The post-apocalyptic undersea RPG Polaris from Black Book Editions was debuted at GenCon 2016 and will be available in stores in September. I picked up the Quickstart on DriveThru RPG recently, as I do love the undersea world–I am an Open-water certified SCUBA diver.
Looks-wise, the art was better than usual for a quickstart. It was full-color, and many PDFs like this are only black & white. There were several art techniques used. Several of the illustrated characters–including cover and inside cover–were beautiful examples of 3D art (the kind I do). There was also a very nice contour map of the Earth. Continents were altered, with low sea-level areas covered by the oceans. The various undersea territories where humans now live were depicted as well. Nearly every one of the 24 pages had illustrations.
The introductory fluff tells the tale of an Earth’s surface so damaged by war and climate changes that humanity had to flee undersea. There are several city-states plus Equinox, a very large cosmopolitan trading city. The Equinox fluff gave me a little Babylon 5 vibe. The information given on the city-states, the details of the surface disasters, and a religion is necessarily scant, given it is a quickstart. But there is enough to intrigue, combined with the 6 assorted pregens/archetype PCs, which can be used with the included adventure module, “Havoc on Irmenger.”
While rules in a quickstart are necessarily bare-bones, Polaris went too far. I do not think it is possible to play the game with the limited mechanics presented. First, nowhere is there any explanation of the eight character Attributes, except for the abbreviations given in the archetypes’ statblocks. (What the —-!?) The PDF covers the test (check) mechanics clearly enough to run a game, EXCEPT–how is the GM supposed to decide which Attribute to use for a test if she has no clue what COO is? Or if INT does mean “Intellect” or Intelligence” as she presumes, and what type of skills it covers if she guessed correctly? Speaking of skills, most quickstart rulesets/modules I have read include an abridged skills/abilities section covering those used for pregens and/or module. Not Polaris.
Combat mechanics are thoroughly explained, except for the game’s Wounds system. The Wounds chart to tick off damage is pretty complex, with a varying number of boxes for each of 6 locations. As wound number and severity go up, ticks for lower severity are erased and replaced by ticks in the next higher box for that location. So far, so good. BUT, how are hit locations determined? There’s a separate chart to roll on. However, nothing else: Are hit locations an optional rule? Are they rolled for each successful attack? Only called shots? Only Criticals?
Finally, there are the Polaris Effect powers. The fluff hints they are something like “psionics” or “Jedi arts.” The PDF has 3 “sample” powers given. But, again, the mechanics are too lacking to be used. The section say that 2 tests are performed, “Mastery of the Polaris Effect test” and “a Polaris Power effect.” What Attribute/s are used for the tests? Are Mastery and Polaris Power specific skills (if so, no pregens have them)? Are they some feat or other ability only covered in the full rules? Again, the Quickstart doesn’t say. So why were Polaris Effect powers even mentioned, since the mechanics are so incomplete as to be unusable? They should have be left for full core books’ writeup.
Now comes the really bad news, at least for me. I liked the setting a lot. I was sure, from the little fluff in the PDF, that I would enjoy reading the whole thing. Plus the mechanics would be complete. Unfortunately, the game is way out of my budget. The 2 volume core rules (total 488 pages), cost, on Paizo’s website, US$89.90 (or $149.90 for the deluxe edition with slipcase, blind-deboss, metallic foil stamping, and two ribbon bookmarks). For comparison, Force & Destiny is 433 pages and costs $60. Maybe that’s not too pricy to many gamers, but for me $90 is a deal-breaker at this point.
TL/DR: “Try before you buy” isn’t really an option for Polaris. But if price isn’t an object, you might want to check out the core set.
Linda Whitson
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