Pool

Pool may refer to:

Water pool

Sports and gambling

The Pool (game)

The Pool is a universal independent role-playing game which was written in year 2000 by James V. West.

The Pool facilitates narrativist role-playing, that is, role-playing which focuses on players as protagonists in thematically charged stories. The game uses an open trait system and conflict resolution instead of task resolution (that is, dice rolls determine whether a character's overall intent is achieved, rather than whether a specific attempted action is successful).

Rules

The Pool is based on a dice pool with several six-sided dice (d6). Every player begins with a die supply of 15d6 which changes during character creation and play.

Character creation

Players define their characters by choosing the characters' motives. These may be attributes and skills like in classic RPGs, but as well archetypes ("greedy businessman"), traits ("depressive"), relationships ("married"), or other stats ("likes Tex-Mex food"). Every of these motives has a value of 1 to 3, which must be bought from the initial die supply of 15d6. The costs are value^2. A motive of 1 would cost one d6, a motive of 2 four d6 and a motive of 3 nine d6. Dice exchanged for motives can't be used during play.

The Pool (play)

The Pool (later subtitled City of Culture?) is a play written by and starring James Brough and Helen Elizabeth. The plot follows David (Brough), a Londoner who finds himself stranded in Liverpool, where he meets Tina (Elizabeth). David persuades Tina to take the day off work and the two spend a day in the city together. The play is a mixture of verse and prose. Brough and Elizabeth conceived it while appearing at the 2004 Edinburgh Fringe. They returned to perform it at The Gilded Balloon in 2006. It has also been performed at the Arts Theatre in London and the Unity Theatre in Liverpool. A film adaptation directed by David Morrissey premiered at the 2009 London Film Festival and was broadcast on BBC Two on 7 March 2010.

Performance history

The play premiered at the Edinburgh Fringe in 2006, where Brough and Elizabeth won the Fringe First award for new writing. It transferred to the Arts Theatre in London's West End for a limited run at the end of 2006, before a three-day run from 24 to 27 January 2007 at Liverpool's Unity Theatre. It returned to the Arts Theatre for a three-week run from 3 to 21 April 2007, now subtitled City of Culture?