First game's lessons…

[Zatt]

Well, I played my first game of Universalis tonight, and was highly entertained to say the least. A couple of things that I learned from the experience:

When framing a scene, make sure that you describe it with vivid detail, paying coins for anything that should be fact. Take control of the scene from the beginning to give other players a good idea of what is going on so that they can participate fully.

Be prepared to use challenges and complications in order to drive your vision of the story and to keep other players engaged with the potential story line. Don't allow others to just go off on silly tangents that have no potential to go anywhere. Use these tools to help give some cohesion to the plot. If you have an idea for the overall story, push it!

Try to sense the tone of the game that the other players want right from the get-go. They'll tell you through what they add as tenants. Don't set yourself up for disappointment by going into the game with a completely different attitude than the other players.

Challenge things right from the beginning to help give the setting and the story some kind of cohesion. Random chaos will be the order of the day for the first portion of the game, but it can be minimized.

That's all that comes to mind right now. As I said above, I was highly entertained. I can see this game becoming a favorite of mine in fairly short order.

[Darren Hill]

Thanks, that looks like a very good set of advice.

[Mike Holmes]

That's good specific advice. What it boils down to, most of it, is that the game does require management and attention to create a good story. It's only a framework, and the quality does not appear by magic. It comes from the players demanding it in play. The system just facilitates that desire.

So, allow silly, and you'll get silly. Focus on something, and you'll get that instead. The tools are present, but it takes some will to use them.

Mike

[Valamir]

Zatt all of those are spot on.  If you picked those up in your first play (and hopefully with a little help from forum threads and material on the website) you are well on your way to mastering the game.

Understanding the power of being the player to frame the scene is one of those lightbulb moments in the game.  Instead of being carried along on a sea of someone elses ideas, realizing that..."hey...I'm in control and am immune to interruption until I narrate an event...so that means I can create All This Cool Stuff and really put my stamp on the story" is an empowering moment.

And I'm very glad to see you not shying away from complications and challenges.  A lot of folks early on get very enamored of the shared nature of play that they neglect the parts where you get to throw your weight around (in a constructive way) a little. Sillyness, endlessly meandering play, surreal story lines with little semblance of plot, are all signs that Challenges and Complications could have been more frequent.

In practive, I've found Negotiation Challenges to be far more effective at setting tone and giving the story cohesion than Tenets alone.  Because as "Facts" the only thing Tenets do is back you up in Challenges.  If folks aren't Challenging then Tenets are a bit of a lame duck.

Keeping those points in mind should definitely make for effective play.