Già che ci siamo, per i curiosi, (esulano un po' dalla tua domanda, ma sono questioni comunque collegate a The Pool), cito
un mio vecchio post su the Pool nel vecchio forum...
----scritto nell'ottobre 2008 ---------------------------------
Ancora su The Pool...
è il gdr narrativista ridotto all'osso. Tutto quello che serve, niente di più. Non aiuta a giocarlo, devi già saperlo fare. Non si cura del consenso nel tuo gruppo, sono cavoli tuoi. O sei in grado di giocarlo o no, altrimenti ci sono un sacco di gdr narrativisti piu' facili (quasi tutti, direi...)
Ma "arcaico?" No. Se sei in grado di giocarlo, funziona ancora benissimo. E' ancora il gdr narrativista più lggero di tutti. Perchè nessuno ha ancora trovato qualcosa di superfluo da togliere (modifiche? Certo, di varianti ne hanno fatte tante, ms nessuna è più semplice)
Mi viene in mente che in molti probabilmente non sanno l'importanza di the pool nella storia dei gdr, quanto sia stato assolutamente innovativo e rivoluzionario...
Tempo fa la fanzine online Fandomlife ha chiesto a diversi game designers quali fossero i 5 gdr che li avevano segnati di più nel loro percorso.
Cito dalla
risposta di Ron Edwards----------------------------------------------
THE POOLSo, between 1996 and 1999 I'd played over 25 different role-playing games, nearly all of them to great and enjoyable effect. I moved twice, to Georgia and then (back) to Chicago, and each time set up at least one new group. I had discovered that role-playing was not broken, and that good role-players were not hard to find - the problem lay in habits of play, especially those that directly opposed what the participants actually wanted. A little attention to these, and the actual play turned into pure joy.
The internet was in full flower and at this point I decided that Sorcerer was worth putting out for others. I also threw myself into a hunt for grass-roots games - I was convinced that they would follow a music model, rather than a fan-fiction model, and therefore the real gems could be found, that would crack open assumptions, rather than endless pastiche. My sense of mission appeared: the idea of drawing the lid off underground RPG design, and helping to turn it into a scene.
It is unfair to many games to single out The Pool as the prize gem. Ghost Light especially, fits the bill, as well as InSpectres, Wyrd, and Soap. Hero Wars deserves special mention as the one game that got me back into long-term play. However, although the other innovative games impressed me, I 'got' them, or rather, recognized what they did as a modification or version of stuff I understood.
The Pool blindsided me utterly in terms of how dice, players, GMs, and game events were related. It was the single most powerful confirmation of the underground, grass-roots potential for role-playing innovation.
-------------------
Da
[Sorcerer] Rules questions: Total Victory"Now, remember, Sorcerer is pre-Pool. When I wrote it, my whole line of thinking was to avoid "the GM always narrates" and went no further than that. I didn't take that mind-set into the
wild new realms The Pool opened up for everyone. You can see that both Jared and I already had one foot each in that realm, him a little farther than me with InSpectres and me with Elfs, but the very idea of saying, "Now you hold the rubber stamp,"
didn't really exist yet for role-playing. It took James V. West to do that.
------------------------------------
Dalla sua
recensione di The Pool, del 2001:
"Here is a two-page freebie available on the internet that may
be the beginning of a whole new wave in RPG design. It presents an amazing concept, astonishingly strong, and so pure. My players, hardened RPG veterans, cannot stop gushing about it.
---------------------------------------------
Dopo le lodi, passiamo ai consigli. Ecco alcuni thread che spiegano come giocare a The Pool:
I primi due sono soprattutto "storici", con le discussioni dell'epoca:
question: when the GM narrates in The Pool comments on The PoolQuesti invece sono più recenti e si basano su anni di gioco:
The Pool: Dragons and JasmineThe Pool; some concerns and question[The Pool]