idea I'd like to explore for a time. It isn't OSR. It's also not a story game. But it does have elements of both those modes of play. Again, this is just me doing what I like to do and not thinking too much about it.

Hell, I don't even want to say what it is because tomorrow I might abandon it. I'll say that it grew out of working on an updated Rabbits &Rangers, but it is not R&R. More later.