Universalis - effective anti-kitchensinking tenets?

[Tobias]

Hi all,

I know I can put 'no immediate turn-around on what came before' and 'no elements outside the genre' rules gimmicks in play, but I was wondering if people've had experience with their effectiveness?

Also, any way of doing so in a not-so-obvious way? I'm sure my player group will evolve this way anyway, but I'm also the kinda guy who plays with new people over and over again. So I'm looking for tenets/gimmicks to gently nudge players into the mentioned direction. (Although I would't use it for first time games - people gotta learn to love the freedom first.)

Thanks.

[Ron Edwards]

Hello,

I ain't gentle about it. That, as I see it, is the solution. Nearly every "gentle nudge" proposal I've seen in role-playing is a guaranteed bomb in application.

"Dude, don't waste my time." That's a nudge, and it's not gentle, but it works - because the guy really does know what you mean. People like boundaries, and in a GM-ful environment, they flail and act crazy because they don't know what the boundaries are.

Best,
Ron

[Tobias]

Hmmm, good point. We're all adults here - why mollycoddle?

[Tony Irwin]

Hey Tobias, have you had much experience with using the challenge and fining rules for what you're talking about?

When I'm putting in new rules gimmicks and tenets it sometimes seems kind of like I'm changing the rules of the game in order to get the game that I want to play. I'm trying to switch the scrabble set for the monopoly board under everyone's noses. An hour later when people suddenly realise we're playing monopoly I can shout "Too late!"

But when you challenge someone you're saying up front "Here's what I like, here's what I want. Show me what you want and how badly you want it". Now everyone can either oppose you or get behind you. It's very simple for them to decide because its just one tiny contextualised thing that's being challenged, they only have three options (support/oppose/watch and see) and they get involved by just pushing forward a coin (no clever arguments or imagination required).

When you're pushing tenets and gimmicks into a game you're running the risk that people don't really understand the implications of what they're allowing in, especially if they're new to it. They can't ask themselves "How will this affect my fun?". They can ask themselves that in the middle of a challenge.

Tony

[Valamir]

I've found that kitchen sinking almost always cures itself when you have the luxury of playing with the same group of people more than once (or with people who are veteran's of other director stance games) because the novelty of doing wacky bizarre combinations of genre wears off pretty quickly.

When you don't have that luxury I find negative Tenets to be quite effective.

Fact:  There will be no "Wierd" elements in this game.
Fact:  There will be no supernatural elements in this game.
Fact:  This game will absolutely not incorporate any anime or manga influences at all.

With just a few Coins you can really apply a pretty tight filter to the game so that the only elements that pass through the filter will be consistant with the desired genre.


Challenges, as Tony points out, are highly effective.

Obviously the negotiation stage is a great way to get cross table collaborating and brainstorming for free as a sort of check to see if everyones on the same page.

But the bidding is actually far more useful than I'd originally imagined.   I had originally imagined a binary situation either a) we could work it out in negotiation and be done, or b) the gloves come off and we fight about it with Coin.

But actually Challenges are a perfect and inexpensive way of doing a straw poll.  For a mere 1 Coin you can get the other players to vote one way or the other as a way of testing the water and seeing where the resistance might be before committing to a course of action.  A couple or three small 1 Coin challenges and then fold can really isolate what the other player's keystone issues are.  That way, when it comes time to move the story in the direction you want, you know what you have to include or what you can't include in order to avoid stirring up opposition.

[Tobias]

I have used the Challenge mechanic succesfully in the past - maybe I should do it a bit more. But I imagined setting a rule of front that everyone knew about would be less annoying to the other players than constant Challenges. Thus the question for 'subtle' Tenets. Where it turns out that absolutely clear Tenets like 'nothing supernatural' are much ... well... better.

So I'll go with that, sometimes, for new groups (when I don't feel like kitchen-sinking), and otherwise just rely on group evolution.

Thanks!

[Bob McNamee]

I haven't been active of late, but the latest version of the Universalis Arena (3?) has the following Tenets.

http://wiki.trmfineart.com/bin/view/Unigame/TenetElement

"No Lazer Sharking" in Social Contract
"Firm Science" in Story Elements

are examples of these anti-kitchen-sink Tenets.

Clicking the link for  each one also lets you get a look at the discussions, negotiaion, and clarifications the Players engaged in.

Bob McNamee

[Mike Holmes]

Bob beat me to it, but, yeah, it's working well there. More importantly, I agree that challenging is important, as has been said as well. More importantly, it's knowing when to challenge, and when not to do so. For instance, you just can't get away with being the only one to have tenets. At some point, you really have to allow the other players to have some say in what's going on. Sure you can try to get it so that the combinations that occur aren't bizarre, but if the player really wants to do something strange, they're going to get something in like that. At that point, it's time to negotiate out the best combo.

IME, what works here is suggestions. This is interesting territory, however. Try only to hint, and not to make complete suggestions. Because if you do the latter, people reject the ideas because they don't want to be paying for what are somebody else's contributions essentially. Help the player in question come to their own addition to the game that you can handle.

Mike

[CPXB]

Me and my group recently put together a setting with Universalis and it is a coherent sword and sorcery setting.  During the pre-tenet making discussion phase Adrienne just mentioned how she wanted a more focused setting, and we talked about how challenges aren't a rejection of the person merely their idea.  It came off like a charm, but I figure a large part of it was due to us having already done the kitchen sink thing a couple of times and were looking to move on.  ;)

So, if you want to have a more focused Universalis game I suspect that with most groups all it does is require a consensus that consistency is important to the game.

Also, of course, don't be afraid to challenge.  We haven't had a single challenge get to bidding, so IME the negotiation is generally enough to let the person's whose turn it is have their way while keeping things focused.  I think that reasonable challenges strongly strengthen a game.

[Tobias]

Thanks, all.

I'm actually playing in Arena 3, so I can see them at work, there.

I guess it's all about respect of the common vision as well as each person's input. That means that strangeness isn't bad, if that's what people want. It's just striking the balance between common vision and player input. If I went to get a bit more towards a common vision with more genre coherency, and they want to play with Uni's cool twiddles and knobs, that's just a difference in preference that can be hammered out, as mentioned, but with clear cut boundaries, suggestions, or challenges.

I've already made the 'I would like for you to explain how that can work, because it seems to contradict this thing X, and unless you can explain how or why it works in this case, I'm going to have too much difficulty believing/accepting it, and will challenge' statement something I want to use more.

[Savage_Joker]

I have yet to read the book as I have yet to purchase it, (soon, very soon, MUHAHA!) But Kitchen-sinking would not be a bad thing. As I see it, it helps game play in the "freedom of thought" department. Mind you tenets and gimmicks are for structure. Say for example a group wants to go in a universal direction but are not sure of the outcome they are looking for. Anti-Kitchen-sinking tenets and gimmicks would ruin this to some point.

[Tobias]

Oh, kitchen-sinking isn't a priori a bad thing... it's just a shame to have zombies trampling through ... well... everything. :)

Enjoy kitchen-sinking and your freedom, indeed! All my players and I do - but the better games were under more focused themes.

Edit: Oh, and welcome to the Forge!

[Mike Holmes]

Yeah, generally speaking Tenets are meant to be overall constraints on creativity. This is important. Without such constraints, creativity is actually much harder. Not impossible - I've played skipping the tenet phase before, just fine. But when you have a good tenet phase, the game is simply smoother to play and more enjoyable, IMO.

From that POV, tenets are, in fact, sorta anti-kitchen sinking just to begin with. That is, if you say that the game is going to have a Western Genre, then after play starts, any introduction of knights in platemail will probably get challenged.

What anti-kitchen sinking tenets do, per se, is to try to limit the tenets to a less open set. What often happens is that you get "Western," but on Mars, and with zombies. Which opens things up a lot wider. The constraints are still there, but the cross-product of the genres is so wide that you founder more trying to decide what the appropriate trope or cliche is to add in the scenes later.

Which, as has been said, is not to say that you shouldn't try playing this way. It's fun in it's own wildly creative way, and the freedom is, yes, breathtaking at times. The point with anti-kitchen-sinking is to allow players who've already been there and done that, and who want to try a narrower, more focued constraint, to do so.

Basically, the right tool for the right job.

Mike

[Christopher Weeks]

I imagine that everyone coming to Universalis kitchen-sinks.  And I think they should!  But I bet that most people who stay with it, do so less and less.  I think creatively combining two genres is cool and fun to play with.  But maybe not every aspect of those genres.  And maybe not four genres.  And maybe not zombies...with guns...on Mars.

Chris

[xiombarg]

It's notable that the primary example in the book is sort of kitchen sinked -- I mean, tiny SF people who ride sparrows? It's sort of SF crossed with Watership Down and whatnot.