1. To establish the setting (playing mice in a medieval fantasy setting that challenges your existence at every turn). I’d like people to start thinking about how big the world is to a mouse and how dangerous things like rain or ants could be to a mouse.

2. Establish the mindset of a guard (”Send any mouse to the the job and it may or may not be done. Ask the Guard to do the task, even death cannot prevent it from completion”). Thankless heroes who exist outside society, the wild west Gunslinger, the Samurai, the Ranger of Middle Earth.

3. Gather a patrol. Hopefully in steps 1 and 2, the players are participating enough that they are ready to start shooting out ideas for a patrol. “We need need a tired leader”, “Ooh, and a bee trainer”, “And the new recruit with a chip on his shoulder,” etc. I might skip this step and bring character templates to reduce the paperwork aspect of the game.

4. Once the cast has been established (half baked at this point) and characters selected by players. The finishing touches should be added as a group exercise - belief, instinct and traits.

5. Examples of play, akin to the DitV accomplishment or a kicker. Flashbacks to formative experiences for the Guard. Experience with the core mechanics for resolution.

6. A group challenge. Either just before meeting Gwendolyn for assignment or just after leaving Lockhaven as the first obstacle. A morale and team building challenge like chasing a parcel down a stream before it is lost in the rapids.

7. By this point, the players have started their mission but have been playing all along.

I’m going to work offline at trying to incorporate elements from the process you developed for Polaris to work with these goals.

I hope the whole “games as both diagnostic and prescriptive” makes sense, at least - does it?

Having just pitched Mouse Guard to my wife and daughter, I saw exactly what you mean about indie games only being compelling if someone has a desire. My daughter (who I read the comics with) was super excited to play the game so we jumped in pretty fast, leaving my wife (who hadn’t read them) wondering what she was doing.

I’m going to be running Burning Wheel this month at KublaCon and Mouse Guard in July at Good Omens Con and I’d really like to incorporate some of these ideas into both games. Polaris, however is a very different game. Willem, can you give me an idea where you started from to structure this process?

Frederick, I hope you try Polaris again and tell me how much the method above helped! It has a lot of room for improvement - only a beginning really.

Yes, also, I purpose to provide a great play experience the first time, so that players will come back. Exactly.

This sounds like a great approach. I ran Polaris at Viking Con in the fall and experienced exactly what you describe - people are simply not confident in the key phrases to lift the story jamming to the level Polaris should be able to get us. Addressing the learning curve is cool - your recipe makes me want to try out Polaris again.

Many indie games seems like they just assume that people need to learn them before the fun can begin - but if a game does not deliver at least a reasonable play experience the first time around, will you come back? The board games are a great inspiration for addressing learnability - something I had as an explicit design goal with Montsegur 1244. Dogs in the Vineyard is another great example to follow - initiation conflicts are brilliant.

Best,
Frederik