Gamist Universalis?

[Sindyr]

So, what would this be?

I ask because I think I may be gamist-leaning, and I just received my copy of Universalis.

I love it! It's brilliant!  However, as I read through the rulebook, I catch myself making mental notes on the best way to manage coins or get new ones, because at some sub- or semi-conscious level I am trying to find an optimizing strategy for getting my influence over the resulting story and outcome to be the strongest.

Is that gamist?

Is it wrong?

What would happen in a group with 1 gamist, and 4 non-gamists?  What if all 5 were gamist?

Can universalis be run as a cooperative and competative game?

[Mike Holmes]

Sindyr,

First, thanks for the praise. :-)

It's far from wrong to note strategies, as, hopefully they'll simply lead you to more effective story building. That is, if we've done our part right, the things that get you Coins create good play.

Now, that said, Competition is another thing.

I'm glad you brought it up, actually. Because it's been a big question for a while. Now that we've had some time for lot's of people to play I think we can dig in, and see if we can answer the question well.

I'll start off with a tenative "no". That is, as designed and presented, Competition makes for some potentially serious problems. Essentially, when it gets down to it, the problem becomes that there are degenerate strategies on how to win.

All you have to do is buy the Gimmick: I get all the Coins, at the start of the game. The other players can challenge, but then they have to, in some combination, outspend you. If there are only two players, the opponent can outspend you by paying all his Coins. But this, of course leaves you with all your Coins left to make up any Gimmick you like uncontested. Heck you could probably just do the same "all the Coins Gimmick" above. He can't challenge. So he who goes first wins; and since this is determined by the players, no agreement will be made, and the contest ends in a tie.

If there's more than two players, then they have to spend some combination of Coins to overrule you. But, again, even with 25 players, that leaves them all down one Coin. Then someone else interrupts to avoid you making some sort of similarly empowering Gimmick, and attempts the same. That player is interrupted after being shot down, and so forth, until I think the player who went first will win, again.

So, you can do a three or more player game, but there's only one likely move - win the game. So Von Neuman's min/max theorem would point out (or Nash's Equilibrium theorem if someone manages to make the game non-zero sum with Gimmicks), there's an easy answer, just like for tic-tac-toe. Worse, you'll never actually do anything "in-game". It will remain entirely metagame.

IOW, if you want such a competitive game, you're as well or better off playing chess (which game theory has not been able to solve).

Now, there are two sources of salvation for this idea.

First, the players can agree to certain limitations before play. This would be technically Drifting Universalis, and not playing it (but then again, so is playing it competitively). This can be done in a lot of ways, and might constitute a whole half of this discussion.

Second, players can (and often do) play in a limitedly competitive fashion. Where it's implicitly stated that there's a goal of creating a story, and yet, the players seek to battle good naturedly for control. Since this is a form of Universalis play already, I think that half of the discussion should focus on limits, enhancements, and potential pitfalls of that sort of game.

Consider which of these points you are addressing when moving forward on the topic.

Mike

[Paganini]

I don't believe that Universalis is competitive as writen, because it doesn't contain win / loss conditions. It's easy to look at Universalis, see the currency mechanics, and say "Hah! Competitive play!" But it doesn't really work, because win / loss mechanics require some sort of comparitive quality mechanic. You have to do *better,* not in some abstract sense, but in actual relation to your opponents in order to win.

At first glance, Universalis might seem to say that "more coins is better," and use that as a condition. It doesn't really work, though, because coins don't represent anything in a qualitative sense. They're just a regulatory mechanic that differentiates between "actual story power now," and "potential story power in the future." If you have lots of coins, it doesn't mean you've done really well, it just means you haven't exerted much influence on the game so far.

Universalis *does* encourage strategic thinking, which is not the same thing as Gamist play. Universalis says:

"Coins are story power. Story power is good."

This encourages players to do their best to get Coins by strategic use of the rules.

But it's all individual. There's no comparative interface between you and the other players. There's just "coins you have," and "coins you've spent" (which persist as your alterations to the game).

So, it's great as a player to try and get the most bang for your buck (I.e., Coins for your Complication), but if you start trying to figure out who won, you're in trouble. :)

[Sindyr]

Hmm...  well, if I can can put on my "competetive" hat for a moment...

In the past, with more standard rpg's, I tend to be the GM because of the old old saying, "If you want something done right, do it yourself..." However, I generally prefer to play.

Universalis seems like it could be a way to have your cake and eat it too.

However, my cynical side tells me not to depend on my gaming partners NOT to be bozos and bring things to the story that either I have no use for or actively dislike. So - I figure that my best defense is learning how to spend Coins clevely so as to have the greatest overall influence on the story...

I must admit, I feel somewhat nefarious in this position, but my defense is, it's a game and I am trying to make the most of my resources by creating effective strategies for increasing my influence in the story.

Also, I wonder how interesting it would be if all of us players came at the game this way. There could be player alliances, back-stabs, etc...  kinda like a Diplomacy/Universalis combo.

For example, here are some possible strategies for increasing one's dominance over the story in a universalis game...

Oh, and I may not have all these right, I have not had the chance to play it yet myself, still reading and absorbing the rules.

[*] Effective Trait choices.  Choose Traits that are more likely to come into play throughout a *wide* variety of circumstances.
Instead of "Good Balance", choose "Determined." Instead of "Good Hearing", choose "Perceptive."  There may be a limit in one's group how general a Trait you can use.  Stay as close to that limit while still flying underneath their radar...that way, you get more dice when complications ensue.
[*] Centralize your Coin expenditures.  Instead of spending a lot of Coins on Facts you will not be capitalizing on again and again, spend most of your Coins on the things you want to have most important to the story.
[*] If you sense that another player does much like the ninja character you created, keep it mostly in the background - but keep steadily adding Traits to it.
[*] For any Component that you want to control, add Traits to it that make it easy for you to Challenge anyone who attempts do thinigs you consider innapropriate with that component.

and there are social manuvers to be played as well...

[*] The less Coins your fellow storytellers have, the more you can control the story.  Manipulate the other players into wasting Coins whenever possible - such as by challenging each other, or by support Complications that don't really get in the way of your agenda.
[*] Above all, keep all this under the radar of your fellow players, if they smell a rat and unite against you, together their mass of Coins can easily thwart you in any  attempt to make the story yours.
[/list:u]Now, not having played Universalis yet, I am not sure how the above ideas would play out, but I am fairly confident that there is a way to play Universalis so, by the end of the game, your Coins have had more influence than those of your fellow players.

Is this Gamist Universalis?

Here's another thought... what about each player writing down a secret Agenda for the story before play commences.  After play is over, Agenda points can be given out for each Agenda point completed.  Perhaps bigger Agendas, like "an Apocalypse happens" are worth more points than smaller ones, like "One of the main characters will lose a sock".

Oh, and I know this is drifting, but that's ok by me.

However, even with the Agenda Gimmick, how can't the basic game of Universalis be played competatively, as outlined above?

Okay, I just scored a copy of the Riddle of Steel, and am working on getting me some Multiverser stuff.  

I love having found the Forge! :)

Oh, and  I guess (apart from the Agenda idea) I am mostly  looking at "the players seek to battle good naturedly for control"  However, while good-natured, I am still figuring that one may wish to battle as well as possible, similar to the way two people can good naturedly play poker.

They will bluff each other, try to manipulate each other, and show no mercy in-game - but its not personal, just for fun. After the game ends, there will be much slapping of backs, grins, and good-natured ribbing.

So good-natured, yes, but not "weak".  Friendly, yes, but still intense and focused - even while keeping an easy-going demeanor up for one's machinations.  And at game's end, one can let one's breath out, and bask in one's accomplishments - as well as praise one's fellow players for theirs

[Bob McNamee]

These are interesting strategies!

They would work for me right up until the actual Story creating started. Then I find I am in one of two states.
1- I have lots of ideas and tend spend my Coins down near zero making and doing things.
2- I don't have an idea I want to use right now, or I've spent most of my Coins down too low to do what I want, so I contribute to scenes and Complications in order to refresh my Coins.

re Gamist-
Coins are story creating power.
Power unused is nothing in this game.
Handle 'story bozo-ing' with Tenets.
If you Hoard Coins and control the whole story for too long, it gets boring. Its lots of fun to have things go off in ways that no one playing could have predicted. That seems to happen a lot with Universalis.

[Paganini]

However, my cynical side tells me not to depend on my gaming partners NOT to be bozos and bring things to the story that either I have no use for or actively dislike.

That's what tenets and challenges are for.

I am trying to make the most of my resources by creating effective strategies for increasing my influence in the story.

As far as I'm concerned, this is Universalis Coin management in a nutshell. The game is exactly about one's influence on the story. The reason it's not competitive is that your influence is never *compared* to the influence of the other players. It's always a tossup between what you want to do now, and what you want to do in the future. Coin management is making sure that you always have enough Coins to do what you want to do. Sometimes another player will want something different, and have the Coins to back it up, so I guess you could say he "won" in that instance. But Universalis really is a game of stories. How do you win a story?

Edit: Notice that the player who "won" here did so by *spending* coins. Again, a Coin count is not really an accurate measure of "success."

Also, I wonder how interesting it would be if all of us players came at the game this way. There could be player alliances, back-stabs, etc...  kinda like a Diplomacy/Universalis combo.

SOAP.

<snip some comments>

As far as I can tell, you're right on track. The point about Coins being a measure of importance is very important. That's exactly what they are. I think that with a little more reading the social interraction elements will come into focus for you. For example, there's no reason for you to hold back with a ninja character that another player doesn't like. The other player has built-in options to deal with it. If it's important enough to that player, he can remove your ninja from the game. He can Challenge uses of the ninja he doesn't like, and he can define Facts to get in the ninja's way and help him  in those challenges. If he really doesn't like ninjas, he can propose a "no ninjas" tenet. Etc.

I suggest doing a Forge search for "The Pregnant Pope" and reading what J.B. (I think it was J.B.) has to say about coin management. Having lots of Coins doesn't exactly mean that you have a lot of control over the story. It means that, up til now, the other players have exerted more control than you have. It's like aji, if you play go (aji roughly translates to "potential"). If you have Coins, you have aji. Spending a Coin brings definition to the story, but loses potential.

Here's another thought... what about each player writing down a secret Agenda for the story before play commences.  After play is over, Agenda points can be given out for each Agenda point completed.  Perhaps bigger Agendas, like "an Apocalypse happens" are worth more points than smaller ones, like "One of the main characters will lose a sock".

SOAP again.

[Valamir]

Good stuff Sindyr.  You might want to also check out Tony Irwin's post in the middle of http://www.indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?t=5216&start=0]this thread.  

I also turned it into an article on the website.

I think you're pretty much on the right track except:

Effective Trait choices. Choose Traits that are more likely to come into play throughout a *wide* variety of circumstances.
Instead of "Good Balance", choose "Determined." Instead of "Good Hearing", choose "Perceptive." There may be a limit in one's group how general a Trait you can use. Stay as close to that limit while still flying underneath their radar...that way, you get more dice when complications ensue.

This is true, but don't forget that characters don't belong to you.  So any broad traits you pick can equally be used by other players when they're in Control of the character.

In fact, this strategy may back fire because the broader the trait is, the easier it is for them to use it in a way you don't like.  

In one iteration of the rules I actually had rules that seperated broad traits from narrow ones because of the potential for different degrees of applicability.  I scrapped that because the game already has sufficient motivation to encourge *narrow* traits over broad ones.

The narrower a Trait is the more you can be certain that it can only concievably be used in the way you want it used.

"Determined", sure that gets you the benefit of broad applicability.  When one of the other players uses it to take the story somewhere you don't like.

"Determined to stop Rodger from marrying Sue"...now that's a trait with some direction to it.

[Michael S. Miller]

There was a thread a little while ago called Winning. It has a few more ideas about setting up win conditions

[Mike Holmes]

The one problem with Coin Management is that it's easy to abuse. If players aren't monitoring this with an eye towards making a good story, and being willing to pay for that story, then that's when things break down. This sounds like it won't be problem for you, because your motivation seems to be marshalling power to make a better story. What will happen, hopefully, as players gain skill to match yours is that they will also have the story motive backing their counter-play. If they see you being overly agressive, and interperet control as the point of play that's when management abuse occurs.

The basic form of abuse is what I'll term Complication Overload. The way the game is designed there is no limit onte returns from Complications. That is, the more you spend, the more you recieve. Thus, there are no ramifications to spending in a Complication in terms of he rules. If I spend every last Coin I have in a Complication, and still lose, I get them all back. There's no downside. Worse, the efficient thing to do is to add nothing but Traits with each Coin spent so that they can be used again later. So in the very first Complication two players might buy 40 Traits. Between the winner and the loser they'll likely have over 100 Coins to spend as a result. So these then end up in the next complication with the original 40 used again, and now you're scrambling to find the 150 dice you need to roll.

Obviously this is out of control. What stops this from happening in play? The players challenge down to reasonable levels (or, more specifically, realizing that they can be Challenged, players do more reaonable things). But Challenges are not, themselves, profitable. So this has to be kept at the level of threat, essentially, for the player who's really interested in Coin Management. So you have a conflict of interest.

Another potential area of abuse is control grabbing. Since Complications are the only real way to get lot's of Coins, the best way to stay in control is to stay in control. That is, once you've done your first Complication, and you've got more Coins than anyone else, the Coin Management player spends what he needs to grab control again, and immediately does the profitable thing and creates another profitable Complication. Players can Challenge, but this can be costly itself, and they already have less Coins.

Anyhow, here's the point where the Fine Challenge comes into play. But even that's complicated, because a potent player can spend that out of existence.

You see what I'm getting at? The more you compete, the more things escallate to nuclear armegeddon. The result of which is the game ceasing to be fun to play, and the players resorting to the extra-game social contract level (that is they do as Marco would put it, and vote with their feet; they decide not to play).

And this is what the result must be in the end if all the power is in everyone's hands. I've mentioned game theory already once. The movie Wargames is a popularization of the RAND corporations discoveries in the 1950's. The Game Theorists of the day, most notably Von Neuman had theorems that prove that in a zero sum game (which this is, as you point out; one of the strategies must be to limit the opponent's capabilities) where all the power is had by both players, then the solution to the game is that the player who goes first wins if he can do so before the other can respond. If the other player can respond (as in the case with nuclear weapons), then to quote the movie, "the only way to win is not to play."

See how pointless this becomes?

The only way to rectify the problem is to insert ways for both sides to profit from exchange. That's what the story is for Universalis, and people are in the nuclear age. As long as you have these elements important to the players, then instead of Von Neumann's Min/Max theorem, you get to apply Nash's Equilibrium Theorem which states that there are points of reasonable exchange than can occur. The game can balance. In nuclear terms we call this mutually assured destruction, and you can see why madmen who don't care about life aren't allowed to play.

So, yes, as long as you and the players keep your eye on the ball, and value the story that's occuring, you can "compete". As soon as you lose sight of that, kerflooie (to use a technical term)!

The other option is to use Gimmicks to limit player options. This is illusory, however, because presumably the same mechanic could be used to remove said Gimmicks. But, it works in the real world (we call them laws), so it could work for you.

Mike

[Paganini]

Hey Mike,

I'd just like to add a couple of points to your post. One thing is that nuclear armageddon style escalation is quite appropriate for, well nuclear armageddon. Or       epic world-ending stuff like you find in Charnel Gods. Rolling 150d6 would be an awesomely appropriate way to end the world. Imagine burning enough coins to buy a Hell on Earth x 50 trait at one go! Woohoo!

Of course this sort of Coin Storm is not always, or even usually, appropriate. When there is a conflict of interests, though, Universalis has another built in option beyond simply "voting with feet." The group can Fine the disruptive player. This not only clues the player in that the other players aren't cool with his power mongering, but it can drop that player's coins down to a reasonable level.

[Mike Holmes]

I pointed that out, Nathan. But the problem is that all you need to do is to get a player who has more coins than all the others put together, and he can Gimmick fines out of existence.

This would be similar to the dictator who decides to shut down his parliament for good.

In fact, the Fine Challenge is potentially problematic for play as well. It too can be used as an abusive weapon.

I'm not saying any of this has to, or even will happen. I'm just pointing out what's at the bottom of the slippery slope of competition. If players can agree not to go there, then play can proceed as designed. Again, it all comes down to committment to the narrative as a product of play. Essentially, the more competitive you get, the more the story might suffer.


On another topic. The question of whether or not this sort of thing is Gamist, is fairly moot. Play is Gamist to the extent that the players are trying to find a way to best each other, and it's something else to the extent that they're trying to get a story out of it. Which corresponds with what I've said above.

Mike

[C. Edwards]

Mike wrote:

On another topic. The question of whether or not this sort of thing is Gamist, is fairly moot. Play is Gamist to the extent that the players are trying to find a way to best each other, and it's something else to the extent that they're trying to get a story out of it. Which corresponds with what I've said above.

I think that something else could be categorized as reciprocal altruism.

Personally, I see play of Universalis as about exerting influence in a particular instance and then watching the narrative repercussions of that influence.  More Aikido than Karate.

-Chris

[Sindyr]

If I am a person playing Universalis, and I want to "win" by making the story do more or less what I want it to, I think it's still true that I *don't* want to risk all-out confrontation to do this, for the very reason you pointed out - mutually assured destruction.

However, I can do things that are more subtle, more "manipulative", more stealthy.

I mean, if my goal is to cause *my story goals* to be met in the story, an overt "attack" of Coin Power would be counterproductive.  Even if I managed to "win" this time, what about next time?

I need to maximize my "wins" over time, over sessions. Overt attacks do not seem to be a smart way to do that.  After all, we all start with the same amount of Coins.  If I make an overt problem of myself in this game, then in next game you can be sure they will use their Coins to prevent it from happening again.

So, if I am in a game with 4 players, and by the end of it I feel that I have controlled 33% of the important stuff, that's good.  If its near 50%, thats great.  If it's over 50%, that's fantastic!  These percentages are all my own subjective rating of it, of course.

If less than 25%, then of course, that's bad.

So, no to overt mass Coin Attacks, but yes to careful coin management, psychological manipulation, hoarding for the right moment, and using quiet strategies to increase my "wealth."

[Valamir]

Yup, I think that's spot on Sindyr.

Only comment I'd add is that the Coins basically reflect pacing.
So you could have only "20%" impact through 80% of the story, and then come in and have 80% impact on the last 20% of the story...which is how I'd characterize The Pregnant Pope play example on the site.

[Mike Holmes]

Sounds good to me.

You may note that I rank players here by their Japanese hisorical equivalencies in terms of ability. You seem to be going down the road to becoming our first Universalis Ninja.

But the only way to really advance is to play and report. Do the above, and let us know how it goes. I personally think it'll work just fine. Let us know how it goes so I can promote you to your new post.

Mike "still trying to get back his Shogun ranking" Holmes