Post originally by Ralph Mazza at 2003-06-16 09:09:33
Converted from Phorums BB System

Hey Lapdog, no foul there. No game is for everyone and this one has a pretty distinctive flavor to it that many people may not be interested it.

But, before you write it off entirely, there are some strengths to the game that you (or others) may find useable.

You note the multiple GMs and OOC content as being negative factors for you. Can't argue that, but perhaps there's a situation where this wouldn't be a problem.

For instance, one of the groups that have gotten some good use out of Universalis feel as you do and also stress the lesser opportunity for immersion. So the game clearly isn't replacing their regularly scheduled campaign any time soon.

BUT, what they have done is define their regular campaign world in Universalis and periodically they play a session of Uni set in their campaign world. Only the characters and components they're manipulating are the kings and guild masters and evil wizards and ancient dragon and high priests etc. In other words the high level NPCs of the campaign. Whenever they want to know "what are the great high muckity mucks of the world up to?" they play a session or two of Uni to find out.

Then they go back to their regular game and characters. In otherwords, you correctly identify that Universalis plays predominately at the meta game level. This group used that as a feature and basically use the game to advance the meta plot of their campaign world.

In their case the players playing Uni are the same as the players in the campaign and the advantage is that whatever underlying plots and conspiracies are going on are plots and conspiracies that the players helped create so as GM you already know they're interested in them. But the tactic would work just as well by having a seperate group of players run the metagame part so its kept secret from the campaign players.