Universalis for Two?

[Borogove]

Is it worth trying to play Universalis as a two-player game? Anyone have first-hand experience?

I haven't successfully done any RPGing for years. Universalis looks like it could be really fun. I'd like to play a little of it to get the feel for the rules so as to make it easier to introduce other players to it. It's very hard to find time to get groups of people together, but I might be able to rope my wife into it.

I'm concerned that with only two points of view onto a story, that things will degenerate into a one-dimensional tug-of-war, whereas with at least three players, more unpredictable story dynamics would arise.

[hix]

Yep, my first 'try the rules out' game was a two player. Worked pretty well. You still get the amazing experience of creating a context for the story out of nothing in the Tenet phase. I found that keeping the bursts of play short compensated for only having two points of view.

One odd thing was that the amount of coins kept swinging back and forth hugely. It may've just been a personal thing but it seemed that first I would have a lot of coins and push forward a huge chunk of the story, then while I was replenishing my supply, it became the other person's responsibility.

There's also a two player test on the Universalis site (I think), and I'm pretty sure someone posted an early example of play on this forum where the two players played adventurers exploring a dungeon. They used their bickering arguments as complications and spent the coins from that to create more rooms and traps.

Have fun!
Steve.

[hix]

I found one of those links, and a couple of other examples:

The Space Trader game, over at the Uni Homepage:http://universalis.actionroll.com/Space%20Traders.htm

A Dragonball Z style game:http://www.indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?t=1637

A husband and wife game: http://www.indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?t=3382

Steve.

[Tony Irwin]

Is it worth trying to play Universalis as a two-player game? Anyone have first-hand experience?

I haven't successfully done any RPGing for years. Universalis looks like it could be really fun. I'd like to play a little of it to get the feel for the rules so as to make it easier to introduce other players to it. It's very hard to find time to get groups of people together, but I might be able to rope my wife into it.

Hey Borogove, I played two player several times and have really enjoyed it. When I've played it two player I've very much "played it for the other guy", in other words just riffing off my friend's ideas and helping to build their vision. If I used some of the tactics I use in big games then it could become a power struggle.

I'm concerned that with only two points of view onto a story, that things will degenerate into a one-dimensional tug-of-war, whereas with at least three players, more unpredictable story dynamics would arise.

For me the key here (as in big games as well) is to build story threads and game world stuff that can co-exist with what everyone else is doing. Just silently figure out what ideas your fellowplayer wants to be considered "untouchable" and then work around that. The challenge then comes in finding imaginative ways to link all your different ideas to each other, rather than in trying to dominate the central vision of the game.

In the game I linked to here (second post in the thread) I had a lot of fun having a nasty rogue-assasin-political type cause trouble in the party. My friend was cool with that because although it seemed to threaten his ideas, he knew that I agreed on what was important in the story and was really just trying to help make his favourite character look cool. I was creating a bit of friction and tension rather than causing conflict and we had a really great time. We had enough little story threads going that there was enough unpredictability in seeing how they resolved, it was especially fun creating some stuff that neither of us were especially attatched to, because it meant those challenges and dice conflicts weren't emotionally charged.

Good luck!

Tony

[Bob McNamee]

The Temple of Bast game that we were playing is still on hold...

Two Player games work, but they do lose a little bit of story power, if you both hit a "not sure what to do next" moment at the same time.

[Brassel]

Our first game was with four players and then I tried a two player game.
The rules worked just as well for two players, but as we both took part
in the four-person-game before, we were used to a flow of astounding
ideas and sudden jerks of the storythread. Trying to provide this for a
two player game was soon getting really hard work., exhausting our brain
batteries for the fantastical rather fast.

So according to my experiences, I'd say you have to take a slightly different
approach for a two-player game, going slower, staying more to smaller
portions of story-details. But all in all it works just great.

Bernd

[Tony Irwin]

Hey Borogrove, I forgot to say - if you try a 2 player with your wife then be sure to post about it and let us know how it goes!

Not needing a GM is one of Universalis' big strengths and I think makes it a really valuable game for small groups. Building up a record of different  play reports means we can point them out to people who don't have access to many players, and show how it can be done.

Good luck,

Tony