Universalis - Red Hunger

[Alan]

Hi all,

Last week, playing Univeralis, Clinton entered a game rule that said "Alan has to write this game up for Actual Play on the Forge."  As far as I can tell from other examples, this means summarizing the imaginary events that were created in play.  I'll be honest: these accounts rarely interest me.  For me, the act of creation is a reward in itself, and the sensation can't be recaptured in a second-hand account.  So I have decided not to do an extensive summary of the diegic (imaginary) contents.  Instead, I'll focus on my observations of group dynamics and game rule mechanics.

I apologize to Clinton, Wilhelm, Mark, Kerri, and Laura, who as players, may have been expecting to enjoy a more detailed summary of play.


*Brief Introduction to Universalis Rules*

If you're unfamiliar with the game, you can find a description in Ron Edward's review at ( http://www.indie-rpgs.com/reviews/review.php?id=24_0_5_0" > http://www.indie-rpgs.com/reviews/review.php?id=24_0_5_0 ).  The review is long, so you might just want to read the ABOUT THE GAME section, which covers mechanics.


*Quick Story Summary*

Our story was set in a prison mining dome set on Mars, with characters like the mine boss, the new Warden, rebel miners and a spy infiltrating the rebels. As it turned out, addictive gas from the mine was infecting people with an alien virus that produced zombies from the dead. In the climax, an "Inquisitor" showed up from Earth with a battle fleet, ready to flatten the dome, while at the same time a gas leak exploded causing chaos on the surface. The mine boss, doctor, and some miners escaped in the Warden's private ship, after recovering the ship's control nexus from the spy and zapping the exo-skeleton-enhanced Warden. We had a lot of fun.


*In Play Observations*

Everyone caught onto the rules quickly and made contributions to the story. However, I did notice that some players consistently contributed more, and more often, than others.  These seemed to be the same players who were vocal in InSpectres.  I suspect this is just natural preference.  As far as I can tell, everyone enjoyed the game, and no one felt they couldn't contribute when they wanted to.

In the first half hour, I noticed that part of the GM-player dynamic established in InSpectres had carried over.  I had GMed InSpectres.  In Universalis, which has no GM, I took the role of teaching the game, making sure no one missed a turn, and also encouraging less vocal players to contribute.  I suppose these actions reinforced the "GM-authority" effect.  All the players continued to catch my eye when declaring their narration, as if I still had primary gatekeeper authority.  When I realized what was happening, I just pointed out I wasn't the GM and the implicit requests for permission stopped.

We had started out a bit slow, but by this time, the players were getting involved in the story.  I noticed that this concern for the narrative drove the players, rather than the measure of their coins or some other player vs player competion.  I suspect humans have a natural story-building impulse that drives the play of Universalis - and RPGs in general.  For my part, I created complications as much to add excitement to the story, as to increase my coin wealth.  Towards the end, though, lack of coins motivated me to add complications.

We had perhaps four or five negotiations, and no actual challenge biding.  I wonder what the game would be like if someone chose to push limits?  A careful provocateur might increase the intensity of player investment, leading to more challenges and competing narrative directions - all without actually creating any inter-player antagonism.  I'll have to experiment with this in a future game.

In the third and final hour of play, we also discovered that buying coins in another player's complication is a great way to earn coins too - even if you loose, you earn back one coin per coin spent.  Everyone was buying in to every complication.  However, only the biggest winner actually used narration rights completely; others often just saved the coins they earned.

The hardest part of rules for people to catch on to, was the fact that Complications remain open during normal rounds, and dice are drawn on one's own turn.  Once everyone caught on to this, many players would pass in order to speed up the resolution of a complication.  To be fair, this happened toward the end of the night, so the motive may have simply been a desire to see the story resolve.

I've played Universalis twice now.  In both games, we gave the story a title after we were finished.  Clinton named this latest story "Red Hunger."

Overall, while I enjoy facilitating groups and being the center of attention, I really like these games where gatekeeping demands on the GM are reduced or distributed.  I like the imaginative act of GM preparation, but I also like the sparking dynamic of group creation.  As someone observed, uncertainty in Universalis, and other player-narrated games, comes as much from the contributions of other players as from the dice.  If "creativity is two ideas in collision" (Orson Scott Card) then Universalis is a hissing reactor.

[Tony Irwin]

Sounds like a great game Alan - I always love reading about how other groups play Universalis.

For my part, I created complications as much to add excitement to the story, as to increase my coin wealth.  Towards the end, though, lack of coins motivated me to add complications.

Yeah its funny how you can structure the story to suit your coin needs. My own best example of this is when I did a 2player with my friend Liam. We tried a kind of Mines of Moria old fashioned Dungeon Crawl, we soon twigged that intiating complications through having bickering arguments between the characters in the party would generate the coins we needed to do all the exciting (but expensive) flashbacks, dungeon traps and monsters. So a natural structure evolved with each scene, first we'd have a "safe" complication then use those coins to build stuff that would be involved in the "dangerous" complication we wanted to see.

Funny thing is, the coin-spinning character-squabbling was amazingly good fun and become just as central part of the story as anything else.

In the third and final hour of play, we also discovered that buying coins in another player's complication is a great way to earn coins too - even if you loose, you earn back one coin per coin spent.  Everyone was buying in to every complication.  However, only the biggest winner actually used narration rights completely; others often just saved the coins they earned.

Yeah once we caught onto this we'd turn the most trifling little complication into the most outrageous dice war. A simple scene of a samurai standing guard on a wall watching out for goblins, got turned into a world-ending battle with legions of demons and humans fighting it out. The funny thing is that coin-scrounging behaviour actually generates rather than impedes the story.

You might have fun with this one Alan - play with the same group, and throw all your coins into the complication. Everyone will follow suite (we did) greedy for enourmous handfulls of coin generating dice. When you win the complication spend all your coins to take away the coins they won. Ha ha ha! That'll teach 'em! ;-)

Tony

[Mike Holmes]

The "teacher" of the game is often an informal position that comes up in play (I've been that guy a dozen times or more). Like you said, Alan, not a GM, but yet serving is somewhat that authoratative position until people get their feet with the system. At that point the position just sorta fades away. Interesting. Maybe that should be encoded, as an add-on, if nothing else.

Jibes a lot with an early idea we had for a game position called "First Player". Which becomes "traffic cop" more or less. Rob has a position like that very formally constructed in his COTEC project.

Note how players could, if they so chose, give special powers to a single player via Gimmicks, and thereby custom create a GM position. I've not seen it done yet, but I wait with anticipation for the first report of this event. :-)

I wonder what the game would be like if someone chose to push limits? A careful provocateur might increase the intensity of player investment, leading to more challenges and competing narrative directions - all without actually creating any inter-player antagonism. I'll have to experiment with this in a future game.

Cool. You just got promoted to Universalis Samurai. Actually do it, and you may make Sensei. :-)

Thanks for the report. Enlightening.

Mike

[Seth L. Blumberg]

As far as I can tell from other examples, this means summarizing the imaginary events that were created in play.

Actually, that's discouraged on the Forge, except insofar as it leads to interesting discussion of issues of broader significance.

What you posted was exactly what I, for one, like to see here. Thanks!

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Alan,

What Seth said. That's an awesome example for people to follow, and I suspect I'll be directing people here for just that reason.

The thing that interests me the most is the "eye contact" phenomenon you mentioned. I'd like to consider the notion that the role of single, constant GM can be addressed from two aspects: habit (which Universalis explodes) and function. This latter aspect is the idea that "GM-ness" is actually a pretty important, useful thing, not just some leftover that can be scrubbed out of role-playing. I also think that Universalis, as a system, offers a unique opportunity to discover just what the elements of functional GMing really are.

Best,
Ron

[Alan]

The thing that interests me the most is the "eye contact" phenomenon you mentioned. I'd like to consider the notion that the role of single, constant GM can be addressed from two aspects: habit (which Universalis explodes) and function. This latter aspect is the idea that "GM-ness" is actually a pretty important, useful thing, not just some leftover that can be scrubbed out of role-playing. I also think that Universalis, as a system, offers a unique opportunity to discover just what the elements of functional GMing really are.

I think there's two elements here at two different levels of abstraction.  

First is the social dynamic (the bigger box).  I've facilitated other groups - a writers group and a union drive - and what I found is that every group needs certain roles filled and also develops certain assumptions of hierarchy and authority.  Roles in a group include scheduler, convener, recorder, process facilitator, host, amenities provision, subject expert, and probably others I can't think of.  

Second, is the game dynamic (the smaller box within the social dynamic).  Most RPG rules assign different rules tasks to different people.  Often the GM has primary gatekeeper authority (deciding what becomes real in the imaginary world) and usually is also entrusted with the role of monitoring the use of rules.  But it's a common thing for the GM to take on not only roles in the game, but also most of the leadership roles in the group dynamic as well.

I have observed that most people are happy to let someone else do the work, and they also assume that that person wants to retain all these jobs.  It was a great relief when I learned how to delegate task like booking rooms, calling people, etc.  This succeeds best when I find someone who enjoys the kind of activity required by the task.

I also heard somewhere that part of leadership is knowing what role isn't being filled and taking it on if necessary.

Hierarchy and authority is another dynamic.  I think that when one takes on a lot of these roles, other group members tend to defer - sometimes within a boundary, like "Alan's Game" and sometimes in a wider circle, like "Alan's group."  But length of time in the group matters, as does actual age, and communication skills.  I suspect this is our primate ancestry kicking in, producing a network  of deferment and authority within the group.  

A group will drift into dysfunction if the people assigned the most authority are unaware of the consequences of their influence, or just plain get a kick out of exercising it for their own gratification.  Good group participation means being aware of your own impact.

[Mike Holmes]

Well said, sir. Well said.

Mike

[rafial]

I'll be honest: these accounts rarely interest me.  For me, the act of creation is a reward in itself, and the sensation can't be recaptured in a second-hand account.

I guess I'm insufficiently reconstructed, but I actually have really enjoyed reading the descriptions of the stories created in this and other forums on the Forge.  Or maybe I'm just sufficiently starved of Actual Play that I'm willing to  live off second hand accounts :)

However, one meta observation I would like to contribute as one of the participants in this game, is that I think there would be significant differences playing Universalis with a group who were all well famliar with the mechanics.  I think part of the "easy cooperation" that Alan noted came from the fact that most of us were learning as we went, weren't sure what our options were, and in many cases the mechanical resolution came down to somebody say "oh I think we do it this way."

I think a group of players that were really familiar with the rules would be much more likely to "push" against each other and amp up the amount of bidding and complications.  However, from what I've seen of the system so far I don't think that behavior would be destructive, in fact I think it could drive more creativity.

And finally, to bring in a point from Alan's other thread, I also found Universalis a bit exhausting, although enjoyably so.  On the other hand, I can now also see the appeal of a more contemplative, slower paced, GM-lead RPG, as an opportunity to concentrate on the "smalls" such as adding more detail to your character, or the pursuit of longer term character goals  (for multi-session play)

[Rys]

I for one would have liked to hear more about Leslie, the kick-butt doctor, made for zombie bait, and ending up as the heroine of the story.

But yes, I agree with Alan and rafial's observations.

~Rys

[contracycle]

At the risk of being accused of flaunting an agenda, I think that inter-human cooperation has a long pedigree and that learning by observation lies at the basis of all of it.  Imagine too people carrying a heavy object, like furniture - they constantly read each others cues, are constantly of each others actions.  If one was an experienced mover-of-furniture (older, frex) and the other not (frex a teen) then it is highly likely that the teen will show pseudo-deference and follow the older persons lead.

Other people provide excellent feedback for things you are unsure about.  If you fear you have just committed a glorious blunder, you can glance at your mentor just to see whether they have their head in their hands or are wincing in sympathetic pain.  Validation arises from seeing the evidence of your success exhibited by others baheavior, laughing and applauding.

So.  In the first case, I think the eye-catching phenomenon is parrtly just tacit human learning behaviour; we attribute trust to more experienced people, both to lead and to provide feedback.

In case where the GM has special/occult knowledge of the game space, then seeking confirmation/affirmation from the GM is necessary to ensure that an effect unwittingly caused is not overlooked.  This may well just be habit in the case where the G does not have special knowledge.  IOW, I feel the role of teacher and GM are in principle identical in the conventional structure of RPG.

[Valamir]

Great discussion.
The reason I like full stories of actual play with Universalis is that the big weakness of the game (from a selling point), is that there is no clear answer to the question "what's it about" it terms of setting or the type of "adventures" you have.  So the ability to compile a bunch of actual play stories with details of the actual play lets me say "you create stories...like these" and the ability to show Zombie Summer next to The Temple of Bast next to Matasume Blades is a pretty powerful way of demonstrating the game's capabilities.  So Alan, if you'd like to put together a summarized account of the events I'd love to add it to the growing collection on the web site (this goes for anyone whose done some actual play).

As far as feeling exhausted...me too.

I think all games that really require players to get invested into the actual "work" of the game wind up this way.  I know its true of playing Seth's Alyria game (part of the reason I think he's happy to be playing in a good old fashion "GM does the work" sim game now).  Its tiring work being the GM.

[Mike Holmes]

So the ability to compile a bunch of actual play stories with details of the actual play lets me say "you create stories...like these" and the ability to show Zombie Summer next to The Temple of Bast next to Matasume Blades is a pretty powerful way of demonstrating the game's capabilities.

Too true.

That said, I've started to note trends in play. Oddly, the elements of Mars, Zombies, Mining, and Westerns seem to be very common in play (Ralph will remember playing all of these elements together, along with myself, Sean Wipfli, and Tom Back). In fact, I think zobmies may be the single most common element added to Universalis. I doubt that it's something about Universalis that brings these particular things out. But I do think that it might be indicative of what's on people's minds in terms of what they want to play. Which is interesting.

As more play examples are posted, we have a larger statistical sampling of what players are subconciously thinking would be interesting in terms of RPGs.

Mike

[Seth L. Blumberg]

Mike: I think the prevalence of zombies has more to do with the Zeitgeist of early 21st-Century America than anything about the game, and Deadlands has pretty well cemented the zombies->Western connection in many gamers' minds....

[Mike Holmes]

That's what I'm getting at, Seth. It seems to me that Universalis lays that bare. Makes it manifest.

I wonder how much of it might be Forge members that think the idea of Deadlands is cool, but don't want to try the implementation? Hmm. Perhaps as the game recieves wider acceptance, we'll see other trends.

Mike

[Valamir]

Interesting thought...to what extent does Universalis allow you to explore a particular really cool setting/genre that's just captured your imagination without requiring learning a new system, doing a conversion to FUDGE, or hunting for and absorbing the appropriate GURPS sourcebook?

Perhaps that's why certain games have a very "Deadlands" or "Blue Planet" feel to them...