Universalis is currently my favorite game, but I clicked with it unusually well. I've played a fair bit of it with a fair number of people -- doing tonight a one-shot with a couple of the people in my group -- and in discussing Universalis we talked about scenes. In particular, I seemed to come up with scenes much faster and do much meatier scenes than the rest of the people in the group. Or in virtually any group I've played the game with. We asked ourselves why is happening.

I told them what I did. I thought of an end point I wanted to work towards and I worked towards it. They weren't doing that; almost none of the people I've played Universalis with did that. They instead tried to think of "where the story would go from here" given what had already occurred rather than saying where they wanted the story to end up and justifying what happened previously to fit their view of the end. After I told them that they started to do it and it was, like, WOW! 1000% change. It was pretty dramatic.

Anyway, that's my concrete tip for helping people create scenes which, in my experience, is the hardest part for most people playing Universalis.

Does anyone else have any other advise?

And, as an added note, I think it might be really useful for this information to find its way into subsequent printings of Universalis or on the website, at the bare minimum. I mean, IME, the biggest reason more people don't really dig playing Universalis instead of just using it to figure out campaign settings or whatever is that they can't come up with scene ideas.

Hey Chris, what kind of effect did that have on the game? Did you find there were more challenges or more closely fought conflicts?

Tony

Tony, well, thinking about it, the players were more confident and comfortable asserting themselves because they knew where they were going. So, yeah, it did make the complications better. Players would be, like, "Ah, ha! I know what this squamous, spiny psuedo-orthopodal creature is! It tries to take over your mind!"

It also made the players more likely to interrupt. Which I thought was just great. Hitherto, the players had sorta thought interrupting was disturbing someone else's play -- but they seemed to better understand that everyone's plan is sorta in, well, a kind of friendly competition. No one's plans had precedence over anyone else's plans.

I hope that answers your question. ;)

I think that's great advice in general. I think it falls under the general advice of being assertive, and trying to make the story what you want. Which we've tried to make a big deal out of - I think your simple statement really might have the potential to get people thinking in the right direction.

But, definitely, there is no "should" in terms of where the story should go, only where you want the story to go. If it takes visualizing an endpoint, then that's what it takes.

Thanks,
Mike

CPXB wrote: Tony, well, thinking about it, the players were more confident and comfortable asserting themselves because they knew where they were going. So, yeah, it did make the complications better. Players would be, like, "Ah, ha! I know what this squamous, spiny psuedo-orthopodal creature is! It tries to take over your mind!"

It also made the players more likely to interrupt. Which I thought was just great. Hitherto, the players had sorta thought interrupting was disturbing someone else's play -- but they seemed to better understand that everyone's plan is sorta in, well, a kind of friendly competition. No one's plans had precedence over anyone else's plans.

I hope that answers your question. ;)

I'd imagine that if you know where you're trying to go, you tend to put more concrete details in your scenes. This gives the other players more things to use and spark ideas off of, thus better participation.

Or at least so it seems to me without having recieved the book yet.

Tony Irwin wrote: Yeah it does! That all sounds really cool, maybe I should try emphasising that the next time I play. I've noticed also that people are less likely to get involved in a scene if the person framing it doesn't have strong ideas about where to take it. Like if you start off a scene and then kind of just leave it open for contributions, nobody is really interested. But if someone's pretty confident about what's happening next, then suddenly everyone else starts diving in. Strange isn't it, how a little bit of (I love the way you put it) friendly competition actually makes the game better. When I first started playing Universalis player vs player conflict made me really nervous.

OnyxFlame wrote: I'd imagine that if you know where you're trying to go, you tend to put more concrete details in your scenes. This gives the other players more things to use and spark ideas off of, thus better participation.

Or at least so it seems to me without having recieved the book yet.

I just wanted to chime in as one of the players at the session described here, and also in the ongoing game. Last night before the regular game resumed, we all took a few minutes to brainstorm about where we wanted the story to go. Three of the four of us took notes on paper, keeping them secret.

Once we actually got into play, the difference was really striking for me. When one of the other players did something, I had an existing framework (albeit tentative) to fit it into, so it was much easier for me to take other people's events and components and run with them. As part of my pre-session notes, I had jotted down several brief scene ideas. Later in the evening, although things had diverged from my original plan, I took one of those ideas and inserted it as a mini-scene with some modification. Without having the idea already, I doubt I'd have thought of it on the spot.

Anyway, I'm not saying it'll work for everyone, or in every situation, but as one of the players who was previously having trouble, I have to say that sketching out a "master plan" (while remaining flexible) really worked for me this time.

Hmmm. Another really cool technique. Thanks, Adrienne!

Mike

Yeah, the writing notes down worked really well for me, too. It is a technique that I think would help almost any Universalis game.

Thats pretty interesting - I've always viewed the Challenge mechanism as a kind of "Storytelling free market", guaranteeing that every contested piece of the story ends up costing exactly what its worth. This metaphor goes along nicely with the friendly competition presented in this thread - Perhaps the free market metaphor its a model that could benefit from developing further?

Just tossing thoughts here. :-)

Actually, the entire game was designed around the idea of being a story free market. "Coins" were used specifically for their monetary connotations and the engine was specifically designed to provide an opportunity to earn Coins and an opportunity to spend them. Since (for obvious game play simplicity reasons) the price of all Traits is fixxed at 1 Coin, the Challenge Mechanic actually serves as the price fluctuation to moderate supply and demand. It also tends to soak alot of excess Coins out of the game as people become willing to bid more on a Challenge if they are sitting on a large horde of Coins.

The economic model was more explicit in earlier draft versions of the game where we had things like "Hostile Take Overs" and "Royalties" and the like in the text.