We played our second session of Polaris on Skype this Wednesday with our gang of usual suspects from GroFaFo, only three players unfortunately. It’s a struggle. Here’s what we struggle with:

• Guidance: There was significant confusion about who says what outside a conflict. For example, my protagonist has a place written in her Full Moon, but the Mistaken normally controls the world. Can the Moon invent people? Make them appear on the scene? Can he state features of the place?
I think the other two had trouble playing an active part as Moon. I pushed it in one scene which seemed to work nicely, only that none of my statements provoked any conflict. At several instances, I was bouncing in my chair, thinking: C’mon, pick it up! But it was no matter.
Also, we made it harder than necessary by framing scenes including more than one protagonist. That can really get you confused, especially if it’s the protagonist of a Moon player.

• Skype: If you’re working so hard to figure out how the game, especially the distribution of narration, works, it’s a large obstacle not be face to face. Each of us had a copy of each protagonist sheet, which was vital. But still, I imagine it to be much easier if you can actually look at the people.

• Three players: Do, by all means, try to get four players for Polaris. Three players just doesn’t work that well. Mainly because you are not your Mistaken’s Mistaken. You cannot deal it back. I think there is some huge dynamic lost on us because of that.

The transcript reads well enough still, but that’s just because the fictional content is rocking so hard. If you know German, you can read about the transcript here.

Our shared fate is Senator Antares Perseus. We have his two sons, one of them a champion despite himself, the other one jealous and ambitious. And we have my protagonist, Kuma, in love with the married man Antares, having an affair with him, playing along with his foul desires. Kuma has sworn to protect a little enclave of the people outside the remnants, a place of purity (reminding her of what she has lost), where the people still dance to the song of the stars. Already after six scenes, Kuma has been tainted in several ways, marked with the blood of demons, feared by those she wants to protect.
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There is something that occurred to me as I posted about Polaris in German. The conflicts in Polaris are very unlike typical conflict resolution because they don’t set stakes. They are not focussed on the goal, on Where It Leads. Instead, they are focussed on What Happens Next, step by step. Action by action. Isn’t this plain task resolution?

But then again, where is the task that becomes solved? You can state virtually anything in a Polaris conflict, like in my favorite from our current game:

M (Caynreth): “Senator Keid notices Kuma’s disarranged looks and immediately knows she has an affair with Senator Antares.” (No conflict yet, Keid is Mistaken, a rival to Antares.)
H (me): “But only if Keid doesn’t tell anyone.” (Conflict starts)
M: “But only if Kuma agrees to have sex with Keid.”
H: “But only if he falls in love with her.”
M: “And that was SO how it happened!” (Conflict ends)

The funky thing is that IIEE is all in one in Polaris. Either it happens the way it is stated, or it doesn’t. Maybe a stated thing doesn’t happen after all. But it can never be initiated but not take effect. If the Theory Channel was still open, I could go there and ramble about how the terms task resolution and conflict resolution and the whole concept of IIEE are flawed. But there is no merit in that.

I just want to state my observation: Polaris is similar to classic task resolution in that a conflict is not focussed by stakes. You do not (necessarily) see where you’re headed until you get there. But unlike in classic task resolution, the way things get to happen is sudden, unpredictable, stunning, like nothing I’ve ever seen before.
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I think we are getting around to figuring the game out. We need more Moon characters with their own active goals to really send the game spinning. Our Mistakens need to be meaner still. And we need to learn the use of “we shall see what comes of it”.

- Frank

Polaris is definitely Conflict Resolution, Frank, and it does have Stakes. In your example exchange between M and H what's happening is that the Stakes are being negotiated.

In Polaris it seems as though Stakes-setting and Conflict Resolution slam together sweetly in the use of the Key Phrases.

There was, once upon a time, a conversation on Ben's blog about Conflict and Task resolution and how the terms don't always mean what we think they mean. They may make interesting reading.

http://benlehman.blogspot.com/2005/06/on-conflict-resolution.html
http://benlehman.blogspot.com/2005/06/on-task-resolution.html

and Joshua BishopRoby had an interesting one about "resolution" in general here:

http://ludisto.blogspot.com/2005/10/resolution-task-conflict-more.html

I'd be interested in hearing how the theory in these posts matches up with your statements about your Polaris AP.

Hi, Frank!  Glad to hear you got to play the game.  To make up for my lack of contact: I'm safely ensconced in China and actually about to go home for the holidays.

Do you mind if I help resolve your rules issues?

I think that the simplest way the explain the Moons is that, barring the use of the Key Phrases, they are identically as powerful as any other player.  A lot of people miss this, probably because I babble on too long about "secondary characters" in the text.  A Moon can say anything and it happens, barring a key phrase.

So, a clarification?  Were you being active as a moon and getting batted down by the use of the "but it was no matter" key phrase?  Or were you being active as a moon but feeling that you still weren't adding enough to the scene?  They're two different issues, and I don't know what to tell you until I know which one is which.

As far as guidance over locations -- the Mistaken's guidance over locations is the same as the New Moon's guidance over women and the Full Moon's guidance over men.  It only applies to things which aren't listed on the Cosmos.  Does that make sense?

*pause for breath*

Okay, all you theory monkeys -- as to the task/conflict question and Polaris, I think it is very simply an explicit conflict resolution system (the key conflict phrases) with a task resolution mechanic which is so light as to float away entirely.  The fact that the steps of conflict resolution are not "declare stakes, resolve" but are "resolve as we declare stakes in an escalating cycle" is simply because I'm a pervert.  It doesn't serve to differentiate the game, at a broad level, from games like The Pool, Universalis, Dogs, Capes or a gazillion other games which inspired me.

yrs--
--Ben

Thanks for the replies! Ben, so that means that yes, the Moon can state what the place looks like, have new people enter the scene, etc.?

Regarding the input as a Moon, it was part of both, I think. The first five scenes we were clearly struggling to have the Moons make any sensible contribution at all. In scene six, I started to aggressively play my Moon characters with an agenda of their own, which I felt was a huge improvement, but I also had the feeling that the other two players didn't really bounce anything off that. "But it was no matter" was used twice, I think, but that was not all. Maybe I enlarge a little on the scene.

So Pollux, the ambitious knight who envies his twin brother, the champion, leads a band of knights into mistaken territory during the spring raids. There is also one knight with him that is on the Cosmos (I forget the name), a new moon character who Pollux fears might have figured him out. I played that one all: "Pollux, we gotta get outa here, what's the point in this mission, what are you trying to prove?" Also, I narrated the other knights getting into trouble, running away etc.

Now, the Heart didn't even have to use "but it was no matter" very often, she could just negate my statements with a statement of her own, like: "Pollux calls the knights back to attack, and they follow!" And I was waiting for the Mistaken to pick that line up and turn it into a conflict, but he never did because he was pursuing different ends in the scene. I don't know if that was bad, but it felt a little dissatisfying to me.

- Frank