Return to the Jungle Frontiers (sans dinosaurs) - LONG

[Dave Versace]

On the weekend my gaming group continued the Universalis story mentioned here:http://www.indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?t=5186 . The results were...interesting.

Summarising, the story so far had seemed to be about a noblewoman surveyor, Lady Larissa Montgibbon, arriving in a frontier town to take up her post, and being rebuffed by an officious git of a town bureaucrat.

Because the previous session had been relatively short, not much in the way of action had taken place, so I decided to up the ante a bit by introducing a Villain with a Nefarious Scheme. Winning the bit for the first scene of the evening (Story Scene 3) I set up the evil alchemist Doctor Solon, his underground grotto laboratory, his gnome clockwork mage prisoner whose name I forget, and (using up the last of my Coins) had him utter the imperious command "[Gnome], initiate the Seismic Activator!"

Having run out of Coins laying the groundwork for what I hoped would be a cool Complication that would kick the story along a bit, I passed to the next player...who then had Solon leave, and had the gnome bumble about the lab looking for a Seismic Activator, whatever that was. I thoughtthat I had successfully implied that the gnome was the one that built the thing, under duress, but apparently not. It's my own fault for not managing my Coin supply better - I literally only just realised that I didn't have enough Coin to set off the Doctor's evil earthquake attack at the last minute.

Anyway, that pretty much set the rest of the session heading down a meandering path of unfocused side scenes, more new characters, and a sidelined "protagonist". The main Complication in the story came when Snyder, the unctuous elf bureaucrat, was confronted by his employer, Mayor Oberon, over a "missing gnome report" that he had filed, just as Doctor Solon (the Mayor's hideously disfigured brother, unrecognised in his full-face mask) angrily stormed into Snyder's office on some highly-unclear errand.

Complicated? Hell, I'm leaving most of the details out! There were two interesting things about the scene: the first was that we agreed as a group that the Complication in this case was in the deranged mind of Doctor Solon. Because his sibling jealousy over the Mayor's achievements was one of the causes of his craziness, it was decreed that seeing him in Snyder's office unbalanced him. In game terms, Solon was the target of Oberon's complication, although Oberon the character was essentially unaware of it!

The Complication was won by Chris, controlling Solon, which led to the second interesting thing: the first elimination of a character from the story (albeit in the same scene he was introduced). Solon revealed his identity, threatened to expose all of Oberon's sinister business dealings unless he left town and ran him out of town on a rail.

What was most perplexing about this session was the way that it was all over the place, with all sorts of revelations and confrontations, but almost entirely at the expense of attention to the character we all agree is the main protagonist. She had virtually no screen time in 5 scenes, except for a brief cameo during a confrontation between Snyder and a local mining magnate, and a short, somewhat pointless scene in which she sought lodgings.

Simon claimed a victory in having one of her servants revealed to secretly be a Steam Lord, an as-yet-undefined string-pulling conspiracy of some kind. The Steam Lords appear to be headed towards a showdown with Doctor Solon, but exactly where the menagerie of minor characters fit into all of this is anyone's guess.

It seems pretty unlikely that we will finish this story next session, although we have all agreed to focus a bit harder on driving the action along and give some more screen time to our plucky heroine. One thing I noticed that we seemed to be doing was spending Coins (especially winnings from Complications) on what were essentially trivialities - Traits that are likely to be difficult to apply in a Complication, Events that don't drive the story anywhere, that sort of thing.

Has anyone seen this sort of meandering in their games before? Any ideas on how to sharpen the focus a bit?

[Valamir]

I have some thoughts, but I'd love to hear what other players are thinking before I profer them...

[Mike Holmes]

Well, I'll say this. I've had games go all wandery before. :-)

That said, I'm refering to games in which I was a participant. Which means that one of two things is true. Either I was intrigued by the wandering, or I wasn't paying attention. I actually like how Universalis can do the wandering thing in an early session. It means that there are lots of cool things to tie together later. That's one style that I can really get into. But let's assume that it's not your cup o tea, or that you just have a different vision for how things should go.

As a player, you have lots of tools available to stop wandering should that seem to you to be a problem. First, and formost, of course, is the Challenge. Challenges are your way of making a statement about the direction of a game. See something that's not satisfactory? Challenge it. That's what they're for. You are not being a jerk by Challenging. You are taking time out to discuss something. Challenges never have to go to a bid if you don't want them to. They can end up being mostly just a cesation of play where things are discussed.

Second, you have your Coins. If you think things are disjointed, unite them. Figure out some way, yourself, of taking two seeming unrelated details and finding a common link. You'll be needing to do this at a later point, anyhow, or you'll never have an end to your story. Practice this skill a lot. (kill or otherwise eliminate characters who are ancillary with Complications if it wraps up their story branches neatly).  

Third, you have Gimmicks at your disposal. Take a look at the website, and you'll see that there are a couple of Gimmicks there designed to do exactly what you're looking for. But you can, of course tailor these to your situation. People just keep starting up completely unrelated plot threads? Then throw in a Gimmick that says that anything new has to be linked to a current thread somehow before it's legal. Or whatever makes sense at the moment. If you really want to pressure people to tie things together, make a rule that says that the story must be brought to closure after the next session. Having a definite end can really change people's long-term strategies.

The game gives you all the tools that you need to take care of business. Sure, it's interesting in your first few games to just let things go as they will. But as you play more, you'll become more adept, and more motivated to give your story structure. So, um, play more. :-)

Mike

[Dave Versace]

Thanks for your insights, Mike.

It wasn't so much that the wanderiness wasn't my cup of tea. I was as curious as anyone to see where the story was going. I just began to realise as the session progressed that it really wasn't going anywhere. Nobody seemed to have an agenda that they were trying to drive except me (who was trying to recover from early over-extension...)

I recognised that I should have tried to Challenge, but I was perhaps over-conscious of not wanting to be the bully player. When this group roleplays, I'm usually the GM, and I wanted to make a clear distinction between that style of gaming and Universalis. I concede that I might have gone too far and hurt my own interests, though. Still I'm pretty sure I did most of the talking either way...

Come to think of it, we were all Challenging pretty regularly, on the grounds that things were irrelevant or too silly or contradicted previously established Facts. I don't want to make this sound more dysfunctional than it was - mostly the game ran pretty smoothly. But one player made the telling comment that "You can't tell a short story with this system. It favours novels." I disagreed, but on the evidence of our Actual Play to date, it was pretty hard to argue :)

Good point about finding the links between disparate details. Actually, there was a bit of that going on: when Chris realised that he had inadvertantly derailed my plot thread about the gnome and the mad alchemist, he cut to his favourite character (Snyder the insufferable bureaucrat) weighing up whether or not to file a "Missing Gnome Report" with the Sheriff (this tangent made me collapse with laughter, for some reason). And Simon was secretly trying to tie everything into an obscure reference to "Steam Lords" which somebody had made during the Setup Phase. So yeah, I think that came across instinctively. I'll try to make it more overt next session.

I don't think we've quite come to grips with Gimmicks yet. The ones we've tried have been either efforts at policing silliness ("No Simpsons references of any kind at all", which cost Linda Coins when she lost a Complications and muttered "D'oh", and forced me to pass when I realised I was about to base an entire scene on a Doctor Nick Riviera joke...) or resource management (it was suggested, though not followed up, that if anyone ended a scene with no Coins, they would refresh 7 instead of 5). What we have done is informally agreed that we will refocus some attention on Lady Larissa, at least until she is actively playing some role in the story.

And we're totally prepared to kill of characters. Chris mercilessly eliminated the Mayor in the same scene he was introduced, pouring more than half his Complication winnings into demolishing whatever Simon had been planning to set up (and me, since I was backing the Mayor's side in the complication...)

But thanks for the tips. I'm making a commitment to reread the rules and go over the essays on the web site before Friday's game. And this time there are going to be more dinosaurs, dammit!

[Mike Holmes]

Sounds like you're doing just fine, then. I'm really interested to see how the second session moves forward. I'm going to guess that you'll all start to pull the threads together. Universalis is a skill, and you'll improve as you play more. Sounds like you have an excellent start already. (missing gnome report...)

Hey, and if you're low on Coins do whatever you have to to get back to a suitable level. It's interesting to watch people get real low, and I try to avoid it myself. That said, I actually got down to three last night. Lower than I wanted to go, but a scene needed touching up, I thought. Still, you have to keep a few around for contingencies, and I was willing to drop to three only because I knew I was closing the scene and returning to eight right thereafter.

Have fun!

Mike

[Dave Versace]

Actually that was the second session, but the first only went for two short scene after setup, so not much had happened previously. I'll post up a report from the third session, wherein I shall undoubtedly report the blindingly inspirational resolution of the story...

Ralph, Mike pretty much covered most of what I expected to hear. Were you going to add something?

[Valamir]

Outside of the rules, it has been my experience that Universalis games take one of two forms with the second form being the more common.

First:  The initial set up phase lasts for an extended period with a great deal of specifics being added.  Mentioned but not explicitly described in the rules (but described more in an essay on the website) is the ability to actually create key characters and situations during the initial phase before play begins.  If suitably detailed this phase can actually create a sort of story arc for which the rest of actual play is fleshing out and filling in the blanks (leaving ample opportunity for that sudden dramatic twist, of course).

Second: The initial set up phase tends to be more general, perhaps focusing on a couple of interesting aspects but without much time / Coin spent on explicitly tieing things together.  This tends to produce a game that meanders a bit until it finds its voice.  My comments on "The Pregnant Pope" game on the site speaks to this a bit.  In that game the story seemed a little amorphous with alot of potential dangling threads until a player (in that case me) finally had an epiphany moment and started tieing things up.  Since that game was clearly more a short story than a novel I'd say it works in that regards too.  

In any case any story requires a "vision" until the players collectively come to a vision for the story it will tend to meander.  There are no explicit rules in Universalis that will force a vision (although the mechanics Mike outlined above, and spending more time on the initial set up can accomplish this).  I had developed an Extensive Rules Gimmick designed to enforce a certain pacing to a story and mechanically drive towards a climax.  It was written for an earlier version of the game and doesn't easily translate to the final version, and I've unfortuneately not set aside the time to update it (I think its mentioned still as "coming soon" on the site...that was optimistic...).

I think your approach of obtaining group consensus out of game on what needs to be done going forward is a good one.  Rules Gimmicks might provide some mechanical reinforcement to this (but are certainly not necessary).

For instance you could have a Gimmick that says after any scene in which Larissa was involved everyone refreshes 7 instead of 5 and that any player who controled Larissa during the scene refreshes 9 [note: just an example off of the top of my head and not rigorously analyzed].  

Another mechanical way to enhance her role is to make sure that the Traits she has ties into the plot.  This may require an epiphany moment when someone finally groks a plot.  The flashback technique is especially effective at getting those relationship traits et.al. linking everyone together.  

If you've followed the Sorcerer discussions on the Adept Press forum you've probably run across the idea of Relationship Maps that gets discussed fairly frequently.  If not a search on that should turn up a bunch of threads.  Its a great technique for driving a game foward.  In a "regular game" the relationship map is prepped by the GM in advance.  In Universalis at some point in the game someone has to begin taking the disparate characters and such and begin linking them together similiar to a Relationship Map.  In my experience until that happens the story meanders.  After that happens it often drives to conclusion faster than you'd think.

[Dave Versace]

Ralph, good point on the relationship map. When I was writing out the description of that second session, and trying to recall the complexity of the character relationships, I recall thinking for about two seconds that "I should really draw this out as an r-map", before the thought staged a daring escape and I forgot all about it. Fortunately, we're now using index cards for all the characters, so I should be able to do that pretty quickly.

I like your suggestions about extra refreshing for scenes with Larissa. I'll suggest to the group that we try something like that. And I already have a flashback in mind for Lady Larissa that will give her new traits that will tie her into the plot more closely (and which will include the Mayor, who in the current timeline has been eliminated from the story, because I really like the "alive in the past" flashback technique to include dead-but-still-important characters).

We've already talked about how we might try things differently with our next story. One of the approaches we're considering is the Extended Setup Phase you describe, possibly even with a bigger starting pool of Coins. I'm not surprised that it's a common approach - it seems to me to be a logical 'fix' for the sort of meandering that our group has encountered.

Looking forward to that epiphany...