The Wish We Wish to Night is a short supplement to the game Polaris: Chivalric Tragedy at Utmost North. It promises to deal with advanced strategy, a few errata, and a new type of character.
Overall, I was somewhat disappointed by the booklet. The actual content is scarce, and the new art (especially the equations) contrasts with the tone of the game.
In terms of content. First, I think the errata of any core book should be freely accessible, and not distributed in a non-free supplement. Fortunately, the errata is short and not really essential to players of the core game.
The advanced strategy part is somewhat useful, although I'm pretty sure most players have come up with similar strategies by themselves.
Then there's the new type of knight to play, the Knight of a Dark Star, along with new Blessings, Fate and Abilities. This addition indeed offers new gaming possibilities. However, I'm concerned this new 'class' will shift the focus of the game away from the story by introducing differences between players. There is a sense of focus and clarity in Polaris as characters are essentially all equal and only differentiated by story elements. This new class risks introducing competitive elements from other RPGs and thus deteriorate the collaborative storytelling experience.
About the booklet itself. I'm not one to judge content by the number of pages (I actually think that the shorter the better in most cases), but in this case the announced 28 pages are somewhat misleading. The 28 pages can be decomposed as follows:
- Covers, acknowledgements, and introduction: 5 pages
- Illustrations and equations: 6 pages
- Advertisements: 4 pages (!)
- Errata: 1/2 page
- Actual content: 12,5 pages.
I was also disappointed to find several typos in such a small amount of text.
In terms of style. The art is similar to the one found in Polaris, but less homogeneous. Although it is interesting to see illustrations from foreign-language editions of Polaris, the different styles don't always match with each other. However, the biggest change comes from the introduction of physics equations (from Einstein's general relativity, which fits the theme of the Knight of a Dark Star). It looks like the author got excited talking about black holes with a physicist, and decided to insert theses scientific concepts into the game at all costs. Introducing hard science in the mysterious and mystical setting of Polaris feels awkward and like a complete shift in the mood and tone of the game to me.
Conclusion. It feels like the decision to write this supplement was an emotional one, rather than the result of carefully thinking about the game's evolution. Even for five bucks, it feels more like you are doing a good deed by supporting an indie author rather than really buying new content. Or maybe Polaris is just one of these masterpieces that are better left untouched.
