Questions tagged [polaris]

Polaris is a GMless (and almost fortune-less) tragedy RPG written by Ben Leheman, focused on exploring the woes of a chivalric society on the verge of inevitable destruction.

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11 votes
1 answer
556 views

Does a “Let us discuss this further” house rule to break “But only if” chains break anything else?

I've been struggling with escalating But only if chains in Polaris for a while. A solution I've come up with is to create a new conflict phrase “Let us discuss this further” with the following rules: ...
2 votes
2 answers
148 views

Should the Mistaken be Secretly Colluding with the Moons?

I'm currently playing a game of Polaris that has been going on for about six sessions. Our protagonists are all deep into their various plots, two of us are veterans, and we're getting towards the end....
3 votes
2 answers
183 views

How to deal with differing levels of ability in Polaris

A concern I have in running Polaris is that the group I intend to run the game with possesses RPGers of vastly mixed ability with regards to the skills used in the game. Three of us are veteran role-...
2 votes
2 answers
150 views

What do Aspects do?

When you check things off, you check off whole themes. When you try and do something, you succeed unless your Mistaken stops you. So what's the point of Aspects?
5 votes
2 answers
101 views

How long can a conflict statement be?

So in our Polaris games we have two recurring problem with conflict statements. This is one of them. Sometimes people want to make statements that are really long and their opponent feels that such ...
4 votes
2 answers
224 views

Whose actions can I narrate in Polaris?

So, when playing Polaris we want our narration to be cool, which requires that it is capable of flowing well. The guidance system seems to indicate that only the player who has guidance is allowed to ...
3 votes
1 answer
586 views

What's the point of the character sheet? [closed]

How do character sheets fit into the game of Polaris and what functionality do they serve? It's not like it's hard to remember your stats; there are only 3. The vast majority of the sheet's info is ...
1 vote
1 answer
105 views

Where can I find a list of Demons for Polaris?

Just looking for names, actually. There's a bunch of nice ones in the rulebook, but I'm not clear on what the naming conventions are. They seem vaguely Aztec-myth-y in origin (Etzlitotec, Four Birds,...
4 votes
1 answer
335 views

Teaching Polaris for a single session game

I run weekly gaming sessions, with variable players. As a result, we play single-session, zero-prep, no-GM, story-games. I've been told that Polaris: Chivalric Tragedy at Utmost North is great for ...