I'm all over the place right now. I'm going to riff for half an hour, then go to bed. Please forgive the mess this post will certainly turn into.



I recieved v4.01 about an hour ago, and I've given it a once-over. Not that carefuly, because my eyes are twitching from staring at a screen all day, and my printer is out of ink.

So, first impression:

Ah, what the hell do I do...

Followed by:

So, that's what the box looks like from out here...


Getting a hand on the 'no pc' thing is still stumping me. As a player, I like to have an 'in game' identity that to some degree I own. In Monopoly, I'm the car or I don't play. In an RPG I like to stick with a character I enjoy. Now, I have to admint... I'm not too keen on the idea of someone else pupeting my character for me.

Give me a second read through on that last bit though; it just hasn't sunk in yet.



Why is there a seperation between coins and story power? Why cash in coins (nice, tactile, physical things that can be pushed across a table, flung down in disgust, or flipped for randomizers) for abstract story points? It would clarify the exchange rate enormously to list all costs in Coins and ditch the Story Power completely.

Also, why use Dice when you have a 50/50 randomizer right there? You flip the coins themselves.

These layers of seperation from one of the game most charming aspects (the coins) are very distracting.

It will also minimize the book keeping.

Here is what I was thinking: One little pile of coins represents those Invested (key term: Invested) in each specific Component. If such components are successfuly Challanged and removed, some or all of those invested coins get swiped by the victor. Otherwise, they Return a certain Profit (say, 1 coin proft for every 5 Invested) if they successfuly affect the World or engage in challange.

A possible example:

Player 1 created Jack Black, ace reported +3 (3 coins) who is Quick on his Feet +3(3 coins).

Player 2 is eyeballing those four coins P1 has invested in Jack, and figures a Challange is in order while Jack is covering The Big Strike. He creates and Invests Morgan Scot: Professionaly Hit and Run Assassin +2 (2 coins)who drives a Souped Up GTO +2 (2 coins).


Player 2 describes the challange with the roaring of the GTO coming out of nowhere, and flips his 4 coins (2 from the assassin, 2 from the car) getting 2 heads.

Player 1 accepts the challange (putting his coins at risk, but also opening the possibility of reaping a Return on his Investment in Jack). He flips his Coins, getting 3 heads. Victory! He gets 1 free coin for his bank (1 coin for every five invested), and Jack successfuly leaps aside using his Quick on his Feet trait. Now, if Jack wants to risk it, he can make a Challange against the hot-rod asassin... but his player 1 declines, not wanting to risk his Investment (or a character he has grown fond of).



I always like simplicity if possible. With this example you can dith the two mediums of exchange for a single one, and the addition of another randomizer element when you have one built right in. It also implies a measure of ownership for a player. Player 1 creates Jack, and likes him. He also has something invested in him. When Jack is successful in challanges, when he changes the world through his actions, that investment will pay off. If the player gets tired of him, he can Cash Out, withdrawing his Investment. Other players can then Buy In on Jack, or let him become Color; nothing but backstory and backdrop.



What about a metagame level add-in for Gods. Players arn't out-of-game hyper-entities... they are the Gods of the world they create.

First round, everyone contributes to the Fundamental Laws of the universe.

Second round, everyone describes the World in general terms.

Third round, everyone adds Civilization to the World

Fourth Round everyone contributes to the Focus region

Fifth Round Culture is described

Sixth Round Characters and Props are described and Invested.

Seventh Round Beer or Pee break.



Real Godlike Gaming









OK, I have got to get to bed. I'm sorry this post came off so complainy... It wasn't meant to be so bitchy. Conceptualy, I'm seriously digging your mojo here... but the numbers confused me. Like always.

Night night.

Bailywolf wrote:
I'm all over the place right now. I'm going to riff for half an hour, then go to bed. Please forgive the mess this post will certainly turn into.

So, first impression:

Ah, what the hell do I do...

Followed by:

So, that's what the box looks like from out here...

Getting a hand on the 'no pc' thing is still stumping me. As a player, I like to have an 'in game' identity that to some degree I own. In Monopoly, I'm the car or I don't play. In an RPG I like to stick with a character I enjoy. Now, I have to admint... I'm not too keen on the idea of someone else pupeting my character for me.

Why is there a seperation between coins and story power? Why cash in coins (nice, tactile, physical things that can be pushed across a table, flung down in disgust, or flipped for randomizers) for abstract story points? It would clarify the exchange rate enormously to list all costs in Coins and ditch the Story Power completely.

Also, why use Dice when you have a 50/50 randomizer right there? You flip the coins themselves.

Here is what I was thinking: One little pile of coins represents those Invested (key term: Invested) in each specific Component. If such components are successfuly Challanged and removed, some or all of those invested coins get swiped by the victor. Otherwise, they Return a certain Profit (say, 1 coin proft for every 5 Invested) if they successfuly affect the World or engage in challange.

What about a metagame level add-in for Gods. Players arn't out-of-game hyper-entities... they are the Gods of the world they create.

OK, I have got to get to bed. I'm sorry this post came off so complainy... It wasn't meant to be so bitchy. Conceptualy, I'm seriously digging your mojo here... but the numbers confused me. Like always.

Night night.

Yeah, all sound sensible feedback, really. One thing that we've admittted is that Universalis has a big learning curve. For one reason, as you pointed out, it has so many departures that players of other RPGs don't have many touchpoints for reference. (BTW, this should remind us all of what it must be like for any non-gamer to try and interperet any RPG)

As Ralph pointed out, a lot of what you have suggested was in previous editions (PCs were only officially dropped in version 4). Other stuff we considered but chucked for mechanical reasons, whatever. If it makes you feel any better, I'm still debating the whole no PC thing myself.

OTOH, you can still just take a character as a pet and stake a claim around him. Ask the other players to leave him alone. There is no reason why players cannot agree to distributre duties in any fashion they like. The game just doesn't do so ahead of time. So, if you want each player to have one character that is more or less inviolate, and another player who handles only the non-protagonist characters...hey, that looks pretty familiar! The add-ons do these things with actual mechanics, a separate pool for character development for instance. (If you'd like to get ver 3.3 which has all the add-ins, 60 pages, let me know an I'll mail you a copy; otherwise I'm sure that Ralph will have them made up for 4.0 in short order)

As for the Coins/Story Power thing, consider this example. I can leverage One coin to create three with a level theree trait. Now I can leverage each to make nene, and so on. In that version you have to put in all sorts of statements like Coins generated from Leverage cannot be used to generate leverage. This happens a lot, and so Ralph invented Story Power I agree with you that it's slicker without Story Power, but potentially more complicated. What do other people think (might merit starting a new thread)?

As Ralph points out, the Complication mechanic (which has seen more incarnations than the Virgin Mary) is designed so that there is an incentive to gamble by participating in Complications. The average return is 1.5 per die rolled (equals an unleveraged coin spent) for the winner and .4 for the loser, FWIW. I understand your concerns, however. If we can find a way to remove distractions, as you put it, we will. Hmmm... BTW, from your example, what would have happened if Jack had not succeeded? Lost the Coins to the other player? There is a potential for abuse (Which the system would promote) in many circumstances that make it important to have some of the mechanics that we do. I can explain that in more detail if you like.

Not only have we discussed the Gods add-in, but I actually had a session that was requested by a player in which all we did was build a world history. Kinda like Aria (which has a lot of comparable concepts, really) except it was our RL history extended into the future. There have been a number of other weird applications that we and others have come up with.

Thanks,
Mike

I got ver. 4.01 a few days ago and got to go through it a couple of times, here's some of my thoughts:

1) Since most of my designs have been leading the same direction before seeing Universalis(no pc's, spreading control to all players, etc), a lot of the ideas aren't difficult for me to grasp. In many ways, this will make it a lot easier to explain to folks to get them to play. In many other ways, it will make it harder to determine how well written the current draft is.

2) More examples, please! I haven't had a terrible time with following the rules, but examples make things easier all the time.

3) Complication/Dice Pools could use some reworking in the way they're explained. There's almost an entire page about Complications, before I even get to dice pools. I was confused for a bit, since I didn't even think Universalis used dice at all... I wasn't sure what was going on until I got to the next page.

4) The example with the angry mob seems like it might cause some bog down in actual play. Of course, I have to see it in action, but it seems that 3 or 4 sentences results in about 7 different transactions...seeing this on paper kinda makes me neverous about it in play. Perhaps if you had 3 examples, one that's really simple, moderate, and finally complex, it'd be less daunting to the uninitiated.

It'll probably be a month or so before I get to try it out, but I look forward to seeing some of the add on's.

Chris

1) Since most of my designs have been leading the same direction before seeing Universalis(no pc's, spreading control to all players, etc), a lot of the ideas aren't difficult for me to grasp. In many ways, this will make it a lot easier to explain to folks to get them to play. In many other ways, it will make it harder to determine how well written the current draft is.

2) More examples, please! I haven't had a terrible time with following the rules, but examples make things easier all the time.

3) Complication/Dice Pools could use some reworking in the way they're explained. There's almost an entire page about Complications, before I even get to dice pools. I was confused for a bit, since I didn't even think Universalis used dice at all... I wasn't sure what was going on until I got to the next page.

4) The example with the angry mob seems like it might cause some bog down in actual play. Of course, I have to see it in action, but it seems that 3 or 4 sentences results in about 7 different transactions...seeing this on paper kinda makes me neverous about it in play. Perhaps if you had 3 examples, one that's really simple, moderate, and finally complex, it'd be less daunting to the uninitiated.

What about a single bulk cost for introding elements. Say 1 unit for a complete element.

FACTS remain in potential in a description. For example:

"Bob is run down by a red car driven by an unrecognizable masked figure."

One player spends his bean, and makes that statement. For the single cost, this whole statement is made reality unless someone wishes to challange it.

A Challange can me made against any single FACT in the above statement, but unless challanged, it is considered just a "real" in the game as anything else.

Say another player who has an affection for Bob decides the challange the statement on two facts:

1) That bob has actualy been run down.
2) That the driver is actualy unregognizable.



Now, the person who composed the above statement can either concede the challange, and thus not waste any beans, or can "charge" the challanged facts with his story power, defending them.

Say he does so, and looses the 'actualy run down' fact, but wins the 'unrecognizable' fact. So now:

"Bob is ALMOST run down by a red car driven by an unrecognizable masked figure"




Make no distinction between 'color' and 'fact'. Assume it is all fact unless challanged. After a full turn, no challange is possible and the elements are not just FACT but WRIT.


So I can spend my one point, and create an Stormbringer level magical sword... but if I choose not to defend it in the first challange, it can be removed easily regardless of it's "in game" power level.

For the same story power, create gods, space stations, worlds, species... but if you arn't willing to invest the beans to defend them, they won't survive challange.

Further:

Assigning trait values for sort of ingame challange mechanics seems like a hold-over to traditional games. You've avandoned player characters, GM's... why not blow away any kind of inherent, in-game resolution mechanic.

The resolution is based entirely on how a player decides to narate it. Anyone who wishes to contribute (or challange) can plunk down some change and add or edit... but the challange doesn't reflect how fast Bob is vs how fast the car is or how skilled the masked driver is... but rather who has the strongest vision for the scene, and who is willing to back up their vision with cash.

I spend a coin and give the Hero stormbringer... another player thinks this clashes with his plans for the hero, so he introduces an encouter with a souless oger who lets himself be wounded so he can wrench the blade away. I choose not to spend the coins to defend the sword (it was a total lark anyway), so the challange is successful and the single fact "The Hero wields Stormbringer" is removed. The sword still exists... somewhere... as all the Facts representing its existence haven't been challanged, but it no longer bears on the character or the story.

Simply, whether Bob dodges the car is entirely dependent on how much a player wants Bob to dodge the car... the extra wrinkle of complexity added with the layer of in-game stating out (via trait ratings and dice pools etc) are really counter to your overreaching design theme.

Finish excising the old ways of gaming... and this will be both more pure and easier to grasp. A game of shared (and occasionaly competitive) storytelling.

Bailywolf wrote:
Further:

Assigning trait values for sort of ingame challange mechanics seems like a hold-over to traditional games. You've avandoned player characters, GM's... why not blow away any kind of inherent, in-game resolution mechanic.

Quote:

3) Complication/Dice Pools could use some reworking in the way they're explained. There's almost an entire page about Complications, before I even get to dice pools. I was confused for a bit, since I didn't even think Universalis used dice at all... I wasn't sure what was going on until I got to the next page.


Thats entirely possible. Version 4 was a completely new rewrite from V3 and hasn't been edited as thoroughly yet. But could you be more specific?
My copy mentions dice pools and rolling dice in the very first sentence and later down the first page mentions using coins to add to those pools.

Since I obviousy know exactly what's supposed to be going on it makes perfect sense to me. So please feel free to suggest how it could be arranged better for those who aren't inside my head :-)

I'm really grooving on your last post. That idea is going straight into the pot to simmer around for a bit. But this post loses me right from the beginning with the above quote.

What specifically are you recommending excising...the existance of purchasing Traits for World Components at all? I'm not sure what you're suggesting here.

Hmmm, well. Not sure I really want to go there actually Bailey. Universalis was never intended to be a pure Narrativist game. In fact, its origins were closer to pure gamism. The root fundamental motivator for creating the game was to create a game that would allow a world to be created and populated by playing it (something like Aria without all the pain). Traits etc are a fundamental factor of what I wanted the game to be.

What you suggest certainly sounds interesting to play, but Universalis would then basically be a campfire game where everyone goes around in a circle and adds something to the story. Thats always fun, but not really what we were going for here.

Bankuei wrote:
"I remember when reading the first quote, which is like 7 or 8 pages into the rules going,"Huh?" I was doing fine until pools were mentioned without any definition of what they were about. I read the entire page confused, until I got to the next page...

It was the fact that you are stating that you accumulate dice in dice pools(what's a dice pool? We use dice in this game? What determines how much dice go into a dice pool? Is it based off traits? wtf?) way before explaining that the dice pools are just a gambling mechanic to make it uncertain as to the success of the target to the complication.

Of course, this kinda contradicts the cover,"The game where suspense comes not from a random roll, but the actions of other players" :P

I define a fact as being something that can only affect one character or item. Frex, Mr. Pink is unharmed for the scene, Joey saves the girl, the Maltese Falcon is lost, etc.

Heh :-) Not really though. The suspense created by the die roll is not one of "what happens" but one of "who decides what happens". In the end its still how the player choses to spend the Story Power from the roll that matters.

Wow, I've missed some action here. Let's dive in.

First, as Ralph said, in play the amount that is covered by the expenditure of a coin has turned out to be pretty maleable. It's not so much that I dislike Flavor, as I feel that since it is subjective that players be allowed to just pick and choose when something is and when it is not. I don't give much guidance there, since any guideline that we've come up with seems very non-intuitive to me.

Given my style of play, the games that I have run have required expenditures only for relatively large amounts of information. Essentially, it ends up working like BW calls it. You state a bunch of stuff, pay one coin, and if nobody challenges it, you get away with it. The rate gets set in play, by the players participating.

This has a potential danger, however. The rate of exchange between doing things like buying traits and activating them in Complications is altered. This has not produced any problems in my play so far, but then I am the biased case. There may be a level at which players are allowed to do so much (or so little, conversely) that it causes play to slant towards particular sorts of activities versus others. This danger may never manifest, however, so I mention it only to point out the potential reason why we'd want to nail it down somehow.

OTOH, this is also a strength of Universalis. It never seems to break. Even when sombody pushes the limits of what a coin can buy, they are still reeled in elsewhere. A player allowed to create a lot with a coin is simply being rewarded for his good creations. Stuff not as good gets challenged. (This usually results, BTW, in the offending player just coughing up a few more coins; rarely does this actually require a vote. As I pointed out recently, this causes a deterent effect, and soon the rate has been established de facto).

"Django opens the coffin and swings a machinegun onto the lid!"

Bailywolf wrote: Further:

Assigning trait values for sort of ingame challange mechanics seems like a hold-over to traditional games. You've avandoned player characters, GM's... why not blow away any kind of inherent, in-game resolution mechanic.

The resolution is based entirely on how a player decides to narate it. Anyone who wishes to contribute (or challange) can plunk down some change and add or edit... but the challange doesn't reflect how fast Bob is vs how fast the car is or how skilled the masked driver is... but rather who has the strongest vision for the scene, and who is willing to back up their vision with cash.

I spend a coin and give the Hero stormbringer... another player thinks this clashes with his plans for the hero, so he introduces an encouter with a souless oger who lets himself be wounded so he can wrench the blade away. I choose not to spend the coins to defend the sword (it was a total lark anyway), so the challange is successful and the single fact "The Hero wields Stormbringer" is removed. The sword still exists... somewhere... as all the Facts representing its existence haven't been challanged, but it no longer bears on the character or the story.

Simply, whether Bob dodges the car is entirely dependent on how much a player wants Bob to dodge the car... the extra wrinkle of complexity added with the layer of in-game stating out (via trait ratings and dice pools etc) are really counter to your overreaching design theme.

Finish excising the old ways of gaming... and this will be both more pure and easier to grasp. A game of shared (and occasionaly competitive) storytelling.