Lee Short ([info]losrpg) wrote,
@ 2006-11-07 21:18:00
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Reflections on Polaris
So I played in the Polaris game that [info]jhkimrpg ran last weekend at AmberCon Northwest. Damn, it was fun. We had an awesome group of players, if I do say so myself.

It was the end-of-the-con Sunday slot -- usually when all the players' attention spans are at their lowest. Certainly this game was a bit over-the-top, but not all that much.

The odd thing about the game is that it never really felt like we were engaging with the mechanics. The basic mechanic of the game is that each PC has a player ("heart") and an opposition ("mistaken"). The Heart is supposed to further the cause of the character; the Mistaken to thwart the character's progress. This isn't really how it played out in our game. In many cases, the Heart acted the thwart the character just as much as the Mistaken did (you say I have to cut my arm to defeat the demon -- no, I cut my arm off). It never really felt like the Heart and the Mistaken were in any real sort of opposition.

So what did we take from the game book that made this game any different than "d20 Doomed Frostknights"? I think it mostly boils down to the vision of play.

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[info]benlehman
2006-11-09 10:54 pm UTC (link)
Hi!

Thanks for playing.

The self-opposition thing happens *all the time* in Polaris play, and is definitely a known feature of the game. The rulebook tells the Heart to lobby for the Knight and the Mistaken to lobby against because that's the simplest baseline, but it's very easy to reverse the roles, or gang up one way or another.

My favorite thing to do, as a Mistaken, is wait until my opposite number starts to do this, and then start throwing escalatingly good things at him. "I cut off my own eyelids!" "But only if your crush confesses her undying love for you."

yrs--
--Ben

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[info]losrpg
2006-11-09 11:38 pm UTC (link)
The self-opposition thing happens *all the time* in Polaris play, and is definitely a known feature of the game.

I suspected as much -- but I haven't played before, and I know how Tony wants play to turn out in Capes (which I have experienced rather more cooperatively), so I wasn't sure if that was how you had envisioned play, or not.

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[info]benlehman
2006-11-10 12:08 am UTC (link)
I don't think it's a cooperative/competitive thing at all, in this case.

Since it's not a question of winning or losing (you will lose, in the end), it's a question of interest. I just don't find unending misery and despair interesting. If the Heart will not provide hope, then that's the responsibility of the other players.

yrs--
--Ben

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[info]losrpg
2006-11-10 12:16 am UTC (link)
Here's where I see cooperation/competition coming in: if the game were designed to be heavily competitive, you'd want the Heart + Mistaken to be advocating for their respective sides. The fact that the Mistaken eventually wins doesn't necessarily have to reduce the competition between the 2. I've played some wargames where the eventual winner was never in doubt, but, say, the Japanese player had serious bragging rights if he held onto the Phillippines in 1947.

In fact, my earliest mental model for Polaris gameplay was the Silmarillion, which is rather decidedly us-vs-them in outlook.

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[info]brand_of_amber
2006-11-10 01:59 pm UTC (link)
"I cut off my own eyelids!" "But only if your crush confesses her undying love for you."

Hehehee.

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[info]jhkimrpg
2006-11-09 11:21 pm UTC (link)
Hey. I had a few comments on my LJ as "Back from ACNW".

I'd agree about the Heart and Mistaken not being opposed. However, they did at least egg each other on, as encouraged by the rules.

Still, D20 Doomed Frostknights would have been enormously different in terms of how gameplay proceeded. If played by the rules, a D20 game would have come to a grinding halt as soon as you entered the hall to deal with the demons and we went into combat. The social interactions also would have been vastly different in terms of handling Intimidate checks, for example.

The rules strongly encourage opposition to the Protagonists, even if there isn't opposition per se between the Heart player and the Mistaken player. They also mean that there is a clear mechanical way to resolve anything that happens relatively quickly. (This can also be true of Amber Diceless. However, Polaris provides a way to do this without a GM, with different feel and social dynamics.)

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[info]losrpg
2006-11-09 11:46 pm UTC (link)
The rules strongly encourage opposition to the Protagonists, even if there isn't opposition per se between the Heart player and the Mistaken player.

It had been a LOOOONNG time since I read the (beta) rules, so I didn't recall this clearly.

D20 Doomed Frostknights would have been enormously different in terms of how gameplay proceeded.

Oh God yes.

The feel of the game and the social dynamics seemed pretty similar to a more cooperative version of Capes or actually rather like Star, Moon, and Cross.


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