Hey Folks, I split this myself from the Adventures in Improvised System Thread as my questions are quite off topic.

Paul Czege wrote: Hey Vincent,

First off, I agree that Universalis is brilliant. But I must say I'm unconvinced that its workings can be correlated to any great extent with the dynamics of what you, Meg, and Emily do during play. A game of Universalis is essentially a mechanically regulated conversation. Your gameplay is a conversation as well, but qualitatively quite dissimilar to a Universalis conversation, I think.

Consider the common dynamic of a group of guys talking. They interrupt each other. They challenge and contradict. They redirect. They talk over each other. The mechanics of Universalis regulate that kind of conversation. It's a male conversation. It's about challenges, and elaborations, and the only kind of support recognized by the system is unqualified agreement.

Your gameplay isn't that. Your gameplay is not an unregulated version of Universalis. If Meg's character enters a room, you take up an NPC and do your best to support what she's trying to do in her scene. Universalis isn't about attentiveness and respectfully facilitating each other. Sure that stuff can happen, but it does so entirely off the radar of the system.
Anyway, in case it's not obvious, I'm seriously interested in what a non-systemless non-male "Universalis" might be like.

Paul

Paul wrote: Notably absent from Universalis are mechanics for being sympathetic to the efforts of another player even if you disagree with what they're trying to achieve. You either support them in their effort, or you don't. There's no way to give the game equivalent of a plate of homebaked cookies to someone who failed at something you warned them not to do. And there's no "thank you" mechanism for support received during a challenge other than supporting someone later when they're being challenged. But I bet you guys play around with stuff like this in your games all the time. Am I wrong?

Jonathon Walton wrote: Paul Czege wrote:
Anyway, in case it's not obvious, I'm seriously interested in what a non-systemless non-male "Universalis" might be like.

*cough*Ever-After/Facedance*cough*

Tony Irwin wrote: ...The system values players with opposed intentions, aggressive commitment, and also the idea that definitive "this is what happens" rulings are intrinsically satisfactory and what players will want.
...

1) How commited are you to seeing this as male/female thing?...

Tony Irwin wrote: 1) How commited are you to seeing this as male/female thing?

2) I can see counter-arguments based on the suggestion that conflict is what makes stories tick. If stories are all about conflict then a game like Universalis (which is all about controlling stories) needs to keep the conflict in players' hands.

3) ...games that emphasise controlling story elements to create Story Now. ...Do you see that whole category of games as essentially "male" in the way you've described? Do you see "female" approaches yielding new games in that category, or is a female approach basically incompatible with that whole category?

4) Hey Jonathon, can you be explicit about how you see Ever-After fulfills this?

What an interesting line of discussion.

I had never made the connection myself, but having read Mars and Venus, I'd say Paul's comments make a lot of sense in that context (if one accepts the dichotomy as posed in the book).

In fact, after reading Jonathan's list of differences in Ever After I think I'd probably balk at it in the same fashion that he suspects his group would balk at Universalis.

Valamir wrote: What an interesting line of discussion.

I had never made the connection myself, but having read Mars and Venus, I'd say Paul's comments make a lot of sense in that context (if one accepts the dichotomy as posed in the book).

Perhaps...and certainly its more sensationalized than it needs to be.

But having read it together with my SO of 10+years I have to say we both found it to be as pretty dead on accurate as any sweeping generalization is capable of being.

In fact the section on men putting on their "Mr Fix-it Hat" when their women just want a sympathetic ear to listen to them helped our relationship enormously.

Since I find all psychology to be a great steaming pile of clap trap anyway, I found Mars and Venus to at least be accessible useful and practical...regardless of the guy's questionable credentials.

Jonathan Walton wrote: By this description, I think that Universalis is definitely "male" in that sense: i.e. it is based on how men are taught to interact (agressively) in our society.

Jonathon wrote: You can "control" story elements without being "male." We're not talking about Communist game design here, where all story elements are shared by the group. Obviously, taking the time to come to consensus on everything that happens is probably too time consuming in most cases.

But people can control story elements without actively bringing them in conflict with the narrative visions of other players. Honestly, I don't think the issue is control at all.

I suppose we could use the male/female terminology in the sense of the various plugs on the computers and other wires. A male/female plug in this case has little to with the human sexes. It is just a method of describing the device. So in terms of system, "male" is proactive, aggressive, etc. and "female" is accepting, enabling, passive, etc. All of this has nothing to do with men and women. This could work, but maybe it's better not to since wires are wires but games still deal with people and the potential for confusion is greater.

One of the initial questions was how strongly committed Paul is to the male/female dichotomy, which only he can answer. (smile) But I agree with Jack that it is potentially more confusing than it's worth to use this terminology. Do we really want to have the same argument about it everytime someone hears about it for the first time? We could look at the phenomenon and describe it more explicitly using gender neutral terms, and take it as read that there is sometimes a breakdown in preference of one type over the other based on gender, for whatever reason.

Paul Czege wrote: It's about challenges, and elaborations, and the only kind of support recognized by the system is unqualified agreement.

Jonathan Walton wrote:
In any case, there are a few things I did with Ever-After to change things.

1. Turn based, with the opportunity to pass. This way, people don't have to fight for input into the story.

2. You can't reject anything someone else does. They have the right to do anything related to the things they have control over. None of this "your ideas have to pass group approval" stuff, which can be very threatening.

3. No detailed list of traits to make things "seem otherwise" than they are. There's no way for one character to triumph over another, simple because they have more traits. Everything stands an equal chance, with no way to really "rules-lawyer" your way to victory.

4. You can't damage or destroy someone else's creation. They have to do it themselves. This limits the risk of victimization. No de-protagonization.

5. No reward for causing conflicts. Players who are more active than others quickly find themselves without the resources to do anything else. This creates a balance between quieter and louder players.

That's all I can think of right now, but I'm sure there are other bits.

Jonathan Walton wrote: Now I'm sure it's the agressive interaction required for it to work really well. My group can play freeform like there's no tomorrow, but ask them to fight with each other, even in a friendly way, and they balk at it.

It may boil down to the fact that the main way to gain resources is via complications. Rewriting complications to give reward for more than just winning the conflict, and broaden resource increasing activities to include creating situations or settings that engage traits of other characters could change this dynamic. Along with emphasizing rewards for mirroring traits created by others.

Emily, i think you pointed out the dichotemy pretty well: "competative vs. cooperative." I don't know exactly how to facilitate cooperative play, but a couple of ideas come to mind.

1. No systemic opposition. Just because you have the most resources (coins) doesn't mean you get your way. You can voice opposition, but if someone is dead-set on having it their way on their turn then they get it.

2. Rewards for support (which has been mentioned). This is already done socially, you get along better if you help each other out. A systemic version seems like it would be much harder to execute.

3. Games are generally focused on competition. In Universalis competition is between players, in more traditional games it is between players and between the party and the GM. If you want a non-GM system that still includes competition, but not between players, then it would seem that the system itself would have to generate competition (opposition tables, etc.) Perhaps you decide that you want a Complication and instead of someone introducing one, roll some dice and check a table to get an outline for the Complication. Then the players cooperatively flesh out what happens...

That's all i've got for now...

Thomas

Hey Em,

It sounds like we're looking at competitive vs. cooperative models.

I'm not sure this is the most meaningful possible distinction. But maybe that's just because men and women have a fairly different understanding of "cooperative." To a lot of guys, dividing a project into separate chunks, each wholly owned by one contributor, is cooperative. To a lot of guys, voting on proposed alternatives, with all participants agreeing to accept the outcome of the vote, is "compromise."

Let me throw something out for consideration: conversation among women is often characterized by participants working to elicit details from a speaker. "He said what? You're kidding!" What's the reward? A little bit of ownership of those details, installed credibility when you relate the story later? The dynamics of social significance are different.

Paul

Oh, so it does have something to do with men and women. My bad.

*wanders off*

Hmm, can we get away from the male/female dictonomy while still acknowledging some of that distinction? How about we appropriate some non-Western terminiology and say that Universalis supports a very Yang-oriented resolution system: one that is aggressive, impulsive, strong, resolute, stubborn, and often "male." What we're looking for, then, is Yin-style Universalis, one that rewards being open, receptive, fluid, changeable, irresolute, compromising, and often "female."

I agree with Emily that E-A/FD isn't really Yin-oriented. I think I was more trying for a balance of forces, something neutral that different personality types could play together. E-A/FD doesn't actively support cooperation in the game system because players are encouraged to build that kind of thing into the Social Contract (which is the part of the game I haven't written up yet).

I think Emily and Smerf both have good suggestions for tailoring Uni to more Yin-style personalities (which includes people like me, honestly). But I do think de-protagonizing the conflicts is a mistake. The thing that's so great about Uni is that every bit of it is represented by a player and not the GM or some abstract embodiment of mechanics. You just have to ensure that the conflicts stay between characters and not players. I think you can do this without losing protagonism, because I, the player, can still enjoy my character getting the snot beat out of him.

Anybody want to help take this on as a side project? Yin-style Uni? I'd volunteer my writing and layout skills if people want to get a bunch of us together and create a webpage or PDF that Ralph can post.

Hi Paul, thanks for joining in.

Paul wrote: Let me throw something out for consideration: conversation among women is often characterized by participants working to elicit details from a speaker. "He said what? You're kidding!" What's the reward? A little bit of ownership of those details, installed credibility when you relate the story later? The dynamics of social significance are different.

Jonathon wrote: Hmm, can we get away from the male/female dichotomy while still acknowledging some of that distinction? How about we appropriate some non-Western terminiology and say that Universalis supports a very Yang-oriented resolution system: one that is aggressive, impulsive, strong, resolute, stubborn, and often "male." What we're looking for, then, is Yin-style Universalis, one that rewards being open, receptive, fluid, changeable, irresolute, compromising, and often "female."

Jonathon wrote: I agree with Emily that E-A/FD isn't really Yin-oriented. I think I was more trying for a balance of forces, something neutral that different personality types could play together. E-A/FD doesn't actively support cooperation in the game system because players are encouraged to build that kind of thing into the Social Contract (which is the part of the game I haven't written up yet).

I'd suggest that the "maleness" of Universalis is in its challenge and interruption mechanisms, not in its conflict resolution and reward mechanisms.

I've been thinking about how we've played it, and here's my first stab.

--

Contributive Interruptions

Before you interrupt another player's turn, you have to get that player's permission. This is as informal as the first step of a challenge. Catching the player's eye or bouncing up and down in your seat are fine ways to ask to contribute, as is just asking.

If the other player refuses your interruption, you have to sit on your hands.

If the other player accepts your interruption, you pay for having interrupted, then introduce things and pay for them as always. If the other player challenges your contributions you should retract them at once. Once you're finished, the other player's turn resumes.

The other half is that you should be gracious about accepting interruptions and moderate about asking for them, in proportion to your own personal tendency to go on and on.

--

We've been playing Universalis this way without (before now) formalizing it. It matches my longstanding personal policy: if a woman's talking, I don't interrupt, and if I'm talking and a woman interrupts, I shut up. (I don't always stick to it but it's my policy.) So in that sense, it's gendered - A way for me, male, to adapt to conversations with women.

--

But I haven't at all addressed Paul's very interesting insight about playing to draw details out of your fellow players.

-Vincent

After some more thought on using charts to generate Complications i have come up with the following:

The chart is a generalize guideline like "physical attack" or "insult of reputation" or "the chosen course is blocked." The details will have to be generated cooperatively by the players. This way you feel less like some other player is "out to get you" by introducing Complications and more likely to feel a sense of shared creation of the Complication...

Thomas

I'd suggest that the "maleness" of Universalis is in its challenge and interruption mechanisms, not in its conflict resolution and reward mechanisms.

Another thing that i feel tends Universalis towards the "male" is that it keeps score (via coins). I find that i often put together a lame Complication so that i can replenish my dwindling supply of coins. Now i see why coins are used and why Complications replenish them (drive the conflict), and i don't have anything better. Perhaps it's just my inexperience with the system, but it seems that at its core it doesn't facilitate a kind of "cooperative" play...

Thomas

I hesitate to turn this thread into a Universalis rules discussion, but Smerf, some of your concerns about "lame Complication" are addressed in this thread

A pertinant quote from that thread that is more broadly applicable

It actually flows quite well into the game's self balancing mechanic.

consider:
1) I spend all my Coins in a flurry of activity
2) I then begin a Complication for the primary purpose of using a bunch of Traits for free dice to generate a bunch of bonus Coins which I intend to pocket.
3) But, someone like Mike, who still has enough Coins to interrupt me, does so and activates most of my Traits against me in the Complication leaves me likely losing the Complication and not generating nearly enough free dice to make up for what I spent.
4) So given that I've now discovered that Complications are not always automatic Coin refreshers, I now must be more cautious about when and how I spend them.

I think that to an extent, Ralph has captured my feelings about this in the above post. That is, I think Universalis sets up a framework that's very naturalistic in many ways. Sure you can call it Free Market Capitalism, but aren't personal relationships handled that way? Think of it in terms of Transactive Psychology. Players are purchasing Strokes from each other, really. What the game does is to give players a way of transacting above board, and from an equal footing. That's footing, it doesn't make them equal. Harrison Bergeron would still stand out.

The Complications are put in the game very much to create conflict. But that's absolutely neccessary. Because it's a game about creating stories. The mechanics only encourage that. I fail to see how you can get story without conflict. What this means, however, is that Universalis is only "male" or "yang" assuming that stories are male or yang.

As for the social level that goes on "above" the game, that will, of course, be based on the players social norms. I'd expect that Vikings would play much more competitively than even Ralph. In any case, I think that game goes out of it's way to make it so that competition isn't the default of play. I think that, of RPGs, Universalis is potentially the most "female" yet. Because players aren't advocates for individuals neccessarily, they're advocates only for the story by default.

Any bias after that is the player's own. I'm male, so is Ralph, so is Paul. Any chance that this "maleness" is being projected on a blank slate? Em?

Mike

Mike Holmes wrote: I fail to see how you can get story without conflict.

I have to agree with you on conflict Mike, without it there is no story. I'm not advocating that we have no conflict between characters. However, the Universalis ruleset turns inter-character conflict into inter-player conflict because it makes you pick a side. The reward goes to whichever side "wins." There's no reward for producing an interesting, albeit doomed, set of opposition. There is, however, and incentive to produce an overpowering set of opposition, even if you plan on narrating that opposition as failing. I'm not saying that this is a bad thing, merely that it is limiting.

I don't know that i have a good suggestion to change this (if you want to, not everyone will). Maybe distribute Complication dice equally regardless of who was on which side of the conflict. This seems to bear some thinking on...

Thomas

There's no reward for producing an interesting, albeit doomed, set of opposition

There is, however, and incentive to produce an overpowering set of opposition, even if you plan on narrating that opposition as failing

*risks being labelled as a self-promoting egotist*

I think my game, Kathanaksaya, would be interesting to look at in the context of this discussion, if only to provide both points of comparison and a points of contrast.

Because it is particularly necessary in this discussion (as well as to prevent many incorrect assumptions), I will come out and say it: I'm a woman. I've often deconstructed my game in an attempt to see what works, why it works, and what is interesting while not being obvious. In the context of this discussion, this is what I figured out.

K. is a very feminine game in terms of its orientation, goals, and methods of reward. Character design is holistic and highly internal. Most of the Story Points come from understanding how your character ticks and relating that information to the story. All the details you create for your character are not equally considered. The number of Story Points you get depends not on how many details you give, but the nature of those details. The main behavior you will find rewarded is developing an intimate portrait of your character. I am willing to concede that I am demanding too much, but at the very least I wanted to create a system that would allow this to happen and encourage it, as opposed to relying on chemistry and assumptions about "good roleplaying."

The feminine elements of this game also extends to character creation. Most games present character creation as a linear process wherein Step B follows Step A, not because it's easier, but because it's necessary. It's hard to know what your character's attribute modifier is if you don't know the character's attribute score. K., on the other hand, only uses a systematic method of character creation as a tool to make things easier on the players. It is possible to just jot down ideas as they come to you then figure out how many Story Points they are worth, or to determine which aspects you want to detail first. In fact, this is mainly how I create characters for K. The outside-in and inside-out stff was only developed later on after players seemed to have difficulting understanding just how they were supposed to make their characters. Then again, this may just be a difference between Narrative games and Sim/Gamist games.

But, if there is anything particularly feminine about character creation, it would be the intuitive nature of the process. I should probably be ashamed of myself for saying this, but most of the design decisions I made regarding this game were rather haphazard. I didn't think about them beyond whether or not they would work during play and if they made sense on a gut level, based on what feels right. In essence, a long string of Eureka! moments. As a result, the mechanics of K. are decidedly simple. The most logically abstract part of the game is the addition and subtraction required to keep track of Story Points. The difficulty for me proved to be translating the game in my head into a system that would allow for the integrated roleplaying experience that I enjoy most. That is, using intimacy with a character as a means of exploring and creating an answer to a particular concept, question, or idea related to human nature.

Outside of character creation, there are other aspects of K. that strike me as particularly feminine. The first is how rewards don't necessarily come as a result of a character's success. Especially in replenishing Story Points. Success in the case of K. comes more from developing an interesting story as opposed to fulfilling specific objectives. The second is how the bidding mechanic need not be used in a purely competitive way. Players may combine Story Points in bids to represent things their characters do to assist each other. Once again, this may just be the difference between Narrative games and Sim/Gamist games.

K. is masculine in the sense that conflict resolution, while ostensibly about the characters, can be between players. I believe this is because Story Points are a metagame mechanic and player resource. As a result, players can vicariously settle conflicts through their characters, but all within the events of the story.

The masculine element also rears its head with the bidding mechanic. Bidding is often an aggressive, competitive thing, although it need not be. However, the fact that players have to narrate what each bid represents implies that the other players involved in the bid should not interrupt.

You could also argue that the mathematical representation of narrative power, the organization of the game, the detail I put into explaining just what can and can't be done in this game, as well as the seemingly logical approach to character design are masculine. Yet (and this is interesting now that I think about it), these things are precisely what gave me the most trouble when I was writing it. In several revisions, I felt like I was drying up the wells of inspiration (so to speak) in order to make the game read more clearly, which my mind translated into making the game seem more like a chemistry textbook devoid of pictures.

Reading this reminds me of my script editing. For five years, I worked on the principle of observing the changes I believed needed to be made and then I'd argue through each one of those changes. In other words, very Aristotelian, very A versus B - an environment of conflict and argument.

All of that changed when I adopted the De Bono "6 Hat" method where you consider a problem from a variety of different perspectives in turn: emotional, structural, creative, etc.

The point: the 6 Hat method institutes a structure that gets people looking at a problem or situation in parallel - it encourages "best solution finding" rather than defending "my" opinion against "your" opinion.

Maybe it's this parallel, team based thinking that needs to be rewarded whenever the story-telling in this new game reaches a decision point?

Steve.

Thanks for sharing about your game, Green, and about yourself. Many different approaches are good to hear. I had one of those "intuitive" mechanics moments in our last session of gaming. Always good when they work out.

hix wrote: Maybe it's this parallel, team based thinking that needs to be rewarded whenever the story-telling in this new game reaches a decision point?

That's what can make it a fast-paced, fun game, but the personality of players become an asset in the game. Those who can think fast and are confident can drive the game. Everyone has the same option to do so, but not all are equipped with the same inter-personal tools to do so.

It seems like the social contract would determine a lot about what it's like to play Universalis.

After an interesting session of Universalis last night (i'll post a link when i get an Actual Play written up) i think i agree with Emily's point that it's not that Universalis disallows cooperative problem solving. It's that the mechanic does not encourage it, the mechanic seems to encourage confrontational problem solving. Again, this isn't bad, most of the time i enjoy it.

Anyway, what was so interesting about the game last night was that it was just two fairly laid back players telling a story. I don't think we used a single mechanic. We spent coins (sometimes) but never started any Complications or Challenges... It was interesting... I'm not even sure if we were actually playing Universalis...

EDIT: The actual play write-up can be found in the Actual Play Forum: here.

Thomas

My anecdotal experience with Universalis (one game with Vince, Meg and Tony, an assertive and funny male friend of ours) leads me to believe that assertive characters are at an advantage over quieter or less forward players in Universalis. The game gives you the freedom to create and rewards you for introducing dynamic interactions. That's what can make it a fast-paced, fun game, but the personality of players become an asset in the game. Those who can think fast and are confident can drive the game. Everyone has the same option to do so, but not all are equipped with the same inter-personal tools to do so.

I agree with Mike. And Paul.

In Adventures in Improv'd System, Paul Czege wrote: Consider the common dynamic of a group of guys talking. They interrupt each other. They challenge and contradict. They redirect. They talk over each other. The mechanics of Universalis regulate that kind of conversation. It's a male conversation.

Hi Mike & Vincent,

Mike Holmes wrote: I fail to see how this is any different from Freeform play.

Freeform doesn't give more in-game resources to louder folks. They may get more time and attention, but not more ability to be effective in game.

Since complications are the main source of coins in Universalis, folks more ept at navigating and initiating conflict, and resourceful at incorporating traits, are at an advantage there.

Hey Mike. As far as my point goes, maybe this'll be clearer:

Universalis draws everybody as equal participants into a guy-type conversation, guys and non-guys alike. It creates an interrupting, contradicting, talking over conversation where coins - which everybody's got equally - matter, instead of force of guy-will. It makes guy-type conversations accessible and fun.

Most RPGs don't even. Most RPGs regulate the conversation poorly if at all. If the players have a guy-type conversation, force of guy-will dominates, to the disadvantage of everybody. Most RPGs fall down in this regard, I'm not afraid to say, and Universalis doesn't by far.

In other words, I agree with you absolutely.

But to see where Universalis might be called "male," compare it to the game Paul's after: the one that draws everybody as equal participants into a chick-type conversation, even guys.

Guys and chicks, I mean, it's like I'm channelling dear departed Jared.

Anyhow, for the thread at large, the "create a conflict, roll dice, get coins" part of Universalis doesn't seem guyish to me a bit. Not a bit. It seems like radically player-empowered storytelling.

-Vincent

Mike Holmes wrote: But again, Complications are character (Component, actually) conflicts, not player conflicts. This is an important point that I've tried to make. Do you agree or disagree?

I think you're starting from a good point but you're carrying it to an unwarranted extreme. I've never seen the level of antagonistic comptetion you fear in any game I've played or heard of.

And I think that's the key. "Antagonistic Competition"

I get the sense from your posts that you view all competition as intrinsically antagonistic "me vs. you", and further view competetion as being diametrically opposed to consensus building as if they were two seperate things.

On that I fundamentally disagree. Competition does not have to be a table pounding, face turning read, contest of wills. Consensus is impossible without either submission or negotiation. And ALL negotiation, however benign, is a form of competition.

I fail to see how uni is in any way NOT about consensus building. I would heartily argue that that is ALL uni does is establish a formalized framework for building consensus. Consensus is about giving ones consent. No action at all takes place in the game without every other player explicitly or implicitly giving their consent for it. I think you are conflating the idea of "consensus" with "everbody is equally satisfied by the choice made".

I would also argue that any and every consensus building technique out there functions exactly the same way; only instead of a regimented organized form of equally distributed currency that is at stake, the currency of consensus is an amporphous, difficult to define, but omnipresent social construct. Authority, guilt, peer pressure, feelings of inadequacy, ego, spite, intellect, perceptions, favorites, friendship, love, sexual tension, etc, etc, etc. form the currency of consensus building.

Heck, how often does a group of friends arrive at a consensus with the odd-man-out finally conceding with words like "fine, but you owe me one". What is such a phrase except the explicit statement of dissatisfaction with the choice made but a willingness to go along any way in exchange for some future consideration. In such a situation that individuals "social clout" was insufficient to swing consensus to their preference so they had to accept the preference of others. Uni functions in exactly this same way but substitutes the playing field leveler of Coins for the purely social currency of "clout".

And as for

But Uni wants you to confront each other, be stubborn about what you want to have happen, and ultimately go into a bidding war where you roll some dice.

One player's wishes are eventually superseded by another's player's wishes, or the minority is silenced by the majority.

Hello Jonathan,

Disagreements among players in Universalis are handled by Bidding (no dice, just money).

Conflicts among characters in Universalis are handled by Complications (the dice).

They're different imaginative/collaborative processes, different mechanics, and different social interactions. I'm having a hard time seeing why and how you're thinking of them as the same thing.

Best,
Ron

See, this'll teach me to post when teed-off, especially when my copy of Uni is at home. Apologies all around, both for the tone of my last post and for misremembering the rules (which Ron clarified).

Ralph, your point about the relationship between competition and consensus building is well taken. But while every attempt to build consensus is ultimately a competition, I'd add that every competition is also about building consensus on who the winner is or what the result is (Lumpley Principle at work again). Honestly, I feel like this relationship isn't as clear in my mind as it should be. Let me step back a bit and then I might start another thread on the Competition/Consensus issue, after thinking some more and reading old threads on the topic. I was throwing out half-finished thoughts, which isn't quite fair.

One thing I can say, I think, is that I was reacting, in part, to Uni's codification of that "clout" you were talking about. It seems like it's a reinforcement of something that's already happening, like you said, but it also doesn't seem to encourage players to develop solutions that satisfy all the players as much as can be done. Again, this may not really be a weakness, as per the "too many cooks" phenomenon that can water down the power of individual decisions. But it seems to me like the players who lack "clout" in normal conversations aren't necessarily getting any more by their participation in the coin system, since, being used to their "place" in those kind of conversations, I can see them chosing to back one side of a dispute or another, instead of voicing a different path for the group to take.

Again, this isn't meant as criticism of what the game does as much as things that I'd like to see another game do.

Still, it's become apparent to me that I'm not quite ready to step back into this discussion yet. Let me retreat and think for a bit.

Still, it's become apparent to me that I'm not quite ready to step back into this discussion yet. Let me retreat and think for a bit

Hello all,

Ron Edwards wrote: Disagreements among players in Universalis are handled by Bidding (no dice, just money).

Conflicts among characters in Universalis are handled by Complications (the dice).

Mike Holmes wrote: To say that males are better at coming up with conflict in the literary sense would be to say that they're better at writting literature. Tell that to all the female authors out there. Or, again, is it the contention that stories are a "male" thing?

To answer myself--

I wrote: My contention is that people who are more comfortable (ie feel less inhibited by or have more experience with) intiating conflict in general, may take like a duck to water with the central role it plays in Universalis and end up with more resources, ie more coins

heh, he beat me to it :-)

Emily, have you had a chance to read through the rules yourself or have you just been taught through the one game?

If you haven't, I'd love to have you do so and let me know how well the text as written addresses the concerns you raised above.

Emily Care wrote: To answer myself--

I wrote: My contention is that people who are more comfortable (ie feel less inhibited by or have more experience with) intiating conflict in general, may take like a duck to water with the central role it plays in Universalis and end up with more resources, ie more coins

Vincent kindly just refreshed my memory of how coins are awarded: one per die rolled for the loser, and a number equal to the successes to the victor. That sounds like it should award plenty of dice to all.

--EC

Hello,

I'd also like to point out that someone who pushes the "brinksmanship" of Bidding a lot, i.e., competes via spending in order to win disagreements, will end up with less coins over time, not more.

In other words, "winning" disagreements does not enhance what passes for effectiveness in Universalis.

In case anyone's interested, I had extensive conversations with both Ralph and Mike during Universalis' gestation period about exactly this: to what extent is competitive play rewarded. In my estimation, and putting aside the truism that Step On Up (and its child, competition) can enter into any interaction, the game doesn't offer long-term payoff in these terms.

Best,
Ron

Say your aim's to create this much more collaborative, consensual game of uni. What gimmicks or tenets would you use?

* High coin refresh to reduce the need for complications?
* No interruptions?
* A reworking of the challenge mechanic?

Maybe we can illustrating the dynamic we're talking about here.

Steve.

Jonathan Walton wrote: See, this is what I don't agree with. Aren't you the same Mike Holmes who typically argues that the characters (or Components) don't exist or have desires of their own, outside of the players' manipulations of them? Components don't have conflicts. Players have conflicts (via the Lumpley Principle, trying to decide what occurs in the game) which are then projected onto the Components. All conflict is player-player conflict, ultimately.

Right, MJ. Jonathan, Ralph is the guy who says that there's nothing to the character's existence. I'm the one who argues against him on the pilosphical points. In any case, it's the characters that are fighting, imaginarily. The players co-operate to get that to occur.

Let's say that two players were playing a theoretical game in which the Complication rule is that if you and I create a Complication, we each get 10 Coins, and work out the result together. Would that be Competitive between players? It would require that we create a conflict of some sort in-game, but it would be completely co-operative.

What people stumble over is how the rules work in detail. All sides in a Complication are rewarded. Even if I lose, I'll profit by a number of Coins equal to the free dice I got by activating extant Traits. Now, usually the player who wins the complication gets more than that, but not neccessarily. So, if anything the only thing that they're fighting over there is the right to have the randomly determined result instead of the fixed one. Which is a truely trivial incentive to actually compete.

The one other thing that's being competed over is the right to first narration of events. This is arguably a bigger reward, because the player gets to direct the outcome of a Complication, which should theoretically be an important moment in the story. But given that I can just narrate these things with my Coins at any time, it's not that big a deal.

To whit, in play I never worry about losing. Ever. Now, if I were a woman, or not very competitive, I could argue bias. But I'm very male (IMO, enought testosterone to have male pattern baldness to the extent that I'm very bald at the age of 35) and I am highly competitive. You should see me play wargames. So the fact that I don't feel any incentive to compete I think is telling.

OTOH, I know the game well. That is, understanding these things, and having the experience with it that I do, I may be too close to it. It may very well be that the text delivers a different message than the one that Ralph and I intended on these fronts. But we do try repeatedly to say that it's a Collaborative Storytelling Game. As opposed to competitive (like Once Upon a Time, which I'd like to see more and better of).

Very much we see Universalis as Freeform + Framework, where said framework serves simply to ensure that there is conflict for the character's stories. In most freeform, the conflict comes from players creating it on their own initiative, or from a GM, who's job it is specifically to deliver this. Having no GM, we just wanted to incentivize player creation of character conflict. That's the theory, anyhow. I can see that it might not work out perfectly that way.

Vincent, if the rigidity of the framework is male, then I guess I agree. But, again, as Ralph points out, it's mostly optional, so, again, it's gently male if anything.

Mike