Re: Polaris Day 95 News

From: "Kerry Harrison" <kerry@io.com>

Date: Wed, 15 Dec 1999 00:00:00 +0000

Carol Mulholland wrote in message ...

>I'm not myself keen on the Polaris postings, though, because
>they don't tell me the sort of thing that I want to know about
>a game: its theme(s), its pace, the options available, its
>complexity, the effect of other players, NPCs etc etc.

They're just copies of an in-game newsletters similiar to Olympia's Olympia
Times except only three newsbits per day are accepted.  The newsbits gain
the submitting company Notoriety points which are used to determine if they
get to have and/or keep certain lucrative sponsorship deals.

The game is technically realtime, but only runs during the weekdays.  Orders
may be submitted at whatever turn frequency you want (i.e. daily, every 3rd
day, weekly, biweekly, monthly, etc).

Pretty much all of the standard options space operas offer are available in
the game, although some options will take quite a bit of time to achieve.

It's a very complex game, easily the most complex space opera I've ever seen
or played (and I think I've played them all at one time or another).  It's
definately up there with Odyssey & Legends in terms of complexity.  And has
such fun things as a working simulation of a free market economy, a stock
market, and interesting set of naval architexture rules that require you to
create deckplans when building new  ship classes.

>All I've gathered from the newsletters is that it's an sf
>trading game with c.3 active positions, while the GM letter
>indicates that it's open-ended and that the established
>players are pushing for more power.

The game's still in the beginning stages an right now has approximately
20ish players.  Most players are focusing on either trade and/or
exploration.

That was me trying to making things more interesting for me in the game - I
generally perfer to just play one or two games (usually a good space opera
that takes up most of my interest and a good long term strategy powergame of
some kind) at a time.  Polaris has a wealth of options and a really cool set
of game mechanics not to mention an excellent GM, but I personaly find the
game's rate of progress to what I view as an interesting level of play to be
too slow.  So I find myself playing 2 different space operas to maintain the
level of diversion I like instead of just a single one as I prefer.

Kerry

References

Re: Polaris Day 95 News
paul@nospam.demon.co.uk (Paul Walker)
Wed, 15 Dec 1999 00:00:00 +0000
Re: Polaris Day 95 News
madcentral@aol.com (MadCentral)
Wed, 15 Dec 1999 00:00:00 +0000
Re: Polaris Day 95 News
Carol Mulholland <Carol@flagship-uk.demon.co.uk>
Wed, 15 Dec 1999 00:00:00 +0000

Referenced By

Re: Polaris Day 95 News
paul@nospam.demon.co.uk (Paul Walker)
Wed, 15 Dec 1999 00:00:00 +0000
Re: Polaris Day 95 News
madcentral@aol.com (MadCentral)
Wed, 15 Dec 1999 00:00:00 +0000
Re: Polaris Day 95 News
Carol Mulholland <Carol@flagship-uk.demon.co.uk>
Wed, 15 Dec 1999 00:00:00 +0000