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Independent Game Forums => These Are Our Games => Topic started by: Chris Peterson on December 21, 2005, 07:00:47 AM

Title: Polaris flowchart
Post by: Chris Peterson on December 21, 2005, 07:00:47 AM
I'm a detail-oriented, visual learner, so I tried to create a flowchart for the Polaris conflict phrases. I know Ron Edwards designed something similar, but I felt it left many questions unanswered. Does anyone see any errors or omissions in my flowchart? Any suggestions are appreciated!

http://www.lawfulneutral.com/polaris/flowchart.pdf

Please forgive the layout. I'm using Graphviz to generate the graph from a data file and, by default, Graphviz controls the layout.

thanks,
chris
Title: Re: Polaris flowchart
Post by: Victor Gijsbers on December 21, 2005, 07:58:35 AM
"But it was not matter" and "We shall see what comes of it" should not be accessible from "Use any conflict phrase".
Title: Re: Polaris flowchart
Post by: Tobias on December 21, 2005, 02:33:25 PM
"It was not meant to buy".
Title: Re: Polaris flowchart
Post by: Tobias on December 21, 2005, 02:36:37 PM
And, given Victor's statement, and the presence of two 'but it was no matter'  (one of which is useless), leads me to believe one of the two should probably be labeled something else. (I don't know Polaris, that's just going from your flow diagram)
Title: Re: Polaris flowchart
Post by: Ben Lehman on December 21, 2005, 02:51:31 PM
Chris --

If it works for you, excellent.  It makes me cross-eyed to look at it.

yrs--
--Ben
Title: Re: Polaris flowchart
Post by: Eetu on December 21, 2005, 03:37:05 PM
This finally booted me off my ass to translate my version of the flowchart from Finnish to English. It can be found here (http://temppeli.org/rpg/polaris-en.pdf), along with the source (http://temppeli.org/rpg/polaris-en.dia) (dia (http://www.gnome.org/projects/dia/) format).

Use as you wish, and hope you find it useful.

- Eetu
Title: Re: Polaris flowchart
Post by: Chris Peterson on December 21, 2005, 06:16:34 PM
thanks for the feedback. I guess there are some typos, but that's what I get for trying to hurry up and post my flowchart right before I go to bed. <:)

Ben: I agree that this chart is dizzying, but that was how I felt when I first read the Polaris rulebook. <:) As a software engineer with a gamist past, I wanted to formalize the conflict rules into an unambiguous "map" that my Polaris group could point at while we're learning the game (which is very cool!)

Tobias: There are two "But it was no matter" bubbles because both the Heart player and Mistaken player must stay it. However, I should probably clarify that in the diagram.
Title: Re: Polaris flowchart
Post by: Chris Peterson on December 22, 2005, 06:11:24 AM
I updated my flowchart PDF with all your feedback. I tried to improve the eye-crossing layout, too. :)

http://www.lawfulneutral.com/polaris/flowchart.pdf
Title: Re: Polaris flowchart
Post by: Darren Hill on December 22, 2005, 07:41:06 AM
There's a lot of white space there. Couldn't you put in landscape format and double the size of the image?