[Polaris] In an hour at a convention

[Joe Murphy (Broin)]

Phew.

THAT was marvellous.

I had signed up to run two indie games at Conpulsion, a con in Edinburgh. The Shadow of Yesterday ran on Saturday, and Polaris was Sunday afternoon.

All through Saturday and Sunday morning, I was becoming more and more intimidated by the text of Polaris. All that clear, cold black and white was really beginning to swim in front of my eyes. So an hour before my game was due to run, I spoke to the excellent Per Fischer. He advised me to take the Heart role first (instead of falling into a typical GMing position with the Mistaken) and push, push, push, and lead by example. It worked.

We had four players. Matt Machell, Aaron Caskey, Cat Hirst and myself. Aaron is in my regular group, Matt's another indie fellow and we'd chatted a bit during the Con, but Cat was new to me. Cat's lovely, but I worried that her pleasant Englishness would be a hindrance, especially compared to a loudmouth Paddy (me) and Kiwi (Aaron).

Firstly, I explained the setting and really impressed myself with how the words flowed. If you can get in touch with the poetry of the book, it's a lovely feeling. We then went through the character sheets, the rotating guidance duties, then the phrases.

I had prepared four simple characters. A champion, an exile, a singer and an explorer. There was one element in each of the three parts of the Cosmos (so in a sense, I already had some NPCs in mind), but we agreed on a common Fate too - The Emperor of Red Eyes, the leader of the Mistaken. Players then chose their character's names.

_Scene 1:_

My champion, whose lover was lost in to the South, entered the museum and demanded that every resource be made available to him in order to find her and bring her home. This was the only scene I had planned. And I really, really enjoyed this.

"You will give me what I want, curator, or I will spill your pale blood upon this desk."

(I interjected: 'Man, I'm hardcore!')

Cat, playing the curator as a weaselly official, explained how I really needed to give them two weeks notice, but if I could just fill in some forms... This was wonderful! So I ran the curator through.

Matt, as my Mistaken, pushed for the roof beginning to crack as my sword was drawn. And as my sword pinned the wriggling curator to his desk, that the love for my lost lover turned to darker obsession. Brilliant!

We closed the scene there, took stock of what had happened, and I asked who wanted to go next.

_Scene 2:_

Aaron's exiled Knight returned to his parents to ask their advice. Immediately, someone suggested that the parents treated him as nothing. As the Moons, Matt and I played the parents as frightened old people, with just a little bitterness. "Quick! Call for a Knight to protect us from this... stranger."

Cat was Aaron's Mistaken. I believe it was Cat, with a gleam in her eye, who narrated their daughter entering, red eyes flashing demonically, who had replaced the exile in his parent's love.

A struggle ensued, and the daughter was killed. There was a to-and-fro conversation about how a piece of the daughter's clothing (a peacock feather which represented the Emperor's Eyes) was taken by the mother, and so the Emperor's presence lingered.

_Scene 3:_

Matt was heart, I was Mistaken. His explorer, swooping over the city, followed a burning peacock down to a ruined part of the city, where it began to feast on the intestines of a fallen scribe (a friend).

I pushed for the scribe actually *feeding* the peacock his guts deliberately and demonically, like some awful sacrifice. Matt didn't like this, and so instead the scribe carried armfuls of scrolls detailing the explorer's betrayals and cynicism. But Matt asked that the scrolls be partly burned. But then the local people began to appear, and when the demon was killed, they began to help scoop up the scrolls.

_Scene 4:_

Cat's singer went to her songwriter, hoping to beg a few new songs. Her singer was wonderfully diffident, and the scene was small, personal and desperately tragic. Aaron, as Mistaken, described the songwriter as an absolute hack.

Then Matt (I think) suggested that a rival singer stepped from the shadows of the room, applauded the hack and was clearly going to win favor from him. So the scene was all about whether the singer could demain herself enough to praise the writer. Which really struck a chord, as it were.

_Thoughts:_

We had an hour, and I was very pleased that we managed four scenes, and so each got to play both Moons, Mistaken and Heart. The four scenes were quite different. Mine was very declarative, with firm statements. Aaron's was concerned with family and loss. Matt's became a little sinister. Cat's was personal, more concerned with her heart's art and career than the the other hearts.

We didn't follow the rules for exhausting Themes nearly enough, and so the 'But Only If' and 'Furthermore' phrases weren't used 100% properly. But the Mistakens were deliciously antagonistic, and all three hearts felt suitably put-upon.

We filled the hour with entertainment. We all focused on the game, and suggestions flew. Tragedy was absolutely natural to us. And the duelling 'But Only If' statements made for some powerfully tragic scenes.

We had one dice roll, which should have resulted in Experience (as it was a failure for the Heart who requested it). We didn't push Experience enough, but I don't think any of the characters expressed resignation or cynicism anyway.

We also did move things around on the Cosmos, added some characters and tweaked some Fates. This worked wonderfully as a record of who meant what to us.

Awesome, awesome game. I'd love to play more.

Thanks to my players.

Joe.

[Ben Lehman]

Joe --

Sounds like you had a great time.  I've had some difficulty trying to figure out how to fit Polaris into a "short but not super-short" timeslot and it sounds like this worked pretty well for you.  Thanks again for running it and posting about it.

Any questions?

yrs--
--Ben

[Matt Machell]

I was really glad to finally get a chance to play Polaris. Various circumstances had previously conspired to stop me doing so.

It was exactly as I'd hoped for: A fairytale tragedy.

There were some really lovely scenes. Particularly the parents shunning their exile son and ignoring his efforts to make ammends ("What sounds are those? Some mongel dog howling in the wastes?"), the paperwork obessed curator and my explorer being dragged haplessly by a crowd to the leftmost museum to deposit records of his failures and sins, just as it collapsed...

Looking back there were a few missed opportunities. I'd have loved to add in a detail of a small girl hanging back from the crowd and picking up one of the peaock's feathers (thus implying aaron's sister's corruption was my character's fault)

-Matt

[Joe Murphy (Broin)]

Matt,

I was struggling to remember the great thing that happened at the end of the session, which was your timeframe suggestion: The museum that crumbled in my first scene would be a ruined backdrop to scene 3. And the peacock's feathers left by the slaughtered demon in scene 3 would have been those ones worn by the sister in scene 2.

Which is just too damn cool.

And all this in an hour?!

Joe.

[Arturo G.]

Hi, folks!

Really nice shot.
Was it an hour including rules explanation and characters presentation? How much did it take to you to explain the rules and setting?

I'm also planing a Polaris sessions of two hours in a national convention in July. Thus, your comments make me feel more confident.

Arturo

[Malcolm Craig]

I'm still delighted that all the games that were ran as part of the IGT fitted into the one hour timeslot so well and gave such enjoyable experiences for all concerned. The slot was described by one poster (it may have actually been Gregor!) on the con forums as the bastard offspring of the 15 minute demo and the traditional 3 - 4 hour con game slot (this was in response to one particular poster decrying the endeavour as a bad idea). But it worked really well.

Joe: I think you did a fantastic job, despite the intimidation factor. Certainly from what people were saying, the Polaris game was fantastic.

Cheers
Malcolm

[catfink]

Just chipping in to say how much I enjoyed the game!  I didn't have a clue what I was signing up for and was attracted mainly by the fact that there were only three player slots which suggested this would be an intense roleplaying experience.

I absolutely loved the negotiation system and the shared responsibility for the story.  I'd seen similar ideas in games before, but never a workable system where the responsibility is truly equal.   I did feel a bit stuck for ideas at times but I think that was because I was worrying about whether what I was going to say would fit in with the background and hadn't quite grasped that we were pretty much making that up as we went along, so it wasn't really important.

I think Joe did the right thing by getting us to jump straight into a scene after a quick introduction.  I don't think it matters much that we weren't using the phrases in quite the right way.  Just the general concept of the storytelling mechanic takes a while to get into so in a one-hour game for newbies I think it's best not to worry about the nitty gritty stuff! 

I haven't been so excited by a game in a very long time. It was the high point of the convention for me and I will definitely be purchasing Polaris sometime soon. 

- Cat

[Joe Murphy (Broin)]

Thanks for posting (and joining), Cat! And thanks for all the other positive feedback, guys.

Arturo,

I don't think you'll have any problems with a two hour slot. Explaining the setting took two or three minutes. Explaining the characters (their purpose) and the rules took maybe 10. That was traits, conflict, tragedy, picking a common Fate and picking names. As far as I remember, we were into our first scene within fifteen minutes of sitting down. I've taken longer with Monopoly.

Scenes themselves lasted less than ten minutes. We talked for a couple of minutes before each scene. And we had four solid scenes played by the end of the hour.

Plus, when one of the staff came round with complimentary cola for GMs, we all got drinks. ;)

Joe.

[Arturo G.]

Really fast! I will follow your advise and I will move quickly to the real play.

In my group the starting session of Polaris was a real hit. Indeed, we start very quickly, we were not applying the rules perfectly, and we were getting into small trouble occasionally, but we were really excited and enjoying a lot.

Thanks for posting about this, Joe,
Arturo

[Ben Lehman]

I'm going to suggest that, especially in convention play, moving into play quickly is more important than getting the rules exactly right.  Basically, if you understand "But only if," "it shall not come to pass" and experience, you're golden.

yrs--
--Ben

[Malcolm Craig]

I'm going to suggest that, especially in convention play, moving into play quickly is more important than getting the rules exactly right.  Basically, if you understand "But only if," "it shall not come to pass" and experience, you're golden.

yrs--
--Ben

Wise words, Ben. I found I had exactly the same experience with Dust Devils: the basic parts of the rules were covered, then we moved straight into actually playing the game. The players were aware there was more system detail available, but it didn't affect play and enjoyment in the slightest.

I haven't been so excited by a game in a very long time. It was the high point of the convention for me and I will definitely be purchasing Polaris sometime soon.

That's absolutely fantastic. One of the key things about the IGT was getting the word out there and ethusing people about the wide range of indie games that are available. This kind of response is exactly what we were hoping for from the event.

Now I'd really like to play Polaris (hint, hint Joe!) in order to experience it for myself.

Cheers
Malc

[netwomble]

I concur with the others, Polaris was incredibly enjoyable and the mechanics worked very well, even given the loose grip we had on them.

My only gripe with the session we played, was that I didn't have a very good idea of the setting, in fact after playing I felt a little let down by it. However, that didn't put me off the game at all and since then I have devoured the rulebook and have a better grasp of how the world works.