I recently hosted a introductory game of Universalis in order to get people in our University role playing club to know the game and find players who would be interested to play Uni on a more or less regular basis. I bought Uni at RopeCon in July 2004 (Finland's biggest rpg con) from the Finnish importers of Universalis and other indie games, Arkkikivi. My only game of Uni before this one was a demo game at the con, requested by me so I could test it before buying :). One of the players at this introductory game hosted by me also played in that demo (but had to leave before the first scene), and one had several games' worth of experience. The other three were complete beginners, but experienced role players.

Game: ”Oiva's Journey”

Starting coins: 25
Refreshment: 5

TENETS

Story Elements:

- Somewhat in the style of Brothers Grimm fairy tales
- All animals can talk with humans (and it's completely normal in the world)
- Story of a journey
- The attitudes and views of the characters are not necessarily tied with Grimm fairy tales or the historical period
- The main character is a young man

Rules Gimmicks:

- Practice game: relaxed rules; you can take back what you said if you misunderstood the rules
- Every player picks a role which guides their contributions in the story. Like you are the God of Something and you try to promote Something in the game world. The roles are public and are picked at the beginning of the game. You can change your role, but it costs 20 coins to do so.
The roles:
Nestori: Suffering
Laura: Pleasure
Christine: Chance
Antti: Complication
Teemu: Love
Taru (who had to leave during the early Scene 1): Nourishment

In addition, we created these central Components during the prep stage:

Forest Devils (”Viitapirut” in Finnish) (Master Component)
Small and nasty creatures, who speak their own language. They emit a strong smell of sulphur, and are killed by light.

Witch (unnamed)
Flies with a broomstick, wears black witches' outfit with a pointy hat.
Has a bat living inside the hat, owns a magical coffee pot (you can pour anything you want out of it).

The three sons of the witch (also unnamed), the eldest is skilled with a sword, the middle one with a bow and the youngest with a spear.

A dog named Rolf
Owned by the main character; loyal to its master, resourceful.

The bid for the first scene was clearly won by the host, Teemu (me). The other players offered only 1 to 2 coins, whereas I offered 7.

SCENE 1 [Framing player: Teemu]

Teemu: We start off in the home village of the main character, the front porch of his home in fact, where our hero, Oiva [a Finnish first name that means something like ”splendid”], a young man with his dog Rolf, is preparing for a journey. Oiva tells her mother he will go out in the big world to search for a great love. His mother tries to dissuade the youngster from such a foolish quest.
[Nestori wants to Challenge, but, after some negotiation, is satisfied with an Interruption]
Nestori: Actually, Oiva has a completely different reason fo his departure, a reason he does not want to tell he mother, who would be shocked. The butcher is coming to kill Rolf the dog! Oiva and Rolf set off.
The location is now the road. Dark clouds cover the sky and it starts to rain.
Teemu [Interrupts]: Suddenly, there's a horrible stench of sulphur in the air. [Creates a Group of Forest Devils.] From the forest on the both sides of the road, a nasty snickering and scuttling noises is heard. The forest devils are on the move, now that the dark clouds block the sun. [Passes the turn.]
Laura: Oiva and Rolf run for it (the forest devils scream threats at them). They arrive in a village, strangely quiet and almost like it's deserted [change of Location]. [Passes the turn.]
Nestori: Suddenly, there's loud barking from the closest house. It's the butcher's huge schaefer, Max, who smells Rolf. ”Rolf, Rolf, Rolf”, Max barks. The butcher Herbert, who eats raw meat, carries a huge cleaver and is covered with blood, sets his dog upon Rolf and Oiva.
Christine [Interrupts]: Oiva and Rolf escape, and run until they reach a river crossing their path. There is a large log drifting along the current. Oiva grabs Rolf and jumps in the water, reaching for the log.
[Teemu makes this a Complication by buying 3 dice for an Obstacle.]

[COMPLICATION:]
Christine: Oiva can swim, and there's a rope attached to the log, helping him get a grip.
Antti: Max (who's been pursuing the heroes) jumps in the river as well. Max's fur is wet with blood, his eyes are glowing and he has strong legs [Only the latter help Max in the complication, of course, I can't remember where the first two came from].
Nestori: The muscular butcher Herbert arrives at the river bank with a meathook attached to a long chain. He tries to use the meathook to fish Rolf out of the river.
Christine: The group of Forest Devils have been following Oiva and Rolf all this time, and they finally catch up with them here. However, they first run into the butcher and attack him while he's throwing the meathook.
[Resolution: the complication pools win.]
Antti: Max reaches Oiva and bites his neck, but is submerged in the swirling waters with the heroes.
Nestori: With a terrible bellowing, the butcher drives the Forest devils away! He catches Rolf with his hook! Then he wrenches the poor dog on the shore and prepares to drag him to the slaughterhouse.
Teemu: The log hits Max on the head, causing him to lose his glowing eyes.
Christine: Oiva manages to grab the rope on the log and goes with the flow, drifting along the river. He makes it to the shore a short way off and collapses on the riverbank, unconscious.
[Complication over, we are uncertain whose turn it is.]

Nestori: The butcher drags Rolf towards the slaughterhouse. [But Rolf is still Controlled by Christine, so we have a new Complication...]

[COMPLICATION:]
Christine: Rolf tries to get off the hook (no pun intended).
Laura: The butcher has a demented old tyrant of a mother, who hasn't had her porridge in time and now yells for her son to come bring her porridge. This distracts the butcher.
Nestori: The muscular butcher is used to dragging bodies around with his hook [justifies the use of the ”butcher” role trait].
Antti: The group [x2] of Forest Devils, whose name btw is ”Kannonkolon Perkeleet” [too difficult to translate properly, but it implies that they live in a hole under a tree stump, ”perkeleet” being a Finnish curse word meaning simply ”devils”] have, after their recent retreat, armed themselves with rusty nails, scavenged from a nearby construction lot. They thirst for blood, and attack the butcher (who is driving them crazy with the smell of blood, being covered in it).
Nestori: The butcher hates all forest devils (he searches for their holes at night and uses lanterns or small fires to light them and maybe kill some devils). He swings his huge cleaver at them.
[Resolution: Rolf and the Forest devils win (the devils get a shitload of successes).]
Antti: The enraged Forest devils eat the butcher alive! [Teemu Challenges and suggests that the butcher be left alive. Antti is ok with that.] The butcher is 95% invalidized, most of his flesh having been et. Now he hates the devils even more [x2]. The satisfied devils leave the scene.
Christine: Rolf gets off the meathook and escapes. He goes after his master, finding him further downstream, and licks Oiva's face so that he wakes up.
Laura: The butcher's mother wanders at the spot of the carnage and when she sees what has happened to her son, she is struck by madness.
[Teemu suggests that it's about time to end this overlong scene. The others agree and pass the turn to Teemu, who ends the scene.]

[The bid for next scene saw some serious competition, won by Laura.]

SCENE 2 [Framing player: Laura]

Laura: Oiva and Rolf are where we left them. A mist coalesces upon the river, and inside the mist a glowing light is seen. The light comes from a small ship that emerges from the mist. The ship is steered by a beutiful girl. The girl invites Oiva and Rolf to board the ship and when they do so, she says her name is Violetta. She acts pleasantly, but when glimpsed from the corner of your eye, there's something strange about her. They sail down the river, the ship apparently powered by magic.

[Antti Interrupts with a Mini Scene:]
Antti: Meanwhile, Max the schaefer has emerged from the river and now returns to his master. It promises to help the butcher get his revenge and takes the wreck of a man, now very light, on his back. Together the blind dog and the invalid butcher set off to find vengeance.
[End of Mini Scene.]

Laura: Violetta takes Oiva and Rolf to her gingerbread home and offers them food.
Nestori [Interrupts]: But what they don't know is that actually Violetta is just the witch in disguise. [We stop the game for a minute to ponder about the rules and how to combine these two Components that are actually the same character. We come up with a good disguise Rules Gimmick, detailed below.] Then there's noise coming from the front door. It's the second son of the witch!
Laura [Interrupts]: Violetta tells Oiva to quickly hide behind the oven. Oiva does so. The witch's second son enters and smells the guest (he has an acute sense of smell). He starts looking for Oiva.
[Nestori makes this into a Complication by buing Obstacle dice – yes, we did this complication in a really silly way and it was very confused.]
Nestori: Oiva is about to sneeze.

[COMPLICATION:]
Nestori: Hiding with Oiva is also the youngest son of the witch. He's afraid of his older brother and tries to stop Oiva from sneezing.
Teemu: Rolf, who is hiding behind a pile of firewood, tries to imitate a rat and trick the middle son into thinking that the ”guest” is just a rat.
[Resolution: the Complication pools win.]
Nestori: Oiva sneezes and the middle son finds him. Enraged, the skilled archer takes his (already loaded) crossbow and shoots Oiva in the belly!
Teemu: Rolf, whose rat-imitation failed miserably, bites the shooter in the leg, causing him to limp.
[Complication over. Again, we are unsure whose turn it should be, and we can't find the official ruling anywhere, so we make a Rules Gimmick stating that after a Complication, the player whose turn it was when the complication began continues.]

Laura: The witch, startled by the sudden events, accidentally knocks over her enchanted coffee pot, which starts to spew an endless flow of clove tea.
Teemu [Interrupts]: The witch has been in shock due to the unexpectedness and speed of the strange events, but now she gathers her witchy strength and decides to set things her way. She is actually in need of a man, and having found a handsome young lad like Oiva, she had decided to make him hers. Now she starts to cast a sleep spell to put everyone except Oiva in an enchanted sleep, in order to proceed to seducing him without disturbances. [Causes a Complication as the others resist.]

[COMPLICATION:]
Teemu: The witch specializes in enchantments.
Nestori: Her sons are specially resistant to her magic – they are her offspring after all.
Teemu: But the fumes rising from the clove tea flooding the house enhance the effect of the spell on the second son, who has the acute sense of smell.
[Resolution: the witch blows it.]
Nestori: The spell has no effect. The second son is mad with rage and aims his bow at his brother! [Another complication...]

[COMPLICATION:]
Antti: Our friends the forest devils have followed Oiva and Rolf yet again. They are attracted to Oiva in their own twisted way. They throw their nails at all light sources in order to get safely inside
Christine: The loyal Rolf (who thinks that it's his master who is about to be shot again) tries to stop the crossbowman.
Teemu: The youngest son just tries to run away.
Nestori: Oiva (who also thinks that the loon will shoot him again) pushes the youngest son in the line of fire.
[Resolution: yet another victory for the madman with the crossbow.]
Nestori: The second son shoots his brother in the face. The bolt pierces his face and ruins Oiva's face as well! [The Lord of Suffering is true to his role.]
Antti: The forest devils make the lights go out and kidnap Oiva in the ensuing chaos. [Oiva and the devils exit the Scene.]
Christine: Rolf bites the crossbowman in the other leg as well [limp x2] and follows his master. [Exits the scene.]
Teemu: The youngest son just screams in anguish: ”My face!”
[Complication over.]

Nestori and Teemu [Dialogue]: The second son and his mother have an argument.
[Everybody passes the turn to Laura, who ends the Scene.]

We decided to stop here because it was getting late. The story is far from complete, of course, so we recorded every player's amount of coins in case we someday continue with the same group.

So how did it go? I'll list the good things and the problems:

+ We had fun!
+ We managed to follow the Tenets pretty well for a novice game.
+ The complete beginners got the system pretty quick and contributed evenly.
+ The player role gimmick was interesting, but it had problems as well – see below.

- Man was it confusing at times
- There wasn't much of a story, and the journey didn't ”lift off” despite being a Tenet. The session was mostly a series of conflicts.
- The player role gimmick, despite being an interesting idea that everybody liked at the beginning, didn't really work out very well. Firstly, it created too much competition and set the game up in a very Gamist way – which should have been obvious, of course, but I just didn't see it at the beginning. The only player who was really Gamist-oriented was the very one who proposed the gimmick. He took his role ”too” seriously, even though he really just played by the rules we had set, and it was the rest of us who played ”wrong”. So the game resulted in lots of Suffering, because the rest of us weren't so interested in fighting for our roles and more often just tried to get the story going. Afterwards we discussed this and the player agreed to this view and also promised that he could next time play in a more narrativist manner.
- The missing rule of whose turn it is after a complication bugged me at least. I still haven't found it in the book. The book could be better for referencing (I tried to make up for it by using a 2-page rules summary handout, which worked well otherwise).
- Paying for Events is very difficult, especially for novices. If you start to ponder every phrase uttered and search for the actual Event that should be paid for, it slows the game and takes the fun out of it. If you don't, however, you open the door for abuse and bluff: people try to get away without paying, or even if they don't consciously do it, some people just don't remember to pay and some are more meticulous about paying for every event. Then the more meticulous ones run out of coins way before the others. And narrating Events is really expensive, too expensive to my mind. You often can't advance the story as much as you'd need in order to introduce a complex idea into the game – you'll run out of coins before you can utter that last Event that would make your contribution to make sense. Then you have to pass and the next player can't build on your narrative because all you managed to do was to get a bunch of characters from place A to place B, without telling why.
- Challenges are too easy to make. In both of the two games I've played in, I was frustrated by the (seemingly) constant Challenges. OTH the Challenge mechanic was the only way in this last game that kept the Lord of Suffering from completely stealing the show. But one standard rule I'd add would be something that made it more difficult to Challenge a Framing player who is still Framing the scene. ”That's not the way I would have started” should not be a valid reason to halt the game in its tracks before it even properly got going. This might not be a problem among more experienced players, however.

Here's the Disguise Gimmick we created:

The Disguise Gimmick works somewhat like Master and Sub-Components. There are differences, however. Now, you have Component A and Component B, created as separate componens. Component B can be made into a Disguise of Component A by buying the Disguise of (A) Trait for it (for 1 coin). Component B can now draw on Component A's Traits. Everything that is a Fact about Component A is also a Fact about Component B. This works the other way around as well, except if B is not present in the Scene (in which case A is temporarily out of its disguise). (Other exceptions might be needed, too.) The disguise can be lifted by exiting the disguise Component (B) from the Scene. Eliminating Component B does not Eliminate Component A, it just destroys the disguise. If A is in disguise (B is present in the Scene), it can be Eliminated only by overcoming both the Importance of itself and its disguise Component.

Hey Thelenius, I think that went pretty well for a first game.

The Roles Gimmick is pretty interesting, but perhaps a bit too advanced to start off with out of the gate. A different way of going about it that might have worked a little smoother is to make each of the roles you came up with into "Forces of Nature" and create them as Components...The Aura of Suffering, the Aura of Nourishment, etc. That way you could assign Traits to them and introduce them into scenes and Complications like any other Component. That might have been a little more concrete and easier for the other players to get a handle on bringing them into play as a counter to Suffering.

I thought the Journey aspect worked quite well. It was quite typical of an episodic journey like the Odyssey where the trip is interrupted for nasty little side adventures.

I'm sure the rules indicate whose turn it is after a Complication. I'll try to get you a page reference tonight.

The Disguise Gimmick is nifty. An alternative means of doing it would be to have the Witch own the Component Violet using the Ownership rules described as being a disguise. Future uses of Violet would involve actually introducing the Witch (the disguise comes for free being an owned Component). Taking off the disguise would then simply be a matter of removing the Owned Component, putting it back on would then simply reestablish it.

- Paying for Events is very difficult, especially for novices. If you start to ponder every phrase uttered and search for the actual Event that should be paid for, it slows the game and takes the fun out of it. If you don't, however, you open the door for abuse and bluff: people try to get away without paying, or even if they don't consciously do it, some people just don't remember to pay and some are more meticulous about paying for every event. Then the more meticulous ones run out of coins way before the others. And narrating Events is really expensive, too expensive to my mind. You often can't advance the story as much as you'd need in order to introduce a complex idea into the game – you'll run out of coins before you can utter that last Event that would make your contribution to make sense. Then you have to pass and the next player can't build on your narrative because all you managed to do was to get a bunch of characters from place A to place B, without telling why.

- Challenges are too easy to make. In both of the two games I've played in, I was frustrated by the (seemingly) constant Challenges. OTH the Challenge mechanic was the only way in this last game that kept the Lord of Suffering from completely stealing the show. But one standard rule I'd add would be something that made it more difficult to Challenge a Framing player who is still Framing the scene. ”That's not the way I would have started” should not be a valid reason to halt the game in its tracks before it even properly got going. This might not be a problem among more experienced players, however.

This Forge is really a great place. Where else you can easily get the designer of a game to comment on your session? Wow.

Valamir wrote: The Roles Gimmick is pretty interesting, but perhaps a bit too advanced to start off with out of the gate.

Valamir wrote: A different way of going about it that might have worked a little smoother is to make each of the roles you came up with into "Forces of Nature" and create them as Components...The Aura of Suffering, the Aura of Nourishment, etc. That way you could assign Traits to them and introduce them into scenes and Complications like any other Component.

Valamir wrote: The Disguise Gimmick is nifty.

Valamir wrote:

- Paying for Events is very difficult, especially for novices.

How much to pay for is a group dependent dial. You may want to review the rules for Color because its possible you were paying for things you didn't really need to.

Only pay for things that are Facts. A Fact is something you want to have happen that you think will be important later and want to make sure gets recorded. A good rule of thumb is: if you want it to be written down so it can be referred to later, pay a Coin. Otherwise its just color.

For instance "Kenny strolled down the lane, aimlessly kicking stones".
Do you need to pay a second coin for "aimlessly kicking stones"? Only if its something important. If you want to set it up that one of the stones hit Old Man Malley and made him mad, then yes, the stones need paid for. If you're just setting a mood. No, don't bother.

Valamir wrote:

- Challenges are too easy to make. In both of the two games I've played in, I was frustrated by the (seemingly) constant Challenges.

That's an easy enough Gimmick to add. In practice Challenges are a formalized process for kibbitzing among players. It much more common to have issues resolved through Negotiation than Bidding.

Yes, but thinking "is this important?" all the time makes it difficult to concentrate on the narration itself. It's easy to decide afterwards what the exact Facts were, but while you are spinning plot threads in your head and looking for the right words for enjoyable narration, it's just too much.

To me, even the negotiation phase is too intrusive. It rudely cuts off the story (except if you do it in a non-intrusive, "throwing ideas and suggestions around" way instead of the "I Challenge that. This is what should happen:..." ).

Therefore, it should be kept to a minimum. And the bidding should be scary enough that you only use it as a last resort. Now you can Challenge with 1 coin, and maybe the other players will bid you into oblivion with 1 coin each. So what? What's there to lose? So you keep doing this (assuming you don't get an unanimous vote against you every time - few people would ignore that hint). I'd perhaps add a default gimmick stating that if a Challenge is unanimously opposed, only the Challenger loses his/her coin(s). That might be enough of a scare, or maybe not.

I think the problem was the gamism. That is, if you're trying to compete to get the story you want to see told, then you're going to have to have lots of challenges, and useless complications, etc, etc.

And it was allowing the PC gimmick that caused the problem. I think it's interesting that you felt that it would be simpler for new players to have individual characters. This is something that only "experienced gamers" (by your own admission) would assume. The game is actually much easier without such rules. It's been said before, and bears repeating, that the PC rules are only for people who really want the game to be more like a traditional RPG - meaning more complicated, not less.

Do try it without such a gimmick.

Because what you'll find, I hope, is that if you aren't an advocate for a particular character, but for the story overall, that you work with the other players instead of against each other. The challenge mechanic serves as a deterrent to players going outside of the agreed to tenets of play in this case, not as a way to get things done.

In a typical game that I've been in there might be two negotiation-only challenges in a session of play. Sometimes none at all. The secret isn't making them more costly - as it stands, if you're not competing, even one Coin is really a lot to spend on something that doesn't actually create anything in-game. What you have to get to, is the point where you don't see the other player's narrations as something that you need to compete against, correct or change. That is, as long as your opponent's narraton isn't somehow actively objectionable, then when playing collaboratively, you simply accept absolutely everything they say. You never change a narration just based on wanting to see some other outcome for some element. Only if the story overall is somehow worsened by the narration in question.

When playing this way, too, you have an easier time with deciding what to pay for as events. With the competitive version you feel honorbound to discover what "should" be paid for, so you're not "cheating." With the collaborative version, you can "cheat" all you want, and nobody is really harmed. That is, try this. Just don't pay for anything. And see what happens. After a while, players will start challenging (negotiation) and suggesting where you ought to pay. Soon it'll become apparent where the line lay.

I don't actually suggest doing that, I suggest just paying quickly and innacurately, but with your gut. What happens then is that your gut slowly, together with all of the other players starts to inform play as to how often and what to pay for. Again, even if it turns out that you're paying for very little, when collaborating, that's not problematic. Because the tokens only serve to produce a pace for the game, and force certain things to happen. Like complications, and scene ends. And to make sure that each player has approximately the same input into the story.

The system cannot, and was not designed to, measure competition between players fighting to get their story told over that of others. It only supports player collaboration to tell a story of their combined devising.


Given that you've already decided to try and get away from the gamism (and I take it that everyone agreed?), I think that you're next session will go much, much more smoothly.

Mike