So, we had us a playtest of the game. One session with four players, no scheduling possibility for more.

All four are old-time roleplayers, all male, with perhaps two actives and two passives who play just with their old pals (read: us) when we happen to be in the same town. Experience before is exlectic: the common Finnish old school (Runequest-type sim adventure) for all, some new D&D for some and newest indie in varying degrees for each.

Everyone had at least a chance of reading the material before play, and at least the setting material was read. Despite this the world didn't click in any major way; rather we picked obvious key datapoints from the setting and played a relatively common kind of pulp fantasy drama in it; the story could have happened in any feudal type fantasy world. At times the fairy-tale quality and style of the game came through, but there was at least an equal amount of floodover from our frequent sword & sorcery type games played now and then with the same group.

Suggestion: the above will be a problem for others as well. It's not easy to get into the spirit of the game cold from reading the game. At least a majority of us, if not all, digged the setting and the style it's written in, but that's not enough to draw players into bringing it in play and creating more of it. I'll address ways to correct this later on.

We decided to make characters in different stages of experience to test the rules thoroughly. Players got to pick their own poison, after we decided that the players' sitting order would degree the roles each player would have towards others' characters. We used the rules as written, except for allowing players to choose two of three blessings as required traits:
Starlight Sword
Breathsuit
Mantis Mount
Here's what we came up with, in their state after the game:

Draco I,
the lord of Southreach. An old veteran with considerable political power, mainly created to illustrate how a knight falls. Obviously trait creation suggested some dramatic potential as well:
Offices:
Knight of the Order of the Stars
Lord of Southreach
Master of a dancing school
Respected greatly in the Remnants
Fates:
Will turn against the people
Will own Lady Sarin (a premiere lady of Southgate)
Brother to Bellatrix (the wife of Alphard)
Will reconnect the Remnants (under his power, presumably)
Blessings:
Mantis Mount
Breathsuit
Clock
Cast away his starlight sword
Blessedly rich
Abilities:
Lore of Demons
Speaks with polar bears
Dancing
Rhetorics of the Ice Rose
Agile swordsman
Demonic cunning
Abilities: Ice 8, Light 6, Star 6, Sun 8, Glacier 8, Frost 8, Weariness 6. (gained only one point of experience during play)

Draco XV,
the jester of Draco. Created as an advanced Novice with not too much overall idea. Became central to the story mainly because of the Ice Maiden and running with it when given a chance.
Offices:
(lost his knighthood during the game)
Prodical Son
Cultural director of Southreach
Fates:
Will turn against people
Slayer of the Solaris knight
Will dethrone Draco I
Blessings:
Starlight Sword
Greater Starlight Sword
Breathsuit
Eternal Breathsuit
(as can be seen, the player couldn't think of anything interesting)
Mandolin
The Call of Home (Is this even a blessing? It's picked from the rules, and I don't care to check. Another throw-away.)
Abilities:
Lore of Demons
Lore of Beasts
Can resist the Ice Maiden
Abilities: Ice 5, Light 3, Star 3, Sun 3, Glacier 5, Frost 3, Zeal 1. (gained a couple of points of experience during play)

Kuma II
The raw Novice. Father a disappeared knight, won't accept that he's dead. Lives in Southreach with Dracos because of his mother's wishes.
Offices:
Knight of the Order of the Stars
Fates:
Will take revenge on Draco XV (transformed from Will betray...)
Lady Sarin is his mother
Daredevil
Murderous rage
Respects Solar knight (These three gained through meeting with Solaris knight and being betrayed by a fellow knight)
Blessings:
Starlight Sword
Breathsuit
(lost his Mantis Mount during the story)
Abilities:
Lore of Demons
Abilities: Ice 3, Light 2, Star 2, Sun 2, Glacier 3, Frost 3, Zeal 4. (started from absolute beginning)

Alphard
The balanced veteran. Hermit knight living in the ruins by his might, got some interesting traits in character creation.
Offices:
Knight of the Order of the Stars
Former Weapons-master of Draco
Hermit
Fates:
Will turn against people
Husband to Bellatrix (the sister to Draco I)
To cut family ties with Draco
Blessings:
Mantis Steed
Legendary steed Minhar al Shuja
Breathsuit
Starlight Weapon
Greater Starlight Weapon
Eternal Breathsuit
Abilities:
Lore of Demons
Survival
McGuyver (Well... you know)
Distiller of Poisons
Abilities: Ice 2, Light 8, Star 8, Sun 8, Glacier 7, Frost 2, Zeal 3. (gained a couple of points of experience during play)

In general, players tended to have trouble choosing many traits, and this reflected in taking multiples of the three blessings (sword, suit, steed). By the by, I heartily recommend the Mantis Steeds as central traits, they were absolutely great and felt strongly fitting to the atmosphere. For some reason ours didn't hibernate in the winter, but that's easily fixed if desired.

Now, the players were seated in order: Alphard, Draco XV, Kuma II and Draco I. This made for Dracos being Ice Maidens to each other and Kuma-Alphard being a pair. This proved significant later on, and I suggest that the absolute core of Polaris is in the player roles and how they formalize player input compared to usual freeform. On the other hand, assigning roles based on seating like this might not be a good idea: players being a heart-Ice Maiden pair to each other can be problematic. It would be better if the roles were assigned circularly so that such symmetries won't happen, methinks.

As can already be seen from the characters, our depiction of the People and the world inclined somewhat towards pulp/medieval fantasy tropes with lords reigning over people, courtesans, servants, honor-as-guide-to-rule and all that stuff. Overall, quite like a samurai drama.

However, the fairy tale quality was preserved largely by one little rule: Players have to start and end scenes by saying "And so it was.", which is absolutely a great rule. It was mostly because of this one rule that the idiom of fairy tale storytelling spread into the group: narration tended to past tense and fairy tale formulae in general after being started with that. The starting formula also helps keep attention and designate clearly who tells the story at the moment.

I suggest that to penetrate the stylistic demands of the setting for the players, it might be necessary to add a little more constraints on the storytelling. Like, do all kinds of ritual during character creation (for example, go through trait assignation by asking questions like from a knight being dubbed or something) to get into the mood and demand past tense from the Ice Maiden but forcing present tense for the Heart, like Puppetland does.

Anyway, the game. We have quite a bit of experience with all kinds of storytelling games between us, and therefore the game wasn't very gamey at all. Actually it resembled Universalis quite a bit, which is not a wholly good thing: in many places the atmosphere was left only luke-warm as we had to concentrate on figuring out how to lead the plot. This is alleviated by multisession play, and players who aren't looking for an intense character immersion narrativist (my own favourite) experience won't necessarily be bothered anyway.

The story itself was opened in a typical manner for us, through a semirandom forceful push from one player. Draco I threw Draco XV out during the winter night and told him not to come back without a demon head to prove his valour. It quickly developed that Draco XV was no fighter, largely because Draco I had kept him for entertainment purposes instead. He was quite lost and in mortal danger outside alone, especially as he had no mount.

The above was straight narration from Draco's Heart (who was also XV's Ice Maiden). Kuma decided at this time to follow the elder knight out without permission, to protect him. He had a mount, and so could easily overtake Draco XV.

Meanwhile, Draco XV was ambushed by polar bears. There was an implication that polar bears could be demonic in origin as a concept, but nothing was affirmed. This was mainly to test the conflict system. Draco won the bears and met with Kuma, whose Mantis Mount scared the rest of the bears away (it was resolved that polar bears fear the giant insects).

Anyway, the two decided to go forth to quest for the demon head Draco I had unjustly demanded. It was decided that a great majority of demons sleep during the winter and thus this was an extremely hazardous business, especially as the Mistake and it's whereabouts are simply too cold during this month to approach successfully.

Meanwhile, we began Alphard's story by his Ice Maiden deciding that his wife had disappeared and been replaced by a demon. Alphard was wise to the chance and resolved to very unfairytalelike violence against the demoness, to stop it's masquerade. This is a fine example of how we were more in a blood-opera mode than telling fairy tales for the whole game. After some spirited discussion the Ice Maiden degreed that the demon wife told Alphard that he'd get his wife back in a bargain, if he would open the gates of Southgate for the demons come spring. Alphard refused. Refusing demonic bargains would become something of a theme for the game.

It developed that Alphard would have to journey to the mount Windpeak to bargain with the demons further, if he ever wanted to save his wife. Some background was developed as well, including the old hero Rigel, a weaponscompanion to Alphard before dying in defense of Southgate.

Meanwhile, Draco I came to the conclusion that he had been unjust towards XV. This happened in Southreach, which we discussed in very feudal and extravagant terms, and wherein Draco I was apparently a power in his own right, although not much of a knight. There was all kinds of efforts by other players to cast Draco in a villainous role at this time, but the player persisted, and depicted Draco as an old and weak, but fundamentally great, knight. It was revealed that he sacrificed his starlight sword in the battle of the Rigel's hill, wherein Rigel himself was slain by demons.

Anyway, a conflict was played out about whether the lord dared leave Southreach when spring was only weeks away. He wanted to go save the young knights himself, you see. This was a pretty big conflict, employing traits like the clock (which was used elaborately to check the time till dawn) and Speaking with Polar bears (which could have told of the whereabouts of the young knights). Draco however lost to his Ice Maiden, which meant that he was largely out of the story as a character for a while when he stayed to govern the remnant.

Now, Draco XV and Kuma journeyed deep into the wilderness, slowly approaching the Mistake until even the mantis started to show signs of hibernating, it was so cold. Draco saw dreams (supplied by his Ice Maiden) that hinted at attrocities afflicted by Draco I on Southreach while he was gone on a fool's errand. The two bickered quite a bit about where to find demons.

Then, the knights spotted a lone figure out on a snowy hill. This disappeared soon, but when they followed they soon stumbled on an ancient ruin.

An aside: The Ice Maiden says: "there is a great forest of black wood afore you, and the figure disappears in there". Another player savagely disagrees about the possibility of trees in the world as defined. The Ice Maiden intentions this to be a strange and dangerous demonic realm kind of thing, which is why he chose woods as his picture. No rules to resolve disagreement as we couldn't abide by a rule that says that the Ice Maiden has authority when the players are strongly opposed. Renegotiated into a great ruin of stone pillars and crumbled walls.

So, Kuma decides to go in, Draco follows a little later. The other two players (who are the corresponding Ice Maidens) degree that Draco won't participate in the next scene at all. It has already been resolved that this is likely a demon, this mysterious figure. The story has dragged a little, and we need something to boost it. One of the Ice Maidens ask the other "Now, why don't we give little Kuma a fair chance at fighting the Solaris knight? Nothing says that you have to be an old ruin to triumph against him." The story is set.

An epic battle is joined within a black stone temple that blocks the stars. The solar knight whispers only, and unlike the knight stellar, his breathing doesn't do that Darth Vader <whoom> thing because he wears no breathsuit. Very scary, and shining bright.

Kuma wins the solar knight, which reveals to him that he is Kuma's father. Kuma resolves to return to Southgate to ask things of his mother, lady Sarin.

This scene was orchestrated by the player of Alphard, the Ice Maiden to Kuma. The next one was by the player of Draco I, the Ice Maiden to XV: Kuma returns from the stone temple with the head of the solar knight (a perfect example of the queer mix of pulp and fairy tale we had going on; a head of a demon was asked, a head of a demon was got). Draco wants the head, to return to Southkeep. The two disagree, as the head will make the slayer of the solar knight a famous and respected knight. Draco decides to betray Kuma for the head, when urged by his Ice Maiden. He slays the mount of Kuma and leaves Kuma for dead, while escaping with the head. He loses his office as a knight as a Heart's temptation.

Later on, Alphard, on his journey to Windpeak, met up with Draco, who was on foot. Draco was glad, and eagerly told his story. The suspicions of Alphard awaken, as an old veteran he knows that nobody comes out of a meeting with the solar knight a happy man. To the contrary, it's said that the solar knight will tell horrible secrets to anybody who slays him, breaking his heart.

Alphard continues his journey, and stumbles on Kuma next. Kuma tells his part of the story, and Alphard believes, being that Kuma is not happy. He gives Kuma clothes and food to survive the wilderness, but won't stop to take him to Southreach when his wife is at stake.

Finally Alphard reaches Windpeak and confers with the Ice Maiden and her demonic host. He still denies them Southgate, but agrees when he's asked to deliver his fellow knight, Draco XV, to the demons. They agree to meet again at Rigel's hill near Southgate to exhange prisoners. When Alphard rides down the hill he spots the first star disappearing to the south, marking the end of winter and start of spring.

Draco XV returns to Southreach and is welcomed by a thoroughly humbled Draco I, who asks XV to lead the defense this spring. XV doesn't believe he can do it, he still thinks himself a humble courtier. He does, however, agree to becoming a secretary for the lord.

Next comes Alphard, who tells Draco I the truth about who slew the solar knight. He won't tell Draco news about his wife, Draco's sister, and because of this Draco won't believe him in the other matter. The things are left tense in the court.

Meanwhile Kuma is hopelessly lost in the wilderness, mainly because the player was reluctant to stumble into the scene at Southreach.

Southreach gets word that the demons are marching, and the solar knight is again spotted leading them. The knight is born again every spring, you see. Draco I is convinced that the main thrust of the attack will be at Southreach, and shores up his defenses.

Finally Alphard loses his patience and takes Draco XV by stealth, escaping Southreach before the demons attack. A little later Kuma returns, and Draco I finally believes that his own grandson betrayed the knighthood and his comrade in arms. Draco agonizes over it, but cannot leave the defense at this critical juncture. Instead he gives Kuma his blessings to seek Alphard and Draco XV to bring them to justice.

Later on, Kuma catches up to Alphard who has Draco XV tied up and is on his journey to Rigel's hill. The two confer, and Alphard agrees to give Draco to Kuma for revenge after he's through with him. Kuma doesn't know what Alphard intends to do.

Alphard comes to the hill, where demons are already sieging Southgate furiously. He rides between the hordes to meet with the Ice Maiden and her court on the top. Alphard exhanges prisoners, but at the last moment frees Draco XV and gives him his sword, thus saving at least a little bit of his honor. Alphard escapes into the city with his wife.

Draco XV fights the Ice Maiden, who attacks him with enticing words and by offering him Southgate as his kingdom if he opens it's gates for the demons. Draco won't be swayed, he wins the conflict and forces the demons to escape.

Draco and Kuma meet at the foot of the hill, the former telling of his victory over Ice Maiden and asking forgiveness for what he did. Kuma promises to delay his revenge till after the spring defense is done.

Meanwhile, Draco I has got word that the actual main attack will be on Southgate instead of Southreach. Much pressure is leveraged on the Ice Maiden to reveal the messenger as a hidden demon, who'd lead Draco astray, but it doesn't happen. The message is true, and Draco leaves with a substantial part of his knights for Southgate, to save the Remnant from the horde.

In the last scene Draco I fights his way through the demons into the city, to finally meet with his beloved Lady Sarin. The New Moon in question interferes and decides that the lady is not a knight born, and is actually entranced by the dawn and doesn't answer Draco. In sadness the latter returns to defend the remnant, hoping to win the lady some other time.

We stopped the game at this time, because the main dramatic arcs had been resolved.

I feel that the main features of interest in the session sprung more from the players than the game, frankly. It was a samurai drama, of the kind we've played before with these players. The most interesting places were the ones where characters had to make portentous decisions of honor, and the decisions rarely had fairy tale idealism. Rather they were the gritty kind you'd expect in Dust Devils or something. There was not much of the aesthetic interest you'd think by reading the rules. The main visually enticing pieces were the mantises, which are just perfect for the occasion. The demons were another one, but they ranged all over the place from new age to judeo-christian, and didn't really enforce the setting color (except the Ice Maiden and Solaris Knight - they were perfect, one with her vague outline and a kiss that kills, the other with golden hair and a whispering voice).

Much can be said about the rules: to enforce the setting, I suggest adding a number of "Seasonal traits", traits that belong to certain seasons or places and are triggered by characters normally, but refresh only by season change. Also the narrative requirements I espoused earlier. Anything to make the setting come forth in a stronger way, otherwise the game tends to devolve into vanilla narrativism instead of setting exploration of any degree. It leaves an incomplete feeling to touch the beautiful world the author has crafted, without really having the tools to make it justice.

The traits system: I like it very much. In practice there were three kinds of consideration when choosing traits:
1) the scale of conflict: can I add a trait, or will it be too big?
2) the appropriateness of the trait: is there an appropriate trait to activate?
3) the narrative requirement: can I still narrate this conflict after this trait?
The conflict system needs work, though. More on that below. We found that we really felt the lack of appropriate category of traits for psychology - we used fates to depict psychological traits. Might be just the games we normally play. Otherwise the trait categories and their choosing was just fine and dandy, and we loved how all traits are as much strengths as weaknesses.

The conflicts: the trait bidding needs work. Ideally you'd get rid of 1) above completely - it's mainly annoying to have to accept defeat because it'd be silly to add the fourth trait into a conflict and make it big, just because it's really a meaningless conflict. Ideally you'd maximize 3) on the other hand: it's great to try to pick traits that you know how to narrate and you opponent does not. It'd be best if the last player to bid would have to narrate, incorporating everything, so that by bidding you promise to be able to incorporate everything.

Furthermore, the stake system needs work. Ideally you'd add enforced outcomes - now the table was mainly ignored in telling, although it was used as a principal in deciding whether to bid more. It was more like "I'll stop bidding because this isn't really a big conflict" than "Well, because I bidded more, it became a big conflict". Much work on this, it's essential to make the bidding work. I suggest giving more room for small conflicts, as well; now a conflict became big much too easily.

The Heart's temptations: worked in action, surprisingly well. However, we didn't much like the options. Although they all were used at one time or other, they felt too arbitrary: why this list, why not some other? Why only this few options? I suggest that you'd need either a more symmetric (with inner completeness) list of options or a way to define more options and redefine old ones to customize the temptations for the play group. Furthermore, I suggest adding the temptations into the bidding phase: make offering a temptation equal to a bid trait. This works better with the system in practise, as the players are anyway figuring out the whole narration thing from the start of the conflict, and the temptations define narration just as much as the traits. While you're at it, give the moons something to bid: divide all traits between the two moons and let them bid for either side or something.

Abilities: There is no use for the Zeal/Weariness subabilities, which is a shame. We found the ability system nice otherwise, and would just have hoped that you'd used the different abilities more fully.

The zeal adding system is problematic, as it makes getting the last bid almost mandatory if you're at all invested in the result (with extreme characters, that is). You could either randomize it further by giving one or both of the moons a temptation that changes the "last bidder", or add the Zeal/Weariness stats in some less forceful way into the game. I suggest that they are important and you shouldn't be scrapping them just because they don't fit the current scheme. Find a completely new way to use them if necessary.

PvP: We played player vs. player situations by two simultaneous conflicts, with the appropriate Ice Maidens playing, too. This works really well, as both can fail or both can succeed, and all players are involved in different roles, making for a delightful chaos. I suggest that the inherent problems should be smoothed and this made the actual rule for those situations. The problems pertain to narration (who narrates and what) and result combinations (all combinations have to be discussed beforehand, as both winning or both losing can be confusing otherwise).

Storytelling: The player roles are the core, as I probably said already. In our game the other roles became weird councillors to the Heart, one moon telling him how he felt and other how he thought (with the understanding that these were just suggestions). We would frequently jog players into commenting situations because they had a role pertaining to it. The combinations of roles became intricate and fun when there were multiple characters in a scene, as a player played his Heart character and a Moon for another player at once, for example. We took suprising bits of authority, as for example the player who decided as the New Moon that the female SC lady Sarin was entranced by the dawn, when by implication all interesting people to date had been resistant to it. Changing roles for a single character should maybe be added to the rules as an adjunct to experience or something. Let the Heart request a new moon or something. This will keep the situation from stagnating on the level of player roles, although that would take multiple sessions at least.

There's probably other things I can comment on, but they escape me at the moment. Ask plenty of questions to jog those things.

Wow -- thanks for playtesting!

I have some questions, as you might expect:

1) Did you rotate scenes around evenly, or start up whichever scenes you wanted to?

2) Where were the Experience checks in the game? Did they tend to come from temptation, loss of conflict rolls, or general angst? When you say that Draco I lost a check, do you mean he started at 5 weariness and went to 6, or started at 6 weariness and went to 7, thus turning against the people?

3) Who played which character? What were the other roles, if you can remember?

4) I get the constant feeling from your post that you feel that you got the tone "wrong" somehow. This is sad, because a lot of what you talk about is totally what I was going for (the contrast of the fairy-tale qualities of the people with the gritty, unpleasant decisions that the knights have to make). Do you feel that this is not-so-fun, and things would be better another way?

5) You say that the Frost Maiden - Heart pairings were a bad idea. Can you elaborate on this further? Were the players, out of game, having trouble with each other, or was it some other cause?

6) You talk about Draco I losing his tracking challenge and thus being out of the storyline for a while. Did the FM there feel that he had to give a "whiff" result for the failed roll? How about other times? Why didn't he just frame himself interesting things to do?

7) In general, how often were temptations accepted?

8) You have Alphard listed with Zeal and not weariness. This is a typo, right?

9) Do you have any suggestions for dealing with setting disputes? Part of the point of the game is that you are inventing large chunks of the society and geography as you play. Should I be more explicit about that, and how it is done?

And, here are some things that are going to change:

1) Oops! I totally forgot to work Flicker/Fade and Freeze/Thaw into the text. Duh. You're supposed to use them at the end of challenges.

2) Temptations will be changed and added. Which ones do you think were particularly interesting and useful, which ones weren't?

3) Steeds will be added to example traits. In general, do you think a longer list of example traits would hurt or help?

4) Trait categories are due for *yet another* reworking soon. If I eliminate the subattributes, it is possible I may increase the number of categories.

I'm also interested in your experiences with the conflict system. Future post.

yrs--
--Ben

Ben Lehman wrote:
1) Did you rotate scenes around evenly, or start up whichever scenes you wanted to?

2) Where were the Experience checks in the game? Did they tend to come from temptation, loss of conflict rolls, or general angst? When you say that Draco I lost a check, do you mean he started at 5 weariness and went to 6, or started at 6 weariness and went to 7, thus turning against the people?

3) Who played which character? What were the other roles, if you can remember?

4) I get the constant feeling from your post that you feel that you got the tone "wrong" somehow. This is sad, because a lot of what you talk about is totally what I was going for (the contrast of the fairy-tale qualities of the people with the gritty, unpleasant decisions that the knights have to make). Do you feel that this is not-so-fun, and things would be better another way?

5) You say that the Frost Maiden - Heart pairings were a bad idea. Can you elaborate on this further? Were the players, out of game, having trouble with each other, or was it some other cause?

6) You talk about Draco I losing his tracking challenge and thus being out of the storyline for a while. Did the FM there feel that he had to give a "whiff" result for the failed roll? How about other times? Why didn't he just frame himself interesting things to do?

7) In general, how often were temptations accepted?

8) You have Alphard listed with Zeal and not weariness. This is a typo, right?

9) Do you have any suggestions for dealing with setting disputes? Part of the point of the game is that you are inventing large chunks of the society and geography as you play. Should I be more explicit about that, and how it is done?

1) Oops! I totally forgot to work Flicker/Fade and Freeze/Thaw into the text. Duh. You're supposed to use them at the end of challenges.

2) Temptations will be changed and added. Which ones do you think were particularly interesting and useful, which ones weren't?

3) Steeds will be added to example traits. In general, do you think a longer list of example traits would hurt or help?

4) Trait categories are due for *yet another* reworking soon. If I eliminate the subattributes, it is possible I may increase the number of categories.

On traits and the way that they restrict conflict resolution: Yes! Yes yes yes! Yes.

I have some thoughts on "no psychological traits" but I think that they belong in their own thread.

And, of course, I have more questions.

1) As you only had experience checks stemming from Temptations (none of which, I believe, offer refreshes), am I correct in that you never had any trait refreshes? How did this work out, especially given that the Total Novice character? Did you find yourself "coming up short" on traits by the end of the session?

2) You say you "averaged one temptation per conflict." Were you allowing the Heart to accept more than one temptation? How did that work out? Would things have been different if they could only accept one?

3) Did you ever use the temptation of Benevolence, or was it mostly Experience and Ambition for trait gain?

yrs--
--Ben


And, for those who are yet to play (as well as my next rewrite), some rules clarifications --

1) The Experience Check that stems from the Knight's actions is intended to be strictly non-optional -- it is not at the Ice Maiden's discretion, rather she is responsible for making sure it happens. Think of it like a Humanity check in Sorcerer, because that's where I stole it from.

2) Foul Understanding grants the Knight a victory in the challenge. I seem to have forgotten to type that.

3) The Zeal/Weariness subattributes are actually what is added / subtracted at the end of a challenge, not the raw score.

4) Just to be absolutely motherfucking clear, Zeal/Weariness does not dictate character morality, simply how close they are to the edge and their attributes and traits (did I mention that I stole it from Sorcerer?) The whole business about Draco I having to be corrupt and decadent is a big misplay on the behalf of the fellow players -- Eero is dead right about it. In general, of course, the Heart is the one who has authority over the character -- even when the character is not present. So no fair painting other people's protagonists into a corner, 'kay?

5) Similarly, the Ice Maiden winning a challenge means, strictly, that the demons are advantaged. It does not necessarily mean that the Knight fails. This needs to be more clear in the text.

6) More about challenges -- The stakes of a challenge are not set before the challenge -- the are set, literally, by the bidding. A conflict is a situation with various potentials, not a contest between two outcomes. So please don't feel that a conflict is capped, trait-wise because of it's apparent importance -- it's totally reasonable to go to 7 or higher on any conflict. For instance, if Draco I is talking to the polar bears to find the other knights, and the conflict gears up to 8-9 traits (feasible for a Veteran), then not only does he track them, but he becomes crowned a chieftan amongst the bears, or some other way totally changes the relationship between the bears, the demons, and the people. Or something else!

Hmm... This needs it's own thread too, I think.

7) Temptations -- only one per conflict. As soon as the Heart accepts a proposal, the whole process stops.

Ben Lehman wrote:
1) As you only had experience checks stemming from Temptations (none of which, I believe, offer refreshes), am I correct in that you never had any trait refreshes? How did this work out, especially given that the Total Novice character? Did you find yourself "coming up short" on traits by the end of the session?

2) You say you "averaged one temptation per conflict." Were you allowing the Heart to accept more than one temptation? How did that work out? Would things have been different if they could only accept one?

3) Did you ever use the temptation of Benevolence, or was it mostly Experience and Ambition for trait gain?

1) The Experience Check that stems from the Knight's actions is intended to be strictly non-optional -- it is not at the Ice Maiden's discretion, rather she is responsible for making sure it happens. Think of it like a Humanity check in Sorcerer, because that's where I stole it from.

2) Foul Understanding grants the Knight a victory in the challenge. I seem to have forgotten to type that.

6) More about challenges -- The stakes of a challenge are not set before the challenge -- the are set, literally, by the bidding.

Hiya,

I'm interested in the gritty blood opera vs. fairy-tale question. I'll start by saying, Eero, I fully understand what you mean by "fairy tale." There's actually a big market for that in the U.S., continually frustrated by the blanket presence of the bowdlerized crap.

So ... the reason I want to focus on the issue of how-to-play in terms of Color is that I've noticed a distinct trend in my and others' experiences with Sorcerer & Sword.

The trend is, it always starts with exactly what Eero described as "rabid, sketchy, Vanilla Narrativism." It seems ... not flat, but illustrated flatly. People get a taste of their characters and seem to hold them, but not to move them much. But the good news is that only a session or two later, something kind of growls deep in the shared communication among the participants, and the characters flame into life, the Color of the events begins to enter everyone's narration, and all sorts of artistic tendencies appear throughout play.

So my suggestion is that Polaris may well be just fine in terms of atmosphere ... it's play that needs a little while to grow into it.

Best,
Ron

Ron Edwards wrote: Hiya,

I'm interested in the gritty blood opera vs. fairy-tale question. I'll start by saying, Eero, I fully understand what you mean by "fairy tale." There's actually a big market for that in the U.S., continually frustrated by the blanket presence of the bowdlerized crap.

So ... the reason I want to focus on the issue of how-to-play in terms of Color is that I've noticed a distinct trend in my and others' experiences with Sorcerer & Sword.

The trend is, it always starts with exactly what Eero described as "rabid, sketchy, Vanilla Narrativism." It seems ... not flat, but illustrated flatly. People get a taste of their characters and seem to hold them, but not to move them much. But the good news is that only a session or two later, something kind of growls deep in the shared communication among the participants, and the characters flame into life, the Color of the events begins to enter everyone's narration, and all sorts of artistic tendencies appear throughout play.

So my suggestion is that Polaris may well be just fine in terms of atmosphere ... it's play that needs a little while to grow into it.

Ben Lehman wrote:
1) As you only had experience checks stemming from Temptations (none of which, I believe, offer refreshes), am I correct in that you never had any trait refreshes? How did this work out, especially given that the Total Novice character? Did you find yourself "coming up short" on traits by the end of the session?

Eero Tuovinen wrote:
Not particularly, no. You see, adding and removing traits through the temptations lessens the need for refreshing; an used trait is removed, and an unused trait is given. Thus there's a slow trickle of new traits even without refreshes.

Still, our novice, Kuma, was almost tapped out (we quickly applied CCG terminology to the whole trait use concept) at the end, and if the game had gone on longer, we'd all have needed some refreshes.

me wrote:
2) You say you "averaged one temptation per conflict." Were you allowing the Heart to accept more than one temptation? How did that work out? Would things have been different if they could only accept one?

Eero wrote:
Indeed, we accepted more than one, but only one per the other player. I felt that it worked well, and don't readily see any reason for limiting things.

Eero wrote:
One thing about experience checks I've probably forgotten to say: I really, really dislike the one-sided checks made because of the temptations. They were the single most confusing rule in the array, to the extent that one player hadn't grogged how a normal experience check works when he got one. I would much prefer if the checks made in the temptations were the same as the normal ones. You can always heap more badness in there in other forms, if you think it too positive.

6) More about challenges -- The stakes of a challenge are not set before the challenge -- the are set, literally, by the bidding.

Eero wrote:
This is a fine ideal, but from my experience it just won't happen without using stronger tools in the whole stake system. The stakes should set some limits to what happens that the players cannot ignore, like we largely did. When a conflict is started because of a situation, it's non-intuitive for the players to go narrating new elements after the conflict. Thus the players will most likely just stick with the result they had in mind, rather than using the whole potential the table allows.

Ron Edwards wrote:
The trend is, it always starts with exactly what Eero described as "rabid, sketchy, Vanilla Narrativism." It seems ... not flat, but illustrated flatly. People get a taste of their characters and seem to hold them, but not to move them much.

Ben Lehman wrote:
It is a fairy world, the sort of thing that humans might stumble into in a fairy-story. No one needs to eat (although they can), and no one shits, pisses, or even gets more than mildly angry with each other.

I'm tempted, by this, to make all traits "enter tapped," just like the Experience ones do. What do you think of this?

Indeed, we accepted more than one, but only one per the other player. I felt that it worked well, and don't readily see any reason for limiting things.

BL> Largely to slow down the flux of traits and speed up the temptations section of the challenge.