[Universalis] - Finally, a first session...

[Tobias]

Unexpectedly, I finally got to run my first game of Uni yesterday. It was my birthday, some people were over, and we had somewhere between one and two hours to kill before more people would show up - so I ran a game of Uni. My two co-players were E. and F., both 'girls' (30 and 26). Both never RPGd before (although E had perused my RPG books earlier that day), and F is known for some shyness and performance anxiety in 'public' settings - still, that didn't stop us.

And we had a blast! I'm not sure all this will communicate well (half the fun is being there and experiencing the twists, of course), but here's what happened.

(everything in Italics costs 1 coin)

Our first tenets were:

- all scenes take place at night
- it wil be a thrilling story
- there will be a murder
- the murder will be committed by multiple perpetrators
- the victim is a woman.

A tenet of 'the killers will be 3 men' was challenged by me as being too much, too early - I wanted more mystery.

After a ton of bidding where I and E bid the same amount over and over, I finally bought the scene for 7 coin. I started framing the scene in a graveyard (like I did in an example when explaining Uni), but that was challenged by E. I then switched over to an:

- American Diner
- 70s paraphenelia
- hamburger joint

In this place were Pete and Bob, both truckers, and it turns out the diner was along the highway. Bob and Peter are both drinking coffee and having burgers, as Bob suddenly finds something nasty in his burger, causing him to start screaming at the staff and generally causing a ruckus.

Pass the turn to E.

Also in the diner are Tracy and Sandra, a lesbian couple. Tracy decides she doesn't like Bob's screaming, and goes over to him. They get into an argument (basically, Bob shouts abuse at her, the highlight being that he's sick of women complaining to him while he is performing a valuable service like hauling 30.000 packages of feminine products over the highway) and Tracy and Sandra move into a corner of the diner.

Pass to F.

Pete turns to Bob and tells him 'Shut the *#&@ up, you idiot, and, by the way, I've slept with your wife'. That at least had the effect of shutting me up - and introducing the first complication, a fight between Bob and Pete. I had already mentioned Bob was high-strung, and I also mentioned he broke a beerbottle and used it as a weapon. Surprising us all, Pete apparently has a sword beneath his coat. We roll, and Pete (F) wins, causing Bob to stumble as he lunges for Pete, knocking Bob unconscious (F saves a LOT of coin). I use my 3 coin to narrate that, as this is happening, a police cruiser happens to draw up to the diner, containing two policemen who notice Pete's sword.

I then get the scene, and 1 of the cops, Hank steps into the diner, drawing his pistol, and shouting 'Drop the sword, Asshole!'.

Turn passed to E, who introduces Hank's Partner Pat, also carrying his pistol. Pat them tries to arrest Pete, making another complication. Pat is solidly built, has his gun trained on Pete, is carrying handcuffs. Pat easily wins the complication, placing Pete under arrest and cuffing him. F reveals, however, that Pat and Pete are twins, unbeknownst to each other. The cops take Pete away into their car and the scene ends.

E starts he next scene in the woods, with Pat, Pete and Hank as they stop for a flat tire. Hank and Pat are clumsy and Pete makes a run for it. Passed to F. In the woods, however, is Floortje, a Dutch tourist, who happens to know karate. She sees Pete and tries to trip him up (complication). Even though Pete is the karate champion of Texas (2) she succeeds, but clumsily. As a result, Pete lands on top of her, and they tumble and roll on, but as this is happening, Pete is thinking this girl is hot, and they wind up kissing, but as they are not paying attention, they roll into a water-filled ditch. Pat also comes running up at this time, and jumps after them into the ditch. Both Pat and Floortje cannot swim, but Pat is better-looking than Pete, at least.

Passed to me. It turns out Floortje likes bad men. That Pat cannot swim is rather unimportant because the ditch is shallow, and he can just stand up. Noticing there's someone else involved, he lifts up the struggling Floortje, who is fully prepared to resume kissing, but is startled to discover she's got the wrong twin (in other words, she sees the similarities). They decide to both go after Pete anyway, and after Floortje picks up a big branch, they manage to knock out Pete and drag him out to the police car.

(We wrapped up a bit in a hurry, since the next guests were arriving at the end).

A lot of coin spending for micro-effects, but that's due a little bit to my method of introduction I think, in trying to convince the girls they could do anything they wanted as long as they spent the coin, and that every coin spent might help them in complications. As to the story, I think its style was heavily influenced by my use of a Dutch Soap series (which they watch) as example of how you can play. But I don't care - cause we had a blast, and it was good seeing the ease with which E and F took to the water. Even better is that both E and F mentioned, unasked, that they want to play again, to see how this story ends up.

[ScottM]

Wow, that sounds great.  It also seemed to start pretty close to reality, but got stranger as the game went on... with a drawn sword, twin officers, and dutch karate champions!

Do you think the game would have kept getting stranger if it had continued?

-- ScottM

[Tobias]

Actually, Scott, not very much weirder. We haven't continued yet, but I have now played another game with E, and I and M (new players). Again, the story seems to start out fairly normal (introduction phase), then for a while weird stuff gets added, plot twists, loose ends that are amazing and beg explanation, and then comes an end phase where generally more threads are tied together than new ones come up.

It might be due to the 'thriller' tenet, or the people I'm playing with - they have little RPG experience, and generally don't read a whole lot (AFAIK), thus we don't get very traditional stories but more eye-candy events.

Or something... ;) Maybe when we've played even more, I can tell you. Maybe Ralph can chime in whether story development he sees matches the 'weirdness' effect you notice.

There are a few moments when I would like to challenge the more outré elements - but I think it's a bit like group processes and brainstorming - if the group is unfamiliar, there's generally a 'sillyness phase' they have to go through first to get social bearings. And I'm trying to get these people enthousiastic, so I don't challenge a lot (except the necrophiliac stuff in last session).

[Valamir]

My experience with the games cycle is similiar to Tobias's.

You start with a narrow idea, then everyone takes turns throwing in the kitchen sink (both genre's and plot twists), then someone clicks on where the story needs to go in order to make any sense and you start wrapping things up and tieing up the loose ends.

The degree to which the kitchen sink stage is silly or particularly wierd roughly correlates inversely to the degree of experience the players have, both with the game and with player empowerment concepts in general.

Players who aren't normally used to be given the sort of power and authority they see in Universalis will often get really weird and silly with their first few times through.  Partially I think this is a defense mechanism (retreating to humor when they're worried they can't pull off drama), and partially its just flexing their creative muscles in ways they haven't done before (or very often) and seeing what they can do.  Usually this is just a creative brainstorming phase, but sometimes its an intentional test to see how much they can get away with.

This last tends to be a reaction of players who've been told "you're running the story" by GMs in the past but in reality got jerked back on a short leash when they started going too far "off map".  The players I've run into that fit this bill tend to intentionally try to derail things by being really wierd or nonsensical as if daring the GM.  It doesn't usually take too long for them to realize that it will be the other players at the table who will rein them in not the GM.


After that as the group gets more experienced with Uni (or if they're already comfortable with lots of Directoral Power anyway) the games tend to ratchet back on the sillyness and wierdness to levels appropriate to whatever genre the story is set in.