Quote:
Originally Posted by Ben Lehman
I have a funny story about this.
I'm sitting in Vincent's living room floor, maybe June 2005? I'm preparing the text of Polaris for the final layout bits, Vincent is doing the final runs through the second edition of Dogs in the Vineyard.
Vincent: "Hey, Ben, do you use 'role-playing game,' with a hyphen, 'role playing game,' with a space, or 'roleplaying game' without a space?"
Ben: *thinks for a minute* "I have no idea. Let me check in Polaris." *checks*
Ben: "Actually, I don't use the term 'role-playing' once during the whole book?"
Vincent: "Oh. I guess that would fix my problem."
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Ultimately, I don't have a strong attachment to whether or not Polaris is consider a role-playing game. Some people strongly believe that it is not, some people strongly believe that it is. Here's what I can say:
* For me and many others, it scratches the same itch that role-playing scratches.
* Practice has shown that people who like role-playing games will like Polaris, and will learn things from playing Polaris which will help their other play.
* Polaris shares many many elements with primal RPGs (D&D, T&T, and so on), including talking in character, getting in touch with your character's emotions, making decisions for your character, announcing in-character actions, multi-session play with a stable group, heroic adventures, and so on.
* For those who feel like role-playing == immersion, some people who are into immersive play have reported that Polaris is really great for it, other people have reported that it has been really bad for immersion. I'm not one to judge either way, since I'm no longer trying to be possessed by a character while I play.
yrs--
--Ben
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Ben,
Thanks for sharing your thoughts on the matter. Your observations are well stated.
For my part, my only concern in the matter has to do with clarity of communication rather than any concept of the One True Way of Roleplaying Games. I've played
WUSHU and run
octaNe and enjoyed both, but neither felt like what I'd consider a roleplaying game in the traditional sense. I've never read or played
Polaris, so I can only base my opinions on second-hand information, and the anecdotes you offer definitely support your case. I'd only add that "immersion" may not be the best term to describe what I consider integral to traditional gaming; rather, it's viewing the setting from a first-person perspective -- i.e., through the five senses of the character -- rather than from some variation on a third-person perspective.
Mostly, though, I appreciate your stance that whatever
Polaris may be, it stands on its own merits. On the one hand, I can't abide those who immediately write off authors of innovative RPGs as Swine or the like; on the other, I'm always annoyed by game designers who insist that their game
has to be a roleplaying game simply because they want to
call it a roleplaying game and that anyone suggesting otherwise must be narrow-minded.