Polaris, Actual Play at Café Racer June 19th, 2011

Setting: Battle Star Galactica (chronologically prior to the first season).

Cy – Heart, (Protagonist, LT Orion) Morgan – Mistaken (Antagonist)
Dustin – Heart, (Protagonist, LT Aria), Ben R – Mistaken (Antagonist)

Ben took us through character creation and explained the rules. Occasionally, Cy stepped in to bring up a point. Mostly, we learned by doing.



Scene 1: After LT. Aria’s partner Jansky (Mistaken) is detained on suspicion of being a Cylon, the two of them escape into the city, defying Commander Keller’s (Moon) orders and evading the military police.

Scene 2: LT Orion is the quartermaster on the Dauntless. When a half destroyed Cylon ship is brought aboard the flight deck, Dr. Tranton (Mistaken) attempts to establish his control over the situation. The doctor orders the commander of the Dauntless off the deck. When the commander refuses, Dr. Tranton relieves him of his command, but not before LT Orion secretly moves the Cylon vessel elsewhere. The doctor now has many jack-booted thugs on board the ship.

Scene 3: LT Aria phones in an anonymous tip to give away the people Jansky is staying with. A firefight ensues, endangering children. Jansky and LT Aria get away.

Scene 4: LT Orion is called to a meeting with Dr. Tranton and Secretary Landross. Assuming they want a parley, he sends Cortez and some men to go free the commander from the brig. At the parley, LT Orion finds that the doctor and the secretary aren’t arguing for a resolution to the two armed groups on the ship (the jack-booted thugs and those loyal to LT Orion). Instead, they simply wish to requisition some basic parts so that Dr. Tranton can finish the machine he has on board (referred to as the M.O.N.S.T.E.R). It will allow him to determine who is a Cylon and who is a human. The negotiations are disrupted when LT Orion’s men free the captain and take the bridge. Dr. Tranton and Secretary Landross are forced to flee the ship.

Scene 5: LT Aria turns himself in to the military. Commander Keller strips him of his rank and throws him in the brig, but LT Aria is freed during an attack by the Resistance.

Scene 6: LT Orion is at a barbecue with his brother Richie, who is trying to convince him to “play ball” with Secretary Landross. Then events move quickly when LT Orion and his commander are transferred to a planet-side base. They are able to bring Dr. Tranton’s devise, but Richie and his wife are scanned by M.O.N.S.T.E.R. It is unclear what effect this has on humans.

Scene 7: LT Aria is the head of the Resistance (which, unbeknownst to him, is filled with Cylons). LT Aria refuse to order the assassination, but his subordinates go through with the act as well as uprisings all over the colony.



Commentary to follow.

So this post was supposed to be a scorching criticism of Polaris, but as I was writing it up, I realized that most of my problems stemmed from me and not the game. I didn’t enjoy it as much as the few other Story Games I’ve played for at least three reasons: I didn’t understand the rules, I was outmatched by my protagonist, and I allowed myself to get distracted.


Shoulda Read Da Rules

I started this write up in a different vein, but many of my questions in my commentary ended up being extremely basic: What is the point of experience? How much authority do I have when setting a scene? Does the narrative seem to lurch about drunkenly?

Polaris is the game that I’ve been telling myself I needed to find, because it’s “gamier” than Fiasco or Perfect, with a much more structured set of rules. I hadn’t had a chance to study these rules and figure out a strategy, so instead of providing a useful structure, they kept tripping me up. There’s no teachable moment to this part, except for stating the obvious: I need to read and understand the rules before I play. I enjoy strategy games, but sadly, I’ve never been a natural talent. My skills usually express themselves as an ability to concentrate and read up on a game. My virtue is an excess of free time?


I Was Outmatched

Unfortunately, I was outmatched on at least two levels. The first was my aforementioned lack of understanding. Unlike many of the Story Games I’ve played, there is a slight competitive element in Polaris. The back and forth between the Heart and the Mistaken has an element of strategy that I was, typically, unable to grasp. It seems that play should be rigorous and my lack of understanding made this difficult.

The second way I was outmatched is that Cy seems to think faster than I did. He would squeeze out of the binds I’d try to put him in and end up better off than when we started the scene. Polaris is supposed to end in tragedy, but every time we finished a scene, he’d be better off than when we started. He advocated hard for his character, just like it says to do. In return, I did a poor job of antagonizing him.

Both of these factors contributed to my dissatisfaction with the game. Apparently I don’t like to feel like I’m losing. I attribute this to my being a big baby whiner.

I Was Distracted

On top of all of this, I let myself get distracted. I took long breaks, I listened in on the game of Fiasco nearby, and I wrote notes down and daydreamed instead of playing Moon. Maybe it was the fact that I was losing that made me start to mentally pull out of the game. Or maybe I’m a shitty person who doesn’t stay engaged and lessens the experience for everyone. All I know is that I’ve never been that guy before, but on Saturday… I was that guy.
Anyway, I am going to buy this game, sit down, and figure it out. I’m going to listen to other actual plays and go to Ross’ Story Gaming workshops. I’m going to finally listen to Paul Tevis’ podcast about improv technique. I’m going to get myself into fighting shape.

Then, Cy, it is on. I’ma get these rules and techniques under my belt and then I am going to make your protagonist cry tears of bloody grief. I want a rematch!

First off Morgan, big kudos on your whole post. I really admire the honesty to not just say "I had no fun so that game must suck!" This is the kind of discussion I am all for.

As far as reading the rules, etc. it's always nice to have read the rules, but we're there to teach the game as we play. There's always some learning curve on a first play of a game, and Polaris is quite different than lots of game and has more of a curve, which is one reason we definitely recommend playing the same game more than once.

I think you're right, that being distracted did trip you up, making it harder to absorb the rules or follow the fiction, but one reason I think you might have been distracted, that you're not taking into account, is that in some ways you were wearing an organizer hat: you'd invited a lot of people to the event, so it would be natural to feel responsible for seeing that they had a good time, or at least wanting to check in with them and see how they're doing. Very reasonable, and in fact commendable, but it makes it harder for you to focus on the game you're in. I've definitely been there.

The real mistake (and this is a teaching failure on my part) is to think it's competitive. Bold, underline, italicize this part. It really, really isn't. If you think it's competitive you'll be making decisions for all the wrong reasons and the game will spiral into frustration. I think both you and Dustin caught some of this.

The ideal case (and this is true for just about all story games) is that both sides play equally hard, and push each other to interesting results. It's not competition, because neither side is trying to actually win. The protagonist player doesn't actually want to skate through the game unchallenged, and the antagonist player doesn't actually want to crush the protagonist like a bug. Neither is any fun.

Take you putting the Captain in the brig. That's good stuff, not because Cy can't do anything about it (that would suck) but because it pushes Cy to have his character do interesting things. Now instead of just being a model soldier living a dull life, he's ordering his buddies to go down and take the brig by force. That's exactly what we want. We want to see Cy's character pushed to make hard choices. That's the point.

Good antagonism is reactive: you find out what the protagonist wants and then you attach a price tag. You were entirely successful in doing that when you put the Captain in the brig, but I don't think you were happy about it because when Cy sprung the Captain you were maybe thinking "oh well, he just cancelled everything I set up." But that's absolutely not true. You made him take more extreme steps that could get him in a lot of hot water, which is perfect.

The goal is not to stop the protagonist. Look at me antagonizing Dustin's character. When Dustin wants to get Jansky (his wingman, unrequited love, and suspected Cylon) out of the brig, I say "Great!" but the price is the brass will suspect him of working with the Cylons. When he wants both of them to escape to a safehouse where no one can find them, I say "Awesome!" but the price is that now he's a wanted man. Same thing later on: want to escape the raid on the cabin (which he called in)? Absolutely, but you personally have to shoot a few of the MPs to get away. Want to become leader of the rebellion? Great, but they're about to overthrow the government. You get want you want, but it costs you or there are more consequences than you foresaw.

So given that idea, that the antagonist is really all about reacting to the protagonist wants, the point when I think we were really in trouble was when Dustin said "I don't know what I want." That's a rockbottom moment. It's the ultimate tap-out.

I have to say, with a fast start and a very rocky middle, Dustin and my side of the story came to what I thought was a very hot ending. By the last scene I thought Dustin had totally gotten the hang of the method, which is how we got the big climax of the popular rebellion (secretly founded by Cylons) overthrowing the military because the public is convinced that it's the military brass who are really the Cylon infiltrators. So that right when the rebels are raising their flags in victory over the shattered military bases ("Arise People of Caprica!") the Cylon invasion swoops in, blotting out the sun with the hordes of raiders. The rebellion, an unwitting tool of the Cylon infiltrators, has crippled the military and left the colonies defenseless...

I mean c'mon, that's good television.