The Forge Archives

We played Universalis for the first time.  This post covers "what happened"-- in the next I'll link to a couple of "good to read before your first time" kind of stuff. That I read afterward, naturally.  I'll also interject way too much personal opinion.

We got together without much advance notice; around 6 Zack suggested we get together at Wes & Betsy's- Wes would be done with his football coaching around 7.  He suggested "bring along that coin game you were telling us about," so I did.  I brought along a board game or two in case the idea fizzled.

Food gathered, etc., we arrived a bit before 7 and ate, then played a game of Fluxx while waiting for Wes.  He arrived (say, around 7:30) and I started explaining the crazy game.  I wasn't too solid on some key things (necessitating some look-ups), but we soon set started setting tenets and rolling into motion.

There was a good deal of trouble in the tenets phase.  I had explained challenges (probably a mistake), and it became an early focus.

Why?  Well, the first tenet (by P1) was "Sci-fi".  No problem.

The second tenet proposed (by P2) was "It's all about cyborg football."  It was challenged right away, but negotiated down to "There's cyborg football players and they'll be involved."

More tenets, mostly building on the sci-fi idea (though a "fantasy too" slipped in and wasn't negotiated away).  Each of P2's  tenets tied into football (the aliens couldn't play, their expulsion from football had started the war).  Some of the other tenets worked with it, but it didn't fit really well.

[Incidentally, we didn't remember to refresh after tenets, but no one spent too many coins, so it wasn't terrible].

After tenets, P2 won the bid for the first scene and set it at the championship game with 1:00 left on the clock.  He introduced a "star player" and a troll.  A good color scene, but there was no conflict in mind when it was set up.  Of course, conflict evolved... P1 (of the tenet: it's Sci-fi) interjected that a nuclear bomb was going off.  It was challenged and negotiated down to "a nuclear device is on its way"), leaning on "it's not dramatic your way" group consensus.

We had a little confusion on mini-scenes (P2 wanted to establish a starship overhead, etc.), and investigations into "how do you end a scene."  Finally we found that the best method would be P2 ending the scene and bidding to start the next regular scene.  With that established, that scene ended.

The bid for next scene was won by P2 and set on the starship.  An "away team" was introduced with members covering three roles (nuclear expert, cyborg expert, and gun-nut).  He wanted them to "beam down" which was challenged (too derived), then modified to "teleported down" (since we had that fantasy tenet).

New scene created by P1 in the stadium parking lot.  A cyborg is introduced, including a cranial nuclear bomb in an impenetrable case, etc.  Other characters are introduced- a security guard and Bobo, the installer/designed of the nuclear bomb.  The action moved along into the stadium, where the cyborg began lasering down fans and charged down onto the field.  Then a cheesy moment, when the cyborg tried to detonate the bomb but people lawyered that "impenetrable case" as a trait included impenetrable to the bomb itself, containing it perfectly.  The scene ended with the star football player tackling the overheated cyborg, winning the complication, and destroying the cyborg with a dramatic tackle, but suffering a lethal dose of radiation as the radiation escaped the box.

A scene was then set with Bobo making his getaway, followed by the away team.  Another complication ensued, won by the aliens supporting Bobo.  The away team was neutralized, and the aliens (and Bobo) made their getaway.

The next scene was set on the ship- it was a debriefing, with dialog. A tracking device was revealed in the neuralizers; P1 framed a mini-scene (properly, we had its rules down at this point), with the alien disposing of the neuralizer and gloating over the fact that the trackers would have to swim through sewage to get it.

It was quite late at this point, so we pushed for resolution, or at least an end.  The away team was sneaking though the alien mothership when polyps hatched chihuahua like alien defenders.  Random damage ensued, the ship began decompressing, the heroic "second in command" (never named) won the complication and fluffed up his description of violent action.  The away team eventually died of rabid chihuahua like alien bites as they fled on their boarding shuttle.

As the ship blew up, "second in command" revealed himself as Bobo.

Comments: The story remained unfocussed the whole time.  At the end, P2 mentioned that he was disappointed that there was so little football.  It seemed to be the core of the problem-- there were two players (P1 & P2) who had strong visions of what they wanted and didn't compromise much.  Early on, they devastated each other's coin supplies with competitive bidding over the scope of football in the story, but P1 was able to bounce back after a conflict, leaving P2 with much less story influence.

An obvious advantage would be someone who knew the rules well to facilitate things.  I fell down here; with a little longer to review (and particularly with the links below), we could have made the "go" part of the story a little smoother.  I think a key point to emphasize (player to player) is that you should try to incorporate all of the ideas... if you have a problem with something, have it modified until it works through negotiations & formal challenges if necessary.  Allowing tenets that you don't intend to follow really undermines the resulting story.  And "this game has a serious tone" or a similar tenet is essential if you want something more consistent/less humorous.

The following two topics seem quite appropriate... I particularly wish I had stumbled on the space pirates example before the game (to align my expectations, if nothing else).

from Space Pirates on the Universalis website:

QuoteBut since my purpose in the game was to introduce the rules and make sure the players were enjoying themselves I took a much less up front role.  I let most of the mish mash of tenets stand without challenge (I drew the line at making it a "Romance") and the majority of the scenes were framed by the newer players.

The other side to this is a story that tends to resemble a chimera of genre tropes and takes some bizarre twists and turns before finally settling on a direction.

Matt's take on the competitive aspect, trying to get the story YOU want, is also useful.  From tried out some Universalis (a forge thread):

Quote from: Matt Wilson
Again, I'm a little weak on the rules details, but I found myself getting motivated by a certain kind of competitive aspect: wanting to have the story turn out a certain way. At times the group of us were very cooperative, and usually just interrupting when someone had a cool idea. But I had the most fun when my ideas for a story were at odds with another player's. That was, oddly enough, most prominent in the beginning of the game, as we wrestled a bit with the introductory scene.

Probably the most useful of all (if only to keep us focussed on play, instead of rules searches): Barclay's Play Aid

* Oh yeah, one important thing: Despite the tone of this, I enjoyed myself thoroughly.  I look forward to our next attempt.  Thanks for providing a great game, Ralph and Mike.
- Scott

Sounds pretty fun...Roller ball meets The Last Boyscout.

Why only 2 players, were you not participating?  I'm not surprised you had a little touble finding footing with only 2 players.  With 2 you either get "perfectly on the same page mind meld...which usually winds up pretty boring" or "antagonists stuggling with each other" which it sounds like what you got.

A third player would have really helped out.  When those two blasted each others Coins to smithereens the third player steps up, picks up the pieces and provides the direction.

Also the third player makes a powerful tie breaker for negotiation.  When its just head to head you can get that testosterone filled bidding war pretty easy.  With 3 people, you get far fewer bidding wars because most of the time it comes down to 2 vs 1 (not always the same 2) and the player with 1 generally isn't going to risk being out bid by 2 others.  This puts the third player in the position of grand conciliator.  His role becomes tieing things together, quashing silly stuff (by getting the 2-1 advantage) and generally sheparding things along.

As for stumbling over the rules...I've yet to play any RPG for the first time where there wasn't some rules stumbling.  One thing that does catch people off guard a bit with Uni is there actually are a fair number of rules.  It isn't nearly as free form as one might think.

Did you happen to find the getting started essay from the web page.

Let me know if that's a useful guide

Glad to hear you enjoyed it.  Hope to hear about your next game soon.

Actually, there were 4.5 players.  (We started with five, but Betsy was under the weather and didn't do much most of the game).

I think that we might have managed better if P3 & P4 (yup, including me) had stepped forward to guide the scenes more.  I introduced a number of color elements (the security guard in a hover golf cart who was supposed to stumble on the cyborg, and the captain who debriefed the "away team"); the other player did similarly (introducing Bobo McPutz, inventor of the cyborg, who was red-green colorblind and used red and green wires, etc.)

But P1 & P2 moved along, trying to wrest the story "their way" and not being particularly good about incorporating each other's additions.  For example, the starship had been deployed to prevent the bombing, but the "away team" was largely ignored-- the cyborg wandered into the stadium, eluding everyone.  That was a big failure to apply the complication rules-- I understood what we wanted (mostly), but didn't really get the conflict resolved correctly.  It'll be better next time.

Thanks for the encouragement,
- Scott

[Edited to add: Yes, your link is quite useful; I suspect that I read it, but not in the critical 24-48 hours prior to the game when I would have remembered it well.  I think that you did a good job of identifying which rules are necessary to start and which can wait for a while-- it's an excellent template, and leads people to the story first, rather than the interesting coin tricks.]

How did you decide to end the game as a one-shot? Just assumed that this was how it was supposed to go?

If there's one thing that I regret not making it into the rules, it's that we didn't put in anything about session to session play. It's pretty simple and intuitve; mostly you just record where everything is at after a scene, and start with a new scene next session (though I've got an essay that discusses nuances on the site).

The reason I say this is because there could have been more football. Next session. But since you decided to wrap up the whole game in one session, some stuff got a bit mangled. That'll happen with one-shots. Inevitably. You'll find that if you plan a game to be more like five sessions long, that you have more time to let things develop. Coins will ebb and flow through more cycles allowing players more opportunities to have more control.

Better stories get made. Period. One session is just too short. Not that it can't be fun. But if you're playing a one-nighter, you have to set out realizing that you have to tell a whole story in just a few scenes. With that in mind it's not too hard to keep things focused (you're lucky that you didn't make a ton of Tenets).

Overall, you did fine. Realize that you played a game that nobody taught you. Most RPGs are taught, or you've played stuff similar enough that you can cope with a change in the ruleset. We often cite that Universalis has a learning curve. But what it really is, I've found, is that unlike learning a new RPG, you're learning something completely new. As if you were learning to play RPGs without having ever played one before. And that just takes time. Like you said, you really don't know what to expect until you've played.

Oh, if only the game could come with a video of a GenCon demo game with it. :-)

Anyhow, by next session you'll have it down. Consider being a voice for a serious game (by which I mean constrained to something less outre in terms of clashing memes), and consider the idea of a multi-session game.

Anyhow, I'm sure it'll be cool. :-)

Mike

One other thing you can do (which I believe Mike does a lot) is to hold back a bit yourself on Coin use. Let the others blow their Coins fighting for control, and establishing Components.

Then later, ease back in with a mind toward tying things together in cool ways. Especially when you have enough Coins to enforce your vision, in case one of the 'fighters' objects.

Sounds like you're doing fine to me.
I've used components on index cards for home games for record keeping, and I wrote up a scene based mini-story for each of the sessions after the fact. That parts not necessary, but will be helpful at picking up "The Temple of Bast" game, since we haven't played in months.

Good point Bob (Bob is a Yokozuna Uni player). New players tend to encounter premature enplotulation which results in a low Coin count.

Think like strategy. You can't control everything. Don't even try. Hold back, pick your battles, and win the ones that are important to you.

Mike

Index cards! I can't recommend these enough. Have a person that is not the scribe be assigned to write down components on cards as they are created. Then hand the card to the player that controls the component. This works very well, and it creates an interesting dynamic. Players can see the components literally changing hands and it creates interest. "Hey... I want Dr. Maverick and his plutonium waistband. Hand him over!" If components are written on a sheet that only one player holds, they can become invisible.

I do like the idea of handing index cards around to cement "who controls what", and for easy review by everyone.

The big reason we rushed (well, two reasons), was that one of us is going back to school and won't be able to continue with us.  Of course, if I had remembered the many threads saying "We started with five, but three was still cool", I could have avoided the crunch at the end.  The second reason was that I suggested that the evening would be a training wheels evening- system experimentation as much as anything.  The fact that (semi)coherent story emerged at all was amazing.

Bob's "Then later, ease back in with a mind toward tying things together in cool ways. Especially when you have enough Coins to enforce your vision, in case one of the 'fighters' objects" was close to my personal goal- it might have emerged in a subsequent session.

(Of course, even with a hasty 'The End', it doesn't mean we have to be through.  It's a bit looser than I'd personally prefer, but it still has interesting things going on that would be enjoyable to return to.)

Thanks for the encouragement and advice everyone,
Scott

The Index card thing indicates an areas of skill that are important to develop. One is making sure that people don't impinge on other's control. That is, new players often do things that could be seen as control of other player's components (occasionally including just declaring that they do things). Make sure to keep a close eye on this to ensure that it doesn't happen much, because it tends to get out of control.

The index cards are a physical reminder (and just handy).

The other skill that's important to develop is related. It's knowing when one controlled component is affecting another. In actuality this is a judgement call based on drama. Because even two characters being in a room simultaneously automatically will affect each other. That is, a social context is created presumably. But minutia like this is ignored and rightly so; challenge away any attempt at minutia that's obviously frivolous (OTOH, sometimes examining minutia can be interesting).

The real test is whether or not you can see traits coming out of the action. If a character is doing somthing in such a way as the outcome would be a Trait or a Fact declared in play, then a Complication should be declared.

There's a lot of leeway with this. But doing it well, and in a timely fashion is key to good play.

Mike