[Polaris PbP] Dreams of Eternal Night

[Garvey]

== Introduction ==

I've been doing a bit of play-by-post (PbP) gaming over on RPG Crossroads, and after reading Polaris and listening to Paul Tevis' group's Polaris recordings, I thought it would be an ideal game for PbP gaming.   PbP gaming seems to be rarely mentioned in actual play, and is often treated just as face-to-face (FtF) table top game but in another medium.  I think PbP gaming has a number of different properties causing some games to work better for PbP than others.  Polaris, in particular, I thought, might excel in PbP play.

Our game, "Dreams of Eternal Night", is located here and a wiki for the game, which has the character sheets, archives of play, relationship maps, and more is located here.  We're currently over 8 scenes into the game, and still playing, though the summer months have slowed us down a bit.

The full text of the game is available on the wiki, and that's where I'd go to read it if you want to read the entirety of the game play - its more readable than the forums (in terms of people's roles being identified, and rejected narration being marked as such).

== Players and Characters ==

RPG Crossroads is a small gaming community with a very close-knit feel (though we always want more people to come by and play!), and rather than doing an open call for players, we got a group of gamers together by invitation.  The other players are Katya, Tanda and Rural Wolfboy.  I'd never gamed with Katya or Rural Wolfboy before, but I had GM'd and played with Tanda in Amber Diceless games on the site before.  The other three had done some (a small amount at that point) gaming together in a freeform game on the site. I was the only player who had read Polaris before, or even really knew what it was, though I hadn't played before.  The other players got copies of the rulebook in short order though.

We talked for a while about our impressions of the game, and various ideas before setting out to create characters, which was basically each of us talking about the things we thought were really cool about the setting, and things we thought were less awesome (I for one, don't like the default notion that the Knight's swords appear and disappear at command).  We also talked about some vague notion of what set pieces and such we thought it might be cool to see, and well as any specific themes we thought we might like to address.  For example, we thought a masked ball might make a cool scene, though we haven't got to one in the game yet. 

Here are brief descriptions of the characters we made:

Alcyone, played by me (Garvey), was a knight who had been lost in the wastes for many years, and whose memory of that period was fragmented.  She had some fragmented memories of a Remnant being destroyed by the Mistaken and being the sole survivor.  She was returning from the wastes with one of her arms replaced by a mysterious mechanical arm of unknown origin.  I decided that it might be cool if she had a child and husband left behind in Tallstar Remnant, and invited any of the other players to take up those roles if they wanted.

Avior, played by Rural Wolfboy, took up that offer and made his knight be Alcyone's son.  He came up with a detailed family and social network, and started off as an idealistic young knight who longed for his mother, and had sealed up his heart against females for fear of being hurt again.  Of all the PCs, Avior had the most detailed cosmos at the start of play.

Sadr, played by Katya, was a knight torn between her political family and her duties as a knight.  Notably she had a twin brother (twins seemed to become a theme in the game) who had somehow died recently, leaving her to carry on the family name.

Circini played by Tanda, made a knight who was the also chief of the drawing office and in charge of maps of the wastes.  She also had a twin (Circinus) who spent his life wandering the wastes looking for a paradise of eternal night, and having finally vanished, had infected his sister with the same madness.  We all loved this notion of a paradise of eternal night and made it our shared fate.

As we made the characters we started grabbing characters from each other's cosmos to add to our own, as well as placing some of the other PCs as well.  Notably, Circinus made an appearance in everyone's cosmos except for Sadr's, and another character, Zhou (who ended up being the Proconsul of the Remnant) was in the Mistaken for Alcyone and Circini, and in the Full Moon of Sadr.  This really made those supporting cast members central to the game and set up some nice tensions.

== Posting Rates and Game Logistics ==

Using our real life geographical locations (west to east) as an ordering we assigned the seating as Katya, Rural Wolfboy, Garvey, Tanda, so that Katya and I sat opposite, and Rural Wolfboy and Tanda sat opposite.  It turns out this was a mistake, but it would take us a while to realize it.  Katya and I are two of the most prolific posters at the site while Rural Wolfboy and Tanda were slower posters.  We knew this up front, but didn't think about it in terms of seating.  What this meant was scenes for Katya and me went much faster than scenes for Rural Wolfboy and Tanda.  In fact, Katya and I started to place restrictions on our posting rates to avoid zooming ahead too fast.  It would probably have been better to pair a fast poster with a slower poster.  Normally Katya and I would get in a post or two a day (as needed), and Tanda and Rural Wolfboy would get in a few posts a week.

I should mention the format of our play a little.  Rather than having a single IC thread that contained all of play, and another OOC thread for out-of-character talk, we had a separate thread for each scene, and a table talk, OOC, thread for each PC, so that we could cheer and boo, as well as discuss, whatever happened in each of the scenes without talking over each other.  We also had separate threads for rule discussions and general OOC talk.  This meant that we could have multiple scenes going simultaneously.  The cheering in the OOC threads have worked out really well so far, though mostly its about commenting, happily, on how evil people are being as the Mistaken.

We started with a single scene (for Sadr) at the start of game, and then tried two, and then three scenes at a time (we never had 4 going at once).  We recently decided that it would easier, due to posting schedules, if we only had two scenes going at once - one scene with Tanda or Rural Wolfboy as Heart/Mistaken, and one scene with Katya or myself as Heart/Mistaken.  This way everyone is always either Heart or Mistaken.  Doing only one scene at a time, at a PbP speed of gaming, would mean huge delays in time between scenes with each PC, leading to loss of momentum, which is a killer in PbP games, and would also result in some players (who weren't involved in the scene at the moment) not having anything to do for weeks (or even a couple of months) at a time.  Our current scene system seems like it might be a good balance for us.

== What Happened ==

I'm not going to go through all the gory details of the scenes, as those are all laid out on the wiki, but I do want to briefly touch upon the scenes, the things we learned from them, and the issues that came up.

We started with a scene for Sadr, begun by her Mistaken (me), wherein she arrived at meeting with the Proconsul (we ended up stealing several ancient Roman titles) of Tallstar, Zhou, where she found her somebody had attacked, but not slain, him and was in the process of stealing an ancient golden compass.  I revealed the attacker was Alkes, a knight and former lover of Sadr, who had previously been just a name without any background on Sadr's character sheet.   A few conflict statements later, and neither Sadr nor Alkes could hurt each due to the lingering love they still felt.  Background and character concepts seemed so flexible that new elements could quickly be added to the character.  It was a brief scene though, as Sadr let Alkes escape after taking the compass for herself, but at the cost that she would covet it for herself and not return it to her friend Zhou.  This first scene was just between Heart and Mistaken, as there were no conscious supporting cast (Zhou being knocked out the whole scene), and it went by in just a couple of days of play.

Rural Wolfboy and Tanda said they weren't ready for their own scenes yet, so we had a scene for Alcyone next where she was having a surreal experience in the wastes, meeting a dream-like and dying Circinus (Circini's twin).  She went through a surrealistic maze, and then confronted a mirror version of herself that was male, demonic, and full of malice.  They fought, and she realized that the demon was her, and she awoke.  Along the way, she lost her starlight blade, had it replaced with a mysterious black blade, found the real Circinus, who she traveled with for years and was lovers with, until she felt compelled home on some unspecified quest with her son in mind.  The entire scene was pretty surreal and left us feeling a little at loss for what Alcyone was really like.  The scene allowed both Moons a brief chance at playing supporting cast (with Tanda playing Circinus and Rural Wolfboy playing a child dream version of Avior.).  The scene caused us to wonder about how the guidance rules applied to dream versions of the cast, who also may have been demons.  A visit to the Forge to talk with Ben Lehman cleared it up for us, where he explained that it didn't matter if they were dreams or not, and he helped clear up all our issues with guidance control.  Thanks Ben!

At the same time as Alcyone's first scene, we started up another scene for Sadr, one that allowed us to really try out the Moon roles.  Sadr was mediating on the golden compass she had taken and was remembering the last time that she and Alkes were together, about a year ago, when she had told him of the golden compass, and how her father, Albireo, a great Senator under Rural Wolfboy's guidance, had caught them together.  There was a nice tension to the scene, as we knew that something would result in Sadr not seeing Alkes again for a year.  We at first had some issues about whether conflict phrases could manipulate what the supporting cast felt or did, where I did a "But only if... Albireo's heart was so full of rage that he disregarded Sadr's calm words, and his daughter knew there would be no appeasing him."  Since it was a PbP game though, we could all refer back to the rulebook and discuss it without any real loss of speed.  Once we decided it was valid, this statement resulted in Katya issuing the first "It shall not come to pass" of the game, which she lost, resulting in an experience check that she would also lose, causing the first Zeal decrease in the game.  This was the beginning of a series of unlucky rolls for Katya. 

The conflict between father, daughter, and lover escalated until, due to an "And Furthermore" and a response of "You ask far too much", Katya had to pick between two horrible choices, when in a very Romeo and Juliet-esque moment, where Sadr was coming between her lover, armed with a blade, and her father, at the edge of a high balcony.  She had to choose whether her lover would accidentally cause her father to fall from the highest tower to the ground dying, or whether her father would attempt to stab Alkes, but would actually stab her, Sadr, in the heart.  It was a moment that had all of us shocked at the two horrible choices.  She finally decided that she wanted her father alive, and chose the later.  This resulted in her father publicly blaming her lover, who fled the city.  Sadr despaired at the memory of loss (since she had in that moment lost her father and her lover) and so, in just her second scene lost her second point of zeal.  This was one of my favorite scenes of the game.

We played out a few more scenes, one less surreal for Alcyone where she fought some beasts of the wastes (wolves), was tricked by a demon masquerading as a child, killed a great star born wolf (causing an experiance check, which she passed), and finally ended up at Circini's camp (where she was mapping the wastes), giving some hope to getting her home.   We continued in a scene for Circini, where most of it was a flashback to her remembering her brother (who Alcyone had reminded her of).  This scene dragged for a while due mostly to slow posting I think, although it finally resolved back in the present with a shifting of the ice that caused Circini to fall down a ravine and along the way to glimpse a vision of her brother in the Paradise of Eternal Night that was our shared fate.  During this we had another scene for Alcyone set decades earlier right when she joined the knights.  This scene did a lot to shape Alcyone, making her into a much more sinister character who
joined the knights to seize control of them (as part of some secret agenda with the future Proconsul), was able to control the demons, and used the ability to wage a great war against them.  She also ended up having a child with Zhou in the scene.

Sadr had another scene at the same time (lots of stuff in parallel!), beginning with a promotion to Praetor, working for the recovering Proconsul, and a meeting with the Proconsul where he wanted to discuss something secretive with her.  This scene was interesting as there was no Mistaken character present, so, with the exception of conflict statements, it was all played out between the Heart (Katya) and the Full Moon (Tanda).  Tanda wasn't sure where to go with the scene, and so asked me, as the Mistaken who had framed the scene, what I had in mind.  I told her I thought the Proconsul might ask her to hunt or persecute down Alkes, or some traitors involved with him, or a cult involved with the Paradise of Eternal Night.  Tanda latched onto it, and in the end had Zhou assigning Sadr to hunt down, persecute and possibly execute traitors, including Circinus, who was confirmed to be a prince of the ancient royal line of Polaris.  The scene was surprisingly conflict filled as Katya struggled to protect Sadr against future implications of this inquisition.  This also resulted in more despair over her situation, and failing yet another experience check, bringing her down to Zeal 1, with very few themes still available to either her or me.

I think one of our more problematic scenes was Avior's first scene, framed by Rural Wolfboy as Heart.  It was set a couple of years ago (before the 'present' of the game world) when he first joined the knights at a big party with almost the entirety of his cosmos present.  The problems surprisingly weren't from the number of characters floating around, but conflicts and statements that threatened to change the back story and vision that Rural Wolfboy had of Avior.  In most traditional games, the player has pretty firm ownership and control of their character, but in Polaris, anything is possible with conflict statements.  Who your character was can quickly change.  Its a very fluid system of play that I really like, but it takes some getting used to.  You have to let go a bit and let the game just happen. 

In that scene, Avior learned rumors that his mom (my character) might be alive, and also that she might be having a love affair with Circinus (who was also an old friend of Avior), brought to his attention by the sister, Gomeisa, (maybe twin sister) of his best friend, Procyon.  Gomeisa seems to love Avior, but is rejected by him, and so she seeks to undermine him.  Avior was desperate to get information on his mom, and so grabbed Gomeisa, causing her to fall, he caught her, saving face for himself but the cost that a growing love blossomed in him for Gomeisa.  He had a cool counter by stating the love would never be consummated because he would discover before the deed was done that she was in fact his first cousin.  As Gomeisa left the party, the Mistaken (Tanda) narrated that Gomeisa was the Proconsul Zhou's daughter, tying the characters together more firmly.  This immediately siezed in another parallel scene (where Sadr was meaning with Zhou, and we had Sadr meeting Gomeisa there, and the two being enemies).  Avior later left the party, and met up with Procyon and we discovered the two are not only best friends but also lovers, and that Procyon was mentored as a knight by Sadr and Alkes (tying things even closer together).  Avior and Procyon decided to go into the wastes to search for Avior's lost mom, but at the cost that their relationship would be poisoned by Avior's new love for Procyon's sister. 

As of the writing of this, we're in the middle of Sadr's forth scene, where she was a party celebrating her promotion, and where a number of new supporting cast were introduced, and we're at the very beginning of Avior's second scene, where a demon is kidnapping Procyon.  In Sadr's scene, we've already exhausted all of the themes for both the Heart and Mistaken, though there haven't been any additional experience checks, so Sadr is still at Zeal 1.

[Garvey]

== Issues, Questions and Problems ==

* We have a less than balanced number of scenes for each PC - Sadr is in the middle of Scene 4 right now, Avior and Circini have each had 1 scene (but they were longer scenes), and Alcyone has had 3 scenes. This is mostly the result of Tanda and Rural Wolfboy starting their scenes later, rules discussions during their scenes, and the lower posting rate.  Hopefully the new schedule will help to balance things out a little more.  I'm not sure that any of us really sees this as an issue, but it bothers me a little.

* We have one knight, Sadr, who has already been reduced to Zeal 1, and has all of her Themes exhausted (since she's failed every experience check).  While she has undoubtedly suffered and despaired more than the other PCs, and so deserves the lower Zeal, as her Mistaken I want to keep her from getting too far ahead of everyone else, but I also don't want to stop having scenes for her.  Of the other PCs, Avior is currently at Zeal 4 (which seems fine since he is still idealistic), Circini is at Zeal 3, and Alcyone (who I think should have lower Zeal but has been luckier with the dice) has Zeal 3.  Katya seems content to have Sadr's story end sooner and in her eyes Sadr is already a veteran.  As the Mistaken for Sadr, I don't want to hold back from pushing hard, but I also don't want Sadr to descend into the quick arc of Veteran status before we get a chance for her do her inquisition duties with the rest of the PCs.  I'm not really sure what to do here, or even really what I'd like to do here.

* I think we've had a problem with trying to resolve conflicts using OOC discussion rather than using the conflict key phrases.  I'm not sure exactly why this was, except that doing it OOC might be safer since if you don't win you can always fall back on the rules.  Its hard to tell if we've been doing this or whether we've been talking about playing sometimes when we should have actually been playing.  It might also just be getting used to the rules.  In most RPGs, these are issues that are handled outside of play, whereas in Polaris you have the tools to arbitrate it all in game.  Now that we've identified this behavior as a problem (which resulted in threads standing stagnant for a week or more at a time) hopefully it won't be a problem anymore.

* Another problem that has recently come up is the depressing aspect of the game - its a tragedy, the characters are constantly suffering.  Because the game is spread out over such a long period of time (in real life) this means we are carrying the depression with us for a long time.  I think this is especially true for Katya, as Sadr has had the most tragic scenes without any real respite.  Recently she voiced the need to have some good uplifting things happen to her knight, Sadr, something to keep her from losing all hope.

* One problem that does seem specific to the GM-less game is the lack of a final authority.  We don't have a moderator for the game, or anyone that is in charge.  When we have an issue relating to how a rule works or even what to name the game (!) we have to fall back to voting (which doesn't work for all situations).  In a face-to-face game, we'd be able to use normal social conventions I suspect, but it seems harder in a PbP game.

* The rules do take a while to get your head around though as its so different from other games.  We've had some comments that its hard to really understand the rules.  I think we finally getting past that stage, but we'll see.  I think this may have dampened the enjoyment of the game for the other three players, but I can't say for sure.

* Overall, the Polaris rule system seems ideal for PbP gaming.  Its spreads the GMing duties across the entire group, so that the entire game doesn't hang on a single person.  If one person doesn't have a lot of time at the moment, its not really a problem, as you can pass guidance of a Moon character to the other Moon, and you can run multiple scenes in parallel.  If one player is gone for extended periods of time, or is very busy, as you can't continue without all the players as easily as in other, more traditional, games.  The game also has the benefit of getting every player involved in every scene even if their player isn't present.  In many games it can be hard to keep attention on other people's scenes, and in a PbP game that might mean not even reading the scenes, but the four roles mean that really, every player is involved in every scene.  The thing I think we benefited from the most was the way the Mistaken and Heart relationship is set up, it causes each scene to be very powerful and really pushing forward.  We haven't had any fluff scenes or even partial scenes, which can really killer in PbP as they can siphon momentum.  Its some pretty intense gaming.  The PbP format really benefits Polaris as well, as you can spend some time coming up with the perfect conflict statements, and it can result in some really awesome writing.  My thanks to Ben for creating such a cool game.

[Andrew Cooper]

* One problem that does seem specific to the GM-less game is the lack of a final authority.  We don't have a moderator for the game, or anyone that is in charge.  When we have an issue relating to how a rule works or even what to name the game (!) we have to fall back to voting (which doesn't work for all situations).  In a face-to-face game, we'd be able to use normal social conventions I suspect, but it seems harder in a PbP game.

Not trying to be flippant but couldn't you just appoint someone to be in charge.  Even in my traditional games I've started putting rules authority and that other stuff on someone besides me when I'm the GM.  It works fine then.  I don't see why it wouldn't work with your game.  That person could change from time to time, if you wanted.

[Garvey]

Not trying to be flippant but couldn't you just appoint someone to be in charge.  Even in my traditional games I've started putting rules authority and that other stuff on someone besides me when I'm the GM.  It works fine then.  I don't see why it wouldn't work with your game.  That person could change from time to time, if you wanted.

This is how we've gotten past some of our deadlocks before, such as with naming the game.  One person, me, in the case of naming the game, just steps forward and takes authority, making a decision that seems to be agreeable to all, and then checks to make sure nobody has any strong objections.  We could formalize the role, but I'm hesitant.  I've fought hard to make sure the role didn't fall to me, which might be natural considering that I organized the game and run the wiki (as well as make most of the changes to it).   I'm worried that having one person's opinion which is somehow above the others in a game where we are all supposed to have equal creative input might do something to unbalance the game.  I'm not sure though.

The other fear I have of handing the rule authority over to one player is that we are all still getting to know the rules, and often we have one person who has a certain viewpoint, one person who is agnostic about the issue, and two players who disagree with the viewpoint.  I'd like to have a solution that takes all viewpoints into account, allows for some discussion, and in the end results in a happy compromise or at least with the majority in favor.

Are you handing authority over to a non-GM player to reduce the GM workload or to speed things up during play (as the GM is typically the busiest player)?  Neither of those is really a factor for us, as we have equal workloads to begin with and time isn't a big factor (unless a discussion halts the game!) as at most we have only one or two posts a day.  Your suggestion does sound like a good solution for those times when the game halts due to a big OOC discussion.  Somebody who is in charge of making decisions whenever we get really bogged down might be a good idea.

[Andrew Cooper]

Garvey,

I think you are misinterpreting my "someone in charge" as being "no one but the person in charge gets input".  I could be wrong.  What I'm really talking about is a person with whom the buck stops.  You come to a disagreement.  Everyone talks it out but there is disagreement.  The person in charge listens to everyone and then makes a call.  It's less dictatorial than it is chairman of the board kinda thing.

Yeah, I started doing this because stopping to look up the rules was really bogging play down.  Besides, in games like D&D I wasn't even the one who knew the rules the best.  Why should I be the rules authority in that case?  I just pointed to the guy with the encyclopediadic rules knowledge and said, "You're the official rules guy!  When we don't know a rule and need a rules call, you're the man."  I did that with other typical GM task too.  I'm lazy that way.

[Garvey]

I think you are misinterpreting my "someone in charge" as being "no one but the person in charge gets input".  I could be wrong.  What I'm really talking about is a person with whom the buck stops.  You come to a disagreement.  Everyone talks it out but there is disagreement.  The person in charge listens to everyone and then makes a call.  It's less dictatorial than it is chairman of the board kinda thing.

That sounds like it could work.  Thanks!