anyway.

The zen may require a leisurely pace. It may be that games like Dogs and The Mountain Witch and My Life with Master play too unremittingly - they don't give the in-play downtime nor the between-play creative power that a less immediate game would.

I don't think so. I really think it has a lot to do with character ownership. I, like Kat, am only somewhat amused by Universalis, whereas Dogs and even Mountain Witch gave me much more of the role-playing ya-ya (zen, if you will).

I think because Universalis is focused so strongly on the mechanics of building the story, rather than the unique and fully owned character available in the other games, it doesn't satisfy as fully.

Your examples are all laser focused on a single type of story, told over and over, but these stories are all specifically aimed at illuminating character, or some aspect that is emotionally related to character. Universalis can do just about anything, but it definitely seems to put the players at a remove from the characters in the story.

The real in-principle tradeoff may be between the zen and pacing. The zen may require a leisurely pace. It may be that games like Dogs and The Mountain Witch and My Life with Master play too unremittingly - they don't give the in-play downtime nor the between-play creative power that a less immediate game would.

I've been fortunate to play Dogs, MLwM and Mountain Witch (sometimes its good to be me) and I don't think its pacing.  There was less Zen in Mountain Witch but it was Convention play, but I have gotten plenty of Zen in My Life,and in Dogs.

Mike and I have moved from Fiat style Freeform to a more upfront style of play where we share tasks and discuss what would make the best scene and then assign eachother roles, but even in that I've noticed the less ownership of characters I have the less Zen I'm experiencing.

Universalis has the least amount of Zen, although it is an enjoyable game.

I would say that pacing is certainly a factor, but I think it also ties back into Character ownership because the more time you play the more time your investing in the character you own.

kat
whim@enter.net

Your examples are all laser focused on a single type of story, told over and over, but these stories are all specifically aimed at illuminating character, or some aspect that is emotionally related to character.

Somewhere in orbit around Pete's brain, the above sentence combined with a meme about the value of genre fiction to form a super-meme about focussed games that is presently re-arranging my mental map... but in a good way.

There's something about focussed sim and character premise nar here, but at the moment, it's still in "watcher of the skies" mode at the mo...