Do people really have a hard time growing the doom pool?

[pksullivan]

Just played session 2 of my campaign tonight. I started up the game with my Doom Pool at 2D12, 2D10. Pretty hefty, right? That's after I had ended a scene in session 1 by spending 2D12 out of the pool. To be fair, my players were rolling a lot of 1s and I kept the doom pool to a minimum of dice at any given moment.

Tonight I made sure to spend dice judiciously to improve the challenges the heroes faced. I spent all sizes of dice out of the doom pool - D6 up through D12 (yes, I gave the players I hit with D12s a plot point for my evil). I managed to get the doom pool down to D12, D8 at one point but I still ended the session with 2D12, D10, 3D8.

Is this common? Should I be spending more from the pool?

[MidnightBlue]

Obviously a bit of that depends on the amount of opportunities that players are rolling...and that's random.

I haven't seen Spatula having a hard time keeping the Doom Pool stuffed in our PBP game...and he is spending like crazy too.

The Doom Pool never got very big for me in the solo demo that I ran for a friend online. Maybe that's another factor? The more players you have, the more opportunities will be rolled in a given scene.

If you are worried about overpowering the PC's in an effort to spend down the Doom Pool, you can always create more Scene Distinctions. That adds narrative flavor without necessarily making anything harder via dice mechanics (I.e. adding/keeping more dice in a roll and the like).


I admit, my play experience is limited. I'm hoping to get my in-store demo off the ground in a week and I'll probably have a better feel for the question.

Out of curiousity PK, how many players do you have in your session?

[Supplanter]

If you are worried about overpowering the PC's in an effort to spend down the Doom Pool, you can always create more Scene Distinctions. That adds narrative flavor without necessarily making anything harder via dice mechanics (I.e. adding/keeping more dice in a roll and the like).

That's really clever!


Jim

[Supplanter]

Just played session 2 of my campaign tonight. I started up the game with my Doom Pool at 2D12, 2D10. Pretty hefty, right? That's after I had ended a scene in session 1 by spending 2D12 out of the pool. To be fair, my players were rolling a lot of 1s and I kept the doom pool to a minimum of dice at any given moment.

Tonight I made sure to spend dice judiciously to improve the challenges the heroes faced. I spent all sizes of dice out of the doom pool - D6 up through D12 (yes, I gave the players I hit with D12s a plot point for my evil). I managed to get the doom pool down to D12, D8 at one point but I still ended the session with 2D12, D10, 3D8.

Is this common? Should I be spending more from the pool?

Hi pk: I hope and vaguely believe that Civil War will give us more things to spend doom dice on. (I don't know for sure.) I'm definitely in the "large doom pools have some unwelcome effects on gameplay" camp, so I do prefer to keep spending the pool down.

One note: when you spend (not just use) a D12 doom die, affected players get an XP rather than a plot point.


Jim

[pksullivan]

One note: when you spend (not just use) a D12 doom die, affected players get an XP rather than a plot point.

Yes, I meant to say XP. And by "hit with a D12" I meant "spent a D12 from the doom pool." It was midnight and I'd just finished Watchering (Watching?) for five hours. I was a little spent.

Obviously a bit of that depends on the amount of opportunities that players are rolling...and that's random.

...

Out of curiousity PK, how many players do you have in your session?

Yes, that is random. When I ran the one-shots of Breakout, I did much more grandstanding and using villain distinctions as negatives to boost the doom pool. Getting the Doom Pool up to 2D12 + other stuff just doesn't seem to be an issue.

I have four players. You can read about their characters (and enter my fabulous contest) here.

[Mouse]

I've only run a few sessions of MHR to date, but my Doom Pool stayed pretty low. Taking every single chance to grow it, the thing's only gotten to 2d8+3d6 at the most. I wasn't going nuts and spending lots of the things, either.

In the one fight where I wanted the NPC to be really tough, I spent the DP easily down to nothing.

[figurefour]

In the first game I played, the doom pool was pretty small. In fact, it completely emptied at one point.

However, for most of the session we had a single hero fighting a single villain, which leaves limited opportunities to add to the doom pool.

For what it's worth, I wouldn't say I had TROUBLE. I was managing to grow the doom pool slowly when I wanted to, but with fewer characters around, it's going to grow slowly.

[Crion]

I ran a one-act sample session for my group not too long ago. We had four party members (Colossus, The Thing, Thor, and Black Widow), and I had NO problem keeping my doom pool up.

By the end of the session, I had 3d12, 2d10, 3d8 and 2d6, and I was spending quite a few of them.

With that many players, there were quite a few opportunities being rolled, and it kept my Doom Pool nice and fat.

I'll be running again in about two weeks, so I'll see how it pans out afterward, but so far, it doesn't look like Doom is a problem with enough players. I think it works best that way, as it makes things interesting for all sides.