Wednesday, July 12, 2006

A Review

While my crazy out-of-town relatives were visiting I got to enjoy the experience of playing Polaris for the first time. I can honestly say that it is the best role-playing game that I have ever played. I don’t claim to be a great RPG connoisseur, but I am a creative person who loves being a part of a good story and that’s exactly what Polaris gave me.

The thing about Polaris is that the system is never a distraction, but rather a marvelous tool to use to create intriguing characters and an intricate story. Instead of there being one all powerful GM, each player has ample opportunity and is, in fact, forced to contribute to the developing plot. Even during character generation all the players have an influence on everyone else’s character sheet.

I’ve never been one to enjoy dragon slaying and cool special effects so my characters have always been the more mellow, innocent-turning-to-evil types so this game was perfect for me in that it is possible to run a full story all the way through without lots of blood and guts and other unseemly things (except demon possession, that is.) On the other hand, Seth, the game geek, was itching for a good brawl or two so when we played together we had explosions and sword fighting in the opening scene. And yet, I still loved it!

I’m not going to get into technical talk about the system, or art work, etc. If you want technical talk about this go to Seth.

All I’ve got left to say about this game is that whether you like the dramatic and romantic stories or if your tastes run more toward exploding lemmings and demon possession- you’ll like this game.