More Uni: "Your pole-dancing ability definitely applies

[Matt Wilson]

Another Tuesday night Universalis game, and more good stuff.

As John will probably agree, this group tends to do a lot of socializin' that limits the amount of time left to play, but I think we still manage to get something really good out of the game time we actually have.

Last night's game was shape-shifting street racing.

We called it "2Fast 2Furious 2Shapes."

There were 8 players (3 men and 5 women). In any other game I'd be miserable with that many players. It made the pace a little slower, but the game held up well. I think what actually worked well for that many was that I could address my end-of-day tiredness and bide my time until I had a really cool interrupt idea without bogging down the game. There was always someone with something to say. In a game like, say, TROS, I have to be "on" more often, and that's fine, but it requires more.

I'll also add that years after some extraordinarily dysfunctional gaming experiences, it's the first game that my girlfriend has given a shot, and she's really loving it. I'll attribute that both to Uni being an accessible game and to a very socially functional group. I'm hopin' she'll want to try more.

I don't know how true this is of other Uni groups, but we've run into this recurring thing where we declare that someone is a main character and then for whatever reason never include him or her in any scenes. It's always the villain or supporting characters, or characters made up on the fly.

Uni is high on my list now for best gaming experience ever. I hope a lot of future games build upon the ideas it presents.

[John Harper]

Universalis is also one of my best game experiences. The game "works" better than anything else I've played, I think, from the first session onwards. Now, a big part of this is probably because I'm playing with people that are very socially capable and trust each other. But the Uni system and philosophy deserves high praise as well. People who have never played RPGs jump right into this game and start having fun right away, as an equal with the veterans. I've never seen this before, and it's very cool.

An interesting thing happened in the game last night. One of the shapeshifting characters had escaped from a car-crash in his cougar-form. I narrated a scene where the cougar was brought down by a tranquilizer dart and captured by the anti-shifter cult. The cougar was taken to a shed on the outskirts of town where it was chained up. Somehow my description of the chains gave one player the impression that the cougar was going to be tortured. This pushed the other player's buttons, and she was a little freaked out. Animal torture was clearly not something she wanted in her game (and neither did I, for that matter). I ended my mini-scene with this bit of dialogue, to heighten the danger level for our cougar-hero:

Clyde: "I don't know, Darryl. What we been doin' here... it's gettin' pretty risky. Maybe we should tell the sheriff after all."

Darryl: "The sheriff is a good woman, Clyde, but she just don't have the stomach for this sort of thing."

That did it. The other player was pretty convinced now that something horrible was in store for the cougar. My portrayal of the evil cultists and their foul plans made the other player think that I, as a player, wanted to see bad things happen to the cougar. So, she interrupted, took control of the cultists and cougar, and narrated a scene where the cougar woke up, injured a cultist, and escaped.

I didn't challenge or call for a conflict since the other player was clearly freaked and needed to have a safe cougar before she could enjoy the game again. Another player picked up on my initial intent for the scene and we managed to work in our plot point after the cougar was gone (The cultists -- shifters themselves -- were developing a "cure" for shapeshifting, and needed a captive animal-form to make it work).

Anyway, I bring this up to address the issue of intent in game play. I think one difference between a novice and veteran roleplayer is the ability to separate player-intent from character-intent. When I was controlling the "bad guys" I had them do bad things. I tried to really make them despicable. In a traditional RPG, I would do this as the GM, and the players would respond, fighting back as the heroes. There's a certain give and take. The GM makes the bad guys bad, but not too bad, and the good guys have a chance to win in the end. In Universalis, though, there's no guarantee that a player won't have the bad guys "win" simply by narrating all the terrible things they get away with while the heroes are away.

The scene in the shed with the cougar is like this. The other player really didn't want to see the cougar get hurt, and there's no safety-net for it if she lets my scene play out. Who knows what I'll do, right? The cougar doesn't have that "PC glow." She either has to interrupt and swing the story in a new direction (which is what Uni advocates), or just cross her fingers and hope. This makes misdirects and red herrings very hard to pull off in Uni because once you telegraph the initial idea (which is the mislead) another player may not like where it's going and grab control before you can follow-through with the reveal.

I don't think there's anything wrong with that. It makes for interesting and challenging play. But it's taken me a few games of Uni to figure this out, and I wonder if others have encountered a similar thing. Do new players sometimes confuse character-goals for player-goals, and have you found misdirection hard to pull off in Universalis?

[rafial]

Any kind of "gradual revelation" in Universalis is doomed to failure more often than not.  The example that I've been bitten by a few times is thinking of a cool plot twist for a character, gradually dropping a few hints through narration, and then *boom* somebody else grabs the character and adds some facts that totally rule out what I was thinking about doing.  The thing to keep in mind when playing Uni is that unless its written on card, it's not part of the world, its just something you were thinking of.

Incidently, I don't think this is an issue that is confined to Universalis, it also crops up in any other system that shares credibility regarding characters or elements of the world across multiple players.  I've got Trollbabe in mind here.  As a Trollbabe GM, more than once I found myself having to grit my teeth and mentally toss away a cool backstory element I was trying to slide into play, because player narration suddenly took things in a radically different direction.  In the end, the players usually had better ideas than I did, but was a jarring experience to those of us who were use to "complete credibility" over some part of the action (players -> their characters, GM -> the world).

[Valamir]

Wow, your praise is overwhelming guys, thanks.  Sounds like a great game.  I'm always looking for cool new actual play writeups that can serve to showcase the stuff than can be done with the game on the website.  It sounds like you guys have a few games under your belt, I'd love to put some of them up.

With regards to gradual revelation, I think there is a certain learnable skill to it in Uni.  Some protection to your as yet unrevealed (and therefor as rafial correctly points out, not yet true) secret twist can be built in with some creative use of facts.  

Adding a few facts, perhaps across different Components that don't yet give away the secret won't make your plan guarenteed, but it will make it more difficult for someone else to do something that will make your plan impossible.  Their something will have to adhere to your facts.  If placed right you may well be able to arrange those facts in such a way to preserve at least the core of your plan.

For example, adding the fact "believes torture is wrong" to one of the involved characters in the shed might have been a signal to the other player that torture wasn't what you had in mind...or if it was, they might have been comfortable that you'd already provided a trap door in the form of a collaborator who wouldn't go along with it.  Also, the other player could have interrupted to add a Trait or two like this, there by giving a buffer against their fear without needing to completely run the ball somewhere else.

Another technique that might have worked here, would have been a mini scene by you to another night in the past with the same shed, the same characters and a different shape shifter.  The shifter's in pain or having some form of difficulty, but in the scene we witness the shifter draw one of the characters close and say "thank you".

So wait...the shifter's thanking him...what's that about?  In game terms you've 1) helped alleviate the fears that something horrible was about to happen, 2) created a fact that could be used to back up your plan to put a positive spin on the character's relation to shifters, 3) still left a big question mark as to what's going on.


BTW:  someone must explain the pole dancing reference...

[John Harper]

Good advice, Ralph. I like the idea of doing a quick flashback to show that the "bad guys" were up to something a little different. That kinda ruins the "surprise", but I'm learning that in Uni (and other innovative games), you need to do things a little differently. That's cool.

I'll have a couple new Actual Play transcipts to post tonight. I'll send you the links if you'd like to add them.

I also have some rules questions about the game, so I'll post those on the Universalis forum.

Re: Pole Dancing. One of the characters was the "town ho" and she was given the trait "Pole Dancing", which one player promptly managed to use in a fight scene.

[Mike Holmes]

Re: Pole Dancing. One of the characters was the "town ho" and she was given the trait "Pole Dancing", which one player promptly managed to use in a fight scene.

LOL! That's awesome. The visual is just great.

In general, you do have to go with the idea that your gradual reveals are not going to work. The same weird dynamic that makes the plot so unpredictable to the participants militates against it. So, yes, one ought to "go with the flow" in most cases.

That said, two things. One, if you corner the market, occasionally you can manipulate it into happening. Or at least close to what you're looking for. Two, instead of looking to plan reveals, discover them. This is the most fun in the game, IMO. At some point you get to a critical mass of Traits, Facts, and Events built up, and you see the plot standing there, looking just a little bit blah. Then it occurs to you that if element A were actually not what it seems...Then you change some little thing and suddenly you have a potent reveal. Nothing you planned for, but all the more potent for it. You can always see when it happens. The players eyes light up, and then he looks around the table trying to guage whether the other players will go for it. Again this is one to pull off when you have the initiative, and players may often have grounds in these cases to Challenge with Facts on their side. (Bill's not a werewolf, his Role says Banker!)

This is why I like to sit back at times and just accumulate Coins. So when I get an idea that seems really neat, but may conflict with some other players preconceptions I can shove it down their throats...

Did I just write that? Well, even I succumb to the gameyer side of the mechanics on occasion. All in the name of a good plot dynamic, however. :-)

Mike

[Meredith]

Do you guys sometimes think of gaming in order to get to know people?  Rather than getting to know people in order to game?  It seems to me I started to game to connect with people, including my boyfriend.  This inherently means there will be a period where I don't know folks really well, much less how they express themselves.

I'm the new player Feng mentioned above who was freaked out by potential torture (more because the shapeshifters in the story took on a metaphorical quality as closeted homosexual men and women).  Though I was sure Feng wasn't a proponent of hate crimes, I was unsure of how he dealt with the darker side of human nature.  Sometimes we want to push ourselves to see it, in order to work with it, and other times not.  I was in the latter place at that very moment, and I wasn't sure where Feng was.

My thought is that these situations have more to do with the relationship between players, rather than the game itself.  I don't know Feng super-well yet, so can't trust that he'll know when he's hit a hard spot for me.  I'm thinking once we get to know eachother better, I'll know a bit more about how he likes to express himself, and gameplay will be that much smoother.

Meredith

[John Harper]

Welcome to the Forge, Meredith.

I agree 100%. The issue of the "torture" scene had a lot more to do with trust among the players than it did with the rules. As players know each other better, they can better interpret what each other is planning, and better understand where each other's soft spots are.

To be honest, I usually do like to confront the darker side of human nature... sometimes on-screen in the game, sometimes off. But that depends a great deal on the genre conventions and the "rating" of the game session. Some things are obviously PG, others are R. I don't ever want to make a fellow player extremely uncormfortable if I can help it, but at the same time I think it's good to challenge comfort levels and push the edges sometimes.

That said, I think it's important to be sensitive to the needs of fellow players and to play in a spirit of positive collaboration that everyone can enjoy. With this particular group, we are friends first, and a game group second.

[Valamir]

Hey Meredith, great to hear from you.  I'm flattered that your first post to the Forge is on a thread about my Game.  Feel free to leave any game specific comments down in the Universalis Independent Games Forum.

I think (as do most here) that there needs to be ALOT more getting into gaming for social reasons rather than finding people to socialize with for gaming reasons if the hobby is ever going to grow beyond being a tiny insular niche.

We've had a number of discussions on redefining the nature of a Mainstream game as not being a game that appeals to a large number of gamers (the sort of titles that most gamers would normally tag as being "mainstream") but the sort of game that would actually appeal to mainstream people.

Part of that discussion is what then really constitutes a gateway game, a game that can effectively introduce a non gamer into the hobby in an appealing enough manner to get them to stay and want to increase their involvement in the hobby.  A common sentiment here is that most so called "entry level" games actually do a better job of filtering people out than bringing them in.  I'm glad you found Universalis appealing enough to try and hopefully appealing enough to play again...ideally appealing enough for you to want to explore even more of the hobby.

The social aspect of gaming as you mention is crucial.  You'll find a lot of talk about game theory here (GNS and Stance and Protagonism etc.) but all of that theory is understood to be a box nestled inside the broader social context of the gaming group.

You'll find a lot of threads on this idea doing a search on Social Contract

[Meredith]

Hi, Ralph!  Universalis brought me in because I used to play a simple version of it with my sister on long road trips when we were young.  We used He-Man and She-ra characters in mostly scatalogical situations (Skeletor was often constipated).

I've played Uni twice now, loved it both times, and was surprised at how easily I could contribute.  The more I play, the more confidence I'll get.

So John, you suggested something about a "rating" - is that part of the rules?  I can imagine part of the tenets discussion including "what type of rating do people feel like today?"  Some days we're Disney, and others Lynch.

Thanks so much for the warm welcome.

Meredith

[John Harper]

The "rating" idea may be in the rules... I can't recall. Regardless, I think it's something we should start using. Establishing the "medium" of our story might help in this way, too. Very different things are permissible depending on whether we're telling a Children's Picture Book, Hong Kong Action Movie, Theatrical Revenge Tragedy, or Classic Hollywood Musical.

[Ron Edwards]

Hi there,

I do this sort of thing all the time when we play Universalis. Stuff as general as, "Kids anime morning show," or as specific as "Innocent love is greater than technological innovation." They're usually set up early on as Tenets, but occasionally they show up later.

We use them just like any other Universalis element - they add dice on either side of conflicts they come into.

As play continues, people tend to throw coins into them to increase their importance.

Best,
Ron

[Mike Holmes]

I agree 100%. The issue of the "torture" scene had a lot more to do with trust among the players than it did with the rules. As players know each other better, they can better interpret what each other is planning, and better understand where each other's soft spots are.

Tooting my own horn here, but the nice thing about Universalis is that it gives you ways to either state your preferences or make them happen. So if you don't like certain things to show up in play, you have rules to make that explicit. I've heard horror stories about players exposed to horrific descriptions of things that they objected to. But as players they had to either accept the other's actions or not play.

In Universalis, you can jump in at any time and say no. Or make a statment about what things ought to be like in general in a Tenet. Or you can just take the story in a direction that you prefer.

I think you used a powerful element of the engine to protect yourself and make a statement. Good for you.

Did you just use it for negation, however? This is a rookie mistake. That is, it got accomplished what you wanted, but maybe it could have done more. If you don't like what's going on, don't just negate. You can usually alter the story not only away from what you don't like, but towards something that you do like. So don't just have a character escape, for instance, but have the character kick ass as well. Or introduce another conflict that's more what you want.

Always try to move in positive directions, even when it's away from something you don't like.

Mike

[Valamir]

Good stuff, I'm going to throw a link to this thread down in the Uni forum to help archive it.

"Rating" is easily done.

Basic tenets that you set up during the pregame typically go along the lines of "Sci Fi", "western", "Hong Kong Action Movie meets MST2K horror movie" etc.  In your own game you had something along the lines of "The Fast and the Furious Street Racing" and "shape shifting drivers" (or however you worded it).

Its a simple manner then to move from genre defining parameters to "line and veil" style parameters.  "No graphic sex".  "no 'on screen' death", or whatever other issues you want to make taboo.  These then serve as Facts to Challenge anyone who tries to violate them.  For instance if I were to start describing some hot sex action, someone else Challenges me, and because "No graphic sex" is a Fact of the game their Coins cost double.

Now one feature of Universalis is that if I have enough Coins I can still "outvote" that person in the Challenge, but that would be quite expensive...especially if more than one other player wanted to oppose me.  At that point normal group social dynamics should keep me from being a prick and forcing things anyway...but if they don't at the very least I'll have burned enough Coins that I'll have pretty much taken myself out of the game.