This was the first narr game I have ever hosted.  Actually, it's the first narr game I've ever played.  I swallowed the rules in a day, called up my gaming buds, and we agreed to play.  In the past, we've mostly played D&D 3+ and, as far as I know, nobody else in the group has ever played narr.  One guy is a big fan of roleplaying in text MUDs and MMO's (if he's lucky to find a good group of people).

Before the Storm
Before the session, I didn't tell anyone much about the game.  If I gave a short explanation, it was limited to statements such as, "It's a game where we make the world in the initial stages of play." or "There are no character sheets"  or "I don't have to have a campaign prepared; we can just play."  None of my explanations went into the game's goal of cooperatively telling a story.  I wasn't sure how to convince them that that could be considered an RPG.  I'd rather just jump into the game and see what happens.  When playing D20 and not killing things, these guys tend to migrate into lengthy sit-com like narrations, so I was curious about where it would go.

Getting Into the Swing
I feel like explaining the rules took a lot of the impetus out of the early part of the game, although I'm sure my inexperience with Narr meant I was not presenting things as effectively as I could have.  I was, in fact, explaining rules for the entire ~4 hours that we played.  The players were particularly iquisitive about them; when I explained a rule it was not uncommon for one of them to immediately pose a question about how that rule would function in case X, Y or Z.  They seemed to be very focused on precisely "what they could do" with a given rule.  Being mostly D&D players, this made sense to me.  They wanted to know what they would be empowered to accomplish during play.  In fact, it wasn't until an hour into the game when one of them asked, "Wait, so what do we do in this game?"  I wonder how many people would gasp at this.  To see how it worked out, keep reading.

Building the World
I stayed away from Rules Gimmicks, since neither they nor I yet had the experience to use them effectively.  Tenets were: All life silicon based, except humans -+- Worlds within space are flat islands called "Oases"-+- Space is atmospheric and breathable to humans -+- Humans forced to live in hanging cities underneath the Oases -+- An Oasis may be connected to another by a sentient space train -+- Humans survive as cannibals -+- Humans divided into three castes: Noble /  Worker / Food. 

Observations: 

• Lack of silly tenets I expected them to write.  This was alarming and encouraging to me, because I have always wondered if this group were capable of telling anything othat than a slapstick story in an RPG.
• Connectedness of story elements.  I wasn't sure how developed this would be, but everyone sort of "automatically" went with someone else's idea and developed it further.  The entire process was very cooperative and iterative.
• A drought of story provoking Tenets... especially on my part.  I think this might have been when the shell-shock set in (see below). 


Building the world took between 45 minutes and an hour.  Too long, in my opinion, and I blame the length of time spent explaining rules.  I want to say I read the chapter faster than it took us to do this!  I didn't realize it at the time but, by my style of explaining the rules and ensuring they were adhered to, I was setting myself up to be the referee of the evening's game.  (By my social posture mainly, I think.  A habit from being GM with these guys before; evident here since I was the only guy with rules knowledge.)

Getting Our Game On
Framing the first scene took a very long time.  An aside: I reccommend that the host of the game, or whomever has read the rules and understands them, take the reigns and frame the first scene.  An example can go a long way.  The first scene turned out to be a flashback (?) in that we all knew what the player was trying to do, story-wise, and so after muuuuch explaining of how framing a scene works mechanically, we ended up not doing anything within it anyway.  One player spent some coins to add a few details to the flashback, but when he was done we ended it and I took the next scene.  Framing the first scene took nearly thirty minutes (although it turned out extremely simple) and playing it took about ten.  Winning bid for the second scene wasn't hard because I turned out to be the only person to bid any coins.  Here, I realized I had shell-shock.  I wasn't particularly nervous, and I believe I was sharp, clear  and confident explaining the rules (referring to the book only twice in the whole evening to grab a detail I had forgotten) of play, but not a single damn story idea would come to me.  In this, my first scene, I puked out whatever was in my head as quickly as I could because things were already dragging, and I did not want things to stagnate with everyone still in the stage of "I want to play, but I'm not quite sure what to do."  I framed a scene with a slave driver of one of the silicon races (the "snowflakes") chasing a young man through an alley.  I had him pull out a canister of liquid fuel (?) to douse a bridge after crossing it (?!?) with his enemy in pursuit.  Someone took the story from there (thank God), ignoring anything to do with the bridge or canister and moving in a new direction.  I have no idea how common ignoring previous story ideas are for new players (or even experienced ones) but I didn't care too much because I was glad for the relief.  I had no idea what I was going to narrate next.

About my shell-shock: a block set itself into my mind early on and lasted the entire game.  I was able to spew out random insignificant Components and Events just fine, as well as react in predictable and logical ways toward story Facts presented by other players, but I found myself unable to start a thread with the potential to create excitement or inspiration for engaging story.  I don't feel like anyone else in the group did, and I felt like I dropped the ball by not being the one to pioneer this.  One of the reasons I was attracted to Universalis (or really any narr game I could have chosen) was the potential to tell a dynamic story that has some emotinal impact and/or the potential to delight the other players in the telling.

Will This Guy Join In?
As play continued, Bob was not becoming involved.  He left the room for phone calls, came back and interrupted us to ask what was happening, and continued to pass whenver it was his turn.  This didn't upset me yet, as I had been wondering most of all how he would react to this game.  This was the same guy who asked, "Wait, so what do we do in this game?"  It was understandable that he was used to having an external source of for goals/direction available to play with.  However, at one point one of the rules (I don't remember which) clicked with him and he immediately jumped into the role of the "antagonist controller" to see what he could make of it.  After killing off a character that was shaping up to become in important hero in the story (nobody fought this, as it was Factually feasible), he was still unsuccessful at retaining a group of slaves that his controlled characters badly desired and -- I'm not sure how -- this mellowed out his desire to take the role of beefing up the "bad guys" to make them "win".  Ultimately, he bid to frame the next scene, and set it up to be a scene that could (potentially) tell a little bit of the story of the relationship between the humans and the "snowflakes".  The framing of this third scene became a cliff-hanger, as it marked the end of the evening for us.  Immediately after we stopped playing, he was telling everyone that we need to play again and that we should write a novel about our game!  I was impressed and I cannot figure out what happened.  Maybe he intuitively caught on to the capabilities of a narr game, eventually puzzling it out from hours of explaining its rules?  Maybe he realized killing other characters was pointless, or a waste of good coins that could be used to further an interesting story?  None of these seem valid.  Regardless, in these last ten minutes of the evening he became suddenly excited about the setting we had jointly created way back in the tenets phase!  It was like he had just gotten started playing.

Stances Are Real...
One memorable moment of gameplay was when Lex, the player consistently showing the most initiative, started a quick dialog during a complication resolution with a character I was controlling.  This was the first dialog for us, and I had (probably my only spark of creativity for the night) some spontaneous lines that I used to develop both our character's history, relationship and personalities.  Interestingly, Lex was solidly playing this character from an Actor stance.  A few lines of dialog were unimportant to his character Johnny, who was working with limited time, as it was urgent for someone to secure the corral barge's cockpit.  Both he and his character ignored the content of my dialog, effectively making it color for the scene!  Not realizing this, he also ended the dialog before I was done to continue acting out Johnny's actions for the complication resolution (which I could not interrupt to continue dialog).

Johnny (Lex): "Go take out the pilot.  I'll untie the people."
Junie (me): "What?  Why do I always take out the pilot?  Can't you do it this time?"
Johnny: "Look, we may have killed the guards, but we don't have much time.  I need you to get that pilot, now."
Junie: "WE took out the guards??  I fired the shots that killed all four!  You still haven't killed a single snowflake on a mission, yet!"
Johnny: "Look, we don't have time to argue.  I'll go do it.  You stay here."

Through Junie's dialog I was trying to establish some facts about the two characters, but it was ignored.  I didn't want to grind things to a halt for the sake of explaining mechanically what I was hoping would come across naturally, so we moved on.

Conclusion

• We played 1 quick scene with minimal events or characters, a 2nd full scene, and framed the 3rd in 4 hours.
• After the game, players spent some time discussing where the story could go next.  I didn't know to encourage or discourage this, although my understanding is that the game thrives on synthesis.  I don't really care as long as they have fun, but I'm curious if this is common.
• I spent most of the night correcting people's interpretations/utilizations of the rules.  This would be disheartening if not for the fact that most of these guys come from a solid D&D background, and when you tell them "RPG", they are conditioned to look through that lens.  It's possible they spent as much time unlearning to understand the rules as they did learning.
• Everyone seemed to have fun and wants to continue the story
• The story is almost 100% plot focused, and the group (except me) seems to be okay with that.  Of course, the way to have my say in this would be to utilize my privilege to add other narrative elements to it.  Shell-shock prevented me from doing this last session, and I'm afraid it might do it again next time.  It may truly be the only way I can ever get over that will be to play this game with more experienced players some time.
• Nobody seems to (unless intuitively and I haven't noticed) have yet caught on to the significance of creating complications to gain more coins.  Again, shell-shock made it hard for me to come up with anything myself, even though I was aware that I could have done it.

Miscellany
If I had to guess where the shell-shock came from, I would say part of it came from trying play the game for the first time while simultaneously explaining the rules.  ("So and so does this.  Okay, let me explain what I just did.")  I don't believe I am a quick thinker or experienced in improv in the first place, so adding the burden of referee-like responsibility probably made me feel especially stifled.  I am hoping that the next time we play the other players will assist in the task of ensuring rules are followed and begin to learn the game's lingo.  If one or more of them were to purchase the game, I imagine it could help immensely.  There are several rules I could ask questions about myself, and I will probably have to head to the game's forum to do so.

I feel like I left out a lot, so I'm sure there are questions out there that could prod me into revealing more details on a particular thing that happened (or didn't) on game night.

-- John

Hi, there! It is a nice report.

I would say that your feelings and situations along the session are quite similar to some of mine.
I think that teaching how Universalis work along play, introducing the rules when they are needed the first time simplifies the first session a lot and makes it go faster.

Bob's reactions sounds natural. There is a point were players get involved in something that is happening on the fiction. Then, they realize what they want to do, and they begin to invest on it.
And someone should be taken the antagonist role from time to time.
Perhaps it was not happening previously because they are used to follow the GM, but I'm sure they will not need much help any more. Well, from time to time you surely find yourself not so much interested on the exact things that are going on. But sooner or later, there is always that moment, when you feel that something really interest you, and you start to positioning yourself spending coins.

The thing that most interests me, is your reaction. That moment of "I'm in charge and I have no idea". I have previously had exactly the same feeling, not only in this game. I would say it is a bad use of our minds, too used to be the one introducing the starting elements of our preconceived story keys.
In a game like Universalis, your friends are your safety net. If you don't have ideas, let the others lead the game for a while. In your case it was a bad moment, as they were not yet investing at the start, still waiting to know what was going on within the game.
I would say the key is to build during the first scenes consistent characters that are somehow having potential conflicts with other characters. Introduce the characters, create situations. Then everything begins to play smoothly.

Your first scene (the flashback) perhaps was not needed. Did you add something valuable to the fiction? How do you feel about it?

About the dialog, if you really want to push something if a specific way, pay coins to introduce the appropriate facts. Don't be afraid to start a kind of player-to-player conflict if it is needed. The challenge-rule is there to let you know who is the one who is more concerned about what is interesting.
But if you are not so much concerned, other people seem to be interesting in a complete different thing, and they really want to go there, let them ignore what you were saying and follow them. I always try to follow the people that are really excited about whatever is going-on (until I am that one, and I start to lead, leaving the coins clink into the bowl to back my words).

This is really cool.  I have stuff to say, but may not find time for a couple of days...But I will get back to this.

Thanks for playing.

I'm curious about your first scene framing. Did you start the first scene because (a) everyone was out of Coins from the Tenets phase, or (b) everybody ran out of ideas for the Tenets phase.

I ask because the rules emphasize that one should NOT begin to setup actual plot lines or events in the Tenets phase, and it says that when you feel that "tension" to start framing, you know you're "done" with the Tenets phase. So if you never got to that point of tension--folks straining to start playing with this sandbox you've all envisioned--then I could see how you'd be floundering a bit on the first scene. (Not to mention learning the next big chunk of mechanics at that moment as well.)

David wrote:
I'm curious about your first scene framing. Did you start the first scene because (a) everyone was out of Coins from the Tenets phase, or (b) everybody ran out of ideas for the Tenets phase.

Arturo wrote:
Your first scene (the flashback) perhaps was not needed. Did you add something valuable to the fiction? How do you feel about it?

Big wrote:
I decided to begin the first scene when 1) We had already spent 45 minutes on it and, 2) Players seemed content that what we had was a "complete" setting.  I am not certain either of these are a good motivation, but they seemed natural.

We chose who would frame the first scene by rolling dice, since the book offers no rule for this.

Let me issue a correction here.  I mistakenly said I had them roll for framing the first scene.  It was kicking off the Tenets phase that we rolled dice for.  When it came to framing the first scene, we bid for it, as normal.  Sorry for the confusion.

-- John

Big wrote: Before the Storm
Before the session, I didn't tell anyone much about the game.  If I gave a short explanation, it was limited to statements such as, "It's a game where we make the world in the initial stages of play." or "There are no character sheets"  or "I don't have to have a campaign prepared; we can just play."  None of my explanations went into the game's goal of cooperatively telling a story.  I wasn't sure how to convince them that that could be considered an RPG.  I'd rather just jump into the game and see what happens.  When playing D20 and not killing things, these guys tend to migrate into lengthy sit-com like narrations, so I was curious about where it would go.

Getting Into the Swing
I feel like explaining the rules took a lot of the impetus out of the early part of the game, although I'm sure my inexperience with Narr meant I was not presenting things as effectively as I could have.  I was, in fact, explaining rules for the entire ~4 hours that we played.  The players were particularly iquisitive about them; when I explained a rule it was not uncommon for one of them to immediately pose a question about how that rule would function in case X, Y or Z.  They seemed to be very focused on precisely "what they could do" with a given rule.  Being mostly D&D players, this made sense to me.  They wanted to know what they would be empowered to accomplish during play.  In fact, it wasn't until an hour into the game when one of them asked, "Wait, so what do we do in this game?"  I wonder how many people would gasp at this.  To see how it worked out, keep reading.

• Lack of silly tenets I expected them to write.  This was alarming and encouraging to me, because I have always wondered if this group were capable of telling anything othat than a slapstick story in an RPG.
• Connectedness of story elements.  I wasn't sure how developed this would be, but everyone sort of "automatically" went with someone else's idea and developed it further.  The entire process was very cooperative and iterative.
• A drought of story provoking Tenets... especially on my part.  I think this might have been when the shell-shock set in (see below).  




Building the world took between 45 minutes and an hour.  Too long, in my opinion, and I blame the length of time spent explaining rules.  I want to say I read the chapter faster than it took us to do this!  

I didn't realize it at the time but, by my style of explaining the rules and ensuring they were adhered to, I was setting myself up to be the referee of the evening's game.  (By my social posture mainly, I think.  A habit from being GM with these guys before; evident here since I was the only guy with rules knowledge.)

Getting Our Game On
Framing the first scene took a very long time.  An aside: I reccommend that the host of the game, or whomever has read the rules and understands them, take the reigns and frame the first scene.  An example can go a long way.  

The first scene turned out to be a flashback (?) in that we all knew what the player was trying to do, story-wise, and so after muuuuch explaining of how framing a scene works mechanically, we ended up not doing anything within it anyway.

I framed a scene with a slave driver of one of the silicon races (the "snowflakes") chasing a young man through an alley.  I had him pull out a canister of liquid fuel (?) to douse a bridge after crossing it (?!?) with his enemy in pursuit.  Someone took the story from there (thank God), ignoring anything to do with the bridge or canister and moving in a new direction.  I have no idea how common ignoring previous story ideas are for new players (or even experienced ones) but I didn't care too much because I was glad for the relief.  I had no idea what I was going to narrate next.

About my shell-shock: a block set itself into my mind early on and lasted the entire game.  I was able to spew out random insignificant Components and Events just fine, as well as react in predictable and logical ways toward story Facts presented by other players, but I found myself unable to start a thread with the potential to create excitement or inspiration for engaging story.  I don't feel like anyone else in the group did, and I felt like I dropped the ball by not being the one to pioneer this.  One of the reasons I was attracted to Universalis (or really any narr game I could have chosen) was the potential to tell a dynamic story that has some emotinal impact and/or the potential to delight the other players in the telling.

Will This Guy Join In?
However, at one point one of the rules (I don't remember which) clicked with him and he immediately jumped into the role of the "antagonist controller" to see what he could make of it.  After killing off a character that was shaping up to become in important hero in the story (nobody fought this, as it was Factually feasible), he was still unsuccessful at retaining a group of slaves that his controlled characters badly desired and -- I'm not sure how -- this mellowed out his desire to take the role of beefing up the "bad guys" to make them "win".  Ultimately, he bid to frame the next scene, and set it up to be a scene that could (potentially) tell a little bit of the story of the relationship between the humans and the "snowflakes".  The framing of this third scene became a cliff-hanger, as it marked the end of the evening for us.  Immediately after we stopped playing, he was telling everyone that we need to play again and that we should write a novel about our game!  I was impressed and I cannot figure out what happened.

Johnny (Lex): "Go take out the pilot.  I'll untie the people."
Junie (me): "What?  Why do I always take out the pilot?  Can't you do it this time?"
Johnny: "Look, we may have killed the guards, but we don't have much time.  I need you to get that pilot, now."
Junie: "WE took out the guards??  I fired the shots that killed all four!  You still haven't killed a single snowflake on a mission, yet!"
Johnny: "Look, we don't have time to argue.  I'll go do it.  You stay here."

Through Junie's dialog I was trying to establish some facts about the two characters, but it was ignored.  I didn't want to grind things to a halt for the sake of explaining mechanically what I was hoping would come across naturally, so we moved on.

Conclusion
After the game, players spent some time discussing where the story could go next.  I didn't know to encourage or discourage this, although my understanding is that the game thrives on synthesis.  I don't really care as long as they have fun, but I'm curious if this is common.

• The story is almost 100% plot focused, and the group (except me) seems to be okay with that.  Of course, the way to have my say in this would be to utilize my privilege to add other narrative elements to it.  Shell-shock prevented me from doing this last session, and I'm afraid it might do it again next time.  
• Nobody seems to (unless intuitively and I haven't noticed) have yet caught on to the significance of creating complications to gain more coins.  Again, shell-shock made it hard for me to come up with anything myself, even though I was aware that I could have done it.

Miscellany
If I had to guess where the shell-shock came from, I would say part of it came from trying play the game for the first time while simultaneously explaining the rules.  ("So and so does this.  Okay, let me explain what I just did.")  I don't believe I am a quick thinker or experienced in improv in the first place, so adding the burden of referee-like responsibility probably made me feel especially stifled.  I am hoping that the next time we play the other players will assist in the task of ensuring rules are followed and begin to learn the game's lingo.  If one or more of them were to purchase the game, I imagine it could help immensely.  There are several rules I could ask questions about myself, and I will probably have to head to the game's forum to do so.

For instance the powerful first scene of Star Wars III requires only Tenets like "There are space ships", "Faster than light travel", "an evil empire rules the galaxy", and "there are rebels fighting the empire".  From there its totally possible to jump right into play leaving the first scene framer to invent Vader and the princess and the space ship chase...and likely subsequent players to insert the "plans to the battle station" and Obi-wan as their only hope.

Thanks for all the great replies.  I'm going to put one last post in about this session when I have time.  It looks like our next game will be a new one, since we don't want to continue this story without one of the key players (who would be very sad).  This is not written in stone, however.

Valamir wrote:

Getting Into the Swing
I feel like explaining the rules took a lot of the impetus out of the early part of the game.

Was the approach outlined in the first chapter helpful here? 

In teaching the game for the first time, I typically keep the rules VERY basic until we've gone around the table one.  For instance  "Say a thing.  Pay 1 Coin for each thing you say that you want written down so its not ignored".  Of course that's hard to do with curious players who want to know, but I find it lets the game really take off sooner than doing long rules dumps.

Did you use the "opening scene of a movie" analogy when you kicked off the Tenet phase?  For people who enjoy movies, I've found that to be an effective way of getting them to think about what they're doing with Tenets with the perspective of supporting some future action.

I reccommend that the host of the game, or whomever has read the rules and understands them, take the [reins] and frame the first scene.  An example can go a long way. 

Actually, my advice to allow another player to frame the first scene is geared precisely towards breaking that sense of the rules teacher being the referee.  I think this is especially important with players mostly familiar with the traditional GM / player divide.

The first scene turned out to be a flashback

[Something] like that for a first play I would have been inclined to treat it as color and just move on, saving the actual "Flashback" rules for later.

Here's what I do in Universalis.  Since I don't have a PC of my own, I look around and see what characters have been created.  Then I simply grab one and ask "What does this guy want?".  Then I spend a Coin to make that a Trait (say "overthrow the guild master").  Then I think "How is this guy going to get that?"...and I may make that a Trait as well (like "frame him for financial corruption").

So just because Universalis turns every character into an "NPC" and lets any player who wants to grab them and run them...don't forget all the tricks you already know about how to set goals and motivations for NPCs from when you play other games.  The only difference is that where in those games you might write a paragraph or two describing it, in Universalis you want to break out the key phrases from those paragraphs and make them Traits (or other Components).

Will This Guy Join In?
However, at one point one of the rules (I don't remember which) clicked with him and he immediately jumped into the role of the "antagonist controller" to see what he could make of it.  [...]

I'd love to hear more on this, especially if he'd like to pop in and talk about it.

Here I'm going to have to confess a little rustiness with the rules...  I *THINK* you could just spend the Coins while you were speaking during the dialog to add Traits

Big wrote:
Their curiosity plus my tendency to over-explain combined to produce my problem here.  I'll simply have to develop a new habit of mentally pausing to ask myself if answering a particular question is prudent at the moment.  I'm not used to saying "no" to inquiring minds.  Concerning Chapter 1, I didn't read it as an approach for me to explain the game to others, although I appreciated it as an overview to the rest of the book.  Maybe I should follow its example.

Good point.  In our game, there was only 1 player who had any clue what a first scene could possibly be.  My uncertainty to ask a new player to take the first scene is based upon my experience with these guys.  It appears to me now that the Tenets phase could have gone a little differently (more examples of the kinds of things you can do besides simply creating factoids for the Setting/Universe the game takes place in).  We spent 45 minutes on it, which seemed long to me, but it doesn't seem like we achieved what we could have in those 45 minutes.  Next time I run the game, I'd at least like to see two players and myself with possible yarns to start spinning before declaring Tenets over.

Any advice/suggestions on the kinds of Story elements one can imagine besides mere Setting facts?  Hm, I guess there are relationships and motivations for starters (at least on a grand scale).  I think it's hard for me to think in these terms because these aren't the kinds of things I'm used to thinking of at the table when playing an RPG.

By the by, there is something in the nature of dialog I am now curious about in this game: subtelty.  I understand that in shared story games such as these, accurate story telling requires openness and honesty.  However, sometimes frankness can tread on literary treats.  If I am trying to portray a character in a certain light, slowly through dialog exchanges, all of my technique is lost the moment I plop a coin down and say "by the way, this means X, Y, Z."  I guess there really isn't any way around that, and in my example above it mattered not, because the other player didn't catch on anyway, hehe.

Here are some game-specific questions I had: 

1) What's a way to handle temporary Component states, without too much writing?  In our game, there was a lot of tranquilizing going on.

2) Similarly, what's a good way to handle events without too much writing?  Obviously, in a story, lots of actions and speech takes place.  These facts are important, but it seems impossible to write them all down.  In our game, the recording technique we used was "each player write down what he/she brings into the game" and we used business cards.  Is it common for groups to literally record the entire game experience, events dialogue and all?

3) What about when non-complicated Complications arise?  For example, Player A is in control of Mirage and Player B is control of Firestarter.  Player A wishes to have Mirage give something to Firestarter.  Player B couldn't care less about this development.  Since the Character Components are controlled by different players, this is considered a Complication, but.... why roll dice?

Session 2: Notable moments and after Session discussion

We got together and contined the story, where it left off: 
Inside a space train with Fizz, (one of the Chryslaris, or "snowflakes") a middle caste male, and an upper caste female.  Fizz is in the front, and the male and female are in the back.  From the back, there is a scream coming from the female.

Bob framed this scene.  I believe he had a potential story goal, but he passed it off to see where we would take it.  I'm not sure what I think about that.  None of us had particular inspiration for this scene (since it wasn't ours).  I forced myself to think of an idea on my turn and I decided the scream was because the train (remember, they are sentient) was hungry and decided to strap the woman down and suck out her plasma.  The man took this opportunity to rob her and get away.  I narrated that Fizz couldn't hear any of this -- an obvious mistake in hindsight: blocking potential narration lines.  When it came back to Bob, he seemed slightly perplexed (I believe that I didn't do what, to him, was the obvious continutation of the story) and, not seeing any way to continue what he originally planned, he had the middle caste guy jump out of the scene.  We ended the scene.  It was a flop, and we all knew it, but we were okay with just forgetting it and moving on.  Nobody was upset.

My thoughts on this scene are: why did he frame a scene and then let go of it?  He had 2 coins to get the action moving, but he didn't.  I'm inclined to think he felt that the game would be more fun if the players are generous and give each other a chance, rather than trying to be in control "too much".  I wonder if stressing active narration (maybe even cutthroat) is a good idea.  I feel if he would have gotten the ball rolling, we would have had ideas.

For the next scene, we went to an Ignatian ("magma-men") starbase.  Junie and Ray, among the other cow caste humans, had been rescued by their Ignatian allies and taken here for the next step.  Again, a scene was framed with little directional motion; however, this scene was related to previous events and characters in a way we could come up with ideas.  General Basalt began to explain to Junie and Ray (members of the Resistance) that it would be possible to reverse the cataclysm, restoring life to its organic form, but it required the killing of many of the few humans in the galaxy to accomplish -- until now.  New information showed that the space trains' use of human plasma featured unique chemical processes that might be able to unlock the secret.  If the Ignatians and the resistance could only capture one of those trains...  We needed coins badly.  5 coins had not been enough for us per scene, we were just too detailed about background elements.  Dan knew we needed complications, and he had control of Ray, and I had control of Basalt, so he narrated, "General Basalt and Ray walk toward the Lab."

My thoughts here are confused.  I had explained to the others that the definition of a complication was when one player wanted to do things that involved a component he controlled and a component someone else controlled.  In that sense of the definition, Dan's narration was a complication.  However, Dan was presenting no narrative conflict for us to resolve.  The other three of us could not figure out any reason to turn this bit of narration into a dice roll.  We tried to explain the concept of story conflict to him, but all he could focus on was the definition I had previously given of a complication.  We basically vetoed the narration, but were left scratching our heads as to why this was even an issue in the first place.  What do you do when someone narrates a non-conflictual event with a component that is not under their control?  Does the owner of the component invent a conflict on the spot for free?  "Basalt says, 'No, we need to go to the armory instead.'"?  My conclusion was that Dan just needed to be more creative if he wanted some coins.  This is not to say he could have been, given the scene, just that 'that's how the game works'.

When Bob's turn came, he turned Junie into a spy, and she immediately found a place to send the previous conversation out as a transmission.  Okay, cool development.  Starbase personnel noticed the transmission and alerted General Basalt.  Junie volunteered to go "check it out" [complication arose...] ... and he agreed, since they were old friends.  On the way, she destroyed the data and tossed her transmitter out a space vent.  When she got to communications, they narrowed down the location to where all the characters were gathered.  She went back, planted a dummy transmitter on Ray (explained below) and framed him.  Basalt shot him dead on site, gaining the trait "Intolerance for spies"

A couple thoughts here, but I'm saving one for the end.  In the complication between Basalt and Junie where Junie convinced him to let her "check out" the source of the transmission, I lost.  In losing, I narrated that she tossed her transmitter out a space vent and gave her the trait: "No transmitter."  I explained very clearly that this meant that she lost her only transmitter and had no way to send or receive future transmissions.  Later, when Bob brought her back down to frame Ray, he said "She takes another transmitter and plants it on Ray".  I and another player pointed to her "No transmitter" trait and said she could not do that.  Bob argued that meant that she simply "lost one that she had before" and that she could conceivably have had more than one.  This was directly contrary to the fact I stated, so he proposed that she have a "fake transmitter" on her for the purposes of planting on others.  In the end, I agreed over the technicality, but I was bothered by the insistence to manipulate the rules in order to narrate this event.  I realized then, that anyone with any skill in finely manipulating the rules could do this during any narration.  It all boiled down to other players calling farse and challenging.  The only problem I had with this was the fact that Bob is perfectly willing to play this way.  I can't figure out if he understands that this undermines the fun of the game for the rest of us, or not.  We'll have to talk about it.

I also narrated that the transmission, even though it went to its intended source, was intercepted by the listening post of a new, third race of gaseous beings.  The event was, "Information Intercepted."  Later, Bob narrated that the information was encrypted.  I got upset because my intent was for the fact to mean that the information was now in the hands of the new race.  I challenged based on the intended meaning of my fact.  Another player called me out and said that the strict interpretation of my fact did not preclude the chance of the information being encrypted.  I knew he was right.  That's the way the game works, and even though I was initially upset that my intention for the fact I narrated was different, you can't really rule based on intended meaning.  All of a sudden I felt really good that the players were getting the hang of the game enough to correct me!

The final bit of story for the evening was the framing of a scene at the communications station Junie's message was transmitted to.  Lexton created the scene, making each one of our players (except Dan, already a character) actual characters in the scene.  Robert, Me, and Lexton were all operatives of a yet-unaffiliated group receiving the message from their spy, Junie.  The first event was me saying, "Sir, incoming transmission!""  We ended after the framing of this scene.

Lex told me later that this was an attempt to create characters Bob would not kill.  What tact!  When he created these characters, he wanted to create a social contract (would have been our first) that would provide for us not treating those characters as unimportant.  He had a general idea that he didn't want us to take them too lightly, but we never could nail down something that wouldn't be too vaguely interpreted to be ruled upon.  The closest we came was a Rules Gimmick that said those characters would cost double coins to eliminate, but we decided against it.

Well, those are the events that stand out from the Session.  Again, we only got through two scenes; one good one and one flop.  I've come to understand this is the way this group plays Universalis and it doesn't bother me.  We don't need to race through 4 scenes a night to have fun.  One good scene is one good scene.  We also learned alot about ourselves and Universalis in general in this Session.  I will try to explain as briefly as possible.

Bob likes to win.
He has potential to tell an interesting story, but he seems blocked by the fact that his main goal in playing this game is to pick a side and win all story conflicts that come their way.  Eliminating potential adversaries that become important is part of this.  This wouldn't be a problem if Bob seemed to have story goals for these conflicts, but we have yet to see them.  Since he left right after the game, the rest of us got a chance to talk, and the other two guys are really frustrated by this.  I'm not upset because I think I've identified it as him just looking for the "right way" to play the game.  I could use some tips on how to present the actual goal of the game to him, and give him pointers on telling an interesting story using conflicts -- a story that won't boil down to never-ending conflicts (with little narration) between "his" faction and "ours".

My proposed solution to the two guys was possibly to narrate on "Bob's side" for a little bit and see what happens.  Does he encourage our narration and add to it, giving us the chance to build up some components?  Does he take on a different side for a while and provide conflict from a new angle?
Our setting sucks
This is partly a joke, but there is some truth to it.  I am all but sure that we charged out of the gate too soon.  When building the Setting, we were too focused on backdrop details, and we never even considered Setting elements that encourage ideas for events-in-motion.  We never drew relationships (even between organizations), we never created prominent characters, and we never created motivations for any of the living components we made.  We just said a lot of stuff about the universe that sounded interesting to us.  I am convinced that this problem is what has been plaguing me, making it hard for me to create story goals for myself.  Combine this with the fact that any important characters we make get killed by Bob, and we are having a very hard time creating threads.
We can do better
We've had fun with this game so far, but we've realized some of the things that have made the game difficult to play, and we feel like our next game can be better.  It's likely that we aren't going to continue this one, but we'll have a talk with Bob first and see how it goes.  I want to make sure all four of us are on the same page before we make important decisions.  We certainly can't just play again without getting together and talking anyway.  My only concern is how we approach Bob and make sure we don't fault him for trying to figure out how to have fun playing the game.  I am encouraged because when we are at the table, we are able to take things in stride and laugh at things we don't necessarily agree with.  When there is an argument that we have to resolve, we have always been able to come up with a solution.
5 coins, not enough
For us, 5 coins just isn't enough.  We might go to 10 in our next game.  I think if I had previously played this game with a group that played games with 5 coin scenes, I would be able to do it.  For us, we enter almost every new scene with exactly 5.  I am sure this is likely because our game got off to a limp start, and we'll do better next time.  Still, I'm ready to go to 10 coins to inject narration if it's needed.  I guess the whole point of the coin mechanic isn't to limit the total amount of narration possible as it is to provide a fair but competitive economy of narration between the players.  Yeah, that sounds about right.
More talk than action
I refer to myself as much as the behavior of our games.  In our games, we do end up talking about what we are doing, or how we are doing it more than actual narration and story telling.  This applies to me when it comes to Universalis, as well.  It's not so hard for me to write an AP post, or to tell the other players what not to do and why it's causing hindrances to the story telling.  It's much, much harder for me to simply drive the game in an active direction, teaching others what to do through example.  I should have entitled this thread "Unsuspecting D&D players -- especially me!"  because I am certain this is due to the fact I've picked up the idea of more narration/story focused gaming by reading articles rather than participating with people who do it regularly!

-- John M

Big wrote:
Session 2: Notable moments and after Session discussion

My thoughts on this scene are: why did he frame a scene and then let go of it?  He had 2 coins to get the action moving, but he didn't.  I'm inclined to think he felt that the game would be more fun if the players are generous and give each other a chance, rather than trying to be in control "too much".  I wonder if stressing active narration (maybe even cutthroat) is a good idea.  I feel if he would have gotten the ball rolling, we would have had ideas.

My thoughts here are confused.  I had explained to the others that the definition of a complication was when one player wanted to do things that involved a component he controlled and a component someone else controlled.  In that sense of the definition, Dan's narration was a complication.  However, Dan was presenting no narrative conflict for us to resolve.  The other three of us could not figure out any reason to turn this bit of narration into a dice roll.  We tried to explain the concept of story conflict to him, but all he could focus on was the definition I had previously given of a complication.  We basically vetoed the narration, but were left scratching our heads as to why this was even an issue in the first place.  What do you do when someone narrates a non-conflictual event with a component that is not under their control?  Does the owner of the component invent a conflict on the spot for free?  "Basalt says, 'No, we need to go to the armory instead.'"?  My conclusion was that Dan just needed to be more creative if he wanted some coins.  This is not to say he could have been, given the scene, just that 'that's how the game works'.

A couple thoughts here, but I'm saving one for the end.  In the complication between Basalt and Junie where Junie convinced him to let her "check out" the source of the transmission, I lost.  In losing, I narrated that she tossed her transmitter out a space vent and gave her the trait: "No transmitter."  I explained very clearly that this meant that she lost her only transmitter and had no way to send or receive future transmissions.  Later, when Bob brought her back down to frame Ray, he said "She takes another transmitter and plants it on Ray".  I and another player pointed to her "No transmitter" trait and said she could not do that.  Bob argued that meant that she simply "lost one that she had before" and that she could conceivably have had more than one.  This was directly contrary to the fact I stated, so he proposed that she have a "fake transmitter" on her for the purposes of planting on others.  In the end, I agreed over the technicality, but I was bothered by the insistence to manipulate the rules in order to narrate this event.  I realized then, that anyone with any skill in finely manipulating the rules could do this during any narration.  It all boiled down to other players calling farse and challenging.  The only problem I had with this was the fact that Bob is perfectly willing to play this way.  I can't figure out if he understands that this undermines the fun of the game for the rest of us, or not.  We'll have to talk about it.

I also narrated that the transmission, even though it went to its intended source, was intercepted by the listening post of a new, third race of gaseous beings.  The event was, "Information Intercepted."  Later, Bob narrated that the information was encrypted.  I got upset because my intent was for the fact to mean that the information was now in the hands of the new race.  I challenged based on the intended meaning of my fact.  Another player called me out and said that the strict interpretation of my fact did not preclude the chance of the information being encrypted.  I knew he was right.  That's the way the game works, and even though I was initially upset that my intention for the fact I narrated was different, you can't really rule based on intended meaning.  All of a sudden I felt really good that the players were getting the hang of the game enough to correct me!

The final bit of story for the evening was the framing of a scene at the communications station Junie's message was transmitted to.  Lexton created the scene, making each one of our players (except Dan, already a character) actual characters in the scene.  Robert, Me, and Lexton were all operatives of a yet-unaffiliated group receiving the message from their spy, Junie.  The first event was me saying, "Sir, incoming transmission!""  We ended after the framing of this scene.

Lex told me later that this was an attempt to create characters Bob would not kill.  What tact!  When he created these characters, he wanted to create a social contract (would have been our first) that would provide for us not treating those characters as unimportant.  He had a general idea that he didn't want us to take them too lightly, but we never could nail down something that wouldn't be too vaguely interpreted to be ruled upon.  The closest we came was a Rules Gimmick that said those characters would cost double coins to eliminate, but we decided against it.

Big wrote:
Well, those are the events that stand out from the Session.  Again, we only got through two scenes; one good one and one flop.  I've come to understand this is the way this group plays Universalis and it doesn't bother me.  We don't need to race through 4 scenes a night to have fun.  One good scene is one good scene.  We also learned alot about ourselves and Universalis in general in this Session.  I will try to explain as briefly as possible.

Bob likes to win.
He has potential to tell an interesting story, but he seems blocked by the fact that his main goal in playing this game is to pick a side and win all story conflicts that come their way.  Eliminating potential adversaries that become important is part of this.  This wouldn't be a problem if Bob seemed to have story goals for these conflicts, but we have yet to see them.  Since he left right after the game, the rest of us got a chance to talk, and the other two guys are really frustrated by this.  I'm not upset because I think I've identified it as him just looking for the "right way" to play the game.  I could use some tips on how to present the actual goal of the game to him, and give him pointers on telling an interesting story using conflicts -- a story that won't boil down to never-ending conflicts (with little narration) between "his" faction and "ours".

An important question just materialized: is it okay to create characters in the Tenets phase?  Looking at Universalis from a Story Now perspective (which I have only begun to be able to do), this seems obligatory.

-- John M.

Hi John,

It so happens that Ralph is visiting at the moment, so I asked him. My own answer was "no," based on the examples and all the times I've played. However, he gave a more nuanced answer.

It was "six of one and half a dozen of the other." Either making a character is a good signal that the Tenets phase needs to be wrapped up, or it's pretty much the first thing someone does on the first turn of play.

Best, Ron

Right.

To elaborate: its ok to create characters in the Tenet phase.  Its not alright to have them do anything.  If the name of a character is ever used in the same sentence as a verb...that's a clear sign that you need to stop tenets, bid for the first scene, and THEN use the verb.

So whether characters are created as one of the last parts of the Tenet phase, or right away in the first scene...doesn't really matter.  Typically when I've been in games where they've been created in the Tenet phase they've been Named and/or given a Role but the rest of the Traits (usually) have waited for the actual play.

I remember we were once using a similar approach by chance.

One of the players introduced a tenet like: "There will be a character named Galileo who will be an astronomer". He was not creating the character, but somehow preparing the arena for doing it, making the character and his role somehow central for the rest of the game.
As it was a tenet it cost him only one coin at that moment, and the player who spent the coins to actually create the character during play was finally another one.

Is it more correct to make him spend the coins to create the character during the tenets phase?

I've never seen that before, but its pretty neat. 

John,
  It occurs to me that you and Bob have some kind of stored up conflict going on. I think the spirit of good narr gaming has not taken either of you by the collar and throttled you either.
  What I mean is, you are both trying to contribute to the story, but you keep blocking each other. A perfect example is the spy issue from last session.
  So, as I see it, you have a pretty boring scene, right? You have two sort of central characters that are rescued. but the central chars are meat/cattle, so they won't have any motivation to fight with each other or anyone really. And the other side of the scenes are the rescuers. Again, no real ripe, ready to explode source of conflict/story there either, right?
  So, Bob tried to liven it up by introducing a party that might turn over the apple cart of love and make for some story (spies). But you blocked him. Its that simple, you intentionally blocked his effort to make the story more interesting. And that's fine, except, it seems like a pattern and there doesn't seem like there is a lot else going on with other story lines as far as I can see...
  Now, to be fair, he blocked you right back, which means on some level he perceived this block as a personal effort on your part.
  You guys seem like friends and my guess is, this is not happening on a conscious, "let's block Bob" level, but its probably an artifact or instinct from another game/session popping up here.
The point is, you need to do one of two things:
1) Stop blocking Bob (don't stop the transmission, but add traits or whatever to the guys receiving it),
2) Block Bob with the Awesome. Make your twist on what he is doing more interesting then the original idea (The transmission gets redirected to the PA system and now the Spy is super public and peeps will be upset that they rescued a traitor).

  I will admit, I am new to narr gaming and I haven't had a ton of success in this regard, but, its been rattling around in my head and finally snapped into place. So, I hope this helps and I hope you guys have a great game!

dindenver wrote:
I think the spirit of good narr gaming has not taken either of you by the collar and throttled you either.  What I mean is, you are both trying to contribute to the story, but you keep blocking each other. A perfect example is the spy issue from last session.

dindenver wrote:
So, as I see it, you have a pretty boring scene, right? You have two sort of central characters that are rescued. but the central chars are meat/cattle, so they won't have any motivation to fight with each other or anyone really. And the other side of the scenes are the rescuers. Again, no real ripe, ready to explode source of conflict/story there either, right?
  So, Bob tried to liven it up by introducing a party that might turn over the apple cart of love and make for some story (spies).

dindenver wrote:
But you blocked him. Its that simple, you intentionally blocked his effort to make the story more interesting. And that's fine, except, it seems like a pattern and there doesn't seem like there is a lot else going on with other story lines as far as I can see [...] (don't stop the transmission, but add traits or whatever to the guys receiving it),
[/quit]

I think you may have misread from my post.  When his character sent out the transmission, it was not blocked.  It was intercepted.  Not intercepted in the sense that it didn't get to where he wanted it to get; intercepted in the sense that a third party was also receiving the transmission.  I was simply playing off this event as a chance to add something I had been thinking about.  This was done through the addition of a story-event, not a substitution.  Does this make sense?  Oddly enough, I think you might have missed that our final scene was one where we fleshed out the traits of the people who he had sent the transmission to.  We did not play the scene, but left it on sort of a cliff-hanger for us.

dindenver wrote:
2) Block Bob with the Awesome. Make your twist on what he is doing more interesting then the original idea (The transmission gets redirected to the PA system and now the Spy is super public and peeps will be upset that they rescued a traitor).

This sounds like good advice.  If someone is going to block someone to progress their story, make it interesting and exciting.  I had definitely blocked Bob once earlier that night without realizing until later.  This was the scene where I made Fizz not able to participate in the action.  Like I said then, I had no idea why I had this stupid automatic reaction; I wasn't really paying attention.

-- John M.