Activity during Complications

[Danny2050]

"Complications proceed regardless of other Events that may be narrated around them. Players continue to Interrupt and take their turns normally." Uni 2nd Ed page 64.

My group has come across a few problems with this:
  a) Can another complication start up while the current one is open?
  b) Can a player close the scene while a complication is open?
  c) Can a player jump to a mini scene while a complication is open?

I can envisage a rules gimmick for b) that I call "cliffhanger" but I haven't tried it out yet to test it. The idea is that a player declares a "cliffhanger" (1 coin) during an open complication. Everything is frozen and the player frames a new scene as if he won a bid. The new scene may not introduce anything that commits the outcome of the open complication but may introduce things that are used to draw dice in the complication upon return. At the end of the scene play automatically returns to the scene with the open cliffhanger complication. No cliffhangers within cliffhangers allowed.

[Mike Holmes]

A) The official rule is "no nesting" for contests. That said, in playtest we played allowing it, and, while complicated as all get out, it works. In fact, it's kinda interesting as it allows players to "drill down" to lower level complications. In some play we even had complications last entire sessions, with all other play being drilling down into the details of the complication.

Use at your own risk. :-)


B) The official rule is, again, no, because the threat is that play will not come back to resolve the contest. Your gimmick deals with that nicely, however.


C) This one I'm not sure on. I don't think that there's anything prohibiting this directly (though I'd really have to look to be sure), but there are problems like complications locking control of components. I think it can be done, but, again, I'd have some gimmick worked up to handle it.

Mike

[Arturo G.]

Hi!

During our first play sessions we were not allowing nested complications (too complicated for us, we were afraid of losing control of what coins were invested in which complication/sub-complication)

  c) Can a player jump to a mini scene while a complication is open?

We ocasionally did it. However, we used the miniscene only as a flashback to nicely introduce new traits which appear to be relevant in the running complication.

Cheers,
Arturo