What Impresses Me Most

[jburneko]

Hello All,

I'd just like to note that what impresses me most about Universalis is that it finally gives us a "storytelling" game that:

A) Really IS a storytelling game.

and

B) Isn't "rules-lite."

I mean this is 80+ pages of text and it's all RULES!  Rules, that are ultimately permutations of the same mechanic (spend a coin, basically) but everything is broken down so specifically, the structure really well thought out.  Every angle of story construction covered in detail.

Rip the combat chapter out of the D&D3E Player's Handbook and Universalis stands up proudly next to it in terms of "crunchiness."

My indeapth reading has only made it part way through Chapter 3 because there's just so much here to absorb, and remember.

Very, very impressive.

Jesse

[Mike Holmes]

Thanks, Jesse.

People might be amazed at how much Ralph had to hack out to get the book down to it's current size and the rules as streamlined as they are (all you playtesters can attest to this). So, what you get in the book is very distilled. In the end, we decided that outside of the core framework people could tailor the game to suit. As that is a feature of the game, it made sense to go this way.

But you still need quite a bit of rules to make it hang together correctly. As such, we consider it to be very much at the "right" level of "crunchyness". I'm glad to see that it works for you as well.

Mike

[Roy]

While the rules aren't "rules light", they are so intuitive that you can internalize them after one session of play.  We played our second session tonight and never had to refer to the rules.  It was great!

Roy