Problem with Universalis

[CPXB]

My Uni game ran into what, to the group I'm playing with, at least, is considered an insurmountable problem.

We're in 10 sessions into a Uni game and what is happening is . . . we can't figure out how to get an economy of scarcity back into the game.  The simplest, most trivial of complications now have 9 or so dice involved in them because, well, you add traits to things.  The inflow of coins is been so tremendous that anyone can do whatever they want to do whenever they want to do it.  This is after we shut down refreshment entirely, too.  The only thing that dents our coin intake is the destruction of high importance components, but even then it takes only one scene to recover from that loss.

Comments, anyone?

[Kintara]

Well, why not encourage the winners of complications to spend coins to negate the other players' coins?

[Valamir]

An interesting question.  This is something of virgin territory as I don't know of any other games that have gone to 10 sessions (aside: 10 sessions and no play reports...?  I'm disappointed)

There should be something of a natural sponge for the excess Coins in the form of Challenge bidding.  If your group is making periodic Challenges there should be a proportionate escalation in the amount of Coins being bid in the Challenge (if you're willing to spend 1/3 of your Coins you should be willing to spend 1/3 of your Coins whether you have 10 Coins or 30).  There should be a similiar tendency to sponge off excess Coins with Interruptions and Take Overs, both of which should become more frequent as their relative cost declines.  As you note, eliminating Components should provide another vehicle for Coins leaving the game.

That said, its possible that 10 sessions worth of accumulated Traits begins to overwhelm those built in balances.  Hard to say as yours is the only hard data point I've seen on a game of that many sessions.  Question:  are you playing with some of the Coin decreasing Gimmicks like free Take Overs, Free Interruptions, or Free Dialog costs?  How easy going have you been enforcing Facts vs. Color?

If so there are a number of possible Rules Gimmicks that might do the trick for you.  Killing Refreshment was a good starting point.

Adam hit on a great one.  You could go a step further and instead of encouraging that, require it.  Rules Gimmick:  1/2 of all Coins won in a Complication by the winner go to cancelling Losers Coins.

Negative refreshment might be another option.  A more heavy handed approach would be to modify the Coin payout of the Complications.  Cut all Bonus Coins received by 1/2 in every Complication.

Any one have any experience with extended Uni games and solutions that have worked?

[Bill Burdick]

Just as a reality check (no offense, please), do all of the involved traits logically contribute to the complications?

Perhaps there is a way to limit the plethora of traits on components.  How about a rules gimmick that says that the first N traits (4, with multiples not counting against the total?) on a component form its 'basis' (you could put a box around the basis traits).  Using the basis, you could limit new traits to either 1) those which follow from the intent (i.e. only allow 'compatable' traits) or 2) those which do NOT follow from the intent (i.e. only allow nonredundant traits).  Violations could be subject to challenge.  the compatible/nonredundant choice could be made per-component, too.

Here are a few other gimmicks: 1) add a coin to the cost of each die, 2) fine EACH player 1 coin for each die in a complication, 3) fine each player 1 coin for each fact (in addition to the cost of the fact for the proposer), 4) when the total wealth of all the players exceeds a certain amount, cut everyones' wealth in half.

[CPXB]

Kintara,

We actually discussed that possibility but it seemed aesthetically displeasing to everyone.  While we have occasionally done it, to do it regularly strikes the group as pretty rude.

Ralph,

We have no challenges that get to bidding.  *None*.  We're a small group -- three players -- who have known and played with each other for years.  We have a pretty functioning social contract.  We're used to working out problems through compromise, so . . . challenges give us no love in this capacity.  ;)

And, ugh, the notes to the game are scattered between paper notes and computer notes in a very disorganized fashion, hehe.  Until a couple of sessions ago, however, the game was going really, really well and we're fairly committed to keeping the game going by hook or crook.

And most of the traits that have been giving us "problems" are the social ones.  "It all started with three dice" -- early on, this kind of scummy guy started manipulating one of the characters, using a dice pool of three dice, and winning.  So traits started getting put onto people's character's sheet: "Thinks Lily has a crush on Lo", "Worried about Lily", "Thinks Ralphie has his back", "Distrustful of Tran", etc., etc.  So, now, when any character gets involved in a complication there is this web of traits that effect the rolls.  And the more we play, the worse it gets because the characters go around getting these relationship traits with each other.

We also find, narratively, it's much harder to get rid of these traits vis-a-vis, say, damage from a fight.  I mean, you get wounded, the character generally knows they're wounded and will seek treatment (and it being a sci-fi game, medical treatment is easy and effective).  But with the psychological stuff, there generally has to be a narrative trigger for the character to even realize the problem exists much less get rid of it.  So, it's been feeding off of itself a lot.

We also do not enforce facts vs. color because, in our experience, it distracted from describing things.  We considered adding it back in just as a way to bleed off coins, but the group is strongly attached to not worrying how many coins it takes to fire a gun.  ;)

I'll bring up the rules gimmicks to see if the group likes them.  In particular I'm sorta liking that we might just cut down coins gained from complications by half.

Bill,

We think they do, yes.  ;)

We also thought of that specific rules gimmick, but in Uni the adding of traits is also the damage mechanic.  So we eliminated that right out -- having a lot of traits would make a character harder to damage?  And since a lot of our problem is that these traits are coming from "social combat damage" that wouldn't work.  I'll bring up the others, tho'.  Thanks!

[Arturo G.]

The problem with cutting the coins earned from complications to half is that it is difficult to decide WHEN do you begin to use it. It may solve your problem now, but I cannot see a systematic way of ruling when a new group getting in the same problem should begin to use it.

For me it should have more sense to limit the number of traits which may be raised from a given component in a complication. Mechanically simple. But I'm sure there will be situations where important traits, highly related to the complication could not be raised, which may look strange.

I don't also like too much using the earned coins to diminish the coins of the other side systematically. But perhaps you can relate this to the dice in the pool before throwing. Indeed, it is said in the rules that you can raise a trait to take away one dice from the opposite pool instead of getting a new dice for yours.
Perhaps you can add a gimmick saying that the lower pool cannot have more than X dice. If it is going to grow past the limit, the new traits should be used to diminish the opposite pool. This will keep the small pools as normal, it will keep the same difference between pools, but will make dissapear the situations where BOTH pools are really big. Let say X=10, a situation with pools A=30 dice, B=40 dice will be transformed in A=10, B=20.
Now I'm thinking you can do the trick after closing the pools. Does this make sense?

Cheers,
Arturo

[CPXB]

Arturo,

I'm not interested in a general rule for EVERY Universalis game. I just want an idea to keep playing this highly successful game I'm currently involved in.  ;)

[Valamir]

Interesting.  I'll throw out a few thoughts in no particular order.

1) Its a fun bit to see how phrasing things differently effects perception.  Mechanically there is very little difference between cutting everyone's Bonus Coins by half and making the Winner spend half their Coins to cancel the Losers Coins.  Either way, Coins are getting bled out of the system for both sides.  Its a bit of a neat psychology to see how the first one seems nicer but the second one seems rude.  Mechanically the only difference is that the loser would lose more Coins in the second version on average (half of the Winner's total rather than half of their own), otherwise they're identical.

2) So its social relationship Traits that are causing the problem? If you have the time provide more details about that, maybe some examples of the Complications and the Traits that are being called on.  I'm thinking that maybe there are situations where a Trait like "Distrusts Tran" wouldn't really apply.  Speculating here...is it possible that your group is too lenient about accepting weak justifications for including Traits.  Since you indicate you've had no Challenges go to bidding and one of the more common Sources of Challenges I've seen is over whether you can use a particular Trait in  a particular Complication, that might be an issue.  A potential solution (if your group is reluctant to get confrontational over interpreting Traits) is to require Social Traits to get more specific.  Instead of "Thinks Ralphie has his back" could instead be "Think Ralphie has his back in a brawl", or "Thinks Ralphie would back him up with the boss".  Narrows down the range of Complications it would be applicable for.

3) Only 3 players might be contributing somewhat to the situation as well.  More players leads to a greater chance of disagreement, leads to a greater likelyhood of bidding Challenges.  I can see how 3 people who are more "mind melded" might not use the Bidding Challenges often enough for it to serve its roll as a Coin burner.  During Challenge Negotiations that you've been involved with where you've conceded to another player do you generally find that you're conceding because they're idea is so much better than yours?  Or is more a reluctance to be confrontational? (or is it truly just a "same wavelength" vibe.)  A certain amount of "putting my foot down" is a healthy thing for Uni play.

4) On removing social traits...don't over Sim it.  Remember a Trait is only written down if its important enough to effect the game.  Just because a character doesn't have a "strong" Trait on his sheet doesn't mean he's a weeny who struggles with his own luggage.  It just means his level of strength isn't important enough to the story to be featured.  Similarly with social traits.  Say you have a Complication where John's "Distrusts Tran" Trait is drawn on.  During the narration, Tran doesn't do anything to betray John.  Its perfectly reasonable for a player to narrate "John starts to think Tran isn't such a bad guy after all" as part of the overall resolution (fit into context of course), and cross the Distrusts Trait off.  That doesn't mean John suddenly trusts Tran, he may still distrust him.  It just means that that distrust is no longer important enough to be a featured element in future Complications.

5) Arturo also brings up an excellent point that I forgot.  A lot of folks have mentioned that they don't allow Traits to reduce dice pools, only add (in fact, that's such a common Gimmick its going in as a side bar in the revised edition).  I don't know if you're using that Gimmick (either formally, or just in practice not canceling dice), but if you are...not using it and permitting Dice to be cancelled might help the situation as well.  Using a Trait to subtract one of your dice isn't really any ruder than adding a die to mine (on average it will make a half Coin difference depending on who wins and loses, but over multiple Complications this should wash out).  Putting a cap on Pool Size as Arturo suggests, is actually a really good idea.  I don't know how big your pools have been getting but setting the smaller pool to be no larger than 1/2 the level it has been (when you've noticed the Coin problem) and requiring other Traits to reduce pools would be pretty effective. It will tend to favor the larger pool more (20 vs. 10 is more likely to win than 30 vs. 20) but that would really just encourage the smaller pool player to spend more Coin to reduce the larger pool down to 15...which would bleed yet more Coins out of the system...perhaps enough to reinstate refreshment.

A fascinating discussion.

[CPXB]

1.  Yeah, a fair bit of this is psychological in nature.  I mean, there are mechanisms we could use to cut down on how many coins are in the game, but they all feel intrusive.

2.  No, social traits aren't causing the problem.  Too many coins arising from complications are causing the problem.  The fact that the complications are social is coincidental to this game.  I mean, if it wasn't social complications it'd be something else.

I also am going to pretty much out of hand reject the idea that we're not doing traits right.  All the players are bright and reasonable people; we are using what traits we, as a group, find relevant to a given situation and we're not going to stop doing that.  We are using the traits we feel appropriate just as we always have done in every Uni game I've played.

3.  I disagree, fundamentally, that "putting your foot down" inherently helps a situation just to show people you're willing to play hardball.  I philosophically believe that people working together do better work than people who are selfishly looking after their own interests.  When someone brings up a challenge, unless I have a firm reason to out of hand reject their proposal my tendency is to negotiate without the use of force, as represented in bidding.  Also, in a literary sense, I am an existentialst.  My ideas are not inherently better than anyone else's.

Which isn't to say I wouldn't put my foot down, or any other players in my group, if I felt they were doing something downright stupid and damaging to the game in general (in one game I played I demanded that the challenge go to bidding, but the other player backed down).  However, if I was in a game with people that I felt the NEED to challenge them all the time, I'd probably stop gaming with them because if we're constantly challenging each other over the game instead of playing the game it's obvious that something is wrong.  The challenge mechanism is a way to resolve *problems*.  And if there are a lot of problems in a game, I will stop playing that game (or, equally likely, attempt to address the problem outside of the specific context of what is occuring in game; I'd be more interested in knowing WHY the people in the game felt the urge to issue many challenges).

So, realistically, there's little chance any Uni game I ever play will have a lot of challenges that go to bidding.  There are just very few situations where that would be necessary given the social contract I have with my groups.

4.  We'll "sim" it as much as we want, thank you very kindly.  The problem is not how we've been playing our game, but that in Universalis characters tend to gain traits over time and this creates an issue where challenges produce ever increasing amounts of coins.  I suspect this issue is independent of the specific game, tho' it might be an epiphenomenon of the particular play style of my specific group.  (In the previous longest Uni game I played, that lasted 8 sessions, we had also started to get this problem, tho' that game dealt almost entirely with kung-fu battles against nuclear mutants.  But the game ended just as the issue was developing.)

I should emphasize that this has been a really great game *the way we have been playing it* but then the rules seem to have reached an area where what we had been doing for the previous 9 game sessions was yielding different results.

5.  The cancelling dice issue is pretty dead on, though.  A rules gimmick to have us cancel dice in preference to taking additional dice might also settle out the problem, because a lot of the drawn on traits are of a functionally "negative" character in many complications.

[Valamir]

Hey Chris, I hope you don't I was being overly critical or anything, you seemed to get a bit defensive there.  I'm certainly not about to start lecturing you of all people (who've probably played nearly as many games as me and certainly more longer term ones) how to play.  Any notion of a "right way" to play is pretty antithetical to the very concept of Uni anyway.  Since I don't know your group I was just throwing out some generic possibilities in the hope that something might stick.

There are a lot of Coins coming from Complications because there are alot of Dice being rolled in Complications because there are alot of Traits being Drawn upon.  Alot of that is simply, as you've pointed out, that a lot of Traits have accumulated over time and are available to Draw upon.  It might be helpful to start interpreting the Traits more narrowly so that fewer of them apply as a way to counter that.  Interpreting Traits too broadly might be an issue for some groups.  If its not for yours, fantastic.

3.  I disagree, fundamentally, that "putting your foot down" inherently helps a situation just to show people you're willing to play hardball.  I philosophically believe that people working together do better work than people who are selfishly looking after their own interests.  When someone brings up a challenge, unless I have a firm reason to out of hand reject their proposal my tendency is to negotiate without the use of force, as represented in bidding.  Also, in a literary sense, I am an existentialst.  My ideas are not inherently better than anyone else's.

There is a bit of philosophical difference coming into play then.  The game was designed from an assumption that you as a player will believe your ideas (at least some of them from time to time) are inherently better than anyone else's, while your fellow players will believe (from time to time) that theirs are inherently better than yours.  The Challenge mechanic isn't intended to be a mechanic of last resort for solving irreconcilable differences but actually a functional part of the overall game system.  There is a certain degree of head butting (in the fun sense of wrestling with your friends) assumed in the game.

Clearly that difference in philosophies isn't drastic enough to prevent you from having been very successful with the game thus far. But it probably is a contributing factor to your current situation.  The built in Coin balancing factor of Challenge bidding isn't going to be of much help to you.  Thankfully we can probably figure out an effective Rules Gimmick that will do the job in a manner more consistant with your group's play style...which is what they're there for after all.


Also my "sim" comment wasn't a criticism.  It was addressing your aside that you were having more difficulty justifying the removal of a social trait than a physical one.  I just wanted to note that removing the social trait doesn't have to require a complete psychological reverse by the character, merely a slight shift in perspective such that the trait (while still understood to be present by the group) isn't enough to have a mechanical impact on the game.  Should the situation shift back, it can always be readded. 

I should emphasize that this has been a really great game *the way we have been playing it* but then the rules seem to have reached an area where what we had been doing for the previous 9 game sessions was yielding different results.

That was never in doubt.

5.  The cancelling dice issue is pretty dead on, though.  A rules gimmick to have us cancel dice in preference to taking additional dice might also settle out the problem, because a lot of the drawn on traits are of a functionally "negative" character in many complications.

Great.  I'll be eager to hear how that works out.

[Kintara]

And I don't think it's too philosophically incongruent to believe that your ideas are inherently better for you than for someone else because you know what your own taste is.  How far you're willing to take it is another matter.  There are certainly going to be games where you get into a groove with everyone.

Another way to think about Universalis is that the coin mechanic is there to be played.  The more coins you have, the more control you have.  Control is good for you because you get to do what you want instead of what someone else wants.  That's cool.  It may feel rude to deny someone coins, but, really, you are enhancing your ability to tell the story you want.  You're enhancing the amount of story you get to tell.  Telling the story is fun, even if your ideas aren't better than someone else's.  You probably agree they're not worse either.

That said, the lower the priority it is for you to feel the need to control the story personally, the lower the priority of the coin economy overall, I would think.

I'm not saying to fix something that ain't broke, but I think asserting personal control, and liking it, can be healthy.

Anyway, I think a good solution is allowing traits to subtract from opponents' pools.  That might go a long way all on its own to fixing the economy.  I'm curious to know what happens.

[CPXB]

Ralph,

Maybe a little defensive.  ;)  I got a little riled when you said, "Don't over Sim it".  That moved, IMO, out of discussing the issue into giving orders.  I actually respond very poorly to authority (which is actually one of the HUGE draws of Universalis to me).

I never interpreted the bidding part of the challenge mechanic as integral to the game.  I mean, we challenge each other all the time on a variety of things.  But I think it is fair to say that we all find bidding fairly intrusive, what you do when the people are adamant about something and it can't be resolved through any other mechanism.  IME, which is limited to the Bangor area, this is the common intrepretation of bidding.  That it is a mechanism of last resort when other methods of failed.

And while it might make more sense to more narrowly draw on traits . . . right now with a lot of these traits there are plenty of established precedents for their use.  There's also the sense that we give traits according to what we think the component should have.  And while it might make sense in a "decrease the number of coins in complications" way to give the character "growing increasingly paranoid about Ralphie" if the player thinks that the character is just growing increasingly paranoid that's what we'll tend to give them.  (And, honestly, many of the traits are very narrowly focused on specific situations and/or characters, anyway -- but the game largely takes place on a spaceship with a small crew so they're almost always the people they interact with; there are only six of them on the ship, and some of the characters have plans which basically mean they will be drawing on those traits.)  Still, when possible, it is something to keep in mind.

Regardless, unless we specifically do something to put bidding in complications into the game, we won't be doing it 'cause . . . we have worked out way worse issues than anything that will happen in the game without the bidding mechanism.  Still, I'll bring it up with the group and see what they think about it.

For the resolution of the actual problem, however, I'm thinking either saying we get 1/2 the number of coins from complications or we buy off dice instead of adding them (which will work neatly in the specific situations where we're encountering problems -- with social complications that have many traits being drawn off of many sheets for the same roll).  Either way, I will let you know.  ;)

Kintara,

Actually, possessing coins means nothing in the economy.   Spending them does.  Coins only mean potential story control, not *actual* story control.  Throughput is more important than merely having coins, and they aren't identical.

The problem is that income is consistently greater than *any potential expenditure* we seek to undertake.  I mean, the past couple of game sessions we have been literally throwing coins away.  They have simply lost value in our economy.

I'm also going to add that I agree, strongly, that people should seek to "tell their own stories".  I have some things to say on the subject, IME.

Challenges that go to bidding aren't really necessary (at least in my group) to advance your agenda.  What either happens is what the other players are doing doesn't really influence your agenda, or can be worked in with only very modest alterations, or (and this is the really interesting part to me) *the plans of the players start to merge* and as the game progresses there are less areas of conflict.  This happens almost invisibly as players start to pick up on the vibe the others are throwing out and modifying their plans, almost subconsciously, to fit the group vision.

I mean, maybe other people play differently than me and mine do, but I've seen it happen in three different groups of people so that I think it is pretty normal in Uni for it to happen.

[CPXB]

I'm also thinking that we use the complication mechanic to resolve what in other groups might be challenges.  (Which might address the issue, because bidding is a coin drain whereas complications are coin generators.)

Play can, in some sense, be defined as the interaction of components.  Players have components do things, modify, destroy, create, etc., to advance their story idea.  I find that when I want to stop a component from doing something I don't want it to do, I introduce a complication.  Or just take control of the component and do what the other player was going to do in a slightly different way.

Thinking about it, we have a largish arsenel of challenge avoidance techniques.

[Bill Burdick]

Oooh oooh!  A couple more gimmick suggestions:

5a) Lower the payback amount for success dice.  This is less draconian than 1/2 payback or double cost but it only affects one side of the complication.  For instance, make the 0 on the d10 count as a 0, not a 10  or cap the success die payback at 3 or 4.  You could even institute a 'graduated tax' by saying that the cap only applies to pools of a certain size or higher.

5b) in addition, only pay back coins for successes for the losing side.

6) Make it more expensive to add dice to larger pools (one extra coin for every die after the 5th, for inst).

7) Make it more expensive to add traits to important components.  I like this one, because it installs 'intertia;' masters won't develop as quickly for instance.  It also makes it harder to add to master components once they have a lot of subcomponents.  It's not as useful for a game that already has a lot of important components, though.

8) impose a 'pool size tax' on winnings -- remove pool size/5 from the payback.

[Mike Holmes]

I really think that the refresh rate is the place to address this sort of thing, personally. That is, the refresh is set where it is by default in a very notional manner based on the idea that at start the complication mechanic alone isn't enough to build up. I think it is natural that over time that this subsidy should subside as traits are built up.

BTW, Ralph, I'm not sure precisely how many sessions we played, but the Kroolian Jungle IRC game went several sessions. Four at least that I played (might have been five), and a few more played without me. In that game, the sort of inflation that's seen here didn't happen. That seems to me because we were constantly building new stuff instead of always leveraging off of things that existed. I'm not suggesting this, but what it says is that, again, there seems to be a "pace" of play in terms of buildup, that at some point should turn over into more an angle meant to resolve things instead of adding new things.

That is, what I'd suggest is reviewing the refresh rate at the beginning of each session, and agreeing to set it at a rate comensurate with how much you want to change from a "building" game to "closing" the game. The harder you want to focus on closing, the lower the refresh rate should go.

And, yeah, if need be, it should go negative at some point (rules for not having enough to pay can be arrived at fairly easily). That might incentivize long scenes, but that might not be a bad thing either if you're getting to the end of things. It also means that players can cause depletions by ending scenes if they feel that their wealth level is too high - it becomes a tool for players to reinstate scarcity by metering the pace.

Eventually this should drive towards a conclusion to the game, and would be a good tool for it. For certain "open ended" sorts of stories that constantly expand, this might not be neccessary at all. But for tight story play, I think that it is rather neccessary to always monitor your refresh rate. Can't hurt to check it at points in any case. Refresh is the mechanic that meters the economy, so use it as it's intended to do so by making the rate appropriate to your play.

Mike