Ran into a problem...

[Bailywolf]

Ran into a problem trying to convince my regular group to give U a try.

They like a fairly bread and butter, mule-kick the orcs, goal-oriented game.  They have a hoot with D&D, Unknown Armies, even Over the Edge... but try and convince them to go with the world building concept of Universalis... and the big questsion was, 'why would we want to do that?'

It got me thinking.  As the designers, what exactly is the purpose of Universalis?  I had a hell of a time trying to explain this... when I didn't exactly grasp it myself.  Perhaps the reintroduction of PC's is what I need- a solid touchstone for conventional rpg's- or simply a better way of explaining The Big Why.  Perhaps an Introduction to the Novice pamphlet is in order here... or at least some advice for prospective... what would the word be?  Not game master... well... the guy who introduces the game to his uninitiated group.  Read: me.

When I explained it in terms of the 'you are the Gods creating this world' they grasped it immediatly... but began asking how they stat out a god character... and how gods duke it out!  The version of the game I have doesn't have any of the optional rules, so i just winged it (it seemed to be hitting the mark) and told them that they fought their duels by manipulating the mutualy created world and trying to score coins off each other... but then lost them, when they became immersed in the competive side of things without paying any attention to the plausibility or consistency of the actions and characters they created.  

It broke down after about half an hour after I got confused with the currency exchange, the story power thing, and all. (I still vote 100% for a unified 'currency'.  Story power is a pain in the ass... especialy when trying to explain how it is used instead of the coins themselves... they asked why they don't just use coins.)

I'd like to give it another shot, but need some clear and concise advice to give to my confused players.

I'll keep yall apraised.

[Valamir]

Ohh, some hard questions.

For starters perhaps I should put back in a large part of the introduction that I had left out.  Some previous feedback suggested it was really more design notes than introduction, but it kind of sounds like some "what the heck is this all for" design notes is what you were looking for.

The "god thing" is actually, as I've mentioned, something that I want to do with the game, but probably not a good place to start as it definitely involves the players themselves as characters in the story which is a fairly difficult thing to pull off.

I'll break down my ideas in this regard into two parts.

1) "How to describe the concept of Universalis"  Obviously most of here at the Forge have the tools to talk in terms of director power and world building and such, but in describing a basic play session of Universalis I've taken a different approach which seems to go over well.

Think in terms of story writers for a favorite TV show.  Most TV scripts are designed by a committee of writers who often will sit around a table and brainstorm ideas for an episode.  In some of the "behind the scenes" shows I've watched they'll even stand up and act through a scene "in character" (usually badly).  Different idea along the lines of "and then we'll have Susan go to the grocery store where she'll bump into an old boy friend...Jay do you think Tom Selleck would be available to guest star"  that sort of thing.

Thats kind of what a session of Universalis is like, the Coins and the turn order are there to provide some order and game like structure to what is essentially a shared story creation experience.


2) "But how do you actually start playing"  For this I'm toying with the idea of actually explicitly haveing "Game Host" as a position in the game because the game does require a bit of direction to get off the ground.

Basically the type of play supported in the core rules works best with virtually no prep time except for the "Host" to understand the rules.  Sit the players around the table and give them a small supply of Coins some blank paper, a pencil and have a big pool of dice.  

Then start with something along the lines of "Today we are going to play a roleplaying game" then picking a player at the table who is usually cooperative say "Alan, what sort of roleplaying game do you feel like playing"  If Alan mentions a number of different preferences, say "Great, now if you could only pick one of those things which is most important to you" Then when he answers say "Fine, today we're going to play a game about 'X'.  Alan that choice will cost you 1 Coin.  If anybody else really doesn't want to play that type of game speak now and you can try to Challenge Alan's choice"  If someone does, run them through the Challenge mechanic and explain this option is always available to Challenge anything.

Then move to the next player and repeat the process adding a different element...genre, setting, mood, theme, etc.  When you've reached a point where there is enough stuff *about* the game, its time to get started.  Pehaps when play returns to you as the Host.  Then introduce the protagonist (or perhaps the main villain, or some other compelling element that will kick off the story).

For example say the play to this point has developed a "Fantasy game, where magic is ubiquitous and a factor in everyday life, and the primary conflict is with the rise of technology reducing reliance on mages".  On your turn you might start things off with "Tom Grevel is a youth who grew up in a workshop helping his father.  His father was a clock maker who had begun makeing progress combining clockwork mechanism with the new steam engine.  One day while Tom was working quietly a squad of robed magus paid a visit.  They hauled Tom's father away and burned the shop to the ground after siezing blue prints for evidence"  

Pay for these things very carefully and slowly using this as an opportunity to teach the game mechanic.  Stress that Tom is a potential protagonist for the story but is not necessarily your PC (unless playing with that option) Then say "ok I'm done.  My turn is over, Alan its back to you, what happens now?"

I do want to include a "how to learn / teach / play" section in the rules, but quite frankly I don't know if I'm equipped to write it yet.  The above suggestions are how I've generally started demos...but I'm too close to the rules to know what it really needs to aid in understanding.  Part of what I hope to get from this forum is some aid in coalescing these ideas into something concrete.


Finally, with regards to the Coin / Story Power issue.  I have not experienced any trouble to date with the conversion, so its hard for me to picture what you've run into.  Basically Story Power is all that matters.  Everything you do you do with Story Power.  Coins are literally the currency you use to regulate how much Story Power you can purchase.  

Again the reason for the dual system is Leverage.  Leverage is very important to the core mechanic of the game.  Instead of purchasing only 1 Story Power with a Coin, players can purchase 3 or 4 or even 10 Story Power with a single Coin IF they can tie the use of that Story Power back to a Trait.  It is a pretty fundamental concept of the game.

Now we used to not call them seperate things.  We used to use Coins to do everything and Leverage basically gave "bonus Coins"...Essentially you'd spend 1 Coin and get the equivelent of 3 (or whatever).  Strangely for us...THIS arrangement is what caused confusion and we found it easier to seperate it out.  Also it fixed some problems where I could spend 1 Coin to get 3, then turn those into 9, then turn those into 27 etc. but that would be getting a little technical to explain.

Perhaps some of the confusion comes from presenting the Coins first.  Try presenting the concept of Story Power as a resource measured in points...like hero points, or fate points, or Drama Dice or any other metagame mechanic that allows players to take control of the story (only these are extensively more powerful than most).  Then explain that the way to GET this Story Power is to buy it.  That is what the Coins are for...to purchase Story Power.  Leverage is essentially the price for that Story Power.  

Does that make anything clearer?


Whoops, got to the end and forgot to add one thing...a big thank you for giving it a shot.  We'll never know if this game appeals to anyone but the two of us and a few assorted Forge nuts unless people like you help us out with some actual play.  I hope your next session goes a little smoother.

[Bailywolf]

Perhaps the problem I run into with the coins is one of mindset.  I tend to treat a pile of real, physical objects as more significant than a pool of theoretical points.  What about reversing it?  Start everyone with a sort of cosmic credit line which allows them to get story-cash advances?  

Then, the actual pile of coins becomes a tactile, physical, immediate representation of a player's leverage in the game.  It apeals more to me to use the 'realer' of the two measures as the primary medium of story control.  

And if, as you say, story power is all that really matters, then this option is just a matter of personal preference.

[Mike Holmes]

I've got a few comments too.

The "purpose" of Universalis is for people to have fun building stories. Thinking about it in other fashions will get you confused. It's not about playing a role in a world of the GMs defining as other RPGs are. Or anything even close to that.

Here's a very simple version of Universalis (ver. -1). Players take turns starting with the youngest player and going around to the left each stating one sentence. The sentences should make sense with each other to tell a story.

That's it.

Universalis does exactly the same thing but uses rules to provide certain advantages. Players are unlimited in what they can do in a turn, with the exception of the limts imposed by the Coins on hand. Challenges allow players to resolve disagreements about the direction of the story. Complications add suspense and mix things up. Specific parts of the mechanics are designed to get the players to reintroduce old elements which might otherwise get forgotten. Etc.

So, the purpose of Universalis is to empower players to create stories in a fun and organized fashion.

So, players expecting to "become" an element of the story in any way will be dissapointed. You are not a god creating the world, nor a character in it. You are a player in a game, and have no particular cognate in the world. There is no one thing that you must associate with. If a player likes, they can certainly choose to associate with a particular character (or nation or stone, for that matter). But there is nothing in the game that links them to that thing automatically. It's interesting that I think that this problem in understanding Universalis is much worse for people who've played RPGs previously. They want to compare the activities, for instant understanding. But it's not forthcoming, unfortunately.

Ralph has a great example. One of the best ways to start a game is to introduce the characters. Get people into making characters right away. If you declare that Rex is a Space Ranger, then you've started to build the world in an effective fashion. And it's fun too. Instead of looking at a book and seeing that there's three organizations that train space pilots and trying to figure out which my character will fit in, I make up the appropriate organization. Which means that the story develops in a very natural fashion.

And don't be shy about making characters either. Another thing that I like about Universalis is that you don't have to worry about getting that 99-00 roll on the percentiles to be royalty. If you want a character to be royal, then he's royal. Want the character to be psychic, then he's psychic. Want a character to have a magic sword, then create that magic sword (I had a character who had a sword that had about ten times the coins invested in the sword as in the character; reminded me of Elric, sorta). If you "abuse" the system ("Gork the Barbarian has an axe with a Level One Planetsplitting trait" might work for some games, but sounds bad for many others), it's up to the other players to bring the errant player back in line with expectations. Knowing this, though, it's not often a problem.

My advice is then to keep other developments to what is happening to the characters. Get them into a scene right away. Create things pertinent to their surroundings and situation, including more characters. In this way the story evolves more like it would in other media. You can create other stuff away from the action if you like, but it may never get used, and often adds little.

One other caution. You can "break" Universalis very easily, and that's by competing with either the game or other players. That's not at all what it's about. The mechanics will continue to work fine, but the stories that result will be terrible. And the "competition" will not be fair or even. The game is not designed to provide that. Universalis needs to be a group effort to succeed. There are players for whom this is not an interesting proposition. I've already encountered a few. While Univversalis is generic, it is certianly not meant to appeal to all players.

BTW, yours would not be the only session that broke down after a while. I've run a session that had the same problem, myself. OTOH, it was similar in nature to your "god game". So, the lesson there might be to stay away from that notion.

Lots of good comments in general, lots to consider. I hope that our responses aren't coming off as dismissive, as this is exactly the sort of stuff we most need to consider. And I also hope that the game experience that your players had don't sour them on trying it again. As Ralph said, feedback like this is critical.

Thanks,
Mike

[Mike Holmes]

Perhaps the problem I run into with the coins is one of mindset.  I tend to treat a pile of real, physical objects as more significant than a pool of theoretical points.  What about reversing it?  Start everyone with a sort of cosmic credit line which allows them to get story-cash advances?  

Then, the actual pile of coins becomes a tactile, physical, immediate representation of a player's leverage in the game.  It apeals more to me to use the 'realer' of the two measures as the primary medium of story control.  

And if, as you say, story power is all that really matters, then this option is just a matter of personal preference.

No, I think you have a good point in a way. It's just the math step that causes the problem. The other option in general would be to have the leverage rule read something like, "For each coin spent, get as many coins as the level of the trait involved. These coins can then be used for anything but producing furhter leverage." You see the potential probelm that we're trying to avoid? I leverage a level three trait to create three coins, then leverage one of them to create three more, then leverage one of those...

There are also a couple of other places that it might be problematic, though I'm not remembering them now. Ralph? Definitely something to think about.

Mike

[Bailywolf]

Perhaps my aproach was where I faltered.  Universalis isn't really a role playing game at all.  It's like a storytelling game... more akin to Baron M.  But I still have trouble with the lack of goals.  "To tell a good story" just ins't enough to motivate a buch of conventional gamers... I need a better hook to capture them.  

Perhaps introducing an element of drinking?  Spend a coin to make another player drink?  Nah...

One possible limit to the itterative expansion of coins is a closed-loop universe.  There a fixed, finite number of coins.  Perhaps only 100 to go around.  Give each player (oh, say) 10 at the start of the game.  If the bank runs out, then it's time to spend some coins, build some charatcers.  When the bank is flush, it's time to leverage those characters for more coins or cash-in characters to return some fluidity.  

Another is to roll most 'profit' back into a small pool representing the character or element in question.  As you leverage an element, you can increase that element's promenance and definition... eventualy producing complex and well defined people/places/things.

[Valamir]

Thats an interesting mindset.  See as a financial guy by profession I tend to think of money (i.e. the coins) as being completely worthless pieces of metal except to the extent that the represent the ability to purchase something.  

So from my perspective the Coins themselves have no value except to the extent they allow you to purchase something (in this case Story Power).

That might be a interesting thread all it own...the nature of what the Coins signify.


Re: your reversal idea, let me see if I grasp you right.  You're suggesting that the players have a non physical pool of resource (called X to avoid confusion), and that they can draw upon this pool recieving the physical resource (say Y) to spend on what they want to in the game.  This way the thing that actually has value is the thing that actually has a physical representation...

Contrasted to the current way where the pool of resource is physical (Coins), and they draw upon this pool to recieve a non physical resource (Story Power) to spend on what they want to in game.

I'll tumble that idea around a bit...but on first blush I see one disadvantage.  In the reversal suggestion the non physical pool still has to be tracked, only now instead of tracking it with Coins it would be tracked...on paper or something.  As written the non physical resource doesn't really need to be tracked because it is spent virtually immediately upon being purchased, allowing the pool to be tracked with the Coins...

[Bailywolf]

See what you're saying.  But the two rates of exchange just seem... untidy.  I understand the design considerations involved... it just seems like a layer of complexity which denies your design ideals- a system to moderate cooperative storytelling/world building.

Also, it raises another question (in light of the above illumination about competitive universalis)... what motivates?

Again "a good story"... but there is also the inherent reward of profit.  Leverage an element to gain a return in coins.  This seems to naturaly imply that this acquisition is a fundamental goal in the game- following the logic that the things highlighted in the rules of the game represent the game's central focus.  D&D spends a huge amount of page space on combat... and for the most part, it's a combat adventure game.  

The core mechanic in Universalis seems to revolve around acquiring more coins... I can see (and actualy, have seen) how the scrabble for more coins quickly obscures the story.  

Perhaps placing such emphesis on profit taking isn't the direction you want to go with this.  I doesn't quite jazz with the conceptual framework as I understand it.

[Valamir]

Mike may have overstated a bit when he mentioned the purpose of the game was not about competition.  In fact, some of the mechanics we were tossing about resembled a game of poker.

What I think he meant to say is that the competition isn't between player's and their characters.  In earlier editions of the game the Complication mechanic usually focused on the Originator trying to "get" another player's character and that player's attempt to avoid being "got" (a mini "beat the GM's death trap" kind of thing).

When V4 eliminated the focus on experienceing the game through characters the nature of the Complication changed a bit.

Players are still competing but now you're competing for control of the story, world, characters, and events.  In other words, when all is said and done we'll have "written" 1000 sentences worth of story.  How many of those sentences were mine.  How much of that story did I direct, and did I eventually accomplish with it the type of story I wanted to tell.

Well, how much of the story is yours depends on how many Coins you spent and how skillfully you used leverage to magnify the purchasing power of Coins.  How many Coins you can spend depends on how many Coins you earn through mechanics like Originating complications.

There's a balance between controlling the story your way and collaborating with the other players to tell it in a group acceptable way, and that balance is determined by the Social Contract and realized in-game by Challenges and the Complication vote mechanism.

[Mike Holmes]

What Ralph said.

The rules are intended to encourage accumulation of coins to a certain extent. In doing so you are accumulating power to tell the story. It is the motivation to collect the coins that keeps the little economy we have created going. That exchange (hopefully) causes the game to work as designed to cause stories to be created.

Complications have a relatively high rate of return for the winner, and low for the loser. This gives incentive to try and be the winner of the complication so as to be able to tell the story from your vantage point. In giving these incentives to compete the system encourages creation of conflicts which are important to the story. Again, hopefully.

These things have all worked in demos run by Ralph and myself, but being that we know how they are supposed to work, this is not surprising. We have struggled to find a balance in the text between over-explanation of our motives and explanation so brief that players are left wondering where to go at all. It would seem that we have, perhaps, pared it down too far. This is my fault as I think I may have overreacted to responses that previous versions were to chock full of design commentary.

If, after this discussion, you are still a bit lost, perhaps we can send you a copy of version 3.x so that you can see all of Ralph's excellent notes in the text.

Mike

[Bailywolf]

some good (if wierd) news.



I ran Universalis by my sister (an entirely uninitiated person with no intrest or history of role playing) and her drama major room mate.  When I told them to think of it as a party game, they got it immediatly.  The esoterica of the rules went over their heads... but conceptualy they had NO PROBLEM with the ideas behind it.  I had none of the "ah, so why are we doing this again?" I got from my experienced gamers (all male, by the way... I wonder... could Univaversalis be the first female friendly rpg-like game out there?).

They found the telling of the story rewarding enough to make it a goal... while the old-school gamers couldn't find any motivation in the storytelling.  

So perhaps, your audience should be somewhere on the fringe of the gaming community.

[Valamir]

Heh, thats not surprising :-) More fodder for the "but its not really an RPG" folks ;-)

I have been tumbling your comments around in my head, and its possible I'm becoming disatisfied with the two tier payment system...not sure...that kind of thing has to simmer and bubble in my brain for a while.  But, especially if the game were to be more "party-game" oriented, the rule would need to be stream lined...hmmm.

I'll throw it open for brainstorming.

Given the strongly desired goal to tie the use of Coins to Component Traits in a way that makes it more efficient to center ones control on elements tied to those components (i.e. Leverage) what other options can people see.

1 Coin to 1 statement is easiest of course, but it doesn't tie things back into the Trait.

[Mike Holmes]

I think that females are socialized to be less competitive in most modern societies. So, the lack of competition in the game means that, yes, it might quite possibly be more interesting to the average female than the average male. This would also bump with my personal experiences.

And, why would we want to market to gamers anyway when they are so small a segment? I think that Universalis might just appeal to normal people as well. Perhaps it's only hardened gamers who will have problems with it. Think about that!
;-)

Mike