Universalis: Fellowship of the Coins

[Tony Irwin]

With Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, only a few days away I’ve been thinking desperately about how to play in a game like that. I was trying to come up with mechanics that reflect the wonderful way that myth and lore drive the story in Lord of the Rings. Everybody is someone else’s great-grandchild (or they were the buddy of someone else’s great-grandparent), has a back-pack chock full of ancestral emblems and weaponry, and screeds of prophecies hanging over their head. A lot of the book seems like its about a young generation trying to deal with the fall-out from a previous generation of goodies and baddies.

Anway that’s just one take on it all. As I was trying to come up with game rules to represent this I realised (as I have many times this year) that Universalis can do it much better than I can! Here's my thoughts...

Lord of the Rings: Gimmicks/Add ons

1) (modified PC gimmick) All players must, before play begins, create a role and name it. This becomes their PC. No player may ever add components or traits to their PC in any way except through those described below.

2) After a complication the resulting coins may be spent to buy relevant traits for a PC this is the only time at which traits may be bought for a PC.

This is meant to simulate the way that the really cool guys (like Gandalf and Aragorn) purposely disguise just how damn cool they are. You only get a flash of their greatness when they're really up against it and have to draw upon their full power/ability. After that everybody views them differently.

Also it covers the "building character" idea. The hobbits start off as a bunch of jolly chaps out on an adventure during their summer hols, but as they go through all these perils we get to see them change and grow.

3) During a complication you may buy components for a PC, this is the only time you may buy components for a PC. To do so you must create a flashback mini-scene in which the component in question is present, and you must intiate an event which involves the component. An obstacle will automatically result whether or not other players buy dice to oppose you. You may use the resulting coins to buy traits for your component. The mini-scene then ends and the component is now considered attatched to your PC.

I haven’t made this very clear have I? Here’s the kind of thing I think it would generate...

Aragorn has role: Ranger. He gets into a fight with a Nazghul who has gazillions of nasty traits. During the complication I spend one coin to say “Ok, Aragorn has a sword”. I then immeadiately spend some coins for a flash back to Rivendell hundreds of years ago. I put an elvensmith in the scene and the shards of Aragorn’s sword in the scene. I pay for an event, “The elvensmith is trying to reforge the broken sword”. It automatically becomes an obstacle and the guy who’s controlling the Nazghul says "the metal is old and unfit for forging" and chucks a couple of dice at me. I throw a few more back and end up winning, so I spend the coins on calling the sword “Narsil” and giving it traits like swift, sharp, and deadly. Clever cookie that I am I then buy back the coins my opponent won (I don’t want him sticking a curse on Narsil, like “May not be drawn against Nazghul”!)

The flashback ends, we jump back to the present day and now Aragorn and his splendid sword can kick Nazghul butt.

Of course you don't just have to do magic rings, ancestral horns,  and shiny swords: you could say that Aragorn has the component "The blood of Kings" or "Arwen's love" and then do a flashback to all kinds of exciting stuff which would give him traits he can use in the current complication.

Anyway my apologies for butchering the story about Aragorn's sword (I think he reforged it himself, not the elves, right?). Anyway how does that look? Do you think it would generate LotR type play?

Tony

[Valamir]

I think this has some great potential.

One of the ideas I had for supporting Universalis with additional material was the idea of Genre Books...basically a package of special Rules Gimmicks and some "standard" characters and components typically seen in that sort of Genre.   I was thinking about the sort of things that would be necessary for a western (a rules gimmick about handling Shoot Out Complications fer instance) or a zombie slasher flick (zombies eat brains...etc), but I've never gotten very far in implementing this idea...mainly because my experience so far has been that alot of the stuff I was thinking about is pretty easy to create on the fly anyway.

But this one has me really intrigued because it alters the way the game mechanics interface with the main characters and turns the character's gear into a way of generating back story and history in a manner I think similiar to the way an actual author does it.

You could expand the idea to locations (its not just a hill...its Weathertop.  Its not just a Dwarven Mine...its Moria), monsters (its not just an orc...its the result of vile magics corrupting elves, etc), you could really use that enforced Mini Scene idea in a lot of ways.  I think there would need to be some attention to when you actually NEED to do this and when you don't...sometimes a sword is just a sword.

I think this is a great idea...I'd love to see you run with it, try it out in actual play, polish it up.  Heck depending on how far you take it, you might wind up with the first Universalis Genre Book on you hands.

[Mike Holmes]

I agree with Ralph that number three is the most interesting.

In fact, what I'd do to simplify all this into one simple, coherent rule, is to say that traits that are going to add to a character's pools in any way can only be added as the result of such a flashback, and only during complications.

This gives you a huge incentive to do complications. And they will all be long, epic affairs as there are lots of new introductions. In fact, to keep players from going off the deep end, and making complications untennable, I'd limit them to just one, perhaps two, flashbacks per complication (or even scene, to keep the plot moving).

This idea has me so jazzed, that I'm now just itching to try it out.  

BTW, it was the elves that reforged Narsil at Rivendel. I believe that it says that Elrond has "his craftsmen" do the job. So there may be some contention as to which Elves were involved. But it was definitely Elrond and his kin. They were the only ones who had the neccessary knowledge to reforge the sword first wielded by Elendil (Isildur's father, the guy who breaks it). Interestingly, it was forged by a dwarf named Telchar in Nogrod (in Beleriand, prior to Elendil's founding of Arnor). BTW, this is one area in which the film diverges from the book, as the reforging occurs, IIRC, just before the fellowship leaves Rivendel, and it does not appear that he has the sword in the film. The specualtion is, I believe, that Jackson is using it as a plot device to have Arwen bring the sword to him in the upcoming film. Sorry, hard to shut up about it when I get going.

Mike

[Tony Irwin]

With several of my group MIA, and the usual juggling act of work and family, I still haven't even been able to try this out. Ain't that always the way of things? I've got a couple of other friends I'm RPing with but its going to take a while before I can groom them for even trying Universalis let alone messing with how the rules work!

In the meantime I'm going to take on the mantle of a role I hate and fear so much, the "armchair gamer". ;-)

I've noticed when we play (back in the good ol' days when we were playing twice or more a week) that most of the world creation takes place before the "game proper" starts. Once we'd started with the scenes we'd keep on creating bits of the game world as necessary, but sometimes we could get a bit tetchy with folk who would stop the entire game for 15 minutes to build up some mythical race or region that they ended up not using anyway...

Anyway here's another thought for an add-on that is reaching for that kind of LotR epic feel.

The Three Ages
Play is divided into 3 phases. The First Age, which is concerned with the creation and stories of regions, mythical races and creatures. The Second Age, which is concerned with the creation and stories of factions, items and master components. The Third Age, where regions/races/factions/items can only be created through use of a mini-scene that flashes back to the appropriate Age.

Any player can spend a coin to propose a fact saying "It is now the First Age". Because this is a fact, if you challenge someone who is doing things inappropriate to the First Age, your coins are worth 2 for every 1 of theirs.

The Age can be changed by any player proposing what Age it is as a fact (which of course can be challenged).

The interesting thing about this idea is that you're only obliged to keep to it if your group is willing to enforce challenges. You can actually create whatever you want in any Age, its only if you get challenged that you have to keep to appropriate Age (and if you've got enough coins to resist the challenge then you don't need to worry).

If you win the bid for framing a scene I suppose you could simply specify that the scene was in the first age or the second age. That could be quite interesting, I suppose you could effectively have several different games going on in different time periods at once.

Tony

-----------------------------------------
Edited Tues 14th Jan, to use proper Universalis terminology

[Valamir]

I like the idea.  It works well as an extension to item #3 we were talking about above.  That being to make the mandatory flashbacks have to flashback to a specific age as well.

I think its a great outline for an extended kind of campaign.  To actually spend a session or two playing in Middle Earth (so to speak) during the First Age and be limited only to First Age type of Components and Conflicts.  Then move on to the Second Age and so on.

This is actually how I've always envisioned (and have yet to experience) the game working.  Not so much with ages, but with successive cycles building upon the same basic world.

It might work better to list the kind of Components and Conflicts you *can't* do in an age than the ones you can.

[Tony Irwin]

I like the idea.  It works well as an extension to item #3 we were talking about above.  That being to make the mandatory flashbacks have to flashback to a specific age as well.

I think its a great outline for an extended kind of campaign.  To actually spend a session or two playing in Middle Earth (so to speak) during the First Age and be limited only to First Age type of Components and Conflicts.  Then move on to the Second Age and so on.

This is actually how I've always envisioned (and have yet to experience) the game working.  Not so much with ages, but with successive cycles building upon the same basic world.

It might work better to list the kind of Components and Conflicts you *can't* do in an age than the ones you can.

That's really interesting - we've had games that extended across three nights of play, but it never really felt like a "campaign" as we apply it to regular RPGing. I always assumed that because so much of the fun (for me and my friends) lay in building from the bottom up, and starting all over again everytime you play, that it would be hard to sustain a campaign.

But yeah - I can see how successive cycles would still let you feel like you and the group are making something new every time, but you still have a wonderful sense of "history" to the world you're playing in.

Damn! I'm gonna have to start a universalis group to experiment with play like this.

Tony