While the game itself may seem best suited to one-shot sessions with little character immersion, Universalis is nothing less than a prophecy of what progressive gaming might become. Sliced bread better watch its back. Here's why.
Post originally by Bifi at 2003-06-16 06:17:46
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Thanks, Jonathan, for your imaginative ideas. I would like to share also my experience and ask you for your council:
In the course of being a GM to the more traditional games I often stumbled upon a specific problem. The players usually don't get to know more than about 25% of the story. In a thoroughly designed environment/background, where different NPCs have their own different motivations and allegiances, the players (or their characters) simply are not able to credibly gain wider insight into the "inner workings" of the story. And, as it goes for a GM, I wanted to share with them as many of the elements of the story as possible.
It can be told to the players after the completion of the story/adventure, during an informal OOC session, sort of a "debriefing" (but revealing details this way often makes them lose a sense of mystery and the atmosphere suffers as well). It can be told during the story by certain NPCs (but the characters either mustn't know the details at that point or it simply isn't plausible for the NPCs or characters to know (or get to know) such details). It could be told by NPCs in a different story, creating a sense of continuity, but that's obviously not always a usable solution.
I had an idea of making breaks in the play at certain points to just really "tell the story" in the manner of a movie intermezzo, showing bad guys planning some horrible things to do to the good guys and cause as many innocent-bystander-casualties as possible. One of the problems is that it excludes the players from propelling the story at these points, although I might be reacting to their actions; secondly, it would take a lot of preparation to be able to respond to different outcomes, not even speaking about being able to tell a compelling story-piece without reading and to draw player attention - "the art of the story teller". There is one last option that falls to my mind - letting players handle/play the bad guys at that point, creating a "framed scene" with different elements and characters (something similar is being proposed in Nobilis).
And here arises the issue of "immersion". The players usually like to immerse into their roles, try to think as their characters would, and discover various facets of the character in the terms of its psychology, abilities, relations, etc. And they don't like to "switch characters", not to speak about the plays where the players ignorance/knowledge of certain things could matter a lot. Even in the case of a mature player the knowledge of certain things always influences the decision-making process of the player. It could be partially solved by creating a set of characters, all being played by the same player, one of them primary and the other ones secondary ("henchmen"), but playing multiple characters .
We are currently playing also a collection of short stories (each taking usually one session) in GURPS. The story itself plays out in the present day, with (of course) a few exceptions, one being mainly the existence of supernatural horror. The overarching story itself is dark, brooding, conspiratory, terrifying and occasionally violent (me being influenced mainly by Delta Green). The players play a collection of almost common-and-usual people, and, being confronted with the horror, responding to it as they are able, with the story mainly having the character of a paranormal investigation. At the beginning of the first story my idea for the players was to slowly build an "agency" through multiple sessions, creating "personnel files" and for each of the stories selecting a suitable character (and also the starting characters were strongly tied to the first story, where the next ones were different - with different needs/methods of solutions). This would also allow for higher flexibility in the terms of players' appearance and being able to introduce new players for just one session, and also it would support different styles of play. And again, the players' need for character immersion proved stronger, since they don't like to just switch/select a different character for each story.
Would anyone of you share your views or solutions to the mentioned problems? Thanks a lot.
Post originally by Lapdog at 2003-06-16 07:30:24
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Thanks for an excellent review!
Though, your review confirmed to me that Universalis is definitely not a game that I'd be interested in ("multiple GMs", OOC content being factors), it's nice to see a very well-written review that highlights the game's strengths and weaknesses.
Post originally by James Kiley at 2003-06-16 08:02:57
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"SpecSimIm"
At this point I knew I would neither purchase nor play this game, and stopped reading the review. So, hey, good review, it provided what I needed to make a purchasing decision.
Post originally by Marco at 2003-06-16 08:45:53
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Hey, I wanna congradulate both Mike and Ralph on getting the excellent review. Universalis is certainly innovative and (although I haven't read it yet) seems to be created with a great deal of craftsmanship.
I also wanted to point out that Universal systems (as per GURPS, for example) are *not* fundamentally flawed, precisely because System Does Matter.
SDM is, in and of itself, simply a counter-argument to someone who says, flatly, System Doesn't Matter. It says nothing (so far) about how system matters (although that's a topic of some debate). It's not an argument for or against anything but its counter-argument.
GURPS is certianly "universal" in the any-genre sense *it* means it. I don't think Steve Jackson would say you can get AD&D players to play GURPS and *they won't know the difference.*
I also don't think anyone would be terribly suprised to hear someone say "You know, Hero just doesn't do it for me." That's not part of the SDM argument either.
Post originally by Ralph Mazza at 2003-06-16 08:59:45
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Thanks Marco. We're going to have to get you playing a game of Uni some time.
Actually, I don't know whether I'd really consider Universalis to be "universal". The name is actually a play on "Universe".
I think every game that tries to be flexible needs to have some part of the system nailed down. Universalis has no particular setting, so you can pretty much play anywhere, or anywhen from fantasy to sci fi to modern to horror to surreal experiments of the bizarre. But that's only because the focus of the game is on players crafting a story. Since a story can be told about anything all of the rest of the setting and genre information can be inserted as desired.
So on the yard stick of "what setting or genre is it" its pretty universal. But on the yard stick of "how do you play" its pretty strictly defined. There's a lot of room to customize, and believe it or not with rules gimmicks and obsessive Trait defining in effect it can get pretty crunchy, but no one is going to mistake it for GURPS.
Post originally by Ralph Mazza at 2003-06-16 09:09:33
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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.
Post originally by Marco at 2003-06-16 09:14:16
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I didn't think Uni claimed to be 'universal'--I was responding to what I think is some doublespeak in the review (and not horrendously bad doublespeak, but still ...)
I've never seen anyone say "this is the game everyone will agree is the best." The closest anyhthing comes to that is marketing fluff--and even that doesn't (IIRC) get anywhere near the sweeping generalization that the "universal games are a flawed concept" statement assumes.
Some games claim to be multi or even omni genre--sure, a fairly weak and probably ill-considered claim to be sure (on the omni side), but still--that's marketing fluff. The idea that, say, Hero might not strike *some* people as the best fit for *some* genres is hardly a stop-the-presses-I've-gotta-point-that-out kind of realization.
So I felt that invoking SDM against the concept of a universal game was a cross between tilting and windmills (no one means universal in the sense of 'the best game' or 'will meet *ALL* GNS requirements simulatneously') and the belief that a focused game will suit any given player better than a general one (something you know I disagree with)
All that said, sure, I'd love to play Universalis. Not what I usually go for in my RPGing, I think, but it does sound like it'd be fun.
Post originally by Andy Kitkowski at 2003-06-16 12:01:23
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Note that the descriptions that Mike made in his own forum is not the langauge of the book. Just like higher-level electrical engineering talk and concepts don't make their way into a toaster instruction manual, nor do PhD level critiques by English professors make their way into copies of Cat in the Hat.
None of this language is in the book. The book is simple, straightforward, very accessible and easy to read. That was one of the goals that was made when it was written.
Post originally by Ralph Mazza at 2003-06-16 12:56:59
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Heh, yeah...I don't know where exactly Mike came up with that one :-)
Seriously, a lot of theory and theoretical principles went into the design and why we made the choices we did, but I tried pretty hard to excise any trace of that stuff from the actual game text.
There is some game term jargon, like "Complications" and "Components" and such, but there really isn't any theory Jargon in there.
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