Setting Creation

Beyond just scenarios for other games, Universalis can create entire worlds for other game systems. A big part of the design of Universalis has always been to allow each game session to build upon the setting created in prior sessions, even if the characters and plot are different. Such an ongoing world creation effort can easily provide the background for an entire setting useable with another RPG system like GURPS or FUDGE.

One of our play test groups set out to do just that. They wanted to handcraft their own fantasy setting, so they started with Universalis. The earliest characters they introduced would become the gods of their world. Through play they fashioned a creation story and an entire mythology complete with a war between the gods and gods who were banished or even dead. They moved on history where they fashioned the legends and great historical events of the world complete with mighty heroes and a couple of sagas. When finished they took the whole thing and wrote it up for play with GURPS Fantasy. Benefit: every player had a vested interest in the world that they had helped create and all of them shared knowledge of a common history and mythology that was all the more meaningful to them because they had written it.

"We used Universalis to create a setting and it was splendid. Before the game even started we had this rich, layered, detailed setting. Universalis is a neat, neat game/gaming tool/imagination prod. --- "Paka" aka Judd who used Universalis to design a campaign for The Riddle of Steel