Under the Snowflakes and Stars
A downloadable story game
Once upon a time, before knights fought with demons, before battle, before war, and before the sun, there was a great city at the top of the world, shining throughout the night that had lasted forever. Built of ice and starlight, full of elegant palaces, shimmering statues, it was home to a people whose splendor we are not given to understand.
But that was before the coming of the Dawn. That was before the Mistake caused the destruction of Polaris.
Many stories are told about the Mistake, its nature, its origins, and its history. No one remaining among the people knows the truth, but everyone knows that before the Mistake, the city was perfect, the sky was dark, and the people had no fear. Now, their city is left a smoking crater, the sky is haunted by a brilliant sun and ghostly moon, strange-formed demons pour forth from whence the palace once stood, and the people have learned of terror.
Under the Snowflakes and Stars is a storytelling game of chivalric tragedy in the utmost north. 3 to 6 Players take one of Three Roles to collaboratively tell a story of the Knights of the Order of Stars.
It is a reimagining of the indie RPG classic Polaris, using the mechanics and procedures from the excellent game Under the Autumn Strangely, remade to have a complete game in only 4 pages. You might want to read or play those games before this one, to fully understand what's going on. (Both those games are great.)
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I've not played Polaris (yet) but as I understand it the through-line of each protagonist's story is the progression from Zeal to Weariness and ultimately corruption or death. Is there a way to have mechanical support for that in this game? (Love what you've done here if it's not obvious)
The procedure for that isn't explicitly mechanized. It's up to the players to enact it (using scene framing questions and other tools to guide the story that direction).
The line about "it's every knight's immutable destiny" is important, though: this is the end every player should be playing toward having happen, and it's the responsibility of every player to see that it happens. That player buy-in is really key. If they don't want to see a Knight's tragic downfall, they should probably play another game.
How do the scene types differ from each other, and what are some examples of questions that a scene answers?
The main difference between scene types is the number of Change tokens each role gets. This will influence the story and how it progresses, as each role gets varying levels of narrative authority.
For example questions, I think a good scene framing question will point the story in an interesting direction but not be so constrained that there's only one answer. A good question is something like "Why does Sir Alphard, last of his line, betray his oath that he gave to his mother on her deathbed?" This gives us a clear direction to play toward (breaking the oath) but a lot of flexibility in how that happens. (We may have a lot of flexibility if this oath has never been established in the fiction before, and we have to define that oath as well as break it.)
The overall story is one of beautiful tragedy and the downfall of the Knights, so anything that builds int hat direction would be good: "What makes the demon so appealing or tempting to the Knight?" or "How is the last great work of the glass sculptors of Polaris finally destroyed?" or "Upon the knight return from their long exile in the wilderness, how do they find the city has changed?"
To a big extent, these questions are up to the players, so that they can guide the story in directions they are interested in it going. (It probably also would help to read the original game Polaris to capture the tone and feel of the setting. Then try to imagine scenes and actions from that game, and use the scene framing questions to help move the game in those directions.)
Wait, wait, wait, what??? OMG, downloading!
A beautiful, subtle game that gets quickly to the heart of the places that inspired it.
This is very exciting! Thank you for a new game, I will try to get it to the table soon. :)
If you play it, I would love to hear how it goes!
Will do!