[Universalis] As played by: Unsuspecting D&D players
David Artman:
Quote from: Big J Money on May 09, 2008, 06:59:20 AM
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.
Yeah, I'd guess that was your first problem: no one was "grabbed" by what you'd setup so far, and so you pushed. 45 minutes isn't actually a lot of setup time, I feel, unless you're spitting Tenets fast and furious, with no Challenges. And if you've gotten to, say, an hour and no one is jumping to frame a scene, then you probably are better off scrapping the setting and trying a new tack. YMMV.
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We chose who would frame the first scene by rolling dice, since the book offers no rule for this.
I don't have my book, but IIRC, the first scene framing rights go to whomever bids the most Coins, and those winning Coins must go to establishing Facts in the scene. And random "go first, you" resolution is also likely to blame for a slow start--no one was really champing at the bit to start, and so you forced someone to do so with a die roll. Just let it evolve at its own pace, I'd say. It's not a race; and a good Uni game should run far more than one session/four hours (or whatever time limit was driving you to rush setup).
Just my 2¢--it's a game of rule making, too; and you can go wherever you want with it, with Gimmicks. But I'd stick to some of the rules as written, to learn it, so that you see how it's economy drives the narrative flow and rights.
Big J Money:
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
Valamir:
Quote from: Big J Money on May 04, 2008, 08:03:12 PM
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.
I think that's effective. The game doesn't really care whether any players think its an RPG or not...I have my own soap box on that topic, but its not pertinent to actual play. I've had several reports from groups who've used Universalis to augment their D&D campaigns. They populate Uni with the key NPCs and movers and shakers of their campaign world, play through a few scenes and then port the outcome (who's doing what, who's betraying whom, who's army got routed at the battle of whatever) back to the campaign. The sessions almost become "cut scenes" for the campaign illustrating what's going on beyond the view of the characters.
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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.
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" is about all the rules you need to get you through most of the first players first turn. At some point they'll realize (or you can point out) that they may want to stop talking before they run out of Coins, and let the next player take a turn at saying things. You can use the pause between turns to demonstrate how components are organized and such.
Then, almost always the next player will start saying things that involve components the first player created...its then you can introduce the concept of Control, and paying a Coin to Take Control. The next thing people typically do will have a component they created or took control of do something to a component from the first player that they didn't take control of. Then you introduce Complications and dice. Those rules are typically all you need for the entire first scene, or at least the first time around the table (and maybe the rule for Importance, if you have players doing violence right out of the gate).
I save almost everything else...including Interrupts, Gimmicks, Master and Sub Components, until much later.
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.
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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!
That's impressive. I've found people default to silly more often then not...(or campy at least), so your group is to be congratulated for skipping that phase.
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. 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. When a player can think of some action taking place based on the tenets thus far, that's usually a good time to cut it off and go.
On the other hand, there's nothing wrong with taking an extended Tenet phase, and my advice to others who wound up with crazy scattered play has been to spend more time on Tenets to provide additional parameters for players to stay within. So it can work either way.
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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.
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...even more so if the person teaching the rules is often the GM of the group. If you, as perceived-GM/referee, frame the first scene, then you are setting the direction of the story. It becomes very very easy for everyone to fall into the habit then of viewing it as your story which can make the other players take more of a passive / reactive role to what you do.
By letting someone else frame the first scene...coming up with anything they want...it becomes very clear that you don't have a story up your sleeve and then its much more likely you'll have the entire group engaged in wanting ownership over the direction the story is to take.
Your first scene probably could have been made smoother by skipping the rules dump and just starting with the bare bones of spending coins to say stuff. What I'll often do is to just tell the scene framer to "start talking" and I'll take a handful of their Coins and start tossing them into the bank as they go. After a couple of paragraphs, we'll pause, I'll write down what they said and I paid for, then hand the Coins to them and let them continue.
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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.
Yeah, I can see how things started bogging right off the bat. Technically, since the first scene framer starts the clock, they could have set the scene "10 years ago" without needing a Flashback. The clock would have just started ticking at "10 years ago". But honestly, 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.
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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.
It can be totally fine either way. Lots of chrome gets thrown out in movies that never get revisited. On the other hand, in the future, should you WANT the bridge or liquid fuel (or whatever) to be important and have other players pay attention to them you'd spend a few Coins to build them as Components. The bridge would just be a regular Component...the Liquid Fuel (or space fighter, or light saber, or whatever) can be a "Master Component" (a great opportunity to introduce those rules when players are more experienced). That way, I, as a fellow player, will be motivated to have a fight happen on that Bridge. I'll introduce it and then claim the dice for it for my side of the Complication. Likewise, I'll create other characters equipped with "liquid fuel", so that I can draw dice from that as well...essentially leveraging the Coins you spent to my benefit. By putting Coins into stuff like that, you're basically providing economic incentive for other players to use it rather than ignore it.
But, of course, not every cool bit mentioned needs to be given this treatment. After all we only saw Luke's crazy utility belt grappling hook thingy once...and the existance of monsters living in trash compactors never became a running theme in the story.
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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.
Not an uncommon phenomenon at all. One of the pitfalls of these "story-games" is that people forget that the tricks you know from basic roleplaying work just fine. 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"). I might also make what I DON'T want to happen a Trait to prevent other players from going there (like "Morally opposed to assassination"). Then I think "what does this guy need to accomplish this" and that might spawn more Traits and other Components...ideally I can grab Components that already exist because those don't cost me anything.
After such an exercise I'll find that I essentially just custom built a backstory for this guy...a hook...same as I would for any NPC I was GMing...and then its just a matter of winding him up and watching him go. The nice thing is, when some other player grabs that character and puts their own spin on things.
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).
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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.
I'd love to hear more on this, especially if he'd like to pop in and talk about it.
Its not at all unusual for play to proceed a little aimlessly at first as everyone introduces their own sub plots, and characters and things going on and there's no central GM vision keeping things focused. But then, at some point something clicks for one of the players and it becomes immediately obvious to them "what has to happen"...something that ties things together, justifies the whys and wherefors...whatever. At that point you have that player taking the initiative to frame scenes, win Complications, and actively use their Coins to "lobby" for direction and ending they want. Other players then either 1) go along for a fun ride providing antagonism where needed, 2) work on the various subplots they're interested in while trying to wrap them into what's going on, 3) fight for a different ending (the hero dies instead of riding off into the sunset), or 4) initiate their own story direction which, if it captures enough interest may turn out to be the "main thread" of the story, or drop off into a sub plot itself.
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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.
Here I'm going to have to confess a little rustiness with the rules...I didn't get around to looking this one up yet. I *THINK* you could just spend the Coins while you were speaking during the dialog to add Traits like "Johnny hasn't killed yet" to Johnny and "I'm tired of doing Johnny's dirty work" for June.
I can't remember now if that's in the basic rules or is a Gimmick I normally play with...
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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.
There's absolutely no harm in debriefing. I would discourage coming to too much consensus, because then when you play again players won't have differing views and the Complication mechanic really thrives when players have differing visions. But there's no harm and alot of potential good to come from "Hey let's see more of the rivalry between Johnny and June"...or "You know, I'm really interested in seeing what it will take for Johnny to actually pull the trigger the first time".
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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.
This is typical for new groups in my experience. People who aren't used to just being able to "make things happen" often grab onto that and run with it...thing is it gets expensive REALLY fast. That's when I normally start noticing players evolving to be more character-centric than plot centric. Once you create a network of Traits attached to characters that provide dice for Complications and you aim those characters at each other, you have easy sources of Conflict that generate free Coins for using the Traits already provided by existing characters. THEN you'll have the fuel (Coins) to keep making things happen...but you'll typically be doing that within the parameters of the Traits you've been using.
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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 hope to hear more about your last game, I'm especially interested in whether my NPC advice helped any.
David Artman:
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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.
[geek]I believe you mean Shtar Wars Epishode IV, A New Hope, shir.[/geek]
Big J Money:
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.
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