[Polaris] Effete, very cold knights and the demons who love them

[Ron Edwards]

Hello,

We used the introductory phrases as per the rules, but when we talked about lowered lighting or candles, the group decided our ritual-opening would be a flurry of sardonic mockery of the game author's artiness, so we did so and proceeded successfully from there. "Some rituals are more equal than others," I suppose.

As for our story content: demons, demons, demons. Evidently Sorcerer wasn't enough for these guys. We decided on Winter via a die roll, which put the two protagonists with hardcore "outer waste, loner, wanderer, frozen outback" themes into a tizzy, being stuck mainly in at-the-Remnant assassination-heavy, hidden-demon heavy intrigue. We ended up with one protag with a demon in his lover's head, one protag with a spikey demon embedded in his body, one protag claimed by a demon/song as its romantic property, one protag chasing a demon who kidnapped or murdered his acquaintance, and one protag enthralled by a poem which may or may not be a demon. It's all sort of messy at the moment, actually. With five protagonists, play gets pretty extended - not a criticism, but we recognize we're in for a multi-week haul.

My protagonist took the "Bound Companion Arrakis" Aspect - I blame the hot-chick sidekick card from Dungeoneer.

The most interesting aspect of play for me is the shared Fate, which in our case, is a person, Ka Kuen. My character was the only one to bring Ka Kuen into a scene, and we all realized that he wasn't very Fate-y yet, unless we push toward that end with lots more Crosses and Weavings next time. None of us feel inclined simply to erase him from most of the sheets based on non-usage.

I'm numbering the next points so that we won't get them mixed up in the discussion.

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1. Our biggest conceptual hump concerned who has guidance over non-protagonist characters in a scene who are (a) designated in a particular part of the protagonist's Cosmos, and (b) not in the Cosmos but important as Theme (Fate, Blessing, whatever).

[A small side point: I recommend that Aspect-based adversity be included in the "Advice for starting scenes" section, p. 58, in addition to looking at the Cosmos and taking suggestions from others. Every Aspect has negative stuff in it, and all of it is solid gold for conflicts. Tod got great mileage out of this when I suggested it to him, as my Mistaken.]

The issue concerns trading around usage of a given character within the same scene. For example, if Na'ir is in the Full Moon portion of a protagonist's Cosmos, but the Full Moon does something with him that's very antagonistic or adverse to the protagonist, the Mistaken ought to take him over, right? Or conversely, if the Mistaken wants to, he or she can reach right over "into" the Full Moon portion and play Na'ir, even introduce him into the scene, as a source of adversity, right?

In other words, and partly due to some phrasing of mine in the beginning of play, I think a couple of people got the idea that if the character wasn't in his or her designated section of the Cosmos, then they couldn't "grab" that character or play him or her in that scene. I tried to explain it later by saying that all three "GMs" were in the heads of each and every character in the scene, potentially. Does that work?

It becomes a little more difficult for the same players when the character wasn't even in the Cosmos at all, but rather listed as an Aspect - in the case of my protagonist, the Fate (a character named Ka Kuen, specifically left totally undefined at the outset of play), and the aforementioned Bound Companion. Again, the issue concerned who "got" that character during play, and I want to have it confirmed that the answer is, "all three of you, it depends on what he or she does," or if that's wrong, corrected.

All of this is a bit more sophisticated than the basic points and guidelines laid out in the text (pp. 62-63), and specific to the particular issues that we, as individuals, experienced. Personality plays a big part of it as well. Julie was my New Moon, which means she desperately wanted to introduce tons of adversity through characters close to mine (because Julie just does that as a GM, period), so she and Tod (my Mistaken) will have to develop their skill at her set-up + his smash, as in volleyball.

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2. The players who hadn't read the book ran into an interesting stalling point during the interaction of phrases. Specifically, during You Ask Far Too Much, when faced with the two phrases (original and altered), they froze. This kind of puzzled me, as I see it as a pretty clear choice, but I now realize that it's a very radical shift from player-role to GM-role, and then, given that you have to come up with the next phrase, back to player-role.

Yes, I realize that we all do better simply to put the GM-role and player-role archetypes out of our heads in the first place, for this game, but like it or not, they persist in our heads and in this case, created a very distinctive and repeated hiccup.

A little dialogue revealed that the players got stressed over a double-decision - (a) which phrase and (b) whether the following statement would be It Shall Not Come to Pass or not. So they wrestled over a four-part decision rather than a two-part one:

- "The demon punctures me and enters my body" + [anything except It Shall Not Come to Pass], which accepts the event (we'll ignore the possibility of repeating You Ask Far Too Much, which wasn't an issue)]

- "The demon punctures me and enters my body" + It Shall Not Come to Pass, which takes the completion of the event to a dice roll

- "The demon punctures my friend and enters his body" + [anything except It Shall Not Come to Pass], which accepts the event

- "The demon punctures my friend and enters his body" + It Shall Not Come to Pass, which takes the completion of the event to a dice roll

I definitely see how this caused the freeze-up, as these players were still processing the dynamics of the basic phrases in the first place.

Oh, speaking of It Shall Not Come to Pass, we are dice-junkies and reward/reinforcement system junkies, so this phrase became a big deal and generally a favored goal during resolution: how to set it up, how to integrate it with other phrases, and more. Since the larger-scale reward system is in part powered by failed rolls, I found myself actually angling toward stating It Shall Not Come to Pass in order to fail it, thus getting Experience checks.

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Overall, I saw a lot of points from previous actual-play threads confirmed, particularly the principle of not wimping out as the Mistaken, and to be open to one another's points during free play, both of which worked out pretty well in our group. A couple of people still have to be prompted to say "He has sex with you" rather than "He tries to get close to you" or something equally vague or transitional.

One point I made early on, which I think helped a lot, is that in Polaris, player-level disagreement and in-game fictional conflict of interest are handled in exactly the same ways. Since a great deal of this group's play-skill is based on socially/creatively agreeing on hard-core fictional conflicts of interest, that takes a little getting used to - we can start by asserting things at a highly individualized level and trust to the editing-rules to whittle things into shape through the resolution system itself. So far, it's fun!

Best,
Ron

[GreatWolf]

Regarding point #1, this is something that our group stumbled over as well, and clarification would be welcome.

On the other hand, I found that "waving off" Moon input with "But It Was No Matter" was an important part of playing the Heart, which, of course, dragged the Mistaken into the act pretty quickly.  This allowed the Heart to push hard for his vision of the scene, which was a good thing.

[Emily Care]

Hey Ron,

The phrase that really  made us light up was "And Furthermore,..." Once we realized that it put a mechanical limitation on how much people could respond to it.  The first half of our game was all "But only if's" the second half "And furthermores".

It becomes a little more difficult for the same players when the character wasn't even in the Cosmos at all, but rather listed as an Aspect - in the case of my protagonist, the Fate (a character named Ka Kuen, specifically left totally undefined at the outset of play), and the aforementioned Bound Companion.

When we played recently, we put all the characters in the aspects on the Cosmos. This would have put Ka Kuen on everyone's sheet and I bet this would have made it more likely to be brought into play.    During our "check out each other's sheet" time after creating the aspects, many of us picked characters from eachothers' Cosms to put on our own.  This made for some good crossover of plots throughout play. 

Who gets to play a character depends on the relationship the characters have: hierarchical/emotionally distant or males not on the Cosmos by one of the Moons,  family/emotionally close characters or females not on the Cosmos by the other.  We went by where the character fell in the  Cosmos, mostly, since we put them all there. However, we all felt free to suggest that a character might be present & doing things, but the Moon in question was the one on the spot to actually play it.

One clarification Ben made to me recently was that the Mistaken player plays demons, characters in that quadrant on the Cosmos & also the environment. 

Final answers of course may be deferred to Ben, but I got to play recently so it's fresh in my mind.

best,
Emily

[Ben Lehman]

It's all sort of messy at the moment, actually.

I like this sentence.



Let me just get the rules questions right now, then do a follow-up in a bit.

1)  A character can switch guidance during a scene, but it has to be directed (or at least rubber-stamped) by the Protagonist's Heart, who has full command over the Cosmos.  So say your (New Moon) lover just, I don't know, put poison on her lips and then kisses you, driving you into horrific, blinding pain while her demons tear your limbs off.  This is pretty clearly antagonistic action, but the Heart decides whether or not she moves to the Mistaken section in the Cosmos, regardless.  The zoning of the Cosmos is intended to track relationships rather than actions -- if, despite or because of the paralysis and demon-tearing apart, you maintain a solid affectionate relationship with her, that's totally still New Moon territory.

1b) Everyone important to the story is in the Cosmos.  If someone's in your Aspects, my general thought is that they're probably important to the story (likewise is someone has a name, or shows up in more than once scene.)  However, if someone isn't in the Cosmos, the rules are as follows: If the character has a clear relationship with the Protagonist, that player has guidance (for instance, no-name knights are full moon); if the character is a demon the Mistaken has guidance. if the character is a woman, the New Moon has guidance; if the character is a man, the Full Moon has guidance.

1c) As a note, the Mistaken absolutely cannot "reach into" other boxes without a demonic possession or similar machination.  The Mistaken absolutely can and should make strong suggestions ("you should totally gank him right now!") or even ask for a "character loan" loan for a bit ("can I control Arrakis for a bit?")

2) I love to use "it shall not come to pass" for exactly the same reasons that you love it.  Of course, it all depends on whether you see experience as a reward or punishment.  Of course, sometimes someone just says the perfect thing and you don't *want* to try to cancel it.

2b) "You Ask Far Too Much" is the most problematic of the phrases in many ways.  It is certainly the most mechanically complex, and also the most alien to the other phrases (far from being a switch between "GM mode" and "player mode," it is also a switch from "rest-of-Polaris resolution mode" into "you ask far too much mode.")  Because of this, it simply takes about five times as long to resolve as the other phrases.  It'll probably speed up as you continue play.

yrs--
--Ben

[jrs]

Surprisingly, we used relatively few "But only if ..." statements.  We gravitated towards the "And furthermore ...", "You ask far too much," and "It shall not come to pass" statements.  I don't think we used, "It was not meant to be" at all.

We need to be more consistent with responses to Moon statements, 'cause that's where I think we ran into problems.  The two briefly described examples that Ron mentions:  Na'ir played antagonistically by the Full Moon and Ke Kuan played antagonistically by the New Moon, both just so happened to have been played by me.  In the first, we stumbled over who should narrate what.  In the Ke Kuan scene we at least used the "We shall see what comes of it" statement which helped to better structure the conflict.

Julie

[Ben Lehman]

Oh, forgot thist:

1d) Regardless of the above, the Mistaken can control the Cosmos by proxy via conflict statements -- "but only if Ke Kuan moves into your Mistaken section" is a fine statement.  If there is no conflict extant, it's pretty easy to grab someone with the "and furthermore" phrase.

yrs--
--Ben

[timfire]

On a related note, what happens when a Moon initiates a Conflict? Actually, can they? Does the Moon run the conflict, or does the Mistaken take over the character for the duration of the conflict? We played that the Mistaken took over the character for the duration of the conflict. But that felt a little jarring to me.

[coffeestain]

On a related note, what happens when a Moon initiates a Conflict? Actually, can they? Does the Moon run the conflict, or does the Mistaken take over the character for the duration of the conflict? We played that the Mistaken took over the character for the duration of the conflict. But that felt a little jarring to me.

Tim,

A Moon can use a conflict phrase, but either the Heart or the Mistaken can say "But it was no matter..." to ignore it.  If either the Heart or the Mistaken use this phrase, the Moon's phrase is discarded.

However, if either the Heart or the Mistaken say "We shall see what comes of it...", then they take over the conflict as though they stated it originally.

That's my understanding of things.

Regards,
Daniel

[Ben Lehman]

Hey, Tim.

Daniel is wrong.

Moons cannot use any key phrase at all.  This means that they can't start conflict.

Is it clear that this doesn't restrict the actions of Moon characters in the fiction at all?  As in, a Moon can say "I run her through the heart and kill her" and that's fine, because it isn't a conflict unless the Heart or the Mistaken objects.

yrs--
--Ben

[Ben Lehman]

Okay, now for some actual response, not just rules clarifications.

Yay!  I've been waiting for this play to happen for a while.  It sounds like you're off to a very good start for a Polaris game -- if the protagonists' status quo is seriously threatened / basically eliminated by the end of the first session, something is seriously going wrong with the game.

We used the introductory phrases as per the rules, but when we talked about lowered lighting or candles, the group decided our ritual-opening would be a flurry of sardonic mockery of the game author's artiness, so we did so and proceeded successfully from there. "Some rituals are more equal than others," I suppose.

The author is such a ponce.  Fortunately, I talked him into only having the phrases as hard rules.  Lighting is strictly optional.

Overall, I saw a lot of points from previous actual-play threads confirmed, particularly the principle of not wimping out as the Mistaken, and to be open to one another's points during free play, both of which worked out pretty well in our group. A couple of people still have to be prompted to say "He has sex with you" rather than "He tries to get close to you" or something equally vague or transitional.

Yeah, that's a really hard one for everyone to get over.  It's really easy to get distracted by the all the other bells and whistles in the game, but effect-loaded announcement is both the most vital component in the game and also the most different from other role-playing games.

Once you all do get over it, though, there's some really cool shading stuff you can do.  For instance, if you want to attack somoene, but you want to be intercepted before you actually hit him, you can announce "I'm swinging my sword at him."  The fact that you're not announcing the effect can serve as a "I'd like my character to be interrupted" flag.

One point I made early on, which I think helped a lot, is that in Polaris, player-level disagreement and in-game fictional conflict of interest are handled in exactly the same ways. Since a great deal of this group's play-skill is based on socially/creatively agreeing on hard-core fictional conflicts of interest, that takes a little getting used to - we can start by asserting things at a highly individualized level and trust to the editing-rules to whittle things into shape through the resolution system itself. So far, it's fun!

Glad it's fun so far!  "Player-level and character-level conflict are identically resolved" a good way of putting it.

Surprisingly, we used relatively few "But only if ..." statements.  We gravitated towards the "And furthermore ...", "You ask far too much," and "It shall not come to pass" statements.  I don't think we used, "It was not meant to be" at all.

"It was not meant to be" is only used in response to "But only if," and tends to be rare across the board, so I'm totally not surprised that it wasn't used.

Why was it surprising that you ended up mostly using those phrases?  Having met and played with you guys once, I'm not very surprised that you tend towards "go for the throat" and "hold on a second!" rather than the more gooshy phrases.  A very good data point, though.

So, questions time:  What are the Zeal levels?  How frequently are you getting Experience?  How much of it is behavioral versus from "It shall not come to pass?"  Any pattern to the Ice and Light progressions?  Were any aspects added from play?

yrs--
--Ben

[coffeestain]

Hey, Tim.

Daniel is wrong.

Moons cannot use any key phrase at all.  This means that they can't start conflict.

Is it clear that this doesn't restrict the actions of Moon characters in the fiction at all?  As in, a Moon can say "I run her through the heart and kill her" and that's fine, because it isn't a conflict unless the Heart or the Mistaken objects.

yrs--
--Ben

Whoops!  Thanks for the correction, Ben.

So the Moons don't actually start a conflict, but they can make statements that become a conflict if either the Heart or Mistaken says "We shall see what comes of it...".

Is that more correct?

Regards,
Daniel

[Ron Edwards]

Hello,

We used the Moon resolution-phrases correctly, checking by the book as we went.

With five protagonists, we ended up with five scenes (turns) in our first session, one time 'round the table. I think three of them ended up with Zeal 3; the other two ended up fully refreshed. A couple of of them had at least two Experience rolls each, and all of them had at least one.

Two of the Experience rolls were behavioral, including my knight's (callousness) and Maura's (acknowledging a demon as her lover). Maybe one more was too (Julie's?). All the others, if I remember correctly, were based on failed rolls. Speaking of resolution rolls, we did see one fail on five-or-less that succeeded with a 6.

This was a much better-written and spritelier reply before I lost it through a connection glitch. Now it is cold and terse.

Best,
Ron