Two questions

[Ry]

Does there exist a master flowchart for the game?  I'm working on one to get my head around the flow, it's going to be quite large (but helpful for my purposes; ease of intro and to clarify Rules Gimmicks when they are proposed).  Has someone done this already or am I breaking new ground?

Also, has anyone used cards instead of dice for Universalis?  I'm a bit of a sucker for cards. 

[Ry]

This is what I was getting at

[Ry]

And one more, what the heck.



(Am I down with OCD? Yeah, you know me.   )

[hix]

Ryan, I'm finding these inspirational. Thanks for posting them.

[Ry]

Ryan, I'm finding these inspirational. Thanks for posting them.

Let's just hope they're reasonably correct.  I am somewhat new to this.

[Trevis Martin]

They look accurate to me, good work! You might want to just post links to them though.  The images break the CSS plus the mod will probably remove them.

[Ry]

Ah, I didn't realize that.  I forget others don't have wide monitors like me.  I'd edit the posts if I could.

[Ry]

Bidding for a Scene is here:

http://ogcesix.pbwiki.com/f/UniversalisBiddingForAScene.PNG

As we go on my flow charts become more and more suspect.  Am I doing this one right?  Also, is it possible to deadlock, that is, have no Coins left with any player when it's time to Bid?

[Ry]

These are being done in Word 2003, if anyone is interested.

[Ry]

Now it starts to get really, really complex, and I'm less confident I've got it right.

http://ogcesix.pbwiki.com/f/UniversalisFramingAScene.PNG

Specifically, if somone is setting a scene in the Future, and they are Challenged and defeated, do they get the Coins they paid to each player back or do they keep the coins?

[Valamir]

Wow really nice.  I don't see anything at a high level that's innaccurate.  Seems like you grasp the flow pretty well.  The only niggling thing, which is more of a terminology point than a flow change, is that your "does someone challenge" boxes makes it seem like spending the Coins is the "Challenge" and the little discussion loops are something that happens before the Challenge.  From a rules perspective the discussion loops are the Challenge and the coins spending is the escalation of the Challenge to bidding from negotiation.

This doesn't change your diagram arrows really, but I point it out because you'll see me advise players to make frequent use of Challenges, or that this thing or that issue can be resolved by Challenge.  When I say that, I'm referring to the discussion loop not the spend-coins-and-goto-F loop.  I rarely ever get to F in my games because the discussion loop usually makes it apparent how much support each side has...and thus making it obvious who would win the bidding if it ever came to that...so it rarely does go that far.

From a useability standpoint, I think including all of the discuss / modify / challenge loops repeatedly throughout is going to get increasingly cumbersome to diagram and make it look a lot more complicated to trace play.  Maybe you want to start the "Goto F" routine earlier, or find another way to break out the subroutine.  Since essentially anything can be Challenged you're going to need that loop everywhere.  I don't know if its kosher in standard flowcharting rules (or whether its easy to do in Word) but perhaps a little icon in each of the statement boxes (or even an asterix) that jumps you to the Challenge Subroutine without embedding it in the main flow would be cleaner.


Anyway...really slick.  If you want to send me the files when you're done I'll be happy to host them on the site (which may take awhile as its currently under heavy reconstruction).

Thanks.  Its always a great thrill to see someone interested enough in the game to spend so much time working on it.

[Ry]

This might be clearer (despite the fact that I haven't written section F yet):

Here's the suggested change in the Tenets section, is this more what you mean, Valamir?

http://ogcesix.pbwiki.com/f/UniversalisTenets.PNG

[Ry]

Framing a Scene is now updated, and I'll soon be attempting to write the Discussion / Challenge algorithm: http://ogcesix.pbwiki.com/f/UniversalisFramingAScene.PNG

[Ry]

Challenges:

http://ogcesix.pbwiki.com/f/UniversalisChallenges.PNG

I farmed Bidding for a Challenge off to a separate page because it has its own logic and might not be needed.

[Ry]

Bidding for Challenges:

http://ogcesix.pbwiki.com/f/UniversalisBiddingForChallenges.PNG