Polaris Meets Amber

[Darren Hill]

After our first play session, one of the players (Stuart) observed, "you know one setting this system would work well for? Amber."
This got a pretty vehement denial from the most traditionalist of our gamers, but I thought it was an interesting insight, especially since I'm sure I remember reading Ben saying that Amber was one of the influences on Polaris (more as a reaction against the ADRPG approach IIRC).

I wonder, has anyone considered using Polaris for amber-style games? I think (with the wisdom granted by entire minutes thinking about it) the only significant change would be in the experience system.
In Polaris, you start out youthful idealists, and become seasoned, doomed veterans.
In Amber, it's almost the reverse (at least based on the Amberite characters in the books). You start out youthful and immature, full of a sense of your own power and arrogance. You're selfish and callous. As you perform acts of empathy and self-sacrifice, you gain experience. (maybe you have two paths to experience - becoming insane and becoming sensitive).
Then again, there's maybe two experience systems: gaining knowledge of reality and power over the universe might be independent of the above. (Then again, the character who gained most knowledge and mastery over the universe - writing his own pattern - was also the character who matured most.)

My first reaction to the idea of Amber in Polaris was, "but those elders would be no more effective than the player's protagonists." But of course, hyper-efficient elders are entirely a product of the ADRPG. The elders in the first and second series blunder from one calamity to another. The undefeatable fighter gets defeated, and thwarted on several occasions; the 2nd greatest warrior gets beaten soundly by the dumb brute in the family; Fiona and Bleys - often treated as the most hyper-competent schemers around - spend most of the first series running scared having made two colossal mistakes before the series even starts (trying to make a deal with chaos that backfired, and understimating their brothjer who genuinely terrifies them).
The young whipper-snappers who arrive in the second series (Merlin, Luke, Dalt) are immediately operating at the same level with as much success as the elder amberites - entirely unlike the way Young amberites are generally treated in the ADRPG.

The way Polaris stories are created - by a bunch of people each working on their own agendas - bears a lot of similarities to the way the amber novels look, with their multiple characters scheming away. Plus, Zelazny was making it up as he went along, doing his best to come up with explanations for the mysteries he created earlier. He had a talent for this, but many GMs and players show a talent that might well be his equal (especially when brainstorming to explain the GM's latest mystery).

The more I think about it, the more I think that Polaris may be the best system out there for Amber style games. Am I a loon?

[Sydney Freedberg]

That's very cool. The tricky part is that you'd have to totally change the mood of the game. Polaris is a game permeated by inevitable tragedy; the Amber books, as you said, are not only more hopeful, but also have a persistent tone of wry, slightly world-wearing but ultimately self-assured can-do skepticism. It'd be hard to disentangle mood from mechanics, since Polaris mechanics ("...none now remember it"; lightning the candle; "but hope was not yet lost...") are mostly in service to mood.

[xenopulse]

I think it has potential. After all, Polaris is based on narration negotiation, so you could play virtually any story with it, and the back-and-forth of complications seems great for an Amber-like setting where things rarely go smoothly and people are pulling in different directions.

And speaking of loons, I'm the one who suggested playing Werewolf with the Polaris system :)

[Dan Svensson]

I dont see the problem disentangling mood from the system. The xp and progress system would need a revamp as i don't see amberites gaining skill as the "Knights" do.

[Ben Lehman]

I think it's a bad idea.  I don't think you can disentangle the mood (particularly, the end-game) from the mechanics without breaking the conflict.  The cool part about Amber is that you can scheme and escalate infinitely.  Both scheming and infinite escalation are incompatible with Polaris.

I'd adopt the rotating GMing and the Cosmos and do something else for the rest.  But, personally, if I got an itch to play in the Amber setting, I'd use Nine Worlds.

yrs--
--Ben

[TonyLB]

I'd also say that, before mixing in all the other elements, you might want to try to traditional Polaris game wherein you deliberately drove the story toward protagonist-vs-protagonist conflicts, and see how the rules work for you.  It can be done, and handily, but the idea that in every scene you can point and say "This person is the protagonist, and therefore it's all about him, every other character lines up in the roles of Moon or Mistaken" definitely puts a flavor on how you think about and resolve things.

But then, my experience is thin:  perhaps some folks with relevant actual play will correct or clarify.

[Rob Donoghue]

Of all things, I'd be leery because of the family structure.  A lot of the punch of Amber comes from it being a family game, most specifically a family game where elders are in a position higher up the hierarchy from PCs (or, for elder games, with a single authority figure).  That hierarchical model lets the model latch onto all the powerful stuff about telling stories about families.  The network around a knight in Polaris is more of a genuine network, with a lot more lateral connectivity.

Of course, that all may just be speaking more too the parts that _I_ think make Amber work.  Separate from the hierarchy, I expect most of the trappings could translate very smoothly, and stopping to think about what direction an Amber game might move inevitably (and tragically) in the direction of suggests a lot of fun ideas.

-Rob D.