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General Forge Forums => Actual Play => Topic started by: Ben Lehman on March 29, 2005, 12:23:16 PM

Title: [Polaris] Two Tales of Six Knights
Post by: Ben Lehman on March 29, 2005, 12:23:16 PM
I played the new Polaris twice.  Thoughts:

General Thoughts

1) Both times, it was a really good game.  The game I played with Vincent and Meg was excellent, but very very mean.  Even in only four scenes, we had some heavy plot development and serious character development, but also we were all playing pretty mean and nasty people, and there were some very mean and vicious demons.  The game that I played with Santo and Paul was much, much more heroic in tone, yet still pretty mean.  In that game, we did some serious fighting of demons, and took a lot more personal injury.

2)  Combat, the big meanie nasty thing that sucks up so much time in RPGs, takes like 2 minutes *at most* in Polaris.  This is awesome.

3)  The change to the trait rules that I worked out with Vincent, while it requires new names I haven't thought of yet, is a really good change.  The cool thing about tightly woven systems like Polaris (also, the frustrating thing) is that a single change has reprecussions throughout the game.  In this case, they were most strongly felt in the experience checks, which now again do what I want them to do.

4)  Both times, there were three players, and the game still worked.  This is an official announcement that Polaris is now a 3-5 player game.  Four is still ideal, of course.  Two might work, but it would be totally intense.

5) A word about Formatting: I'm using {} to add explanation and comments to the character sheets.  Everything else, including () is written on the sheet.

The First Game

Scenes:

So I'm staying at the Baker's house and Meg says to me "Hey, let's play your game."  And I start bitching and moaning about how it can only run with four players, but she wants to play it anyway, so I give her the background briefing while we wash dishes and then Vincent puts the kids to bed and wham, we're playing.  We agree that we all have a Fate with Mirach, a knight, whose name means "the loins."  Mirach has issues with womanizing.  We (I?) decide to name the mantis-steeds after famous explorers.  Meg has a hard time picking her traits -- the default list comes in handy.  Also, her character is genderless, which is a little strange but works okay, except English really isn't made to handle it.  We end up with these characters.

Heart: Vincent
Title: [Polaris] Two Tales of Six Knights
Post by: lumpley on March 29, 2005, 12:39:10 PM
Thanks for writing this up, Ben. I said I'd do it, but I wasn't going to get to today!

Play was pretty smooth. Meg and I were sometimes confused what our options were, "yes if," "yes but," "no" and "really no" - but if we'd kept playing, we'd've figured it out pretty quickly.

You keep saying that it was mean. I never felt like I was being mean to either you or Meg, or that you or Meg were being mean to me. We were mean to the characters, of course, quite mean - but to all of them pretty much equally I thought. Nobody could justly feel singled out.

The events in the game were eerie. They were more disturbing in the moment than reading them now. Good stuff.

I'd like to hear about the other game too.

-Vincent
Title: [Polaris] Two Tales of Six Knights
Post by: Ben Lehman on March 29, 2005, 12:45:02 PM
Vincent --

I mean -- "mean to the characters," yeah.  Or maybe "mean to the players in that it forces them to make tough decisions and keeps trying to make them be cynical."

I don't see these as bad things.  I don't mean "mean" on a social level of someone being picked on.  Just to clarify.

yrs--
--Ben