Universalis as a Training Tool

[Valamir]

As those of you who dilligently follow all of the Univeralis website updates undoubtably know...and I'm sure that's everybody, of course ;-)
Universalis has been being carried at Adams & Co bookstores in South Africa, thanks to our own Kwil aka David.

A few days back David was looking for a new approach to push the game and asked the following.

What do you think about the suitability of the game to training programmes (in the business sense)?  I was thinking of submitting it to some of our training/leadership development customers.

I figure this makes for an excellent topic of discussion for the forum.  So, those of you who've played the game, and especially any of you who've experienced those wonderful leadership training programs, what are your thoughts?

[kwill]

thanks for starting this discussion up ralph; I'll contribute some more myself once I've got through some of the regular business training books we have in stock

at the moment my only comment is that uni requires more investment time-wise than some of the training games I've read up on; I'm also wondering under what context people need to be trained to Make Stuff Up (although of course Rules Gimmicks could alter the goals considerably)

[Mike Holmes]

I'm hoping that Paka will have something to say on the subject, given his background.

Mike

[Christopher Weeks]

I received Universalis last week and have been too busy to get through it, but the half or so that I've read is exciting.  I'm educated (eight years at university) as a teacher -- though I have chosen not to teach as a vocation, and I've worked as a trainer of adults.  

I think Universalis is screaming to be used with kids.  I'm planning to finish it up in the next couple of days and try it out with my wife and son (and then with a larger group his friends as time permits).  I tend to think that it is something of a waste of time to convince educators of the value of such activities (they either get it already or never will) but in case anyone wonders, I think that this kind of activity has the following advantages (off the top of my head, more will probably occur to me later) for kids (some only apply for certain age groups):

- fosters and approves of creativity and storytelling
 - provides a concrete example of positive conflict resolution
 - introduces the notion of sharing in creativity
 - builds language skills
 - builds very basic numeric skills
 - provides a fun outlet for intellectual activity
 - introduces kids to complex systems (use, not theory)
 - teaches system-customization
 - broadens diversity of interest
 - enables directed social activity
 - provides a framework for incorporation of, and inreasing, interest in traditional subjects (e.g., history, science)
 - could be used as a springboard for or special activity related to other learning experiences
 - could be integrated as a creative writing exercise
[/list:u]
I'm not sure I actually see the value as a team-building or management training tool.  I've been to a few of those kinds of events, sponsored by corporate America, and I'm usually unclear on how those activities are supposed to help too.  They are often fun, and playing U with my coworkers would be a blast (most of them would be like fish out of water), so who am I to argue?  But I'd be interested in seeing an explanation of the merit.

Chris

[Mike Holmes]

Vincent AKA Lumpley, suggested to us at GenCon, that Universalis would be very suitable for kids. In fact, he posted to the Kids RPG yahoo group (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/kids-rpg/) about his thoughts on the subject. I wholeheartedly agree, and look forward to playing with my kids someday (2 is still a little young :-) ).

Thanks for the comments, Chris. I too am not sure what the corporate training stuff is supposed to be about. I was under the impression that some of them, like whitewater rafting, were intended to bond the employees through facing adversity together. I don't think that Universalis would be particularly good there.

OTOH, role-playing is often used for training purposes. So there might be an application there. That said, I'm not sure that the LARPish freeform methods used aren't just fine.

Mike