[Polaris] questions & new storygamer report
vonkorff:
I tried Polaris for the first time recently. No one in my group, including me, had ever played this type of story game. I wasn't sure we could handle it, but it turned out to be a lot of fun. However, advice would be appreciated, see questions below.
We used Myth Weavers' "pedagogy of play" plan, with improv warm-ups and adding one rule at a time.
http://www.mythic-cartography.org/2009/02/25/the-pedagogy-of-play-bite-sized-pieces-part-ii/
It worked very well. When we got confused, at least it was just one rule at a time. The Myth Weavers' improv warm-ups were lots of fun ... we told a "yes and" story, a few sentences at a time going around the circle, about a village that had been abducted by demons except for one man. When a force of knights came to investigate, the knights, too, disappeared, leaving one man again -- the commander of the knights -- who went mad. It was surprisingly coherent, considering that every few sentences in sequence were spoken by the next person. During warm-ups, we also told a story about the myth behind the "rope" constellation, which involved a man climbing up to a star on a rope, as well as the symbolism behind the "whale" constellation.
I'm wondering if anyone has played Polaris and has suggestions about these questions:
1. Pacing. We were building continuity slowly with each scene. In one scene, a knight was fighting demons on the front line outside the city. In the next, he was recalled home by his father, the senator, to deal with family business, and had a Mistaken-inspired vision of his father dying in a thousand different ways. He and his father don't get along, because his father had wanted him to go into politics, but he certainly wouldn't want his father dead. In the next scene, he will presumably find out what that family business was. The entire session took place in the spring of one year, perhaps over the course of a week or two. Considering that each knight only gets 1/4 of the time, we could have gone on for 2-3 sessions without the father ever dying (if that was indeed destined to happen). No major NPCs died, and only one showed any signs of evil (and that went uncontested.) From the rule book, I get the idea that a normal father/son quarrel is considered "small potatoes" by Polaris, and should certainly not extend over multiple scenes. If a scene doesn't result in the death or corruption of a major character, that scene wasn't worth having. And you're supposed to move fast, so that you can tell the whole life story of the knights, not just one season or one year. But I kind of enjoyed the little interactions between the characters. What do you think? Part of me wants to push the group to have bigger stakes. Part of me says don't fix it if it isn't broken. Though I suspect that before too long, we'll have grown so attached to the NPCs that we won't want to kill them off. People will get upset when their NPC friends are hurt, and this will cause messy conflicts that don't end properly, see #3. But if we do kill off an NPC just for the sake of doing it, that won't be very meaningful either ...
2. Experience. We didn't have many PC actions that would cause experience, and it seems like we should have had 3-6 such actions per player per session in order to get the required 25-30 over 4-10 sessions. Should I push people to be more evil / cynical / callous? One character did poison his friend (non-lethally) so the friend would be unable to go to fight in the battle, where he would have died. Which was cool. But is that really cynical, or more heroic albeit in a twisted way? No one did anything truly cynical.
3. Conflicts and competition. Most of our conflicts were short and fairly uncontested. So for instance, I was trying to pull a book away from an NPC. The Mistaken said that the book crumbled into dust from the strain. I said "but only if I keep my half of the book, which has at least some useful information in it." And the Moon said he kept part of the book as well. This was a neat compromise which will lead to more story -- now perhaps I have to get the other half back from the NPC somehow, in a later scene. But there was only the one "but only if" in this conflict.
In our only extended conflict, a knight was escorting some villagers to safety. On the way, the group was attacked by demons, and the conflict went back and forth like a chess match. So "I stand in front to fight the demons." "But only if half of the demons split off to attack the villagers." "But only if the group of demons that attacks the villagers is very small." "But only if the large group of demons that attacks you is too large for you to defeat." It felt as though both sides were intensely involved, and we couldn't come to a compromise solution. When the villagers were about to be eaten by the demons, the knight would say "it was not meant to be" and try a different way of rescuing them. Eventually the knight challenged the leader of the demons to single combat, which was cool, but rather than continuing to extend the scene forever, we just stopped it there. (I can imagine it going on forever like: "I kill the demon leader" "But only if the remaining demon army slaughters the villagers anyway" "Okay, it was not meant to be ... instead, I pin the demon leader, hold my sword to his throat, and demand that his soldiers quit the field" etc.)
Any thoughts on how to deal with this problem? Note that we didn't have "and furthermore" or "you ask far too much", because we hadn't reached those rules yet. Maybe that would have helped.
4. Scene length. How long should a scene be? Ours were 10-20 minutes, as we finished 11 scenes in 3.5 hours with perhaps some chatting breaks. (We also spent 1 hour on warm-ups and 1 hour on character creation.)
Ben Lehman:
Hi Vonkorff. Do you have a first name I could call you by?
I'm glad you played Polaris and are having fun with it. However, I detect a tone in your post that you feel like you're not getting all you can from the game. I agree. There are two issues, You have some misconceptions about the rules, and there are also bits of your attitude towards play which may be getting in the way of your enjoyment. I don't think the attitude thing is your fault. Much as I like Willem's guide, it has some fundamental problems in approach which give potential players the wrong attitude when entering a game of Polaris.
Let me take your points in order, then talk about more general issues.
1) There's nothing wrong with a slow burn as long as everyone at the table is okay with that. It might indicate that you're all looking for a slower moving story. However, I have the hunch that this isn't the case. My hunch, based on your comment about "liking NPCs too much" is that you're trying to feel around for consensus. Polaris is not a consensus game. My recommendation is: if there's an action you want to take, and you're worried that someone else at the table will be unhappy with it: do it. That's tragedy fodder.
2) As for the rules, I want to be very clear that the Mistaken has absolute, complete, and final authority over what constitutes an experience check, full stop. There is no process of group consensus, feeling out, or room for "well, maybe he was just being heroic in his own way." Fuck that shit. It's the Mistaken's call.
Additionally, there's no room for considering the circumstances in experience. Experience is given for failing a roll in conflict or: Sympathy for a demon (or the demons as a whole), hatred of a person (or the people as a whole), apathy, callousness, cynicism, doubt, or despair.
Note the complete lack of content about whether or not the action was for the greater good, whether it was morally right, whether it was "natural" or whether there were extenuating circumstances. Those concerns do not enter into the calculation. That's the whole point. There's no tragedy where the plot is advanced only when the protagonists take wholly evil action. That just leads to Episode III bullshit.
Consider, for a moment, that the demons are right, that the people deserve to die, and that the demons are the good guys. Does that mean that a knight siding with the demons is not advancing towards tragedy and death, even though he's doing a "good thing?" Hell no.
I would also like to point out that the Mistaken (and moons) are totally allowed to set up a situation in which experience is unavoidable. Say, for instance, that a demon possesses the knight's lover. The lover comes to him and begs "take me, please. I cannot live without you. fuck me now!" If the knight turns away, that's callousness. If the knight complies, that's sympathy for a demon. If the knight tries some other solution, they usually (thanks to the conflict mechanics) get themselves even deeper in shit. You can come up with a thousand such situations on your own. Try it. You'll like it.
3) Okay. You have a serious rules misconception here, which I think is tied to your attitude misconception, which is totally not your fault but I'm going to be blunt about anyway.
"It was not meant to be" does not work how you think it does. It means that the previous (and only the previous) "but only if..." statement, and the statement which it is in response to, do not happen. All other statements that were a part of the conflict do happen.
So, in your example:
H:So "I stand in front to fight the demons."
M: "But only if half of the demons split off to attack the villagers."
H: "But only if the group of demons that attacks the villagers is very small."
M: "But only if the large group of demons that attacks you is too large for you to defeat."
H: It was not meant to be.
This means that the Heart does stand and fight the demons, and half the demons do split off and attack the villagers. Sucks to be the villagers.
Further, I strongly disagree with playing the game with less than the full set of rules. The key phrases are not divided into "basic" and "advanced." They're a complete unit, a working whole, which cannot do without one part and cannot abide any additions. For a "training wheels" scene that's not actually play, sure. But if you're really playing the game, with the intent to continue, use them all or go play a different game.
Putting the rules aside, there is also a serious, serious attitude problem here. The sort of statements that both the Heart and the Mistaken (but especially the Heart) are making are, to point a point on it, crap statements. They don't add anything to the game, they just serve to wriggle out of whatever the other player threw at you. They aren't technically illegal they're just bad play as in wet, soft, and unenjoyable.
The best example of this is the initial statement. It's not the stuff that conflicts are made out of. In Polaris, you must say what your character does and what effect, if any, it has on the world. "I stand in front to fight the demons" is crap. "I stand in front and drive the demons away with a ferocious roar" is good. "As the demons approach, I behead the first to cross my path and hold the head up, screaming 'this shall be the fate of all who oppose me!'" is golden.
The crux of the matter is the issue of consensus. I'm not surprised you were unable to come to a consensus, because the Polaris conflict rules are not designed to facilitate consensus. Instead, they are designed to escalate conflict.
Let me say that again, in bold:
The Polaris conflict rules are not designed to facilitate consensus, they are designed to escalate conflict
4) Scene length sounds about right to me. Don't be afraid to go longer or shorter if it's appropriate, though.
Now, I want to address a larger issue. Let me say that thing again, slightly reworded:
The Polaris rules are not designed to facilitate consensus, they are designed to initiate and escalate conflict
I am convinced that the attitude you took to the game, is encouraged and fostered by Willem's lessons, and that it was destructive to your full enjoyment of the game. The attitude is that Polaris is a hand-holdy game where we all agree with each other while play-acting a pre-set storyline and being careful not to trod on each other's feelings. This is because Willem's lessons are based on two things: "story gaming" culture at large, a phenomenon that post-dates Polaris's publication and has little to do with it, and improvisational theatre, which is all based on building a consensus and not quashing each other's contributions.
Polaris is not either of these things. If I had wanted to write a game that required and fostered consensus, I would have written a game without mechanics. If I had wanted to design an improv theatre game, I would have designed an improv theatre game. Instead, I wrote a game which is best played with an aggressive, adversarial, rough-housing attitude. Go for the (fictional) throat.
Willem's background in both story gaming and improv theatre made it very difficult for him to teach this style of play, which is basically tabboo (and for good reason) in both traditions. But it is necessary for Polaris.
So, since you like exercises, consider this an exercise. The next time, before you play Polaris for real, invent a new character. Frame a scene for him.
For the Heart: During, make a definitive statement about intense and passionate action, and its effects, without serious forethought.
For the Mistaken: In response to the Heart's action, try to determine what the Heart holds most sacred. In your opposing conflict statement (but only if -or- and furthermore), defile that thing.
For the Moons: Try to force a situation as said above, where the Heart has no choice but to take experience.
See where that takes you.
yrs--
--Ben
Noclue:
Ben, I love that reply. You just helped me understand why Polaris doesn't play like an improv theater game, even though it does have some similar trappings.
While reading the OP, I had the thought that the next time someone said "I stand and fight the demons" the Mistaken should reply "But only if they disembowel you and strangle you with your own entrails while pounding your face into goo on a nearby rock!" I know I'd be all "How did that 'You ask far too much...' thing work anyway? Can we get to that part now, 'cause it sounds like you're asking far, far too much?"
vonkorff:
Hi Ben. My name is Josh.
Thanks so much for your reply. We really enjoy your game so far, and hopefully we can get even more out of it.
I think your point about consensus is spot on ... we were looking for consensus. The word "compromise" came up during the session. The idea that if H says "I kill a demon" and M says "You only save half the villagers", then that's a "fair compromise" and should be accepted. We assumed that when the conflict wasn't working, it was because we weren't acting in good faith to reach a fair compromise. Also, we felt that we should all be acting to ensure a "good story", whereas it sounds like you're saying we should be acting to get what we want, and a good story will come out of that.
And if I understand you correctly, you're saying that the conflict wasn't working because (1) we didn't use the rules properly and (2) we didn't state the results of our actions. (We said "The demons split off to attack the villagers" rather than "The demons split off and kill the villagers.")
But our misunderstanding of the rules was not what you are thinking. We did understand that you can only undo the last two statements. The problem is: what happens when, after undoing the last two statements, the outcome of the conflict is still not decisive. The clearest, simplest example I can think of is a hypothetical 3-statement conflict. Suppose this is the entire conflict, and nothing interesting happened before it:
H: As the demons approach, I behead the first to cross my path and hold the head up, screaming 'this shall be the fate of all who oppose me!'
M: But only if half of the demons split off and devour the villagers, swallowing them whole as they stand hypnotized with fright.
H: Oops, it was not meant to be.
Now what happens? The one demon is not dead, and the villagers are not eaten ... nothing has happened yet.
a. Can the Heart try something else now? Can the Heart say
"In that case, I wrestle the demon leader to the ground, and he calls off his minions for fear of my starlight sword."
or "It turns out that one of the villagers was a knight in disguise! Together, we drive the demons away."
If so, couldn't this lead to endless conflicts, as the Heart keeps backtracking? Since we are avoiding compromise, the Heart wants to do everything he can, within the rules, to protect the villagers.
b. Are the demons prohibited from eating the villagers ever again, because that statement was denied? If so, what do the demons do, and why don't they eat the villagers? Can they kill the villagers without eating them? Carry them off into the wastes? Again, a possibility for an unending conflict ...
Here's how this problem applies to the conflict I described:
H:So "I stand in front to fight the demons."
M: "But only if half of the demons split off to attack the villagers."
[followed by more statements, which get undone by the "it was not meant to be"]
Suppose you wind back to this point. You said: "This means that the Heart does stand and fight the demons, and half the demons do split off and attack the villagers. Sucks to be the villagers."
But the villagers are not dead yet, because it doesn't say "the demons eat the villagers." It says "the demons split off to attack." (I know, I know, this is a wimpy way to run a conflict. That's why the first example above is better.) Why can't the Heart accept all that, but make a new statement, saying:
"It turns out that one of the villagers is a knight in disguise!"
Also, it seems like the "ask for what you want" philosophy could lead to very short conflicts ... wouldn't the knight start with "I slay all the demons" rather than "I cut off the head of the first demon?" He might as well use his statement to the best possible effect, and go for what he actually wants. Or how about "I slay all the demons, while protecting all the villagers so they don't get harmed, and in fact no one comes to harm from these demons ever again." The conflicts will sound like someone making a wish from a genie that they know to be malevolent. This may sound like a silly objection, but this is exactly the sort of thing our group might do, if we are told to go for the throat. Is the Mistaken now forced to reach farther away and say "but only if your lover, back in Southreach, is slain by an assassin"? Etc.
It's very kind of you to say that WIllem's exercises were at fault -- but I think our own inexperience is more to blame. One part of the problem may be that it's hard to teach oneself the feel of a game, except by playing with others who have already played it -- even if one can read a beautifully written rule book like Polaris has. I can remember all kinds of stupid things I did playing D&D as a kid, just because I was playing with complete novices like myself. I don't think Willem's exercises encourage a pre-set storyline, in fact quite the opposite ... on the other hand, they certainly don't communicate the attitude you're recommending. ("Defile something that someone holds sacred.")
Ben Lehman:
Hi Josh, nice to meet you. You're tying yourself into knots, here. I can try to untangle you, or you can take a deep breath, look at the rules (the rules, not Willem's document, but the actual book) again, and try to answer all your own questions. Which would you rather do?
Your questions are:
1) Why doesn't over-use of "but it was not meant to be" cause infinite conflict loops?
2) Are the demons, once prevented from eating the villagers in conflict, allowed to eat the villagers again? When?
3) Why can't the Heart say "one of the villagers is a knight in disguise!" without use of a key phrase?
4) Is it bad if the Heart says "I cow the demons, and no harm comes from them ever again?" What should the Mistaken respond with?
yrs--
--Ben
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