Boy, it's been a while since I've started my own thread in this forum. *cracks knuckles*

My game, Polaris is still in heavy development. Playtesting has revealed some snags in the conflict system, which is what I want to talk about with you here.

Go here and download the playtest draft (thanks, xiombarg). Read it. Get on the same page with me, which is about page 28.

So, right now, here are the problems with conflict resolution:
1) It is a little too slow, I think. It breaks up the scene in a really unpleasant way. Like, we play, then we break for 5-10 minutes to bid traits, then back to playing.
2) People tend to ignore what traits where bid when doing the narration. I think this is because sometimes the Heart or the Ice Maiden bids traits, not towards a wide possible scene, but to a particular conclusion that they have in mind, and thus you get these nonsensical traits that you have to ignore.
3) The whole "winner and loser" thing isn't exactly working out how I want it to.
4) People ignore scale, mostly. Most challenges are in the 4-6 range, anyway, at least for starting characters. This is a problem. I want a range of scales.

Here is what I like about conflict resolution as it is now:
1) It has a role for every player.
2) It has an unpredictable element, but yet allows you to shape and change it.
3) It allows you to push places that you wouldn't have in just free play.
4) It exhausts traits, which means that if you want to keep being effective in your conflicts, you need to either lose or do bad things (see Experience Checks.)
5) The scale mechanics, when they are working right, are really neat.

Here are the things that conflict resolution in Polaris must absolutely do:
1) Exhaust a limited pool of stuff.
2) Be exciting and tense.
3) Have some manner of both loss and success.

Here are things that are icing on the cake:
1) Role for every player.
2) Some way of tracking the effect on the outside world.
3) Some way that conflict is different for each player. I'm not totally wedded to the traits system, mind you, but something like that.

So does anyone have any hints about how I might start down that road?

yrs--
--Ben

Also, you can download the game through the temporary TAO games site at www.tao-games.com

Hey Ben,

First thoughts.

1) You have several ways that characters can change/lose/gain traits. Personally, I find Counting Stakes not nearly as powerful or interesting as accepting what the Ice Maiden offers you. If you can only grow as an individual by giving in to the evil of the demons, that says a lot about the game.

2) I still don't understand the mechanics for refreshing traits and whatnot. It seems sorta Mind's Eye Theater inspired to me, and I don't really have any experience with that system. During the playtesting, it looked like each character would commonly only have one or (maybe) two scenes in a given session, which makes exhausting traits more awkward than anything else. If you have one big conflict where most of your traits get exhausted, then your choices for the next scene, if there is one, are crippled. Is that intended? Do traits get refreshed between sessions?

3) I still feel that, looking at the Temptations, the Knight is much less likely to be tempted by them if they've already rolled a victory. The whole process seems less important then, unless the Temptations actually serve to make the story more interesting, even when the Knight's already succeeded. Also, the masochist in me wants some Temptations that take a loss and turn it into a more interesting loss, instead of a re-roll or success. Finally, when we played, it wasn't very often that a Knight would actually reject a Temptation, because these were things constructed by the other players precisely because this is what they wanted to have happen in the game, and rejecting it was like rejecting their input. When your friends come bearing narrative gifts, you tend to accept them. The rules make it sound like you're expecting more rejections than I think will actually occur.

4) In some ways, I think Polaris is fairly close to being the "abstract boardgame" equivilent for roleplaying. This hit me as I was re-reading the Challange Value section. I really wonder if the way attributes are brought into the game will actually lead to any kind of consistant characterization based on choices made at character creation. I mean, does having a higher Light or Ice value really make that much difference in the outcome of rolls? Do characters with different values really feel all that different? Or is this just some way of calculating Challange Values, because there needs to be one that's based on something, not arbitrary? Just something that struck me on this reading.

5) Just like in Dogs (and, say, Vesperteen), trait bidding makes all conflicts push towards importance really fast. If there's any possible way that a trait makes sense in a given situation, there's a very good likelihood that it's going to get bid. Remember the demon in the ice sculpture? I very much doubt that low octane conflicts will happen at all. And why would you really want them to? With 1-2 conflicts per char per session, and most likely having one conflict at the core of every scene (at least, the way that we were playing it), you want these things to have teeth right?

More later.

Jonathan Walton wrote: Hey Ben,

First thoughts.

1) You have several ways that characters can change/lose/gain traits. Personally, I find Counting Stakes not nearly as powerful or interesting as accepting what the Ice Maiden offers you. If you can only grow as an individual by giving in to the evil of the demons, that says a lot about the game.

2) I still don't understand the mechanics for refreshing traits and whatnot. It seems sorta Mind's Eye Theater inspired to me, and I don't really have any experience with that system. During the playtesting, it looked like each character would commonly only have one or (maybe) two scenes in a given session, which makes exhausting traits more awkward than anything else. If you have one big conflict where most of your traits get exhausted, then your choices for the next scene, if there is one, are crippled. Is that intended? Do traits get refreshed between sessions?

3) I still feel that, looking at the Temptations, the Knight is much less likely to be tempted by them if they've already rolled a victory. The whole process seems less important then, unless the Temptations actually serve to make the story more interesting, even when the Knight's already succeeded. Also, the masochist in me wants some Temptations that take a loss and turn it into a more interesting loss, instead of a re-roll or success.

Finally, when we played, it wasn't very often that a Knight would actually reject a Temptation, because these were things constructed by the other players precisely because this is what they wanted to have happen in the game, and rejecting it was like rejecting their input. When your friends come bearing narrative gifts, you tend to accept them. The rules make it sound like you're expecting more rejections than I think will actually occur.

4) In some ways, I think Polaris is fairly close to being the "abstract boardgame" equivilent for roleplaying. This hit me as I was re-reading the Challange Value section. I really wonder if the way attributes are brought into the game will actually lead to any kind of consistant characterization based on choices made at character creation. I mean, does having a higher Light or Ice value really make that much difference in the outcome of rolls? Do characters with different values really feel all that different? Or is this just some way of calculating Challange Values, because there needs to be one that's based on something, not arbitrary? Just something that struck me on this reading.

5) Just like in Dogs (and, say, Vesperteen), trait bidding makes all conflicts push towards importance really fast. If there's any possible way that a trait makes sense in a given situation, there's a very good likelihood that it's going to get bid. Remember the demon in the ice sculpture? I very much doubt that low octane conflicts will happen at all. And why would you really want them to? With 1-2 conflicts per char per session, and most likely having one conflict at the core of every scene (at least, the way that we were playing it), you want these things to have teeth right?

Blast. Stupid browser ate a long and considered reply. I hate that.

Hi, Ben. I'll try and reenter my points. Just read over the design, like it a lot, and have some thoughts on your questions about conflict.

The first is that I think maybe you have Trait bidding and Stakes setting in the wrong order. Any bidding process with an advantage to last call tends to drive things up, up, up. As you note this results in some odd behaviour and also in long bid phases.

Maybe you should consider putting the Stakes selection come first, and have this control the bidding segment somewhat. For instance, perhaps a given Stakes level (row of your chart) sets not only the max Traits bid, but also a minimum. If between you, you can't bid enough Traits to hit this minimum, then downgrade the Stakes automatically; it wasn't keyed well enough to the character. Fine. Reaching the max, on the other hand, serves a very important role: it signals stop bidding, already, and roll. The lower the stakes, the sooner you want to be able to get this signal across.

(Offhand I would recommend a range of 0-2 for the first row on your chart, scaling up from there, with the second value always about double the first one. Ish. That's what my gut says, anyway.)

With regards to exhaustion, I have some bad experiences with MET and its derivatives when it comes to exhausting traits in a conflict. For one thing it's not always the Heart who opens the scene, and anyone's contributions could (and should) drive the scene toward conflict. Thus it's not necessarily up to the Heart to "go social" after exhausting his sword and Demon Lore, and it can cripple a story to force everyone to steer so completely clear of a conflict type. (Two conflicts can draw on the same Traits, be both interesting, and be very different indeed.) First edition MET had this problem in huge amounts - basically you could engage in only one good solid physical, one solid mental, etc. conflict per night, then you were done - regardless of later circumstances. (There were mollifying factors but not enough of them. It sucked.)

So I would definitely recommend that you pick some other engine to drive players along the thematic path you've laid out. A variation on this scheme does seem like it would work well... just not one which kicks in this abruptly. Two alternates which come to mind, both of which would start with the idea of writing Traits all on separate slips of paper...
1) A Trait invoked by the Heart gets handed to the Ice Maiden at the end, and vice versa. You can only invoke a Trait you're holding. The various Temptations and Refresh events basically redirect Traits to their "rightful" holders. Passing 'bad' Traits back to the Ice Maiden makes a good cost to associate with some otherwise-beneficial Temptations.
2) A Trait invoked by the Heart gets handed to the Full Moon; a Trait invoked by the Full Moon (not possible under current rules, necessary here) passes to the Ice Maiden; she passes to the New Moon, and a Trait invoked by the New Moon is exhausted and set aside. Perhaps the 'colour' Temptations pass Traits back to the Heart from the respective Moons (though this allows the Full Moon to "preempt" the Ice Maiden, probably not good).

Either of those might be a gain over what you've got now, I'd have to see them in action.

Vis Temptations, I'm pretty much opposed to all three of your "fixes" listed above. Specificity rocks; I would say that Eero is smoking something. The colour of your game is added to tremendously by limiting those options. See The Mountain Witch's Fates, Sorcerer's descriptors. Players who feel that they have a good enough handle on the game to modify it, will; those who don't, need specificity to help them get that handle. Similarly, I think that the idiosyncratic and asymmetric distribution of effects is a great gain; the places (such as the two Moons' "helper" Temptations) where they are symmetric come across as a weakness, not a strength. Were I you I would fight to individuate more, not less.

And as for having the Heart choose, I would say that your best course would be to keep this being the case... but to help distinguish between "That's not the direction I want the Heart to go" and "I don't value your contribution." I'd say do this by making Temptations much more double-edged than they are now. Let the tempter associate some colour with both sides of the choice, such that the Heart is choosing between two possible contributions by his friend, instead of yea-or-nay'ing someone's addition to the tale.

Hope that helps a little.

- Eric

Eric, thanks a bunch for your post. That gave me serious food for thought.

I really like the idea of bidding a stakes cap. That's a good idea.

I like the idea of bid traits passing back and forth between the Ice Maiden and the Heart, but I'm worried that then I wouldn't have the refresh carrot to tempt people into wanting experience checks (An advance result, mind you, is really more of a penalty.) Generally speaking, I think that there needs to be some sort of substance that you get back from a refresh. Any ideas on what it is?

I had an idea for a new way of rolling which I think might take some of the "must go last" pressure off of bidding. The idea is a bit more complicated, like maybe this.

Each ranking in an attribute is keyed to a dice type, as such:
1: d4
2: d6
3: d8
4: d10
5: d12

When you bid a trait, you get one die of the appropriate type. Bidding last, for the Heart, gives a Zeal die, bidding last for the Ice Maiden gives a Weariness die. Possibly the Ice Maiden gets a bonus 2d6, or something, because as it is things are a little unbalanced.

Roll the dice, and compare them in some way. What I'm thinking here is along these lines:

Line up your dice in order from highest to lowest.
Compare all dice. Whomever has the most "victories" on these comparisons wins.
If somoene has more dice, simply discard the lower ones.

The cool thing about this is that you could tie the stakes and range of the challenge could be tied to the number of victories. That way, whomever bid less traits effectively sets the possible scale for the victory.

What do people think about that, as a general rule?

yrs--
--Ben

P.S. For what its worth, this hasn't eliminated the slowness, yet.

Hmm. I think you have something good in making all traits contribute as they're being bid, though the die selection may be a problem (number of available d4's, for instance). I can see where this isn't helping speed, though.

On the other hand, while clever, I think that the "throw out the lowest N dice of the guy with more dice" trick may be a red herring. It simply gets you back to where the Stakes are emergent from the bidding process, rather than setting constraints on it. It's a more elegant way to still not have a "quit bidding and roll already" signal.

As for a refresh carrot, how about combining that with another of your points above. You say the Ice Maiden kind of needs a bonus to stay competitive; I can see how that would happen, yeah. Maybe use that as your carrot? Every time a conflict resolves, the Ice Maiden gets a cumulative 1d6 "ingathering sorrow" bonus to use on all subsequent conflicts involving this character. A refresh event causes those dice to go away.

I should note again that this design is really, really cool and has inspired me to some neat stuff on one of my own games, which I'll show you as soon as it's ready to be seen. Thanks!

- Eric

Harlequin wrote:
On the other hand, while clever, I think that the "throw out the lowest N dice of the guy with more dice" trick may be a red herring. It simply gets you back to where the Stakes are emergent from the bidding process, rather than setting constraints on it. It's a more elegant way to still not have a "quit bidding and roll already" signal.

I think then that I must not be following you.

My suggestion is that you set stakes before anybody ever bids a trait, so that the stakes can imply a bidding cap, which will serve the important function of cutting things to the chase during the bid phase.

I don't see how that's compatible with having the first player to stop bidding be setting the stakes in doing so. Seems like if you use both, then he has just re-set the stakes. Possibly this will always be lower than the first case, possibly not, depending on implementation... but it doesn't really make sense to me that this, too, is seen as the stakes-setting moment.

I'm not arguing... just confused.

Harlequin wrote:
Vis Temptations, I'm pretty much opposed to all three of your "fixes" listed above. Specificity rocks; I would say that Eero is smoking something.

Eero -- thank you. I'm digesting the post, this is just to say that I'm not ignoring it. More response in a few days.

yrs--
--Ben