Matrix Games and Universalis - similar but different

[MatrixGamer]

Have you talked with the guys at Hex Games? My brother games with them in Ohio. Their game QAGS (Quick Ass Game System) uses "yum yum" token that allow players to add something to the game. Largely their game plays like a standard RPG (so they have planned adventures and character stats) with this small Universalis like add on. It is different from Universalis but is another game that is running in the same vein as yours and my game.

Chris Engle
Hamster Press

[Mike Holmes]

Lots of games have had tolkens that allow players to use director stance power. FATE comes to mind as does the more mainstream Adventure! I can't say where the idea started, however.

I wouldn't go so far as to say that nomic has no structure, but it certainly has minimal structure, and that structure doesn't include any goals other than to create and play some game.

Mike

[MatrixGamer]

Peter Suber (that's the guys name!) suggested that the initial "game" that would be amended should be simple and uninteresting so that players would want to amend it out bordom. Now hows that for a game design goal?

Nomic is an interesting idea. Just as Paddy Griffin's Mugger game is interesting but neither have lead to any commercial games. The Mugger game has had 40 years to do so and Nomic has had 25 years. It is like the "Variable Length Bound" idea that George Jeffreys came up with in the mid 80's. That idea was very inspiring but aside from "Science versus Pluck" I can't think of another game it lead to. And how many of you have heard of Science versus Pluck? Or for that matter, how many of you have heard of the variable length bound? It may have only circulated in miniature war game circles.

Chris Engle

[Mike Holmes]

Another such "game" was called Evolution.

Then there's the sorta-game "Life." Check this three-D one out. http://www.ibiblio.org/e-notes/Life/Game.htm

There are lots of games that come from the very basic Game Theory school. As it happens I've been playing a lot of Twixt lately, a game invented by John Nash.

But, yes, these games tend all to have sorta limited life to them. I'd include Universalis in that. Not sure why, perhaps it's their pure simplicity of form that makes people abandon them for more "messy" games (while an obsessed few always keep them alive).

Mike

[Christopher Weeks]

Universalis is very focused on individula characters. Matrix Games started out as an attempt to come up with a way to "role play" whole countries.

Just as a note, that very game has Character Components that are all of the following: small animals, humans, city-states and forces of nature (death!).  As Mike mentioned way up above, there's nothing that states that "characters" have to be individuals in any "normal" sense.

Chris

[Mike Holmes]

And I have played in one game where the idea was to play out a future history. In that game, mostly the characters ended up being large organizations. But some individuals did slip in, too. Bill Gates, for example (who I had as a villain causing worldwide technological problems). I think we've heard of one or two other cases where people have done similar thigns with it.

Also, Universalis has been used to do "worldbuilding" to set up a setting before playing another game. It seems to have been supplanted in this role, however, by the game Lexicon, of late (I'm participating in one right now).

Mike

[MatrixGamer]

When I run political games I like to personify groups by their leader. The leader "controls" the group. This fits the way politicians talk about over seas enemies. We're after Osama Ben Laden, Saddam Husein, etc. Having worked on local agency coordinating committees I know first hand that the Leader serves the group not the other way around. I chaired the First Step committee when we implemented this Developmental Delay program in Morgan Co. Indiana. Three years we worked to get it in place. As soon as I was out of office they dismantled everything we did. The kicker was that I didn't like the model the committee chose to implement anyway!

I think people like glorifying leaders - even if it is foolish.

Chris Engle
Hamster Press

[Mike Holmes]

Interestingly, the War College guys follows the same ideal, Chris, when they run their National Security Decision Making (http://www.nsdmg.org/) events. They put it like this: when you get the position of, say, Secretary of Defense, you aren't just that one individual, but your position represents all of the personnel and resources that they have at their beck and call. They refer to this as the individual's "Cone of Power" as though they were at the top of some pyrimidal heirarchy or something. The individual has more direct control of the few people at the top, but wider resources at the bottom of their cone.

Mike

[MatrixGamer]

I've been reading the reviews of Universalis on your web page. All point out that the game starts with no built in focus. I like the pre game game of world building. It gives people time to say waht they want to have happen. I imagine that creative players love this, but doesn't it lose followers?

Matrix Games have a lot of built in scenario information that "suggests" to players what to do. But there is also a mental geography that underlies the game.

I'll explain.

The world is made up of people, places and things. Statuses can be added to anything to modify what it is (you call them traits). But it doesn't end there. There is a boardgame like structure beneath that which shows how things interact.

Let's start with a character. They are surrounded by an "area". They can move anywhere they want to inside that area during free move so players can set up scenes in an instant. They can also move to adjacent areas during the free move (but no more than one). Strategic movement is limited but tactical movement is not.

Within area characters encounter "barriers" to movement. To enter these areas they need to use an argument. The argument triggers a "conflict" round to see if they actually got in. So I can try to break into Fort Knox but I'll fail my conflict argument! There are a variety of types of barrier. Defense barriers are guards, wall, locks, armies guarding boarders, etc. Anonymity barriers are when someone is hiding, in disguise, or my favorit when they are unknown to one another (so if I want to arrest you but I don't know who you are I'm unlikely to get you). "Crossing" this barrier is done by man hunts, investigation etc. Social barriers are where people are barred from certain areas because they don't have a priveledged position. Then there are mental barriers.

Mental barriers start going inside the character's head. Once layer of defense protects us all from the outside. Inside our minds we may have additional layers of mental defense to protect secrets. Interrogators need to breech all barriers to get at what it behind them. In this way information in the mind becomes another character in the game. A person could argue for the secret - driving the character insane with guilt.

I also use a pyramid hierarchy to show social status. One person is on the top (social priveledge) two are on the second tier, three on the third tier, etc. The game can then look at social climbing (as I do in "The Wizard's School")

The geography behind the game gives everyone a shared world and a shared physics. I don't stress it's existence in the rules (that would be boring) but it is a big difference between Matrix Games and Universalis.

Chris Engle
Hamster Press

[Mike Holmes]

I've been reading the reviews of Universalis on your web page. All point out that the game starts with no built in focus. I like the pre game game of world building. It gives people time to say waht they want to have happen. I imagine that creative players love this, but doesn't it lose followers?

Universalis was a working title that ended up sticking. But at one point we were looking for other names for the game. Paul Czege suggested the following:

Extropy: create a story with the spare homogenaity you have lying around tonight!

Consider that it's an artifact of RPGs that you have to have a setting to interact with. Authors of books don't write up settings first, and then create the stories. Even Tolkien wrote the Middle Earth setting as a place to house his languages - not as an exercise in having a place for characters to romp around.

So the usual way the author works is to create what setting he needs as he goes. Sometimes that's more extensive than others depending on the story. But Universalis allows this to happen just like an author does it. At the start of the game there's a section of play called the Tenet Phase during which, often (though not neccessary) the setting gets laid out in broad terms. Then as play goes on, the setting is embelished only to the extent that it needs to be in order for the story to contiune.

Because I do think that there's a major difference in focuse between Matrix Games and Universalis in that Matrix Games seek to create a simulation of action in the game universe. Meaning that some of the material must exist a priori in order to move elements around inside of that simulation space.

Universalis is not like this. The only thing being created is the story. The universe created is a byproduct of that process, and only comes into being, generally (some players - OK, myself - can tend to pervert this a little), when the element needs to be created to support the story.

For example, let's say in the Tenet Phase that we decide to play a Standard Fantasy game with Dwarves, Elves, Wizards, etc. That gives us all a basic framework that's plenty enough to start from. In the first scene, the player sets it in a castle, because, well, we all know that castles exist in such worlds. Then somebody creates an order of knights for one of the characters to be a member of. Then, in order to create conflict, a player makes it so that the order of knights has a vow of chastity, and the character has a girl in love with him.

All of these things come into being with very little effort. Either they're just typical of the agreed to setting, or they're neccessary to move the plot forward. Either way, everybody has tons and tons of ability to create this sort of stuff, just based on stories that they've already read or heard told. Given that there's no particular need to explore complex interactions of many in-game elements, other than the players should want to make these things, it takes very little effort to come up with the setting material needed.

This does tend to produce cliche play to some extent. But that doesn't seem to matter much to the players. Yeah, the stories produced in Universalis won't be something that you can just turn into a book by making a transcript of play. But that doesn't mean that it's not fun to make the story up. Quite the opposite. What's really surprising is that the plot always goes places that nobody expected. That's because, essentially, you have several GM's all authoring the plot at the same time. So even if the endings are cliche, they're still somehow novel at the same time.

Mike

[MatrixGamer]

From a business stand point - if the players create their game anew each time they play - then you only have one book to sell. How can you pull a Steve Jackson and put out yet another GURPS book for the Gurps addicts to buy?

I have a fair bit in my books telling people what actions need to happen for certain stories to be told. For instance in a murder mystery, you need a crime, clues need to be found, someone has to be determined to have done and and justice is done. In effect they are little lessons in plot. I don't care if the players deviate from the plot or completely ignore it but they can't say it was a murder mystery without those things happening (or something like them.)

I ran a spy game at a con years ago where a woman made here character murder her lover at the beginning of the game. She then spent the rest of the game slowly driving her character mad so that the character confessed to the crime at the end of the game. It was a wonderful story. She won the game hands down in my oppinion bcause of that. We determin "winning"  when it is done at all by having players make one last argument for who won the game. It's a fun way to wrap up a session.


Chris Engle
Hamster Press

PS: I'm not being completely facistious with the business observation. It get into and stay in distribution I've heard you need to put out four new books a year. Have you thought of scenario books?

[Valamir]

Conceptually alot of what goes on in Uni will look very similar to Matrix.  As Mike points out the key difference is that the elements get created on the fly.  It was my intention initially to release "genre books" that would have the key elements predefined so that they would be "plug and play" (I suspect that would look fairly similar to your scenario books) but in practice we discovered it just wasn't necessary.  Inventing the Components proved so easy and intuitive to do on the fly that there really wasn't much benefit to predefining them.

But once play gets underway there are definite touch points for the players.  The game is organized into scenes, and the first requirement of a scene is to Frame it.  This involves selecting a Location, Components (Characters, et.al.) who are present, and establishing the Time (e.g. "later that same day", "2 weeks later")

As these Locations get created and endowed with traits they begin to establish a world geography that characters can move to in a way that I suspect would seem familiar to your "area" treatment.

Barriers, as you describe are handled in a couple of different ways.  First they can simply be narrated and they happen: "Jack disarms the guard and knocks him out with a karate chop to the neck.  He then disarms the security system and opens the door into the villain's inner sanctum".  This would require spending Coins to accomplish.  Depending on how these elements were defined in the game there are different ways this might be done.  For instance if "Inner Sanctum" was defined as a Component with "Armed Guard at the Door", and "Security System" as Traits, then simply spending 1 Coin apiece to cross those Traits off (just as they cost 1 Coin apiece to add initially) is sufficient to mechanically represent the narration.

Alternatively, the Guard may be established as a Component by itself with Traits like "Security Guard", "Armed", and "Highly Alert" as Traits.  The Security System might be a seperate Component with Traits like "Security System" and "High Tech".  In this case taking out the Guard would take 3 Coins (3 Traits) and the Security System 2 Coins (2 Traits).  So the cost to overcome an obstacle is directly related to the cost someone paid to put it there.  The more they spend to beef the obstacle up, the more difficult it is to defeat.

The second way would be to use the Complication mechanic.  As the acting player is narrating how Jack manhandles the guard and is preparing to spend his Coins to make it happen, another player might make a Complication out of it thinking that since this is the last guard before the Inner Santum is breached that its a good time for a bit of a "fight scene".  The other player Takes Control of the Guard, the acting Player has Control of Jack.  The rule for Complications is this:  if one player (the acting player) attempts to effect a Component (the guard) Controlled by another player, a Complication ensues.  In the Complication each side builds a dice pool using relavant Traits or purchasing additional dice with Coins.  Other players can jump in on one side or the other introducing additional elements or using elements already in place that they alread Control themselves.  Dice are rolled to determine the winner (in this example most likely Jack or the Guard) and the rolls generate bonus Coins to spend to resolve the situation...Jack's player could then use 3 of the Bonus Coins earned to then narrate the karate chop to the neck that eliminates the Guard.

This resolves the Complication, but some other player could then jump in and Take Control of the security system and repeat the process for getting through the door.

The key difference being that those "barriers" were not positioned on the "map" before play begins (usually).  Rather they were populated as part of the process of play itself.

[MatrixGamer]

This makes sense. In story telling you use components as the story needs them. You don't have to worry about the rest of the world. It exists to serve the story not the other way around.

I'm interested in simulating processes in the world, though I like a good story.

BTW I know a few people who have used Matrix Games as a creative writing teaching tool. They say it is very helpful. I be Univeraslis would work that way to - if not better give that it is more directed at story.

The mental map/barrier geography behind Matrix Games is really the world view I use in my job as a social worker. If pulls from Kurt Lewin's field theory, some Durkheim, a dash of Freud, and a boat load of cognitive behaviorism. It gives me "parts" that I can then manipulate to set up outcomes I might want to see. In this way you can experiment with it. I've also heard it's been used to facilitate communication between "stalk holders" in organiztional planning (British Army). In the long run I see the nirvahna of Matrix Gaming is to do management training seminars, but not until my soul is completely black...

Do you have any other books in the pipeline? (I mean other than Universalis.)

Chris Engle
Hamster Press

[Mike Holmes]

Ralph has Robots & Rapiers in a nearly complete state.

I actually have an idea that relates somewhat to both our ideas, Chris, but it's pretty incohate at this point. But I've thought about it enough that it could explode out onto the page at any point now.

Mike

[komradebob]

Sorry to reopen a semi dead thread...

I'm surprised that noone has mentioned the similarity in that both Uni and MG/Pbom have an explicit rule for adding rules during play. I find this one of the most interesting features of both games. It not only allows players to tinker, but allows for the rule set to be very short in page count. Rather than forcing players to learn a tome full of rules for sundry situations, both games presume that players are smart enought to come up with some sort of solution on the spot. The question then becomes not one of "what is the rule", but "is this rule acceptable to the play group?"

Robert