A question on setting up complications...

[LordSmerf]

Mike, Rapl, or both of you...

I'm fairly new to the game, but last night a question was raised.  When does a Complication begin and what can be narrated prior to resolution?  Can i spend a coin to make it a fact that "Arthur shoots Wilfred in the face" as the action which starts a Complication?  What about while we set up dice pools?  Or is that instead something that must come during the resolution?

Thanks.

Thomas

[Mike Holmes]

If Arthur shoots Wilfred in the face, then that means that you control both Arthur and Wilfred. Shooting him in the face changes Wilfred, and so can only be done by you if you control him. If you do not control him, you can claim that Arthur attempts to change Wilfred by shooting him, and that starts a Complication.

Now, one could claim that shooting someone in the face doesn't change them, and if you didn't spend any Coins on any effects, then you wouldn't have broken any rules. But if you do this and don't get Challenged, I'd be very surprised. Because most players would very much expect that shooting someone in the face would have an important effect that ought to be measured by the mechanics.  :-)

This is the key rule about Complications. They only occur when something you Control attempts to do something to a Component that you do not Control. As with everything in the game, it's a fine line, however. If I claim that a character that I Control puts a gun in the face of a character you Control, to start a Complication, that'll probably fly - despite the fact that I've sorta affected your Component.


What you are allowed to narrate as you set up dice pools is a bit more open to interperetation. Basically, you can narrate anything at all, so long as it does not resolve the Complication. Now, this is tricky. Some players will try to do things that they'll claim are only giving them dice, but which drastically limit what the outcome could be. This comes up in the "Bomb" complication example:

The Complication is that there's a Bomb somewhere nearby that's on a timer, and about to go off and destroy Americopolis. Players will be tempted to do all sorts of things to address this before resolution. Things like "Flyboy finds the Bomb, and uses his Flight Trait to take it away, which adds two dice to my pool." This should not be allowed, as it will directly affect the scope of the resolution. He can legitimately say that he'll use his Flight to zip aroung looking for it, intending to fly it away if he finds it. Subtle difference, but very important.

If you don't Challenge the first narration, what the player controling Flyboy has done is to do some resolution before the dice are rolled. The player who wins will have to narrate the result in terms of Flyboy having taken the bomb some distance away, which is a limit that the other player set without authority to do so, really. The limit is that no player may resolve the Complication before it's mechanically Resolved.

Now, again, there are times when it's not really clear. Talented players will try to get away with this sort of thing. Which is fine. You'll find that, as long as you're really pushing the story forward, that you'll be able to get away with more than if you make things up just to get your way. So, what I'm saying is that you have to play with it like everything else in Universalis. Challenge when players step over the line to resolve things before resolution. Push that limit creatively yourself. Play in the spirit of the rules (because the letter is often fuzzy), and stomp on players who don't. :-)

Mike

[Valamir]

To elaborate a bit on Mike's Bomb example, the way I normally do it in play is to look at all of the potential traits that are available and ask "could this help me?"  If so than I can try to claim it for dice.

The key is that "could this help me?" is not "did this help me?"

You won't know until after the dice are rolled, the successes totaled and the bonus coins spent whether it did help or not.

Could Fly Boy's flight help find the bomb?  Sure, take a couple of dice.  Did it?  Don't know until the Coins are spent.  

For instance I win the complication and I want the bomb to go boom, I could narrate "Fly Boy circled for hours but found nothing", or "Fly Boy finds the bomb but its too heavy for him to lift", or "Fly Boy found the bomb and had started to fly away with it when it went off"...or just about anything else...but this resolution waits until the dice are rolled.

[Mulciber]

Another question, that I should probably start another thread on (but I'm stingy about that, and it's about Complications, and blah blah. . .).

When setting up dice pools, do we add based on what the player's agenda is, or what the characters' agenda (that the players control) is?  Another way to approach this is, are we identifying characters with players (and thus dice pools) pretty closely, or are identifying differing narrations of scene with players (and thus dice pools) when setting up a Complication.  To restate again, this is really a question of, are we making these dice pools based on character Sides or Takes on narration?  We defaulted to the former, but I'd like your opinions (or ordinances, etc.), gentlemen.

This came up in an Actual Play experience.


Edited to add:

So yeah, Ralph, we got the game a week ago.  In fact, shortly after I read your message I received it in the mail.  I'm just really inconsiderate with respect to responding to PMs (apparently).

This is probably far simpler than I make it out to be.

[LordSmerf]

To clarify the question (since i was arguing one side and Kelvin the other):

When drawing on dice are we building pools with the primary purpose of determining the Player who gets to narrate?  What was attempted was to draw upon something that would weaken your side to get dice for your side.  An example would be: there is a locked door.  Fred, a character controlled by Frank "is an awful lock picker" and Fred tries to pick the lock on a Door, controlled by Bob, which which is "locked" with a "masterwork lock".  Frank activates the Trait "awful lockpicker" to add a die to his pool because he's building a pool based on controlled character traits that apply to the situation regardless of which side they fall on.

I would say that Frank can not add dice to Fred's side of the complication with a negative trait.  I would say that either Fred loses dice, or the door gains dice.

Kelvin argues that you are building a pool based on the relevance of the character to the action, not how likely the character is to succeed.

Of course we can play either way we want (that's what Universalis is about), we were just curious as to your intent...

Thomas

[Mulciber]

So, who's this Kelvin guy?  Do we need to read something by him to know what you're talking about?  What's going on?

[Valamir]

Smerf's interpretation is the correct one.

Check out pages 65 & 66 and let me know if that answers the issue well for you.

[LordSmerf]

So, who's this Kelvin guy?  Do we need to read something by him to know what you're talking about?  What's going on?

Well, it is how you signed this post so i assumed adressing you as such would be appropriate...

And Ralph, thanks for the help.  Also, Robots and Rapiers looks interesting.  I'll try to give you some meaningful feedback in the Design forum...

Thomas

[Mike Holmes]

To link this all back together, to activate a Trait, it has to have a reasonable in-game explanation. That's where you're narration comes in, in some cases. So you narrate that Fly Boy is flying around looking for the bomb intent on carrying it off if he finds it, as a way of explaining how Fly is a power that could work towards defeating the bomb.

The narration in this case is basically an attempt to head off a Challenge to the validity of the Trait in question. So, you could activate that Trait "Awful Lockpicker" to help Fred, if you, for example, explained that he was trying hard to become a better lockpicker. That's weak, and it'd probably be Challenged away. But that's what the narration is attempting to do. Make the Activation plausible.

Note that in many (or most for some groups) cases you'll just activate a Trait that's so appropriate that everyone just nods without the need for any narration. So, in a fight you could narrate, "Bob comes in fists flying. That's good for 2 dice for his Fist of Fury Trait," but you might just as well say, "I'll Activate Fists of Fury for two dice." Because nobody's likely to Challenge that in this case, and the narration doesn't really help.

OTOH, it's fun to narrate, so do it for the fun of narrating those flying fists. Probably doesn't help your already strong case, but it doesn't hurt it either. One effect of these suggestions about "what might happen" (as Ralph so rightly points out), is that they often inspire the player narrating at the end to narrate the results in the way that you indicate. That is, even if Fly Boy loses, the player doing the narrating will probably narrate him being in the air when the bomb goes off (maybe just after picking it up if he intends to oblitterate Fly Boy). So previous narration becomes influential on later narration.

Mike

[dragon_of_colour]

Thanks...
This little thread has been most helpful for a newbie Uni player!