[Universalis]They Only Come Out at Night 1 (Very Long)

[plosiguant]

[plosiguant]

Some of my thoughts on the session (any of the other players, feel free to pitch in, I know for a fact that D@vid posts here regularily):

I love Universalis!

The game started with just myself, Adam and Garrick, but we easilly launched into it, despite the lack of any experience with similar games (all three of us have a lot of experience with more 'traditional' rpgs). We started the game with very few tenents (only three if I remember correctly), which, judging from my reading of the Forge is below average, but it worked for us.

We initially started tha game as a 'demo' session, just to get familiar with it until D@vid arrived, but we loved the story so much, that we decided to continue with it.

We pretty much ignored the control rules, with anyone taking control of any component at any time. This did get a bit chaotic at times, but we had great fun nevertheless.

One issue which I noticed: Adam and Garrick insisted that a scene be explicable in terms of the preceeding ones. I.e. anyone introdusing a scene would have to explain what happened to get to that point... It did force us to add more depth to the setting and the story, but I am not sure whether this really dealt with things the way Universalis intended.

Anyway, we fully plan to continue the story, and cannot wait to find out what happens next!

Nenad Ristic

[kwill]

> d@vid posts here regularily

well, if by "regularly" you mean "irregularly" ;)

it was great to not be unofficially running the game and teaching others, instead I got to focus on just creating fun story bits - the game ran a little more freeform than I'm used to with Uni, but as I pointed out to Nenad, I haven't yet been in game where I used the Control rules correctly

there was some interesting decisions made on when to reveal particular Facts - usually I hate fussing about "how things work" behind the scenes, but felt compelled to add a few tangental explanations as the story progressed - reading now how loose the group started, I'm going to specifically try out minimal tenets in my next game of Uni

I'm very keen on having a further session (tomorrow) based on the same story, as time away from the game has allowed certain thoughts to develop (like why it's always night!) - I'm still not sure about how to find a middle ground between the spontaneous creativity typical of Uni, and some kind of revision/Editor mechanic

> One issue which I noticed: Adam and Garrick insisted that
> a scene be explicable in terms of the preceeding ones.
> I.e. anyone introdusing a scene would have to explain what
> happened to get to that point...

I think this is largely a matter of taste; for me, somewhat born of Forge discussion of scene-framing, I'm happy to cut to the next interesting bit (the ornithopter crashes, we see the boy, new scene: the boy is drinking soup in the heroes' apartment) and assume that the transition happened somehow (and if it's important we can flash back to it)

one lengthy discussion involved me explaining what seemed like a million things (and others buying Facts where they saw fit), just so that I could connect two mini-scenes - we ended up generating a ton of story and backstory in getting there, so it was worthwhile despite how many times I said "but guys, all I want to do..."

[Valamir]

That sounds like a great game.

The reversed control rules sound quite functional.  Modifications like that are precisely what I created Rules Gimmicks for.

The insistance on maintaining plausibility and structure is also a good use of Gimmicks to give the game the level of structure desired.  This is an entirely group dial-able setting, and I'm thrilled to see groups work out their own preferences for where to set it.