I suck at finishing things. I can start s$&% with no problem. But when it comes time to actually finish them? I just suck.

There’s a lot of reasons for that. But they’re between me and my therapist. So butt out.

Anyway, I suck at finishing things. If you wanted to track me across the wilderness of life, you’d just have to follow the detritus of unfinished, discarded projects. And on the rare occasions when I actually do manage to finish something, I immediately declare it unfinished and get back to work on it.

Remember that module I published? Yeah. Already working on a republication to fix the issues I discovered stress-testing it. This is why you stress test s$&% before you release it, I guess. Who knew? And remember that series about open-world gaming? How long did it take me to post the fifth part out of four? And remember last week when I posted the definitely final and totally comprehensive guide to my Tension Pool?

To be fair, though, I knew there was no way that last one would be final or definitive. Which is why we’re talking about it again!

Thanks for the Feedback

Last week, I posted what I claimed was the final, comprehensive, definitive ruleset for my Tension Pool. That’s my brilliant, system-agnostic rule hack that makes time actually matter in TTRPGs and punishes players for inefficient and reckless play. And then I posted it three more times because of typos in the f$&%ing probabilities tables I didn’t even want to include. F$&%ing gamers. And that should have been the end of it. But feedback.

Now, when I say feedback, I mean feedback. Notice how I didn’t put the word in sarcasm quotes or use italics or append the word f$&%ing. I mean, there was some f$&%ing feedback. This is the internet. There’s always some. And, as a content creator on the Internet, you’ve got to be able to take a few handfuls of s$&% to the face.

But this was just honest feedback. Compliments, comments, and lots of questions from people who genuinely liked the whole Tension Pool thing but couldn’t figure out how to use it right. And I’ll take some of the blame for that. Because I do keep revisiting and revising my s$&% and changing it without explaining the changes. And I’ve been revisiting and revising the Tension Pool, specifically, for four years now. Hell, that’s why I put out the This Time I Really Mean It version of the rules.

Aside from that, my writing style — in-depth, exhaustive, and overly wordy analysis combined with mixed metaphors and sweary, stupid analogies that aren’t as funny as I think they are — my writing style works great for analysis and argument and overly critical critique. But it ain’t great for presenting rules.

So I really can’t blame anyone for being confused at this point. Which is why I’m taking today’s article to respond to some of the feedback and clarify a few points in an overly wordy, exhaustive fashion. This ain’t the same as an FAQ, though. Most of the confusion’s down to the fact that I keep changing things. But there is one topic that will end up in the official rules when I inevitably reissue the rules for really real. Probably in six months when I try to sell you custom Tension Pool Dice.

So, that’s what we’re doing today. Let’s get to it.

Why I Changed Whatever

I got a lot of questions asking me why I changed this or that aspect of the Tension Pool or why I discarded something I was doing in the past. Or whatever. And I can explain why I made every change I made to the Tension Pool over the last four years just by telling you the True and Real Story of the Invention of the Tension Pool. And clarify a few other points as well.

The Tension Pool story started in November of 1992. No. Really. It started when computer programmers John Carmack and John Romero began work on a licensed first-person shooter video game based on the Alien franchise. Which they were mainly doing to polish the first-person shooter genre they’d just got done inventing. Unfortunately, they lost the Alien license. So they decided to file off the serial numbers and make a first-person shooter based on their office D&D campaign in which the players were trapped in the Nine Hells.

Fast forward to late 2016. I’d just finished playing the awesome Doom franchise reboot thingy that had just come out. And I wanted to make D&D more like Doom. That version of Doom anyway. Except not in a way that had anything to do with the things that made Doom Doom. So, I decided to write a series of articles about how to build some scavenger-huntery exploration into D&D 5E.

Because, ironically, a game called Dungeons & Dragons is not nearly as good at scavenger-huntery dungeon exploration as a first-person shooter video game about chainsawing demons on Mars.

As with most of the things I start, I had no idea where the f$&% I actually intended to go with it. And, after three articles, I realized that scavenger-huntery exploration just couldn’t work in D&D because D&D didn’t give a flying f$&% about efficient play. Nor did most GMs. Nor did most players. And that was a big problem because scavenger-huntery exploration is the opposite of efficient play. And if the game doesn’t give a s$&% about something, not doing it isn’t a choice.

Now, that efficient play issue isn’t a big deal in a video game. I mean, it is. But it also isn’t. And I don’t get want to get too far off track. The reason efficient play doesn’t have to be an issue in a game like Doom is that, in video games, you can have execution challenges. But, in TTRPGs, execution challenges generally don’t work. I know some people say otherwise but, well, there’s always stupid people in the world. But this is a whole other argument.

Point is, three articles into my series on exploration, I realized I had to make gamers give a s$&% about efficient play. Making efficient decisions. I was on a deadline and didn’t have much time to think all this s$&% out. And, frankly, that was back before I was thinking s$&% out before I started writing about it. So, I had to invent a game mechanic to solve the problem on pretty much the day my paper was due.

And thus I crapped out the first version of the Time Pool.

I had no interest in the Time Pool myself. It was just something I crapped out to fill an article and fix a problem I didn’t have at my table. But that’s a whole other story. Point is, I had no intention of using it myself. And after I wrote it, I realized I’d done all I could do for scavenger-huntery exploration in D&D 5E anyway. It was beyond my help.

But something strange happened. A bunch of people — and I don’t mean a few or even a few dozen; I mean a lot — a bunch of people sent me e-mails saying things like, “hey, I used your Time Pool and it worked really great.” And I said, “you used my what now?”

Look, I’m not bragging here. This ain’t me saying, “I’m so brilliant that I accidentally invent revolutionary mechanics without even noticing.” The truth is, the Time Pool was a crap hack. Practically stolen. I smashed two other ideas together. It’s kind of like the process whereby new Pokémon are invented. Look around the office for an object and then pick an animal at random. Combine then, and now you have Lampyderm! Or Bookulisk! Or Trubbish!

In this case, I combined old-school D&D timekeeping based on exploration turns with visible dice pool mechanics like the Doom Pool from the out-of-print Marvel Heroic Roleplaying game. The logic being you can make players care about things if there’s a scary, visible indicator and that I was trying to make wasting time searching every inch of the dungeon scary. I wish there was more to it than that. But there wasn’t.

But that doesn’t mean I’m not a sexy gaming genius. I am. Once the Time Pool success stories started rolling in — it’s the single most frequently used mechanic I’ve invented so far — I realized there was probably something to it. And I am really good at analyzing mechanics. Especially from a game feel perspective. So I started really digging into the Time Pool. To figure out why it was working.

And once I recognized its potential, I wanted to see what else it could do. And what it could do better. Because I’m all about loaded and elegant mechanics. A loaded mechanic’s one that can solve a lot of different problems. An elegant mechanic is one that’s easy to understand and remember. Basically, I like mechanics that can solve a lot of different problems and can do so as simply as possible.

I tried to find things the Time Pool could do beyond the scavenger-huntery searching of dungeon rooms for traps and treasure. And I tried to simplify it. To pare it down to the fewest number of possible rules. The Tension Pool rules are simple. They’re intuitive. You can keep them in your head. They take just minutes to explain. And players can see precisely what’s happening when you add dice to the pool and then roll the dice to screw them over.

Why did I change the Time Pool or the Tension Pool or whatever? Why did I drop this or that? Change it this way or that? To maximize its versatility and elegance. To make the simplest damned thing possible. To get rid of everything it didn’t need. To make it something that was always there, always on your mind, but that required no thought at all.

You know, like a timer. Like a clock.

Why am I polishing the hell out of it? Because my goal for it changed. The Time Pool — the Tension Pool — isn’t something I just crapped out anymore. It’s something I have big plans for. Because it also helped solve a massive problem in D&D-like RPGs that I never would have seen without it. One I haven’t even talked about yet. Well, I have. But I’ve never talked about it in the context of the Tension Pool. And I won’t. Not for a while.

And aren’t I being mysterious now?

Point is, to some extent, the changes to the Tension Pool are about those big, future plans. It ain’t about D&D anymore. You can use it in D&D. It works great. But I’m grooming it for something more. And grooming all y’all as well. Because I’m using it to change the way you think about a part of TTRPGs that needs some real attention in case I ever decide to usher in the next generation of TTRPGs.

Meanwhile, if you’re having trouble with the changes to the Tension Pool, try this: pretend the Definitive, Final, Comprehensive Version of the Tension Pool is the only version you’ve ever seen. Forget all the other versions and all the other things I’ve written. The rules in that PDF? Those are the only rules. Anything else in your head is Mandela bleed from some other universe that never existed.

Look, I can’t stop you from using older versions of the Tension Pool rules. If you want to use the version with different-sized dice, that’s on you. I can’t stop you from changing the rules, either. But you’re wrong. You’re objectively, provably, axiomatically wrong. The Tension Pool is a player-facing mechanic that changes player behavior. It’s for them, not for you. And it must be simple and intuitive. It must work the same way every time. And it must not distract from gameplay. Don’t f$&% with it.

Different Complication Systems

Everything I just said about how the Tension Pool is perfect and you shouldn’t change it? That doesn’t apply to the Complication s$&% at all. Do whatever the hell you want with Complications. They’re made to be messed with.

When you write a D&D adventure, you don’t change the core game rules. You shouldn’t anyway. You work within the rules to build the adventure. An action’s outcome is always determined by an ability check. And the check’s result is always compared to a static DC. That’s the game rules. What checks you call for and how you stack them up and what success means and how you determine the DCs? That’s adventure-building, game-design stuff.

The Tension Pool rules — add dice, roll dice, clear the pool — the Tension Pool rules are mechanics. Leave them alone. If you f$&% with them, you won’t actually get many benefits, but you might just break the pool. But do whatever the hell you want with Complications. Want to use them as the alert level of an enemy base or enemy computer system? Do it. Want to track the advancement of fronts in your Dungeon World campaign? Do it. Want to make non-complicating Complications and let your players just trip over treasures to loot and dungeons to explore? Do it.

Complications are part of adventure design. Let your creativity shine.

Why Two Pools?

Originally, the Time Pool was called the Time Pool. Then it was the Tension Pool. Now, there’s two different ways to use the rules. They’re similar, but not identical. One’s called the Tension Pool. The other is the Time Pool.

What the actual f$&%?

First, the Tension Pool is the official mechanic. The core mechanic if you want to call it that. It works exactly how it works. Whenever the players take a Time-Consuming Action, add a Tension Die to the Tension Pool. Whenever they take a Reckless Action, roll all the Tension Dice currently in the Tension Pool. Whenever there’s six Tension Dice in the Tension Pool, clear the Tension Pool by rolling the dice and then setting them aside. Whenever you roll the Tension Dice, a 1 on any die indicates a Complication arises. That’s all there is to it.

When using the Tension Pool, you don’t actually worry about how much time is passing or how much time dice represent or any other s$&% like that. Just evaluate each action as Normal, Reckless, Time-Consuming, or Recklessly Time-Consuming. The Pool just keeps running forever, filling and clearing in response to player actions. If the players leave the dungeon while there’s three Tension Dice in the Tension Pool and then spend an hour setting up and securing camp, there’s four dice in the Tension Pool now. If they go to sleep for the night, add another Tension Die to the Tension Pool. If they wake up the next day, return to the dungeon, and search a room for traps, add one more die. Now the Pool’s full. Roll and clear it.

The Time Pool is a variant of the Tension Pool. It changes the Tension Pool to a clock. Every die represents a specific time increment and whenever that amount of in-game time passes, regardless of what the characters do, you add the appropriate dice. Thus, you can use the Time Pool to track time reasonably accurately in your game world, but you do sometimes have to change the temporal resolution. The time scale.

Just Use Random Encounters!

Several folks have helpfully informed me that this whole Tension Pool thing is just a really complicated random encounter system. They then reminded me that most RPGs already have nice, simple rules for rolling random encounters. Those folks are — and I want to be polite here — those folks are idiots. They couldn’t miss the point any harder if they tried.

To some extent, yes, this Tension Pool s$&% is just a complicated way of handling random encounters. And I know that. Because I was ripping off old-school D&D time tracking and random encounter rules when I invented it. I just slapped a visible dice pool mechanic on top. But the dice pool mechanic — and its visibility — is the key to the whole thing.

In the old days, if you spent an hour searching every damned inch of a dungeon room for secret doors, the GM would roll to see if a wandering monster wandered in to eat your face. Your choice to search for a secret door that might not exist had a cost. A risk. A tradeoff. If you didn’t want to spend your life fighting random wandering monsters, you had to be smart about when and where you searched. You didn’t search every square-f$&%ing-inch of the dungeon for traps. You used your brain to guess the most likely spots for traps and you searched those. You looked at the dungeon map to find the negative space and focused your secret door hunts there. At least, if you were smart, that’s how you did it.

And that’s how it has to be. Scavenger hunting can’t be an execution challenge like it often is in video games. It has to be a decision challenge. Which means you need a tool that prevents brute-force solutions. And if none of that s$&% makes sense to you, don’t worry about it.

The point is that, while the Tension Pool is just another way of handling random encounters, it’s one that tells the players that every random encounter they deal with is their own damned fault. And the indicator is staring them in the face. If they don’t want to deal with endless random crap, they’ve got to think long and hard about when to search and when to just risk a poisoned dart to the face. To consider the pros and cons of smashing through doors, picking locks, or just looking for keys. Thus, exploring a dungeon becomes a series of interesting choices and tradeoffs and not just a pile of die rolls to search everywhere and check everything.

The Tension Pool just moves the time tracking to where the players can see it. And that f$&%s with their heads. In a way that just knowing the GM is tracking time in some nebulous way can’t. It also makes time feel less arbitrary. Less like something the GM just fiats. The flow of time is inevitable and unstoppable. Even the GM obeys the flow of time.

This all just goes to prove what I keep trying to tell you: actual game mechanics are way less important than how that s$&% feels at the table. If you moved the Tension Pool behind the screen but did it all the same exact way, it would be mechanically the same. And it wouldn’t work.

All of that said, if you use the Tension Pool strictly as a wandering monster generator, you’re going to overwhelm your players. The odds of a Complication every hour run pretty high. You’ll be averaging two random encounters every three hours. If Complications are broad and most are small and low impact, that’s a good frequency. But if every Complication’s a monster — even a nuisance monster — that’s going to tax your party. So make sure you include some harmless monsters on the list. Normal rats, swarms of bats, things that spook the party but can’t hurt them.

Of course, if you’re old-school enough to remember reaction rolls, you’ll be fine since not every wandering monster is itching for a fight.

Virtual Tabletops and the Tension Pool

This issue was inevitable. Lots of folks wanted to know how to use the Tension Pool in their online game using whatever virtual tabletop they were using.

And I don’t have an answer. Sorry. The inability to easily add house rules to or use tokens, indicators, or props in a VTT game is just one more way online gaming sucks donkey balls. VTT means core rules only.

I run online games. These days, I mostly run them through a Zoom call with a webcam pointed down at a wipe-off gridded board on my desk. That makes it really easy to use the Tension Pool. I just make sure it’s on camera. My VTT games use Fantasy Grounds. In Fantasy Grounds, you can share multiple maps or images in separate windows with your players. I made a Tension Pool image to keep open at all times. I add tokens to it as it fills and the players can always see it.

When it comes to other VTTs? I got nothing. Sorry. I don’t use Roll20 anymore. It’s frustrating and limited and time-consuming. I hate it. I’ve never tried Foundry. I haven’t played much with Bugbear Rodeo or whatever the f$&% it is. And I don’t develop apps or add-ons. There’s not much I can do for you.

The big problem is that the Tension Pool literally doesn’t work unless everyone can see it. Or see something filling up from zero to six. And it can’t be closed or hidden. It always has to be waiting to catch everyone’s attention. Otherwise, it’s just an overly complicated wandering monster system.

How to Actually Use the Tension Pool

Lots of people have asked lots of little, technical, nitty-gritty questions about how to actually use the pool at the table. Questions about when to add dice, when to roll them, where to roll them, that kind of thing. Fair enough. I thought this s$&% was so obvious as to be self-evident, but that’s because I wrote the system. It’s easy for me to grasp it intuitively. It lives in my brain.

First, all the fiddling you do with the Tension Pool happens during your Action Adjudication. You know how your players say things like, “my character does this,” and then you evaluate the action? You decide whether it can succeed and whether it can fail and whether it’s got some kind of risk and whether you need some rules to determine the outcome and which rules to use and what ability score to use with the rules and whether a proficiency counts? While you’re doing all of that s$&%, you also have to decide whether the action is Time-Consuming or Reckless or Both.

Once you’ve figured out everything you need to figure out to resolve the action, you usually Resolve the Action, right? And that’s when you add Tension Dice to the Tension Pool and Roll the Pool if you have to. It’s part of the Action Resolution step.

Now, Complications shouldn’t change the outcome of an action. The rules are clear: if the ability check succeeds, so does the action. If a Complication does arise as part of the action resolution, it can be a consequence of the action. That’s fine. But it can’t change the action’s outcome. Ten years ago I told you that Outcomes and Consequences were different things. That hasn’t changed. So, you can hurt yourself battering down a door or you can break your lockpicks picking a lock, but the door or the lock still opens.

As for whether you roll the Tension Pool in front of the players or behind the screen, it doesn’t really matter, but I hide it behind the screen. I’m old school. I like rolling s$&% behind the screen. I like to keep my players on edge. And honestly, my gut tells me that if you roll in front of the players and a Complication arises, they’re going to be distracted waiting for that Complication if you decide to hold off on introducing it for a few minutes. Call it waiting for the other sword of Damocles to drop syndrome. Keeping the Tension Pool rolls hidden usually causes the players to assume that every bad thing that happens in the game came from the Tension Pool. Which amplifies its effect on player behavior. Which I like.

As for how you classify s$&% as Time-Consuming or Reckless? Look, I can’t do your job for you. You’re the GM. Evaluating actions is your job. Are the distinctions a little fuzzy? Might two GMs make two different calls given the same circumstances? Might you make a different call than I would? Yes. Abso-f$&%ing-lutely. If you aren’t okay with that, GMing a TTRPG ain’t the job for you. Go program computers.

Note though that there’s a difference between risky and Reckless. And I specifically used the word Reckless for actions that lead to rolling the Tension Pool. If you’re running your game right, every action that requires a die roll is risky. Otherwise, you wouldn’t roll dice to resolve it. Reckless goes beyond risk-taking. It’s ignoring imminent danger or obvious consequences. Or deciding those consequences are worth the risk for an immediate payoff. It’s flirting with disaster. Deliberately or not. Camping in the wilderness isn’t Reckless. That’s a normal adventuring activity. It carries a normal adventuring risk. But if the trees around you are splashed with orc-signs painted in blood and you keep passing skulls on pikes and you’re unmistakably in a patch of claimed orc territory? Camping there is Reckless.

As a GM, I’ve built a habit of issuing Player Warnings over the years. So when a player says, “I’m going to search this entire room for traps,” I say, “you know that’s going to take a long time right?” And if a player says, “I’m going to threaten the guard captain to get the information,” I say, “you know that could have bad consequences, right?” The Tension Pool basically fills the same role as those warnings. “You can do that, but I’m going to add a Tension Die to the Tension Pool.” Or, “okay, but I have to roll the Tension Pool.”

Side Note: On the Making of Active Perception Checks

One commenter asked about how the Tension Pool works “when players choose to make active Perception checks.” I was going to ignore that comment because of how f$&%ing angry it made me, but then several other people e-mailed me with basically the same question.

So, I hate you all and I have to address it.

What do you do with the Tension Pool when players choose to make active Perception checks? Nothing. Because that is not a f$&%ing thing that happens. It can’t happen. And if it does happen, you need to stop it. Otherwise, I will find you and I will destroy your GMing screen. Because you won’t be allowed to run games anymore. I’ll revoke your f$&%ing license.

This isn’t a Tension Pool thing. It’s a thing to do with Passive Perception. Let me spell it out:

As a GM, you use a Passive Perception score to determine whether a creature notices something when they aren’t actively searching for anything. Creatures have senses. Those senses are always turned on. Always gathering information. If there’s a hidden thing — a goblin waiting in ambush, say — in a PC’s line of sight, there’s a chance the PC’s eyes or ears will register some sign of it. That’s what eyes and ears do.

If creatures — like the PCs — fail to notice s$&% outright but suspect there’s something to be found, they can search for the thing. They can fan out and look around and look under things and behind things. They can part the underbrush. They can look under the bed. They can tap the walls and listen for hollows. They can run their staves along the floor feeling for out-of-place tiles. And if the PCs — or any creatures — search an area, you — as a GM — resolve it with a Wisdom (Perception) check.

A Wisdom (Perception) check doesn’t mean that a creature is “looking around really hard” or being “really attentive.” It means they are deliberately searching an area because they suspect something is hidden there and they want to find it. They are interacting with their environment and anyone looking on — like a hidden goblin — will see that they’re conducting an active search. And such a hidden goblin might leap out and kill the wizard rather than wait to be discovered.

I don’t care what the rules say. Or what they imply. Or how you interpret them. Or how you prefer to run things. You’re just wrong if you do things differently. And if the game designers disagree with me, they’re wrong. Wouldn’t be the first time either. I know I’m right because it’s the only way this s$&% makes sense. In a role-playing game, the players decide what their characters do and the GM resolves those actions using the rules as necessary. This means any time the players interact with the game world, the PCs must be taking an action in the game world. That’s actually why Passive Perception exists. The designers invented it to handle the characters’ awareness of the world when there wasn’t an action to take or a reason to take it. And that problem only existed because D&D is really careless with the idea of actions and actors. See also Intelligence checks to identify creatures on sight.

If you handle Perception — and Insight and Investigation — this correct way, it’s easy to use the Tension Pool. Actively searching for anything at all? That’s Time-Consuming. Add a Tension Die.

The F$&%ing Six-Day Week

I’m going to end on this one because it’ll leave me too pissed off to continue. I fully expected to get some flak over the whole six-day week thing. That’s why I called attention to it in the first place. I was hoping the majority of you would say, “oh, okay, he knows what he’s doing and it’s not actually a big deal.” But no. Of f$&%ing course not. To date, I’ve gotten a crap-ton of suggestions of how I can fix the problem. Or change the Time Pool at the Days-and-Weeks scale to eliminate the problem.

Do you remember what I said about elegance? There is absolutely nothing elegant about changing the way the Time Pool works at the one time scale at which you’re going to use it the least. So, no. No changing the Time Pool rules for Days-and-Weeks scale. Just no.

Now, let me ask you a question about this problem that is in desperate need of a fix:

When the motherloving f$%& has it ever actually mechanically mattered in any way in your game how many f$&%ing days there are in a f$&%ing week? When? When has that s$&% ever had even the slightest impact on how your game played out? I want a solid, concrete example of a time when your game would have been fundamentally different if your in-game weeks had one less day in them?

That’s a rhetorical question. Because it has never, ever in the history of fantasy gaming actually mattered in the slightest how many days there are in a week. F$&%ing never.