The Single Flip of a Coin

[CPXB]

One of the big differences between Univeralis and most other games is how complications are handled in pretty much one flip of the coin.  You roll and the other guy rolls and you handle it via the narration.

I love most things about this.  I think it is wonderfully elegant, having the element of chance I like about gaming but focusing things on the characters and narration.  However, recently I was reading a description of an Exalted game where eventually the PC lost (and died) in this really epic battle.  It was a great PC death scene, a dramatic battle ending in a duel where the antagonist pulled a "from behind" victory.  And while Universalis can do many things very, very well, I'm having trouble imagining how it could do that sort of thing.  Where the characters battle back and forth, slowly loosing resources, until eventually one of them falls.

Any suggestions how to make this possible?

[Christopher Weeks]

Do I understand that you want to make it require multiple rolls/complications?  You could write a gimick that at most, one trait can be removed from a component as the result of a complication.  Or one per participant, or something.  You could also limit the size of the dice pools -- to decrease the scope of complication and to encourage more players to get involved in each.  

The other approach that I'm imagining is to increase the frequency of edge dice.  Since that builds tension and requires rerolls, it might reach what you're looking for.  Maybe require a complication winner to have two (or more) more victories than the loser or an edge die is shed.  You could also use an underdog gimick that gives edge dice to the player with the fewest dice.  

With some combination of these gimicks, I think you end up with complications that commonly start small and build in intensity before resolution.  But I'm not sure how fun it would be with all the rerolls.  It may just be a personal aesthetic.

Chris

[CPXB]

Chris,

Ah!  Interesting ideas, hehe.

I'm not sure if any of it will lead to more fun, either.  It was just something that was passing through my mind.  The game is, actually, plenty fun the way it is; I'm just a perfectionist or something.  :p

[Christopher Weeks]

I didn't mean to suggest that I'm opposed to such tweaks.  I like them!  I just can't clearly foretell how they'll turn out.

Chris

[Tony Irwin]

Hey CPXB, remember that complications are started when you target a component you don't control with an event. The narration is meant to reflect the impact of that event (or how it was prevented).

If you want things to happen in smaller incremental steps then try targeting the components with smaller incremental events.

eg
"I'll pay a coin to say Spidey attacks the insane Doc Oc. Now let's have a complication!"

An event like that leaves things wide open - whoever narrates will most likely try to narrate the end of the battle. Instead try:

"I'll pay a coin to say Spidey tries to knock Doc Oc off balance. Now let's have a complication!"

With the coins you win from that one you can start another complication to get above and behind Doc Oc in position for a final strike. Spend your extra coins to buy dice in the conflict, justifying each one as a separate tactical advantage gained from Doc Oc being off balance earlier.

Alternatively start a new complication within a complication, again to try and get a particular tactical advantage within the battle. The winner of that complication will then have enough coins to go on and win the main complication. That works really well but you do need to track it all very carefully.

Not sure about the "swinging each way" aspect though. In both these methods once you're ahead in coins its easy to maintain a lead. Playing in a big group will help, as they'll be more people who can team up to oppose you.

[Mike Holmes]

Yeah, Tony beat me to it. If you want rising tension, make smaller complications, and use the outcome to feed more complications.

The book does warn agains "nesting" complications. The reason for this is that it can get insanely complicated. Fortunately for me, I'm insane, so I like this sort of thing. Personally I really like nested complications. And they're exactly the sort of thing that you need here.

One game I played was one gigantic nested complication. Actually I think that's a good way to create long term tension.

Mike

[CPXB]

I'll take another look at the nested complications stuff.  No one has accused me of particular amounts of sanity.  ;)

[Valamir]

For reference, Nested Complications are discussed here

There's also a link ot a discussion on Multiple Dice pools on that page, which, while not directly related, may also provide you with some inspiration on the sorts of ways you can Gimmick the way Complication Dice Pools work.