[Universalis] As played by: Unsuspecting D&D players
Big J Money:
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 storyThe 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
Arturo G.:
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).
Valamir:
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.
David Artman:
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.)
Big J Money:
Quote from: David Artman on May 08, 2008, 06:51:58 AM
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 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. One player tried to create an actual event with Tenets, but looking back, I'd say this was not enough. Also, it turned out to be the isolated flashback scene.
Quote from: Arturo G. on May 05, 2008, 03:56:45 AM
Your first scene (the flashback) perhaps was not needed. Did you add something valuable to the fiction? How do you feel about it?
We chose who would frame the first scene by rolling dice, since the book offers no rule for this. The player who won the roll created this scene. Actually, this had some precedent because he had tried to create it earlier as a Tenet (a binary star pair going supernova) and I told him events were not valid Tenets. The flashback did add something valuable to the narrative, and in fact inspired us (much later on) to think of ideas. However, I agree that it did not make a great first scene for the game, and at the time left us feeling like, "Uh -- ok, so now let's have a real scene." I wasn't going to tell this player his scene was invalid since the rules do not "outlaw" flashbacks as initial scenes, although I questioned how we could consider it a flashback since we didn't yet know what time the game would be set in (context)! In the end, since he told us explicitly he wanted it to be a flashback, we took it in spirit and framed the next scene many years later.
I forgot to mention in the OP that the only previous experience with Player Authorship or group has had is the card game "Once Upon A Time".
-- John
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