After a fourth and fifth try, our attempts at playing Universalis by Wiki have come to an anticlimactic end.

I think Mike's original idea, way back when we started thinking about play by post on a wiki for Universalis, was a subtly different game.  He was interested (as I remember) in a game with many participants where the world building was the focus.  Others who played were interested in a more traditional scene centered game.  The first two Universalis Wiki tries were killed by wiki spam so, being interested, I offered to host the game on my wiki, because the engine I use is relatively secure and because I was convinced that some things could be done to accommodate Universalis play, including the automatic tracking of coins.

The Universalis Arena 3 was born as an attempt to play Sim Universalis.  The interface was a bit clunky requiring multiple entries for the tracking to work.  This game started as a Jules Vernian "Hollow Earth" game instead of the multi universe "shard" games that had been played earlier.

Because of the nature of the medium it was generally ruled before play that there were no strict turns.  Multiple scenes going at once were possible and people could post where they wished when they wished.  We hoped that by attaining a critical mass of posters the game would be perpetually moving.

As these games do, this game dwindled into nothing. When the game came to an absolute standstill we did a little postmortem on it.

Not wanting to be licked I refined the interface for the following game.  I'm pretty sure that I ironed out the usability problems outlined in the last thread I linked.  Everyone said the interface was pretty easy to use and understand.   So we began Universalis Arena 4.  We got quite a few people who signed up, which made me excited that this would work. 

In an attempt to solve what we saw as a problem with diffuseness in scenes we came up with some rules to commit players to play scenes through.  This game also failed though we could no longer blame the interface for the issue.  People simply stopped posting.  People were not invested with what was happening in the game.  The setting stuff we had started wasn't cranking anyone up very much so we scrapped it and started again.

Due to This clever post by Mike Holmes we realized the importance of everyone getting invested.  In discussion on the boards of my site we decided to reconcile ourselves to the idea that we would only be 5 or 6 players and to no longer expect any growth because it would be too hard for people to be invested in the game from the beginning.I even posted two tenets one demanding that every player has a story element tenet which they are jazzed about and committed to seeing realized in play, and a second asking for a voluntary commitment to make two spending scene posts a week.

Well, so now this final Uniwiki has failed.  It was whittled down to just three of us.  Scott Martin, Chris Weeks and myself.  We didn't have the drive to keep it going on our own.  This, combined with the failing of the online Sorcerer PBP, Razing Arizona, that I was in, and the failing of the playtest of my exclusively PBP game, Revisionist History.  I feel a little soured on the whole asynchronous gaming thing.

We started off well enough, in the new Uniwiki, but things soon slowed to a crawl.  It seems the idea of Universalis by post is fatally flawed somehow.  This is my idea as to why.

Universalis, as a game, builds up a great deal of entropy.  The game itself is perpetually expanding and fuzzy.  Unless set inside the individual or in some kind of tenet, there are no walls or limits to bounce off of.  Many role playing games have a set setting or situation or character that provide that creative contraint for players to bounce off of and gain energy from.  Universalis does not have any of those things and so the system is always loosing energy.  It is a game with a lot of points of contact, and which requires a lot of energy to keep going.  In a live setting, when everyone has their minds charged up (like haveing just seen a cool movie) and an enclosed and focused social situation, these problems can be overcome.

But, add this kind of system to play by post gaming which is, by its nature, much less focused (or requires hyper focused and committed people) and has no immediate social reinforcement.  Add to that no turn order requirement and the energy loss ramps up that much more. It is, played in the way we attempted, Unsustainable.

I'd like to hear from all those who have participated in the various Universalis by post games as well as anyone else that has any comments on this issue.

All this said, my wiki is still available for anyone who wishes to play by post any kind of game.  Just contact me and let me know.

best

Trevis

Great wrap up Trevis.  I agree that the interface is simplified to the point where it clearly isn't the responsible party. I know it took a lot of work on your part. Thank you.

I agree that it's unsustainable, though I don't know why.  I think these two points you mentioned: the lack of focus and the lack of social reinforcement, combine to pull things apart. 

Most PbeMs I played have fallen to entropy-- but usually the GM can keep things going a bit longer, especially by reclaiming players who are drifting.  Kind of a hall monitor position; making sure that absences are quickly cut out or encouraged to rejoin the game.  Without a hall monitor, drifting players might get one or two weak reminders before they drift completely away.  There's also less a feeling that you've dissapointed someone specific... there's less guilt to make you post through a rough or boring spot.

Those are my observations and guesses so far.
Scott

I think the culprit is not solely asynchronous gaming, but rather the juxtaposition of asynchronous gaming with players who have very high standards for considering a game enjoyable and worth their time and those standards are challenging to meet with asynchronous communication.

Consider the importance that recognizing the non verbal cues of your fellow players has in the Big Model.  That's where enjoyment gets recognized, that's where synergies get going.  People get jazzed off of seeing other people get jazzed.  Its hard for eagerness and excitement to come through in asynch communication.  This is also proven to be a big hurdle for distance education practitioners to overcome.  Student participation in asynch classes tend to be much more torpid than in live classes, or even sych classes.

For gamers whose reason for participation doesn't boil down to getting jazzed by other people being jazzed asynch gaming should (and has) worked fine.  But for those for whom that's a priority...especially for narrativist play where its pretty much a requirement...asynch falls flat in a big way.

Yep.

The only thing that I wonder about this, is whether or not Universalis is any worse for asynch play than any other game. And it might be, in fact, for the reasons that Trevis lays out, though lots of other games fall apart in asynch play. Most, I'd say. So it's hard to say for sure.

But certainly the feeling that I had to start that in fact Universalis would be good for this sort of thing isn't in any way particularly true. At least not for the sort of play that ended up occuring.

As I've said elsewhere (and Trevis indicates above) I am still interested in what I'm now calling WorldWiki which is a very different set of rules than Universalis meant to inform people that play is less about trying to create storylines, and more just about worldbuilding. That said, though I think the rules that I'd posted for WorldWiki might work, I'm currently working on a design that I think will be much better for this. Still in it's infancy, however.

Mike

thank you for your insights into why PBeM format games seem to fall apart. i have had a few online attempts at gaming with some friends, much more structured games that what you seem to be talking about, but even then, it fell apart into almost nothing. now it is down to just myself and one other. between the two of us, we continue, and even enjoy it. but, i must admit i miss all the others too. in our case, scheduling seemed to be the clincher. eventually people didn't want to take the time needed to come up with something, and were distracted by other life things in their schedule.

Hi Ninjineko, welcome to the Forge. What's your real name?

It's not "life things" and "schedule." These are the excuses people use, yes, but they are excuses. I mean, the players all decided to play in the first place, right? So they didn't have "life things" and "schedule" then? Those things suddenly appeared?

Players might even feel like those things did appear suddenly. But the fact is that we all either make time for a game, or we don't. What's really going on is that the player is comparing the urge to post at each moment to the urge to...do "life things." Or watch TV. Whatever it is. And they're deciding not to post. This is true of all gaming, but especially with Asynch gaming. Because you really don't have an excuse with Asynch gaming. You're telling me that you can't come up with 10 minutes to post a couple of times a week somewhere in your schedule? As compared with attending a 4 hour session? Timewise, the shortness and flexibility of asynch are optimal. So they never, ever fall apart for "scheduling reasons" or the like. This is just what people put forth.

No, they fall apart because they're not very social. Basically RPGs aren't often played solo, and having more players actually means more solo players, in terms of asynch play in many cases. So no surprise individuals fall out. How often do players drop out of a face to face RPG in the middle of a session? I've never seen that happen. Because the social pressure of being face to face, committed to being present with others to do this activity in question, is amazingly powerful.

Now, does that mean that all asynch play is doomed? Well, I've had PBEMs go for a long time. I've got one going right now that's been going for nearly a year and is over 1000 posts. I have another that's been going on at an amazingly slow pace for over two years now (like some months having only one post or so), but refuses to die. There is a level of committment that you can achieve if you spend some time in the game being social. That is, not just posting to the game, but either making social posts, or actually being FTF with the players from time to time (even if you don't play when you're FTF).

So asynch is merely very problematic. Not automatically doomed. Play tends to crawl along at such a slow pace that it's just not often enough to keep your attention without that social reinforcement.

Mike

Trevis wrote:
Universalis, as a game, builds up a great deal of entropy.  The game itself is perpetually expanding and fuzzy.  Unless set inside the individual or in some kind of tenet, there are no walls or limits to bounce off of.  Many role playing games have a set setting or situation or character that provide that creative contraint for players to bounce off of and gain energy from.  Universalis does not have any of those things and so the system is always loosing energy.  It is a game with a lot of points of contact, and which requires a lot of energy to keep going.  In a live setting, when everyone has their minds charged up (like haveing just seen a cool movie) and an enclosed and focused social situation, these problems can be overcome.

I agree - investment is lessened as the focus wanders. Assuming people are looking for a coherent narrative. This is why what I've always wanted wouldn't have a creative agenda to shoot for a coherent narrative at all, and instead be about worldbuilding. Not sure that'd work any better, but I can garuntee that I'm more interested in it personally. In that case discursion is the point of play.

Mike

Hi Nils,

Yeah, trying to get back up from the previous failure didn't help much either.  The experience has made me do a lot of thinking about the power of creative constraints.  This is something I've thought a lot about in the context of art.  I see games like Lexicon that seem to succeed  because the constraints are very strong and the time is short.  When playing Uniwiki I admit that I sometimes felt the yawn of the chasm of time on the edges of my conciousness.  Thinking about that, and continually pouring energy into that chasm,  is part of what de-energized me.  I've been wondering what would happen if you did something like a set number of scenes for the whole story, say 12 or 15.  One scene per week, period.  You'd know the game wasn't infinite, 15 weeks is about a semester.  In fact I thought about all sorts of limits.  LIke say only 3 or 4 main characters, unity of place, etc.  All those things that are sometimes thought about in fiction writing.

I don't know that I could persuade anyone to give it another go though.  :)

best

Trevis

It makes me want to figure out a formula for time constraint in Revisionist History too.

Frankly I haven't seen any evidence that Lexicon actually works any better, either. Which is bad news for me, because it's largely the sort of worldbuilding exercise that I advocate.

Here's a theory that's really unlikely to be right. How about the problem with UniWiki is that it's open but wants story, and with Lexicon that it's closed, but wants to contain more? That would make both of us right.

Sounds like wishful thinking and pandering to parallelism, however. :-)

Mike

Trevis wrote:
When playing Uniwiki I admit that I sometimes felt the yawn of the chasm of time on the edges of my conciousness.  Thinking about that, and continually pouring energy into that chasm,  is part of what de-energized me. 

I've been wondering what would happen if you did something like a set number of scenes for the whole story, say 12 or 15.  One scene per week, period.  You'd know the game wasn't infinite, 15 weeks is about a semester.  In fact I thought about all sorts of limits.  LIke say only 3 or 4 main characters, unity of place, etc.  All those things that are sometimes thought about in fiction writing.

I don't know that I could persuade anyone to give it another go though.  :)

Trevis,

I can't say I'm surprised. That had been my exact experience with PBP games for many years, and one of the main reasons I stay the hell away from them these days. It is also one of the reasons I demand, as a rule, that anyone joining one of my on-line RPG groups make a specific commitment to the game, to be there every week, and that if they do not feel they can make that commitment, to pass on the invitation.

In 15-years of FTF gaming, I only ever had one player we booted from a group because they decided not to show regularly (and obviously had other things they wanted to do with their time), but there's something about the Internet that makes people blow off their game time for other things, to an extent that wouldn't be tolerated in FTF groups. There's a come-and-go, whenever-I-feel like-it, noncomittal nature to internet behavior in general, and it can be seriously detrimental to RPG play.

I'd heard about all the Uniwiki games, Raising Arizona, etc. and made the conscious choice not to participate, despite my interest, because I simply did not feel like investing the time and energy into something I knew would never come to any sort of resolution.

And I think that is often the trick with these things: working towards a resolution. Rather than an open-ended, let's-see-where-this-takes-us, this-is-going-to-go-forever sort of situation, put a time-limit and/or a clear end-game/goal on it.

The most successful PBP I ever played was actually a board game, and the only reason it crashed is due to the guy running it placing play on hold "for a bit" and then moving to Japan for three years, though I think there were some ulterior reasons for him not completing the game.

//Tangent //
He had mentioned to me in discussing play that the game was not playing out the way he had envisioned it. I believe the frustration mounted for him as the game continued to move further and further away from his vision of what it was supposed to be like during various turns.

I'm not talking about the way it was working mechanically, but progressively. Basically, the guy running the game was looking to use it to develop a history of his game world, but he had some ideas of how that history should happen before play began. Simply, his own expectations of where play was going to/should have gone sabotaged his ability to allow the game to happen and destroyed his own enjoyment of it.

Years of Illusionist play and GMing were trounced by simple board game rules that did not obey the necessary fudging to pseudo-organically "produce" the desired events -- the illusion of an organic history that exactly matched his vision, thus validating that history in some manner, was shattered. Instead, things happened as they happen in a game: in an unknown manner, without a script, and without foreknowledge of the resulting events.
//End Tangent//

We ended one turn shy of end-game (which honestly still aggravtes the hell out of me). That was the last time I ever participated in a PBP.

Now, many, many years ago I also played in PBM games that lasted forever: both Duelmasters and Hyborian War. I don't know how the guys at RSI manage it, or what their player turn-over rate is. I only stopped playing because I ran out of disposable income to devote to it, and plan to jump right back in to one or both

I think, perhaps, the reasons for the success of these games as long-term enterprises are twofold: with Duelmasters, there is very much a "drop-in, drop-out" mentality. It doesn't matter if a particular player and their team suddenly disappear, because you can still keep playing without interruption AND anyone can join in, or back in, at any time. Even if every other player disappears, the lone individual left can continue to play against the teams RSI (the company) itself runs, and there is no difference between them and your team.

Second, with Hyborian War, the world doesn't stop moving because someone drops out of the game. Their country continues to be run by the individuals at RSI, basically put on automatic, but such a thing is transparent to the other players: for the most part you do not know if another player is a computer/company nation or another player. There is also an end-game component: the game ends after a particular number of turns have passed and a winner is declared based on well-known criteria.

(There is also a commitment-through-monetary-investment aspect to RSI games that affects player retention rates, but I think we can ignore that here, though it is a viable method to produce incentive, and one my high-school FTF group actually adopted at one point.)

HI Mike,

Mike wrote:
Frankly I haven't seen any evidence that Lexicon actually works any better, either. Which is bad news for me, because it's largely the sort of worldbuilding exercise that I advocate.

One word, however, since we seem to be doing a postmortem on the wiki--I really have trouble with the format, with having to enter the right codes, etc.  I think you're far better off playing this in threaded fashion in a forum, using something like Yahoo groups databases to track coins, facts, objects, etc.  Could be I'm just hopeless, but since reading the wiki represented some static in my enjoyment of following the game, I thought I would mention it.

I think, perhaps, the reasons for the success of these games as long-term enterprises are twofold: with Duelmasters, there is very much a "drop-in, drop-out" mentality. It doesn't matter if a particular player and their team suddenly disappear, because you can still keep playing without interruption AND anyone can join in, or back in, at any time. Even if every other player disappears, the lone individual left can continue to play against the teams RSI (the company) itself runs, and there is no difference between them and your team.

(There is also a commitment-through-monetary-investment aspect to RSI games that affects player retention rates, but I think we can ignore that here, though it is a viable method to produce incentive, and one my high-school FTF group actually adopted at one point.)

Trevis wrote:
I don't know that I could persuade anyone to give it another go though.  :)

Trevis wrote: It turns out in our experience that once people drop the phenomenon of the "game moving on" seems to destroy their investment and keeps them from coming back in.  Generally when someone goes, they go for good.  And we have no equivalent "core' like the RSI staff to keep things going.

Ah!  My new get rich quick scheme! :)

Raven,

Honestly, I can kind of see why you aren't getting anyone excited about it: this is definitionally dysfunctional play! "It still isn't doing what we want, darnit! I'm not happy with the results! Let's do it again!" This IS all those broken gaming groups who prompted Ron to write about them in his essays.

Trevis wrote:
Raven,

Honestly, I can kind of see why you aren't getting anyone excited about it: this is definitionally dysfunctional play! "It still isn't doing what we want, darnit! I'm not happy with the results! Let's do it again!" This IS all those broken gaming groups who prompted Ron to write about them in his essays.

Wow, that stung.  Part of why it stung is that I think you're probably right.  Damn, you think I'd know better.

I want completeness, and resolution of some kind. 

What if we were Uni-ing a TV series or serialized novel or something in even shorter chunks that had to stand on their own, but were (optionally) part of a larger thread?  What if we were committed to making just four scenes stick together?  And then we could do another episode of four.  And another.  As long as we wanted to.  And we really would have something in the end.

Here's another problem.  I'm not sure that participating twice per week is enough.  In our first TUA (I think of it as Montezuma's air-ship) it seemed like we were often banging stuff out more quickly than that and most of the time we were in a Complication.  I think some of our finest play came from that game (that in the end, died like all the rest).

Nils, what's the problem with wiki that you don't have with the web in general? 

Christopher wrote:
Nils, what's the problem with wiki that you don't have with the web in general? 

greyorm wrote:   Thus far, it seems like you guys develop all this stuff, and then you quit. Well...OK. Why, though? That seems like a waste of time: "Well, that didn't work out, so let's do it again and start over from scratch!"

Honestly, I can kind of see why you aren't getting anyone excited about it: this is definitionally dysfunctional play! "It still isn't doing what we want, darnit! I'm not happy with the results! Let's do it again!" This IS all those broken gaming groups who prompted Ron to write about them in his essays.

OK, first thing, yes the play is dysfunctional, but that's not really surprising as this is pretty much playtesting. I mean nobody else has ever done this. And we don't simply try precisely the same thing ever time. Each iteration we've tried various things to improve the situation. Not that they've worked. But the point is, as long as we're trying to make it work better than last time, we're not being lunkheads playing the same old dysfunctional RPG over and over.

We're being lunkhead designers, sure. But that's part of being a designer. At some point it's more efficatious to simply test what you have than to keep on trying to tweak the design.

So we don't have a lack of players because we're playing a broken game, we have a lack of players for the same reason that every playtest does - everyone knows it's broken up front, and that we're just looking for the solutions at this point. Actually the fact that we've got lots of good players trying out a system that is not widely played in an environment that's not understood by a lot of people to do something very experimental is, if anything, quite encouraging.

Which is to say that I think that the basic idea has a central appeal that grabs people's imaginations. If we can actually make it work well, and can prove it, then I think we'll have loads of players for the first non-playtest game.

I just have no idea how close we are, or even if the design is fatally flawed. Something I'm completely willing to accept as possible.

Raven, I played some Dulemasters, mostly the free turns they let you play at GenCon. And I agree it's a good model. This is what I've been harping on over and over.

To reiterate, the problem I see with UniWiki is that if you play it for story, as the story progresses, instead of making people want to jump in, or back into the game if they've taken time off, it has precisely the opposite effect. Story created makes a barrier to further play (to say nothing of it looking bad in Wiki format as Neal points out). In fact, I think that even if you have a group posting regularly, that the "Chasm" effect that Trevis mentions occurs. I've lost interest right in the middle of scenes that I was posting to myself. After only a couple of days and a couple of posts.

In Duelmasters et al, such games do not have a story at all. They are complete gamism stuff with a goodly level of sim. You get back into it because you want to compete, and to get back to your interest in your team. Here's the key - the other player's contributions and play satisfaction aren't important to you in playing - you're only interested in it for your own reasons. The other player's contributions are simply an evolving map on which you play.

That's what would work with UniWiki. Maybe. Completely selfish play. Which is why I keep bringing up the worldbuilding idea (oh, and also it solves Neal's problem with it because it no longer masquerades as a story at all). Because I've seen myself go nuts with it before. Whereas I've not once gone nuts with UniWiki. I can even remember the very first game starting (Gosnold Isles), wanting it to be all simmy, but having players immediately assume that it was simply normal Universalis play, just Asynch.

Basically I've yet to see if my original vision for the game works. Even in the "Hollow Earth" game, where I tried to make it clear what I wanted, somehow people didn't get it. In part I think that's because Universalis as written doesn't support the style in question well (which I've tried to fix since then, too, also without success).

All of which is to say that I'm officially giving up on UniWiki, the version where you try to tell stories using the system as written. I'm personally convinced that it's dead. That's not to say that it can't possibly work for somebody else - if you have the urge to play, please go ahead and try another round. Maybe you'll find something that works with constraints, etc. But I no longer have any interest in that, personally, for whatever that's worth.

As I've intimated, however, I am trying to forge something more along the lines of the vision I had originally. I'm tempted to try WorldWiki as presented, but I think it might be too notional and interim to a better rules set. So I'm working out something more coherent. Again, for whatever that's worth.

Oh, and one more thing (he said, sounding like Columbo). There may be an even simpler problem with all of this. Freeform interactive fiction is something that people do. And it, too, falls apart, as I understand it with great regularity. So it could be that adding point tracking to play, no matter how easy it is to do, is going to be seen in Asynch play as useless extra work. That at the speed of Asynch play, that the Universalis framework is merely too much for the benefits it provides. Said benefits being hard to see over such long stretches of actual time. I've often wanted to hand a copy of Universalis to a group of freeformers and get their reaction to it...

Mike

Mike wrote:
Oh, and one more thing (he said, sounding like Columbo). There may be an even simpler problem with all of this. Freeform interactive fiction is something that people do. And it, too, falls apart, as I understand it with great regularity. So it could be that adding point tracking to play, no matter how easy it is to do, is going to be seen in Asynch play as useless extra work. That at the speed of Asynch play, that the Universalis framework is merely too much for the benefits it provides.

Mike wrote:
Said benefits being hard to see over such long stretches of actual time. I've often wanted to hand a copy of Universalis to a group of freeformers and get their reaction to it...

Thanks for the background, Chris.

Neal, I think you're reading too much into what I was saying. FTF, Universalis works fine for people like myself who enjoy structure. The sliding coins around as part of the process is not at all onerous, and seems to facilitate the action. Really the same old social stuff we talked about above that's lacking in asynch.

Anyhow, I don't think it's in the scope of this thread to try to salvage all asynch play for everyone everywhere. In any case, if there is some salvation for it, I do believe it's in structure. Has anyone had any experience with De Profundis?

Mike

Trevis wrote:
Raven,

Honestly, I can kind of see why you aren't getting anyone excited about it: this is definitionally dysfunctional play! "It still isn't doing what we want, darnit! I'm not happy with the results! Let's do it again!" This IS all those broken gaming groups who prompted Ron to write about them in his essays.

Wow, that stung.  Part of why it stung is that I think you're probably right.  Damn, you think I'd know better.

Keeping the faith and sticking it out through thin times in this kind of thing is hard. Like Ralph said, I'm used to better than that.  When people just drop out like flies I wonder what might be wrong and whether it can be fixed or not. And I feel down because its like a bunch of people just walked out of the room in a FTF game.  When I first got caught up in this idea it was because I wanted to see a great big game of Uni.  I realize that I really don't want a game without limits though.

I want completeness, and resolution of some kind.  This was what happened in Razing too.  We had a damn good game going, though the posting slowed down.  We played for two years which I'm told is pretty good for a PBEM.  I was disappointed when it stopped because the reason I came to the game, to play out my characters situation, to address the premise in my characters situation, was not achieved.  Sure I we all did it some, but it still felt abortive.  I did have fun in that game.  There were great people involved and I had a good time.  Actually one of the better games I've ever played in anywhere.   I was just sorry it ended when it still had so much potential to realize.

That's how I felt about all the Uniwiki games.  I was sorry they petered out when they still seemed to have potential.  Now with the way we acted about it I'm sure we just drove a bunch of people off.  (Sound of shoe leather forcefully meeting head... repeatedly.)

Trevis

I appreciate the advice Callan.  I admit I was being a bit overy theatrical about the self scolding. It was a little pop for me is all.  Trust me, I get it.  Thanks to everyone for the discussion.  Mike's point about playtesting is well taken.  I'm not yet sure about giving up on it.  Anyone else interesting in getting one of these off the ground email or PM me.

best

Trevis

But what your doing is going "Oh, I'll invest once I finally get a good game going" or worse "I'll invest once someone else invests...I wont go first though!". It does not work in that order! Investment must come first!

All this "beating up" stuff is bunk, and really missing the point of the discussion

But, for myself, mostly the problem has been that the game starts, and the other players head off into a type of play in which I'm personally very much not interested in. Despite my efforts to get them not to do that.

Trevis, I admitted that the system is, in many ways, to blame. Basically I was asking for drift from the normal rules, and didn't get it. The vision was that people would probably spend alternating scenes doing world building while playing rather normally in the other scenes. Essentially the idea was to have people worldbuilding a somewhat sim world, and then other people playing through, and that these would largely be the same people. That is, I have a scene in your bit of world, then you have a scene in mine, then we both have a scene in somebody else's area, etc. The hope was that people would get the feeling that they were moving characters through more objectively extant world instead of creating world as they felt they needed it.

Think the kind of MUD where people can add stuff on making their own dungeons and other areas. You don't make it as you need it, it's made before you encounter it (in the case of MUD to make it a challenge). Imagine my chagrin in the first game when one of the tenets was that the game was to be in the real world, followed up quickly by the notion that anything you could find on the internet about the game locale was considered fact. Very interesting idea. Very much instantly crushed my idea, by setting up a notion that the setting was already largely established.

Later I actually did, in a couple of cases, lobby for changes to the rules that would have made my vision a bit more viable in play. But, realizing that these small changes weren't working, that people kept right on playing Universalis as written more or less, it's precisely that the system doesn't seem to produce what I was looking for that got me to come up with WorldWiki, and working on the new systems that I am working on now. With WorldWiki, in fact, one of my ideas is that people would theoretically be able to play UniWiki in the world produced. Essentially I've split the two funtions into their own games that are not connected. That said, I don't think that UniWiki would work any better in a WorldWiki setting (in fact, perhaps worse). But I think that WorldWiki, or something like it, may be viable by itself.

In fact, the newer systems I'm looking at are really getting back to the original notion of build some/play some. Which might be viable by asynch play, or might not be. I probably should test WorldWiki to see if that alone can sustain play in asynch any better. But, that said, I think that the new system may well work tabletop, so it might not be a loss if it turns out that it doesn't work asynch.

Mike

Hi Mike,

I dunno. I see a two year PBP campaign...two whole years, not being seen as an achievement. If you were dealing with what your invested in during that time, surely it's an achievement? I see several univeralis play tests where people came and stuff did happen, not being seen as an achievement. Again, either you were dealing with what your invested in and it had merit, or you weren't terribly invested in anything that was in play.

Excuse the one line quote:

We hoped that by attaining a critical mass of posters the game would be perpetually moving.

Mike wrote: But at no time has anyone thought to themselves, "hey, I'll just jump in once it's good." Nobody involved has done that. Everybody gets inovolved to some extent right off the bat. The problem, very specifically, is that the game doesn't keep your attention.

Callan, you're talking a lot of nonsense. What two year game are you talking about? I know of about 8 tries at this now, none of which have lasted more than a couple of months. The ones that have lasted longest often trickled down to three players or so playing for the last month or so (they really disintigrated after the first month or so). The lack of achievement is that none of the goals for the games was achieved - neither my goal of worldbuilding, nor anyone else's goal of having complete stories. There are now 8 stories out there just hanging in limbo, most of them just having gotten the plots set up. Still in act one, as it were. Nobody is satisfied with that outcome - the rules were a failure. Everyone who has participated has felt dissapointed that either they couldn't keep up with the game, or that they were abandoned by the other players. Not that they blamed the players, everybody knows it's a problem with the structure.

The perpetual movement goal was to have enough stuff going on that not only could stories be completed in the world generated, but, in fact, that several stories could be going on at once potentially (though later we narrowed it down to trying only one story at a time). The idea being that if you have, say, 20 players involved, and any 4 of them are active at any one time, that the story being created will have enough momentum that other players will come back in later about the same time as others drop out. So you'd always have a quorum of players neccessary to keep Universalis play going.

We discovered this doesn't work, not because we don't have informed and invested players at the start, but that no amount of starting investment can keep your attention once the game has drifted away from you after a while. Even while participating, investment drops off. To say nothing of the precipitous drop in investment one gets when they "take a break." Players who stop playing pretty much never post again.

Your notion that the investment should keep your interest, well, that's precisely what our idea has always been. Just...doesn't...work. Precisely why that happens is not absolutely clear. But it's absolutely the case. As attested to by all the players who actually did try to participate. Again, we went so far in trying to ensure investment that Trevis even made a rule that people had to basically demonstrate how they were invested to play to even be allowed to play.

We are proud that we managed to playtest the game several times (have you read the last couple of posts?). No amount of you saying that we're not is going to change that. So...I dunno, it's like you're trying to get us to wallow in some victim's group while we're trying to move forward. What would be helpful is comments on, say, what changes would increase investment over the long run. If you've got a suggestion on that, I'd love to hear it. Because this is not done. All we're doing here is throwing out the last bad plan, and trying to figure out a new one that has a better chance to work.

Mike

Mike wrote:
The perpetual movement goal was to have enough stuff going on that not only could stories be completed in the world generated, but, in fact, that several stories could be going on at once potentially (though later we narrowed it down to trying only one story at a time). The idea being that if you have, say, 20 players involved, and any 4 of them are active at any one time, that the story being created will have enough momentum that other players will come back in later about the same time as others drop out. So you'd always have a quorum of players neccessary to keep Universalis play going.

Well, given that I'm not interested in making a story...I guess your comments are for somebody else other than me.

I really am not getting through here, and I'm not sure why...

Mike

Hi Mike,

The two year game was the sorcerer PBP game Travis mentioned.

Again, we went so far in trying to ensure investment that Trevis even made a rule that people had to basically demonstrate how they were invested to play to even be allowed to play.

To put myself on the line more here and explain it a bit more, a technique of investment I have been quite fond of is delayed gratification. Say I want a D&D wizard character who can shoot lightening out of his hands or something. But I wouldn't just let myself have that...no, I'd have to earn it by getting to the level where he can do it. Partly it is because I'd feel silly just getting excited about just doing it and partly because I want to explain away my excitement "Oh, I went through sessions of play to get this...thus I deserve to enjoy it"

But at least for myself, I've realised that it's a major issue. Play will just be about 'doing my time' until I get to what I really enjoy playing.

There's probably a social ripple effect as well, where if I don't let myself be 'silly' and invest in/get excited about something and play with that from the start, others at the table wont either. So the problem spreads.

All I can say is that I think that you're projecting. The emotional investment tenet doesn't say anything about delaying gratification or anything. It says that the tenets of the game, which are going to form the entire basis of play from scene one, have to contain something that you're "jazzed" about. I see these elements showing up in the very first scene.

That is, I can accept that, in fact, players ignored the tenet in question, and they tried to play without investment. But if they did, in fact, pay attention to that tenet, and there was at least one story tenet which they were jazzed about, then they probably found investment right in the very first scene. Which seems to me to cover more than half of the story tenets right there. Lesse:

• Paragraph 1 sets the scene on the shore satisfying the Island tenet.
• P 2 introduces both the "heavens" (angel/demon tenet), and the astrology idea (Stars are Right tenet).
• The language and content of all of the scene makes it cover the "high mythology" tenet.
• It's hard to positively portray the "restricted fire" tenet, as it's sorta negative, but nothing was done in the scene to violate it, in any scene, and I think you can feel it's spirit in action.
• Small communities, too, were not directly represented, but you get a sense of it from the names of the characters.

Basically I'd say that there was absolutely no delay at all in this game between starting and getting to precisely the sort of stuff that the players at least said that they were invested in. In fact, I think that the play is pretty good, and that the players seem pretty excited about it, given the OOC chatter in the scene.

No, I really don't think that it has anything to do with a lack of playing right off to stuff in which players are invested. I can't say for sure in this last game, since I didn't play, but I can tell you absolutely for certain that in starts like the "Byzantine" game, that I was really, really invested in the ideas behind the game, and dove right into them from the start. Unlike other games, Universalis almost forces this. I mean, what else are you going to create other than ideas that spring right from the tenets. You have no other source of inspiration. Sure you could pick others up to delay getting to the part in which you're invested, but it would actually be harder than what Universalis promotes naturally. You'd have to swim uphill to have less fun. I've never seen that happen in any Uni play.

Nope, what happens in UniWiki is that the game aquires it's own "weight" as it goes based on the events that have happened. If you're not invested in that weight at every step, then it becomes a hinderance. Every player agrees with me that this is what happens. You go away for a few days, and when you return, you look at what's there, and every bit that everyone else has posted in the meanwhile stands in the way of your interest in what's going on. Not because it doesn't match the tenets, but because you weren't "there" when it was created. Because there's no social challenge to you to move the story onward considering what the others have put in place in the interim.

I think the problem is well identified. You can speculate about it being something else all you like, but I'd suggest that you actually try to play it before you do so. Because the problems are very specific and peculiar to the form of play.

Mike

I don't think I was dead on. But social feedback and a social challenge to move the story onward are strong incentives to invest in the way events have turned out. Without that factor involved, how invested were they in playing with their favoured idea?
For example, my 'shoot lightening from my mages finger tips' investment. Play events could mean there are no targets for it, targets are immune to it, it's dangerous to do it, or any other number of inhibitors that stop my favourite thing coming into play.

By being invested in play, I mean how invested they were in/comfortable with the idea that the game might stop them from having their fave thing at any given point? I'm reminded of the D&D advice about a character who just got fireball, and GM's shouldn't throw critters who are all fire immune at that player. No one is particularly invested in play that removes their fave thing from play that thoroughly. But players will accept a certain degree of removal. How much, in this case do you think?

I still think you're grasping at strange straws here, Callan, and I'm starting to find it hard to even understand what you're talking about.

I think the elements of play in which the players said they were invested were never delayed, and came back over and over later in play. I could cite later scenes that had as many of the investment elements as the earlier scenes. So...I don't know how invested they were for sure, but enough to have those elements come back repeatedly. And with great fecundity. I don't think that anyone playing thought, "Ohmygoodness, I'll never be able to examine my "Stars Are Right" tenet any more.

It might interest you to know that most of the players involved play lots of other RPGs with each other over at Indie-Netgaming. So it's not like there's a complete lack of social context. We all know and trust each other pretty much implicitly (I'd play with any of the players from any of the games at any time). Further, all are excellent players in terms of ability. In fact, that might be something to worry about if the idea with UniWiki is ever to get it into wider play distribution. But what it says is that there's no worrying going on. Not, certainly from me, and I don't think from anyone else.

No, it's not worry about play getting away from what you want. Not it at all. Again, what it is, is looking at a scene that somebody else has created and feeling...eh...I don't want any part of that. It's not that the scene in question doesn't have the sorts of elements in which you're personally invested - often times the players have, in fact, used your tenets and things you like well. It's just that RPG play is about participation in the creative process. RPGs make terrible stories. All the talent of the UniWiki players notwithstanding, the idea is not to produce a readable document.

This is something that Neal's not getting either. Play of Universalis is said to be "storytelling" but that's not even precisely accurate. It's myth creation. Using the definition that ethnographers use for this activity in societies that actually have it (not ours). Meaning that the only meaning of such an activity is in the act of creation. The output is not at all the point of the activity. It's the act. If you look at somebody doing the act, but are not a part of it, not only is it disinteresting, it's actively repulsive. It's exclusionary - not intentionally, but as a result of the social act of creation, and the ritual space about the act (see Lehrich's essay).

I actually have a hard time reading any scene that I was not a part of. Hard time. I mean I have to absolutely force myself to read each word one by one, if/when I have the urge to do so. That alone is impediment enough to getting back into play. Once I understand the created content, and then try to think of something to add...total blank. I can force myself to add something, and have on occasion, but it's entirely joyless. Dull, drab work. I have more fun making spreadsheets at my job, than I do trying to add to a UniWiki scene in which I have had limited or no participation up until this point.

As long as I'm playing hard, and maintaining that ritual social space in the asynch play, and keeping up with everything that's going on, then my original creative investments are just fine. It's entirely the breaking of the ritual space to "take a break" from posting when the problem shows up. This is true not only of UniWiki, BTW, happened with me also with the IRC "Kroolian Jungle" game. I forced my self back into play after a hiatus, but no matter how much it had the invested elements that the tenets had set, no matter how the content matched my personal desires about what was interesting to play, I couldn't remain invested because there was some distinct disconnect between me and the creation in place that meant that I couldn't care for it at all.

Why is it that it's so loathesome to tell somebody about your 45th Level Half-Ogre Anti-Paladin? Is it really because the story is bad? Well, in the example that's probably part of it. But the real reason it's not just boring, but annoying, is because it's precisely like a "One Time at Band Camp" story. That is, it contains a social boundary from which you are excluded. The best you can do, if the story is good, is resent the person telling you because you didn't get to participate in what sounded like a fun time. It has nothing to do with the content of the story, but rather with the fact that it's a social activity in which you are not involved.

As Trevis says, looking at this activity that is no longer yours, any energy that you pour into it is like feeding a black hole. In fact, you can tend to feel like an interloper.

I'm not guessing about this. I've known that this is the problem, at the very least for myself, and likely for others, for quite a while now. I've been saying this since previous to the last iteration of the game. All of Trevis' work to try to ensure investment in the last iteration was for naught. Not because it failed. But because it doesn't target the problem. So please don't send anyone back down that road to nowhere again.

The (dubious) reason that I think that the WorldWiki wouldn't have the same problem is because there is no shared story to fall out of social space with. That is, the idea is not to establish the social space in the first place, and leave it, largely, a solitary activity that just happens to have other people participating in it at the same time. Like the Duelmasters game - there is no social context there. For all you know, you could be (and sometimes are) playing against the computer. This might be throwing the baby out with the bathwater, but for asynchronous play it would seem that the baby has left the building anyhow.

Mike

Hi Mike,

Awsome post/account! Again!

I think your actually getting to what I'm trying to convey but from a different, clearer direction. I'll quote you a few times, where you indicate some pretty heavy investment:

It's just that RPG play is about participation in the creative process.

This is something that Neal's not getting either. Play of Universalis is said to be "storytelling" but that's not even precisely accurate. It's myth creation. Using the definition that ethnographers use for this activity in societies that actually have it (not ours). Meaning that the only meaning of such an activity is in the act of creation. The output is not at all the point of the activity. It's the act.

This is true not only of UniWiki, BTW, happened with me also with the IRC "Kroolian Jungle" game. I forced my self back into play after a hiatus, but no matter how much it had the invested elements that the tenets had set, no matter how the content matched my personal desires about what was interesting to play, I couldn't remain invested because there was some distinct disconnect between me and the creation in place that meant that I couldn't care for it at all.

I see your point, Callan, and I'd say, yes, you're merely stating my POV in an obfuscatory manner. That is, yes, it is my opinion that all players are always more "invested" in the act of play than they are with the content of the game. That's what I've been saying all along. That, as soon as you lose contact with the game, you lose interest.

Where we differ, I think, is in our assessment of whether there's something to be done about this. The way you state it, apparently there was something that we could have done to ensure that people were more invested in the tenets than they were in being a part of the continuing play. Well, my point is that, in fact, we did everything humanly possible to ensure this investment, perhaps more than any other RPG group has ever done before to try to ensure this investment, with the sole exception of playing in a more social situation (which, after all, is the point of the experiment) and it still did not work.

Your solution seems to be "Be even more invested." Well, that's very easy to say. If you can show us the way to do this in asynchronous play, I'm all ears.

Yes, it's precisely the social situation in FTF that makes this work. That, too, is precisely what everyone in this thread has been saying. That this is the missing ingredient. Are you saying don't play asynchronous?  Then you're like the doctor who, when I tell him that my knee hurts when I run, tells me not to run. That doesn't solve the problem in any way. Actually, that's the prescription that I've been giving all along, anyhow. I don't think we can run on this leg without it hurting. Tell us something new.

Mike

Hi Mike,

Cool, established some mutual ground. :)

Your solution seems to be "Be even more invested." Well, that's very easy to say. If you can show us the way to do this in asynchronous play, I'm all ears.

I don't know how you get people to stop being so myth creation focused though...perhaps just tell them to just lay back and enjoy those tenents?

Hey guys,

I think we've beaten this topic into the dirt, and very, very flat as well. Everyone's had his say, and the info will remain here for others to think about in the future. So let's call it closed.

Best,
Ron