Polaris Setting Introduction

[GreatWolf]

(If, at the end of the first session, you feel like you don't have a strong grasp on the setting, have an out-of-game discussion about what you want to see in the game's setting.  Don't refer explicitly to the book during the discussion.  I have a feeling you won't need to do this.)

I'm going to reinforce this a bit here.  First, check out these posts in Actual Play:

[Polaris] More Peoria Polaris, including a discussion of immersion (sorry)
[Polaris] We make Veteran!

My group is comprised of three people who are able to groove on the "vibe" of the game, and one player who needs some of these concrete images.  So, before last game, we sat down and discussed what the setting looks like to us.  To be clear, we were not establishing Setting.  Rather, we were describing Color.  Those of us who "got it" helped the one who didn't "get it".  This worked quite well.

Originally, we were going to discuss Setting.  But then I realized that the "list" would indeed be a needless constraint on the game.  What the players really needed to understand was the Color of the game.

I happen to think that certain people will be more likely to "get it".  I read "Moments Frozen from the Flow of Time" and was nodding my head only halfway through.  "Oh yeah!" I thought.  "This is like Nobilis and Alyria rolled together and basted with tragedy.  I am all over this!"  My wife, though, was a bit lost.  However, all that we really needed was to take a little time to explain the Color that had been developing during play, and things pretty much smoothed out.

[Darren Hill]

I'm with Brand, probably obviously, but it's not even as stark as that.
I mentioned playing Polaris to my players. Immediately, I recieved a barrage of questions - "What's the game about? What do the protagonists do? What is the world like? What is the game about? Where do the people live? What are the people like? What do they look like? Who do they fight?" And more.

All these questions are answered in the setting chapter. And they are answered so well, it would be a shame to be the only one aware of that stuff.
My group's approach to game fiction is to use what we like, mangle what we want, so there's little danger of that vision forcing us into too narrow a route. The stuff in the setting chapter is still plenty vague with lots of ways to use it as a springboard.

If that danger is there, though, why is that Setting chapter even in the book? Ben, you thought it was worthwhile for someone to read, and I think it's worthwhile for all players to get the gist of it, and get an opportunity to read it in full when they can.

[Frank T]

Go ahead and make them read it. It's only 20 tiny pages.

- Frank

[Darren Hill]

I would do, but I can't ask them to do that at the start of the session we are designing characters and starting play - there are five of them (some of whom are veeeerrrryyyy slow readers). Thus, the idea of work out a handout to give them ahead of time. (If I had five copies of the book, it would be no problem, or a spare copy I was happy to chop up and photocopy!)

The handout I've now done is mostly typing verbatim some key passages from that chapter, which is a good compromise of information v. keeping much of the poetic language.

[Valamir]

The important thing to remember about Polaris is that its the color and flavor that's important not the specific details.  These are a lost people, forlorn and without hope.  Most are so lost as to not even realize their own doom.  Some however remember that there once was a time when the city and people were perfect.  Not figuratively...but literally...perfect...Like Garden of Eden before the fall perfect.  Like Platonic ideal perfect...like rapture beyond comprehension perfect.  And now...not perfect.  Capture that sense of loss and longing and it pretty much doesn't matter what setting details you come up with.

For some you can capture that essense from the moments frozen in time passages.  For others it might take a little more.

The moments didn't really do it for me.  They were too fragmented to have any impactful meaning.  NOW having read the rest of the book those moments are poignant.  But with no other context, they just kind of hung there for me.

The part that did it for me was the depiction of the people so mesmerized by the sun that they spend the entire day observing it without eating, drinking, speaking or...singing.  When the science portion of my mind realized that that far above the arctic circle day lasts for like 6 months at a time...the degree to which the people have been trapped by the glory of the sun really hit me.  6 months...entranced like a moth to a flame...damn...that's pretty "not perfect".

Whatever it takes to get that sense across to the players is essential to having Polaris work.  A dry list of bulleted factoids won't do it, but I can certainly see why the frozen moments by themselves may not be sufficient to do it either.

[Ben Lehman]

Darren -- e-mail me at taogames@gmail.com  I'm making something for you right now.  I think you'll like it.

Everyone else:  I'm glad such vigorous discussion is going on.  Please continue, if you feel it's productive.

Brand: The setting text as it stands is designed specifically to try to ease "I'm-super-detailed" sorts into playing Polaris.  The thing is, and this is absolutely critical, that the setting text can't be taken as an unbreakable canon without destroying the game's system in a really painful way.  Now, if you read the 20 pages as they stand right now, that isn't a problem, because they are quite ambiguous and unreliable.  If you condense it to a set of bullet points, you suddenly have a reliable setting information which pretty much kills half of the Mistaken role and a big chunk of the game's play.

There's a ton of room for people who love setting details to revel in setting details.  But there isn't room for a canon.

Victor: That's pretty much what I do.  "Knights fight demons, fallen civilization, Mistake, a bit of Moments" and then let's go.  I'm impatient with prep.

Frank: It's not as bad as all that!  I wish we'd played while I visited, you could have seen how it goes.

In Polaris, setting is treated like a secondary character -- created and discarded as needed, and only important based on our shared investment as players.

yrs--
--Ben

[Brand_Robins]

Brand: The setting text as it stands is designed specifically to try to ease "I'm-super-detailed" sorts into playing Polaris.  The thing is, and this is absolutely critical, that the setting text can't be taken as an unbreakable canon without destroying the game's system in a really painful way.  Now, if you read the 20 pages as they stand right now, that isn't a problem, because they are quite ambiguous and unreliable.  If you condense it to a set of bullet points, you suddenly have a reliable setting information which pretty much kills half of the Mistaken role and a big chunk of the game's play.

Ben,

Yes.

This is why you may notice that I specified a difference between detail=BadWrongFun and what you said. What you said was not the same thing as what others were implying (or at least what their tone sounded like on this side of the monitor), and had to do specifically with the design of Polaris instead of a general one wayism.

It's also why I shut up when I did.