Good experience with newbies.

[Adrienne]

This week, I ran a Universalis game for a couple of high school students as part of my job.  I'm working for a summer program that serves upperclassmen or just-graduated high school students, and part of my duties is running one evening activity a week.  I've chosen RPGs as my "workshop" topics, and ran a couple of D&D sessions earlier in the summer.  I'm a little tired of dungeon crawls, however, and have recently had good experiences with Universalis (see game writeups by CPXB).  So, I decided to try it this week.

Only two students signed up, but the three of us had a blast with it--so much so that they want to continue the same story next week, although I'd originally intended it as a one-shot.  What pleased and surprised me the most was how much the other players were willing to take initiative and contribute.  Out of twenty initial Tenets, I contributed 6, Player 1 made 8, and player 2 made 6.  We had time for two Scenes, both of which were started by the other players--both with pretty high initial bids, more than five coins.

They had some hesitation with rules and the (I suspect normal) issue of "do I need to pay for this?"--but still, they mostly steered where the game went.  Although I spent many of my coins, it was usually to fill in details for the broad strokes they'd already made.  

Anyway, I just wanted to register that satisfaction.  In contrast to my earlier D&D sessions, I found it much easier to get the players to take initiative in the collaborative free-for-all atmosphere of Universalis (and this despite the fact that I was a staff member, and thus by default "in charge").  Good fun.


-Adrienne

[Mike Holmes]

Excellent.

Yes, absolutely the question of what to pay for is always asked. The "problem" is the abstract answer which comes down to "whatever it seems to make sense to pay for" and/or "whatever you want to be able to have a game mechanical effect with." It's just something that has to be experienced. Fortunately in ever game I've seen it just works itself out over the course of a scene or so.

Do your duties include instruction? What I'm wondering is if you might be using the game at all as an instructional tool. From one POV, I think it's unavoidable actually - players transmit their values to each other automatically via play. But did you do this consciously at all?

Mike

[Adrienne]

Do your duties include instruction? What I'm wondering is if you might be using the game at all as an instructional tool. From one POV, I think it's unavoidable actually - players transmit their values to each other automatically via play. But did you do this consciously at all?

I teach physics for the program, but not to either of the students at the game.  I wasn't consciously using Universalis as a teaching tool, if I'm understanding what you mean by that.  I just decided to give it a try because it'd been fun with my normal group, and I liked the idea of needing no prep time.

Looking at it with an eye to me-as-teacher, I realize that I did take a bit of a supervising role in the Tenet-making phase.  In addition to explaining the rules, of course, I was the one who asked clarifying questions to make sure I was writing down the Tenets as intended.  (Another interesting side note--the very first Tenet proposed by one of the players was to include a specific character he wanted, even before I'd mentioned that characters were fine to introduce in the world-building phase.)  Really, though, they barely needed me to explain anything.  


-Adrienne