Add-on idea

[Bob McNamee]

Its Better to Create than Destroy

This is an add-on similar to "PC Plot Protection", but with more far reaching effects.  All aspects of the game require double the number of Coins to destroy, including Importance reduction.  This will make killing Characters, destroying Locations, etc much harder.  It will tend to skew things toward making existing things gain Importance, since it is cheaper to add a Fact to something than to destroy a Fact from it.

A combat example...
Bob's has character A attack B. After resolving the Complication. A side wins with 10 coins, B side gets 3.  B is an Importance 6 character. With this Add-on, instead of reducing Importance to 0 and describing the 6 "coin moves" and keeping 4 Coins- killing B like the normal rules, Bob can't kill B (he would need 12 coins to reduce the importance), so he adds 6  Coins worth of Facts (like...Flesh wounds x2, Weak with Bloodloss x2, Broken Nose, No match for Character A) and keeps 4 Coins. These added traits will have the effect of acting against B in other Complications, but they also increase the importance of character B to 12. These "negative" Facts are also difficult to remove from B.  (and perhaps Bob will destroy one or two trait Facts and add a couple wounding traits etc instead of using them all one way)

If you want to make sure that the groups creative work hangs around longer, this might be a good Add-on for you.

Bob McNamee

[Mike Holmes]

Hmmm. Cool. I'd also include an option for exceptions. A "Mook" rule, if you will. For components that are designed as throw-aways. Essentially, when a plyer creates something, he declares it either "Durable" or "Ephemeral". Durables get the doubling. In fact, just to make players think about it, I'd also have an option to make the "Durable" trait cost a Coin itself, but not count towards importance (nor would it be removeable itself).

More complicated, but possible, one could be required to declare all traits individually as being Durable or Ephemeral. So if I were to attribute a Bound with Rope trait to a character, I could say that it was just Ephemeral. While his Strength was Durable. That way certain things are easier to remove individually. In this case a surcharge rule would only make sense for Traits rated higher than one level (a level one trait with a one coin surcharge would become Importance 2, but only have the effect of a level one Trait; more sensible to just buy two levels of the Trait).

A lot of options to play with here.

In a game without PCs, the Durable/Ephemeral rule can be used to protect your favorite characters, for example. But leaves that Army of goblins as something that's easily disposed of.

This could also be used in conjunction with the PC Importance rule to quadruple the Importance of PCs. This would very solidly cement a PC into the game, and make giving negative traits much easier than destroying traits. While not makng it impossible altogether. Might be an interesting dynamic.

Good idea Bob. Now we just need somebody to playtest it to see the effect in action.  :-)

Mike

[Bob McNamee]

I hadn't thought about Mooks....

Hmm, I do like the Durable - Ephemeral idea too...

Playtesting... yep, maybe I'll try it out when I finally get my Supers game going. It would be an appropriate rule for a Supers Genre (especially the 4 color variety my players were last leaning toward.
I want to use Universalis to cement Tone and Expectations...and then maybe as a "Background NPC/News game" warmup before our game sessions.

Bob McNamee

[Mike Holmes]

I want to use Universalis to cement Tone and Expectations...and then maybe as a "Background NPC/News game" warmup before our game sessions.

Ah, I see. For a specific odd application like that, I'd suggest tweaking the hell out of it. Make sure that it will do what you want.

Mike