Dice Apocalypse: Bug or feature?

[eef31415]

After my first Universalis game, I noticed a big artifact of the rules systems;  the dice apocalypse.

Once I control a character in a conflict, it makes sense to spend boatloads of coins on them just before the conflict.  If the character loses, I get 1 coin back for every coin I spent; if the character wins I expect to get 1.5 coins back for every coin I spend.  For instance, if I spend 20 coins, my expected return is either 20 or 30, depending on winning or not.  If there's another conflict in the scene, I can take those points and spend them winning that conflict.  If the previous coins are applicable to this new conflict, then I'm rolling 50 (!) dice for this conflict.  So, 20 coins becomes 30 coins becomes 75 coins (50*1.5).  Guess what I can do in the next conflict?

Even better, somebody can spend 1 coin to take over the character, so now they are spending 1 coing to get back 75 or 75*1.5 = 112 coins.

I think this is a pretty serious flaw in the game.  The game I played started out as a couple scenes of interesting character developement, then became a massive brawl as players figured this out.  I don't see a good way of fixing the problem.

[rafial]

The winner has the option to buy off coins won by the losers, which can help hold down "speculative" entry into complications.  In fact, I'm pondering a rules gimmick for next time I play to require that winners *must* buy off losers coins before they use them for anything else.  See if inflation can be held down that way.

[Paganini]

Well... you can't just buy dice for complications like that. Each die you buy has to represent something. When you buy dice, you don't just say "I'm buying 75 dice," you say "Inigo gets a die because the sun is in Roberts' face." <plink> "He gets another die because Roberts' is still winded from climbing the cliff." <plink>

If you can come up with 75 different situational modifiers for one roll without your butt being challenged off, then you deserve every die you get! :)

[Bob McNamee]

Don't forget about Challenges too...

I would Challenge someone putting down a bunch of Coins on an already established character...especially to increase skills/Traits for no reason, or add new skills that just happen to be helpful. Everything must be well explained to the satisfaction of all the players.

That said, I agree it could become a problem. I never quite saw the point of just buying a couple dice to add to a conflict (calling it "the slippery floor") when you could spend the same couple coins adding the Trait of Slippery Floor 2 to the ballroom. Of course you have to control the location to add the trait.

I would challenge the spending of coins won by the Challenge as well... and if, as the loser in a conflict, they didn't take my coins away... I would probably un-buy traits, or add "negative" traits to those involved. Things like cowardice, concussion, injuries, gullible...traits that can be called upon by an opposing side in future conflicts.

[edit:  cross posted with Paganini  :)  ]

[Tony Irwin]

After my first Universalis game, I noticed a big artifact of the rules systems;  the dice apocalypse.

Once I control a character in a conflict, it makes sense to spend boatloads of coins on them just before the conflict.  If the character loses, I get 1 coin back for every coin I spent; if the character wins I expect to get 1.5 coins back for every coin I spend.  For instance, if I spend 20 coins, my expected return is either 20 or 30, depending on winning or not.  If there's another conflict in the scene, I can take those points and spend them winning that conflict.  If the previous coins are applicable to this new conflict, then I'm rolling 50 (!) dice for this conflict.  So, 20 coins becomes 30 coins becomes 75 coins (50*1.5).  Guess what I can do in the next conflict?

Even better, somebody can spend 1 coin to take over the character, so now they are spending 1 coing to get back 75 or 75*1.5 = 112 coins.

Well no, more likely they'll spend up to 74 coins to take over that character! As soon as you take someone over, someone else can immeadiately take them back. So if you've got a couple of hard hitting characters on the table with say 75 applicable traits, you'll find that all the coins everyone has built up will quickly vanish in a race to see who gets to own that character in the complication. People will be willing to spend up to 74 coins just to take the character over, because they know they'll be rolling 75 dice with them.

I think this is a pretty serious flaw in the game.  The game I played started out as a couple scenes of interesting character developement, then became a massive brawl as players figured this out.  I don't see a good way of fixing the problem.

I think using the take-over rule might be change things for you. If you (say) spend 20 of your 25 starting coins on a coin-vending-character then the other players will quite happily spend 20 coins trying to take it over - you've only got 5 coins left to maintain control compared to my 20. The more coins you plough into a character's traits, the more chance there is that you will never control them.

eg.
We both have 20 coins.
I spend 1c to take control
I spend 15c making Bandit with 14 combat traits.
I spend 1c to say my Bandit attacks your character.
You interrupt, spending 1c to take control of the Bandit.

I've got 3c and no Bandit, you've got 19c and a Bandit who will roll 15 dice if he gets in a fight. My bad. There's no point in me even trying to take control back.

Please play Universalis again with the same group you played with before and try this as soon as someone starts building a "coin-vending-character". Its so funny the first time you try this! As soon as everyone catches on to this, what happens is that heaps of coins don't get invested in complications any more, they all get spent in retaining control of the all important "power characters".

This makes the other route seem much more attractive, don't invest coins in characters, just keep a pile of coins that you can use to buy dice in any complication. The problem then is that people will use character traits to rob you of your dice eg

You have the Bandit and 3c
I have 20c
I buy 20c worth of dice for the complication.
You activate your 15 Bandit traits to take 15 dice out of my pool.
You then spend 3c on three dice.
Im rolling 5 dice against your three.
I win making 8c you get 3c.
Result - Im 12c down. My bad!

My experience is that its a balancing act - keeping a nice store of coins for emergencies, investing in adaptable characters, picking and choosing your complications. My experience is that like you guys, every time we discovered a new quirk to the rules we'd exploit the hell out of it, until we discovered another quirk that would balance the first one completely. Several times we've thought "Cool! We broke the system", but we haven't come up with anything yet that is guaranteed to break the way Universalis plays.

Let me know if you have any luck with this, the group I play with is always interested in seeing (and talking endlessly about) new ways of playing Universalis.

Tony

[Tony Irwin]

We both have 20 coins.
I spend 1c to take control
I spend 15c making Bandit with 14 combat traits.
I spend 1c to say my Bandit attacks your character.
You interrupt, spending 1c to take control of the Bandit.

Doh! This is what I get for trying to post from work where I don't have a copy of the book to hand. I'm not actually sure if you can take over my character once I've paid for an event targetting both our characters or not. I'll need to double check that tonight so my apologies if I've misled you.

However in my experience of playing Universalis, take-overs are powerful enough to keep coin build up very low. You can take-over any component once a complication has begun as long as it hasn't yet activated a trait to affect the dice pools. This still allows for the big guns to change hands constantly and drain big coin reserves. (Like I suggested, try it with your group. Everyone I've played with so far has had this kind of unwritten rule of "What I create, I control". It can be such a shock when someone takes control of your guy with swordsmanx6 and you have no coins left to get them back).

Anyway I'll double check the rules tonight on take-overs

Tony

[Mike Holmes]

First, Tony is right that once a Complication has begun that control may not change. This is to prevent such situation s from getting very complicated potentially. However, if one felt that a "threat" was needed, one could rescind that rule with a Gimmick, and make it possible again.

The best solution, however, is Nathan's. Challenge the inclusion. As he points out, the Coins have to mean something. If a player does a cruddy job of describing their inclusion, if it's obvious that he's only doing it to accumulate more Coins, then Challenge it. Such a challenge says to the player that they have to earn their Coins, that they can't just exploit the rules to get more Coins. After all, what's he going to do with the now even larger pile of Coins? Likely, the player will just make similarly cruddy stuff. Use Challenges to make the game what you want.

But this is all sorta academic. It seems to me that there is some sort of interplayer competition going on here to see who can accumulate the largest pile of coins. If all the players agree that this is fine, then, the game will degerate into a series of Coin garnering Complications. Which is presumably what the players want. After all they are the ones who allowed it. Soon everyone will have piles ten feet high. Which is silly, given that you could just institute a Gimmick to give yourself a jillion Coins each.

Anyhow, what fun is that? I mean really. Now you have a jillion Coins; what do you do? Buy ever more powerful characters? To what end? How does that build a story?

Universalis is not a competition to get the most Coins. The Coins are a measure by which the group rewards itself for good play. The group as a whole must monitor the use of the rules. They cannot monitor themselves. As long as there is a consensus (or even just a majority, actually) that play is about using the Universalis rules to create a good story, there will be no problem.

Just my experience,
Mike

[Paganini]

Universalis is not a competition to get the most Coins. The Coins are a measure by which the group rewards itself for good play. The group as a whole must monitor the use of the rules. They cannot monitor themselves. As long as there is a consensus (or even just a majority, actually) that play is about using the Universalis rules to create a good story, there will be no problem.

Just my experience,

My experience agrees with yours. :) The game currency (Coins) in Universalis has no intrinsic value beyond what the group itself assigns to them. Coins are very simply an abstract econmy set up to regulate the flow of realized player influence vs. potential player influence. I don't see Universalis promoting inter-player competition at all. This is because potential influence has no particular advantage over realized influence. It also makes a big difference that there aren't any player vs. player Conflicts - only Component vs. Component conflicts. And we all know that Components change hands constantly. :)

[Valamir]

I think the initial question of the thread has been addressed pretty thoroughly without me.  Thanks all.

The three points that have been brought up that I really want to hammer home are these:

1) The Coin has to be justified.  If you can come up with 74 interesting facts about your character that could be meaningfully applied to the situation at hand the moment before entering into a complication you're alot more creative than I am ;-)  

2) If the justification you use isn't a good one (as judged by your fellow players, not me or the rules) you'll likely be challenged...especially if you try to side step point #1 by saying "amazing combat abilities x74"

3) Most subtly (and I'm so glad players are getting this because it isn't explicit in the rules) Nathan is quite right when he says that Coins have no intrinsic value.  I've played games where 15-20 dice pools and characters with 30-40 Coins worth of traits were standard.  I've played others where the dice pools never got above 6 and most characters had only 3-4 Traits defined.  Very different volumes of Coins and dice being thrown around, but both worked equally well.

The way the economy is designed to work, inflation should largely wash itself out.  If you spend alot of Coins to get alot of dice you should get alot of bonus Coins...which you'll need because eliminating a character bought with alot of Coins will be very expensive.  Challenges have also shown to be an easy way to drain excess currency from the economy.  If someone's inflating tactics are being seen as abusive...a Challenge will easily wipe out such ill gotten profits...If they're not seen as abusive, but are being enjoyed...than there is no foul.  The only downside to inflation in that case is that record keeping and pool sizes can get cumbersome.  But what's considered to be fun and what's considered to be cumbersome is one of the key factors each group must decide for itself.

If the natural economic forces of the game don't eliminate your worries about inflation, its easy to get a little more forceful with a simple rules gimmick.  First:  1 Coin to buy the following Fact as a tenent of the game "abusive Coin inflation will not be tolerated".  Second:  1 Coin to buy the following rules gimmick:  "In any challenge the Challenger can call for a vote to determine if the player being challenged is abusively inflating the economy.  If the majority of other players agree that he is, than the Challenger gets the benefit of Coin doubling for the "anti inflation Fact" being violated."

I HIGHLY doubt, such a heavy handed tactic would be necessary, however.

[Michael S. Miller]

In my first game, we spent 23 of our starting Coins on setting creation (we were having too much fun) before we even went to bid for the first scene. Seeing our error, I proposed the one-time rules gimmick: "Before bidding for this first scene, everyone gets 10 coins from the bank." It worked fairly well to compensate for our newbie error.

If the book-keeping of huge numbers of coins becomes problematic, couldn't a one-time rules gimmick be the answer? "Everyone must pay the bank 20 Coins right now." I mean, if everyone is annoyed by the situation, and everyone's stockpile is reduced by the same amount, it shouldn't be a problem, right?

Just a thought.

[Valamir]

Exactly right, in some games I know Mike has done the opposite when there were too few Coins to handle all of the cool stuff players wanted to do ("I propose everyone take 10 Coins").  

Rules Gimmicks handle unique social contract needs just as easily as they handle custom game world design needs.  Great example.