The Pool is a diced roleplaying game that includes one of my favorite elements of Nobilis, the resource-based chance of success. In The Pool, as in Nobilis, a character's chance of success is determined more by how bad the player wants that characters to succeed. The character has so much of a certain resource (in this case the dice pool) and they can use the amount they think they need to get the job done.
Check it out. It's a fairly complete RPG that's only two pages long. You can take the time to read it.
My favorite part? Character creation. Write about your character in 50 words or less.
I like it.
I like it a lot.
This game fits more into the cooperative storytelling types of game that I like while stilling have that element of chance that dice brings to a game. If a player really wants to succeed in The Pool, they gamble all their dice. Of course, if they end up losing all their dice on that action, they'll have less chance to control later scenes.
Check out the the variant rules as well. Particularly, check out the "Anti-pool" variant, which I think should work much better than the normal tradition.
This wouldn't work for all RPGers or all games, but could be a lot of fun to run occassionally. In particular, I think some setting require a little more detail on what a character is capable of, particularly what kind of powers the character has. However, I plan to run a game of "The Pool." Someday.
Posted by Nuadha at March 8, 2004 2:34 PM