Topic: Polaris
Started by: lumpley
Started on: 4/19/2005
Board: Actual Play
On 4/19/2005 at 5:16pm, lumpley wrote:
Polaris
I've been trying to figure out how to write about this. This is actually my ... fourth try.
Meg, Emily, Ben and I played Polaris a second time, a couple weeks ago. We played five scenes, one for each of our knights, plus one more for Meg's because we wanted to see what happened. I've heard a rumor that we'll get to play a second session of this game sometime. You know that thing where you get to play only one session of a game that deserves many? It happens at cons and when people visit? That's a sad thing.
The events of the game were cool. Probably five hours all told playing Polaris and already I've got my expectations. Beautiful horror, emphasis on the beautiful, emphasis on the horror: check. Tragic knights with their pale translucent swords and their heartlessness, at war with (and succumbing to, always succumbing to, one way or the other) the demons of spring: check. Emily's knight fought and killed a demon, only to see that it was the first of a thousand. My knight gave his sick friend (or lover?) possessed water to drink. Meg's knight committed to betraying her brother and her father. Ben's knight fell into a crevasse (Emily's watched, unacting) and shattered his legs; he was taunted by a demon he could see only when he closed his eyes, so he sliced off his own eyelid to bind it. Meg's knight failed to betray her father and brother, instead battling demons alongside them; she brought fire in as a weapon. After the clean edges of all the ice and blood and razors, fire seemed too harsh and ambiguous.
Our interactions at the table were mostly cool, and when they weren't cool they were educational, and no hard feelings of course. More data along the same lines as our most recent Epidemonology writeup. In the final Polaris text there might be a rule about how the Heart isn't allowed to suggest things to the Mistaken; that's for us.
And I thought that was it, but now I hear rumors that we might get to play another session. Hooray!
But I want to say about Polaris: it's really fuckin' cool. It's a fulfillment of theory, quite a serious one. Check this out:
It's not co-GMed. Instead, it's GM-rotating; when it's your character's turn, the person across from you is your GM. As you pass whose turn it is, you pass who's the GM too. But it is so co-GMed. The person across from you is your opposition and your demons, and the world, but the people on your right and your left play NPCs.
Rotating co-GMing. Okay. That's an expression of theory, but it's not a fulfillment of theory.
Here's where Polaris fulfills theory. The person on your left plays any and all NPCs whose relationship to your character is personal, emotional. The person on your right plays any and all NPCs whose relationship to your character is social-hierarchical, formal, business, authority-related.
What you've got is three groups with incompatible agendas. You have to deal with their agendas and reconcile them with your character's own, as best you can. Whichever way you fall, you let someone down. What you've got is a question with four sides. Ben said to me recently: "Yourself, Your Loved Ones, Society, Power: choose one." Yeah. Choose one now, and now, and now, and now: how many can you have? Can you have them all? If you give up yourself, what meaning does power have? Love?
Polaris splits GM responsibilities and draws its Premise across the very same lines.
-Vincent
On 4/19/2005 at 5:25pm, Ben Lehman wrote:
RE: Polaris
Thanks for writing this.
yrs--
--Ben
P.S. Don't blame me, blame Carl Jung. The GM / Premise division in Polaris is exactly the division of the personality in Jungian psych -- Self, Shadow, Animus, Anima.
On 4/21/2005 at 6:15pm, Kesher wrote:
RE: Polaris
Hey there.
I read the last Polaris post, and it seemed intriguing, but it was hard to make heads or tails out of what actually went on. There was a bit of mechanic-explanation towards the end, but it didn't really help (me, anyway) to understand the play described.
This post actually sent me to check out the game, and I'm about halfway through reading it right now. Ben, it's damn cool. You've set up a strong atmosphere and a clear structure-of-play (something I'm very interested in at the moment.) However, I'm wondering if someone involved in this session could expand on the scenes mentioned by Vincent above. I'd really like to see, blow-by-blow, how the scenes worked with the competing agendas, and especially if Temptations were used (with attendant results.)
Thanks!
On 4/21/2005 at 6:18pm, Ben Lehman wrote:
RE: Polaris
Oh, man, Kesher. Temptations are totally last month. The game I was playing with Vincent was a totally different game.
I really need to take down that old draft.
Expect a new draft... soon. Whenever I get the will to unplug my wireless card and get some work done.
yrs--
--Ben
On 4/21/2005 at 7:21pm, Emily Care wrote:
Re: Polaris
Here is part of the first conflict:
lumpley wrote: Emily's knight fought and killed a demon, only to see that it was the first of a thousand.
Everyone rolls off, I get the highest roll, so get the first turn.
I play the Heart of my character--narrate its actions, frame & argue for what I want to happen from that perspective. Meg is sitting across from me, so is my Mistaken--she plays the demons that plague my primary character, frame situations & argue for things that will challenge my character. Vincent is to my left, he plays my New Moon (correct?), describing & playing characters that my character has loving, friendly or familial relations with. Ben is to my right, he is my Full Moon, and plays the characters who my primary character is in a hierarchical relationship with, above, below, or lateral (I believe). As each of us takes a turn, these responsibilities shift. I will be Meg's Mistaken, I will be Ben's New Moon, etc.
Play begins, I say: "And so it was that Alshain was the first to see the demons attack," and describe him riding his trusty mantis steed across the open wastes on patrol.
Cue to Meg to describe the demons, "Alshain sees a large shape in his path, an amorphous pinkish mass, sloughing its way across the plain."
Back to me. I describe my knight bringing his steed up to the creature. Shackleton, the steed, is on my character sheet in the section labeled "New Moon", Vincent gets to play him.
Vincent says, "Shackleton clicks & shudders, he does not want to go near that blob."
Smart Shackleton. I say, "I click to him and drive him nearer. He's a well-trained horse, he'll take my lead." I guess we could have had some more formal conflict over this, but it would have distracted from the real meat, the first contact with the demon.
The pink mass keeps moving, Meg describes pseudopodia shlumping it along. I say, "Alshain takes out his starlight sword and hacks through a likely bit." Aha! Conflict!
Now, above is my first mistake--which I believe was pointed out and corrected in play by Ben or V. What I could/should have said was: "Alshain draws his starlight sword, and kills it in one sweeping blow." Reason being that I was setting my sites too low. Conflict is about asking for things that the other player doesn't want to have come to be, and negotiating to a new outcome using the structure of the ritual phrases.
So, take the second as my opening statement and Meg responds: "It shall not come to pass, your blade but bites through a gelatinous tendril, to no harm." Ben or someone volunteers the image of the oozy flesh sealing up right behind the blade, essentially allowing the sword to pass right through it.
I say: "But only if as my sword glances through, I see through the flesh to a dark, beating purple heart within."
Meg says:"And so it came to pass..."
(Ben has conveniently posted the key phrases on his blog.)
best,
Emily Care
On 4/21/2005 at 8:34pm, Kesher wrote:
RE: Polaris
Ben wrote:
The game I was playing with Vincent was a totally different game.
I really need to take down that old draft.
Yeeeearrrrggghhh... Would you mind PMing me when you put up a new draft? In the meantime I'll continue to read what I have...
Emily-
Thanks for the recap! That helped clarify things quite a bit. I gotta say I love the ritualized language for managing the conflicts. It seems that if everyone buys into it, it'd work really well.
How did the conflict end, though? If I'm reading it right, Meg accepted your condition, so the demon was left alive, but with Alshain having glimpsed a vulnerability; did you then start a new conflict (still being within the same scene) with exploiting that vulnerablity as its focus? How did the demon's death result?
Sorry if I'm pestering you guys; this game's just got me psyched at the moment...
On 4/22/2005 at 4:51am, Paka wrote:
RE: Polaris
Kesher wrote:
Yeeeearrrrggghhh... Would you mind PMing me when you put up a new draft? In the meantime I'll continue to read what I have...
I heartily second this motion.
The words spoken for conflicts are just cool. I love the way Polaris seems to put rules to story negotiation. I can't wait to take a look at the game.
On 4/22/2005 at 5:41am, Selene Tan wrote:
RE: Polaris
Wow.
I want to play Polaris, but I also don't feel good enough to play Polaris. Argh!
On 4/22/2005 at 5:45am, Ben Lehman wrote:
RE: Polaris
Selene Tan wrote: Wow.
I want to play Polaris, but I also don't feel good enough to play Polaris. Argh!
This is important.
Polaris is not a game you have to be good to play. The whole thing is designed to help you generate cool, interesting, ultimately tragic storylines. That is, in fact, the whole of what it does.
And I should really get back to writing it.
yrs--
--Ben
On 4/22/2005 at 7:26am, Miskatonic wrote:
RE: Polaris
Man, the Actual Play posts for Polaris, the stuff described happening in the SIS space is just... weird. Beautiful, but weird. Weird, as in I have a hard time understanding how this can produced by an RPG process, and not some crazed poet on opium.
Aaron (Kesher), we gotta get two others and try this.
On 4/22/2005 at 3:20pm, Emily Care wrote:
RE: Polaris
Selene, it's Ben's job to make the game good enough to support you finding things like this to do. Delivering so far. : ) The feedback we provide will help make that so.
Kesher wrote: How did the conflict end, though? If I'm reading it right, Meg accepted your condition, so the demon was left alive, but with Alshain having glimpsed a vulnerability; did you then start a new conflict (still being within the same scene) with exploiting that vulnerablity as its focus? How did the demon's death result?
Yes, that's right. We continued with another round of conflict beginning the same way:
Emily: "And so it was that Alshain directs Shackleton to circle round the demon."
Vincent: "Shackleton picks up his pace and begins the circuit."
Emily: "Okay, I come to crouching on his back and, holding my starlit sword aloft, leap into the air, rolling and turning a vertical 180 degree angle to fly over the demon's back, slicing down, through it and through the heart as I pass, killing it."
(There is some discussion of camera angles and use of wires.)
Meg: "But only if the horrendous oozy beast spews ichor everywhere, covering you."
Emily: "Fine. I come to land on Shackleton's back, covered in demon blood."
Meg:"And furthermore you look beyond it, seeing moving, shlumping pinkish shapes as far as the horizon..."
Emily:"And so it was...."
(Hey, Ben, please correct my use of the phrases. I'm remembering "And so it was.." being the scene beginner/closer, instead of the conflict beginning/ender. Is there another phrase for one or the other?)
On 4/22/2005 at 3:24pm, lumpley wrote:
RE: Polaris
Polaris: unleash your inner crazed poet on opium.
-Vincent
On 4/22/2005 at 3:56pm, Ben Lehman wrote:
RE: Polaris
Meili wrote:
(Hey, Ben, please correct my use of the phrases. I'm remembering "And so it was.." being the scene beginner/closer, instead of the conflict beginning/ender. Is there another phrase for one or the other?)
The conflict-ender (with agreement) you are looking for is and so it came to pass
Hey, everyone. We were playing the game before the key phrases were totally worked out. So Emily has a few things written down here which, while fine for the game we played, aren't totally legal in the present rules.
I think the best thing for all involved is for me to finish the rules, then you can see for yourself the discrepancies. ;-)
yrs--
--Ben
On 4/29/2005 at 3:14am, Bob the Fighter wrote:
RE: Polaris
wow, the description i'm reading here is much clearer and more concise than my attempts to decipher the online rules.
not that they were so terribly confusing; it's just really far from my experience of what RPGs are. technically, that's not true: i'm used to system being about numbers, dice, and such, rather than laying down a ritualized narrative form.
it's like shared-authority freeform, but with a system of how to manage it. and it's not freeform, of course, but i generally think numbers to be "system" and hadn't yet come across a good "words can be system" setup.
i love the setting to pieces. it gives me visions of Ghosts and Goblins (original NES version). did anyone else think of that game when they saw Polaris?