Spam killed the Universalis Arena II

[ScottM]

I've got a question for UniWiki players: was it all tedious (ever) to include links & wiki formatting and the like when posting play? And would Universalis-specific tools be at all helpful in Actual Play?

Linking's not bad at all. Setting up a framework is important though-- will every component be its own page? Will all of the location components share a page?  You need to avoid setting the same information in two locations, cause only one tends to get updated, so they quickly get out of sync.

While Uni specific tools sound great, I can't think of anything specific that would have been necessary or even really cool to have.  If I think of something specific, I'll be sure to let you know.  [On a little more thought-- cut aways for complications would be great. We wound up putting complication stuff at the bottom of the page and hrefing back and forth, but if you could "show/hide" the complication stuff in the body of the page, that'd be handy.]

Scott

[Trevis Martin]

Ok then.  Well the offer stands.  Let me know if you want to set it up.

One bit that might be helpful in twiki is it can do an automatic table of contents that is anchor linked to the headers.  If you use a low level header for the complication, etc, it can take you right to it.  YOu can also display the contents of one twiki page inline with another.  In other words you can edit one topic and have it be updated in all instances across the board.

regards,

Trevis.

[Mike Holmes]

Actually that sounds pretty cool to me. Is this what you're referring to as "Uni Specific Tools" or did you have something else in mind? I'd be very interested, actually.

Mike

[Trevis Martin]

Mike,

I'm not sure if you're talking to me or not since it was Dev that mentioned Uni specific tools, but TWiki is a pretty heavily developed wiki so there are all kinda little bits to it that I think may be helpful.  I'm investigating show/hide functionality at the moment to see if that one is possible, but I thought the indexing and inline display capability would help a lot.

Is anybody else interested in giving it another go then?

Trevis

[Mike Holmes]

Oops, yeah, Dev, what were you thinking in terms of tools? Are Trevis' examples what you're looking for? Or did you have something else in mind?

I think that I'm potentially up for another stab at the game. I agree with Bob, I think, in that I don't think that all of the overhead that we put in to make the game more accessible was a good idea. That is, I agree in general that it would be nice for the game to be accessible, but it has to be something simpler, IMO.

And, as usual, I'd ask for a more sim game, but I'm not sure if anyone is interested in that. I still think it has the most potential for play on Wiki.

Mike

[DevP]

Oops, yeah, Dev, what were you thinking in terms of tools? Are Trevis' examples what you're looking for? Or did you have something else in mind?

Well, we could start up a thread on this, if more brainstorming was wanted; I was thinking of some more all-encompassing tools, although I think that you should take Trevis up on his Wiki and such ASAP.

I was thinking about a theoretical online package (probably a Twiki mod or such), with some tools that made Universalis creation & management of Facts/Components/Scenes easier, perhaps such that you wouldn't strictly need to have a copy of the rules at your side to play. The system is aware of how Facts/Things relate, and could organize the various elements in play (a dynamic dropdown menu, frex) in a meaningful, nested fashion.

I'm still thinking through if there's an actually easy interface for this sort of thing, and if its actually completable - we're talking more about a wish list than a promised result on my end. I also asked here, because I wanted to see if it was something players really thought about much - i.e. would players have an easier time, and maybe post more, if they didn't have to explicitly worry about referencing the rules properly int heir post? It sounds like it wasn't actually a big impediment, in fact, so this thing is probably more "could be interesting" rather than "very helpful".

[Mike Holmes]

Interestingly, I actually did start coming up with an application that would do what you describe, using Lotus Notes as the basis. Maybe I'll look back into that (it was a long time ago).

Anyhow, I think I'm definitely going to take Trevis up on his offer. Next week. :-)

Mike

[Christopher Weeks]

Mike,

Talk some more about making it a more sim game.  I know one of your beefs is multi-genre...what else?

Chris

[kwill]

although I was very bad about not posting to TUA2 in a long long while, I'd been keen to join in another wikigame of uni

tools: tools that I have thought up previously have centered on having mandatory fields (frex, every scene has a location and time) - but to make this usable in uni you'd have to be able to make field templates on the fly (for non-core rules that are tenetted in)

I think tools could be built around a particular framework (eg, core uni, shards) but at some point you're going to be relying on the users again

[Bob McNamee]

A framework of consensus for how to run Complications is probably the most important thing for running the game in wiki (or other internet form).

With that, and perhaps an agreement on how, or if, an Active Player or Scene Framing Players is determined is enough to get going.

Personally, for the next game, I'd rather do just the barest framework of rules in pre-game discussion...then dive right into play, perhaps with multiple scenes, and flesh everything out as the needs of the scenes require.

Well, maybe a "Once around the table Tenet setting", but no world building beyond that. If its needed Component, Location, Gimmick or Tenets...add it in play.

[edited in: and most  of the remaining pages got spammed again over the last couple days  :>  )

[Mike Holmes]

The multi-genre thing isn't a big deal, and a separate consideration from the idea of a more sim game. I've gone over this before, but one of the problems that I see is investiture in the stories that are being told as a result of play. What I'd like to see is a game where people weren't so interested in making stories as much as making a world.

When a person jumps into playing Everquest, they don't worry about the "plot" to date because there is none. Instead there's just this world that you wander characters around inside. That's what I'm looking more to do. Skip the storytelling (well, to an extent) and just make people, places, and then have "stuff" happen.

I think that overall it would be a much more viable model for play, and is what I had in mind for Wiki play from the start.

As a history, while creating Universalis, I was involved with JB on a Wiki on which the activity was just creating this world. I had a problem with it personally because there were no rules about when something could be discredited by another participant, and when it could not. At the time I thought that Universalis would be the way to solve this problem.

What happened, however, was that in the first attempt at Wiki play of Universalis, I didn't make this at all clear, and kinda lost sight of it myself. We started playing, and it turned into just an online way to play Universalis like normal. When what I wanted was to use Universalis to do something fairly different from standard Universalis play.

And I've never been able to get back to the original idea. People interested in UniWiki want to play standard Universalis for the most part. When I mentioned this idea last time I had people threaten to back out of play because they were expecting normal play.

What I'm saying is that I'm really only interested in joining up with a wiki that is going to be set up by people who are interested in this idea. I don't want to just shout "another uni wiki!" and have people come running and then find that the game isn't what I want to play yet again because most of the people involved want to play standard play.

Now, that shouldn't stop anyone from starting another UniWiki on their own that's like the previous ones have been. But is anyone interested in the kind of game that I'm proposing? No "plot" just worldbuilding, and stuff happening. I'm not selling it well, but it's hard to explain just why I think it'll work without a lot more text. But I think it would be really fun.

Maybe it's just me?
Mike

[Bob McNamee]

Mike, I'd be up for that kind of play actually.

I'd be interedted in a game where you can't return to a scene with the same characters for at least two scenes or something.

Where there's a wedge against plot.

I'm a bit burnt out for continuing-style gaming right now. A Uni world where scenes are occurring all over the place in order to fill out many varied aspects of the world/universe/setting would be fine.

Might need to tweak Coin refresh, but maybe not.

It would be fun to build a really lush world, a little at a time.

[Christopher Weeks]

I'm interested in playing because I'd like to see what Universalis does with a different set of parameters.  But honestly, without story, it's hard for me to envision the point.

Maybe it works like this(?):  We're still building stories, but they're really small, kind of ordinary stories -- stories that don't typically span scene breaks.  And as we accumulate tons of those stories, the world emerges as a semi-coherent thing with complex topology.

Is that how you're seeing it?

Whether or not I pegged it, as bob suggested a wedge against plot, what starting gimicks would you be imagining for kicking this thing off?

Chris (wondering if this should be split off)

[Trevis Martin]

Okay guys.

I've gone ahead and set up a new web for the online Universalis game on my TWiki site.  You can find it here.  Everyone who's interested in playing go ahead and register there.

best,

Trevis