Reducing or restoring importance?

[Caynreth]

After my first game of Universalis I have one question regarding Importance.

On p. 30 (grey box: actions you can do only on your turn) one option is to 'reduce or restore importance for 1 coin per level'.

What's the difference between this and 'removing or restoring a trait for 1 coin per level'?

How can I reduce or restore the importance of a component without removing its traits (except when trying to remove the whole component, which is just paying it off)?

Cay

[Valamir]

Well, Importance and Damaging Traits are explained pretty thoroughly from page 44 to 51.  But the key difference is simply this.

Importance is how many Coins it will take you to write a component out of the story.  You want to kill a character, blow up a building or in some other way remove a Component from future scenes.  You pay its Importance and declare it "dead" / "destroyed".

Removing Traits cannot in and of itself eliminate a Component, although it does reduce the Component's Importance at the same time so they are tied together.

Why the seperation?  Well, consider this.  I have a Component of a "Ferrari", "Cherry Red", "Goes Real Fast", "Picks up Chicks".

Its in an accident and gets totaled.  Now I could handle this in a couple of ways.  I could eliminate traits...the mangled wreckage no longer goes fast and its chick magnet abilities are now rather dubious.  But its still Cherry Red, and its still a Ferrari.  Simply being totaled doesn't change its color.  So since every Trait and Trait removal must be justified, one would have to come up with a reason why the car was no longer Cherry Red (blackened by smoke perhaps?) to remove that Trait.  Ok...but its still a Ferrari...

Point being that if I simply want to remove this Ferrari from the game and not worry about addressing each individual trait, I pay the Importance of 4 and narrate 4 Coins worth of accident wreckage and am done.  If on the other hand I want the car to remain in the game, I might simply remove the Traits so that they can later be repaired.

Or if the car had no Traits other than simply 1 Coin "ferrari" but I wanted it to stay in the game so it can be repaired, I'd actually ADD a new trait to it "Mangled Wreck" to represent the accident.  This would actually make the car MORE Important.  Which is exactly as it should be.  If I'd wanted the car removed entirely that same 1 Coin could have done it (Importance of 1).  So since I obviously did not want it simply removed, it must be more Important than merely 1 Coin...now its 2.

Helpful?



Tangental to your question but following from the answer:

Now if someone wanted to take the first Ferrari example and simply add a "Mangled Wreck" Trait to it to represent the accident you have an interesting situation.  If the "goes real fast" and "Pick up Chicks" Traits are not actually removed first, then technically they are still in play and I could draw upon them in a Complication.  Someone else could draw upon the "Mangled Wreck" trait to reduce my dice.  

Soooo, the "Mangled Wreck" Trait didn't really completely total the car...the car is still useable, just at a reduced effectiveness...so the Trait actually just had the effect of damaging the car and thus more properly should be called something like "Damaged in an accident".  I'd probably Challenge someone trying to use "Mangled Wreck" as a Trait in this case argueing that the Trait should be renamed to something lesser, that the other Traits should be bought off first, or that a Rules Gimmick is required to get the effect of totalling a car for a single Coin.

[Caynreth]

Thanks for your fast and extensive answer.

I think I understood the way importance and traits are linked together albeit not beeing the same. Your explanation made it much clearer to see.

However it raises two more questions for me:

1) I'll use your 'cherry red' 'ferrari' which 'goes real fast' and 'picks up chicks'. It now has the role of 'ferrari' with 3 traits which make it worth 4 coins = importance 4.
Is it possible to reduce the ferrari's importance to 2 (paying 2 coins) without removing traits or justyifing the loss of traits? Or is reducing importance only intended for eliminating components from game without the necessity of justifying the loss of traits?

2) Now (after an accident) the 'ferrari' is a 'mangled wreck' but it's still 'cherry red'. It doesn' go fast anymore and it itsn't attractive to chicks anymore. It has still the role of 'ferrari' with 2 traits = worth 3 coins = importance 3. Now I want it to be repaired and remove the trait of 'mangled wreck' but restore 'goes real fast' and 'picks up chicks'.
What's now the difference between restoring these traits and restoring it's importance?

Or is importance more of a meta-game term linked to traits?

Still struggling

Cay

[Valamir]

1) I'll use your 'cherry red' 'ferrari' which 'goes real fast' and 'picks up chicks'. It now has the role of 'ferrari' with 3 traits which make it worth 4 coins = importance 4.
Is it possible to reduce the ferrari's importance to 2 (paying 2 coins) without removing traits or justyifing the loss of traits? Or is reducing importance only intended for eliminating components from game without the necessity of justifying the loss of traits?

Good question.  And one of those areas I have to waffle on a bit.

Rules as written the answer to your question is "yes".  With the caveat that all Coins have to be justified so you still need to have an ingame reason for reducing importance, it just doesn't need to be tied to the specific Traits.  If it is tied to the specific Traits its just as easy to remove the trait and reduce Importance that way.

In practice.  I have to admit to having seen it used that way only once in any game I've played.  Its only real value as a rule is as way to chip away at a very high importance component a little at a time with many players chipping in to do so.  In the one occassion where I've seen it used it was after an game developed an entire island civilization and at the end we destroyed said island in a great krakatoa style explosion.  At the climactic scene we basically just pooled Coins and said "yup, that's enough to wipe out everything".

So is it a rule worth having?  Would I write it that way if I were doing it today?  Hard to say.  I'm tempted to say that I'd skip defining Importance as a seperate entity altogether and simply have a rule that says "at any time you can spend a number of Coins equal to the total value of the Component to eliminate it from the game".  But as I say, I'm waffling a bit.

2) Now (after an accident) the 'ferrari' is a 'mangled wreck' but it's still 'cherry red'. It doesn' go fast anymore and it itsn't attractive to chicks anymore. It has still the role of 'ferrari' with 2 traits = worth 3 coins = importance 3.

Quibble:  "Ferrari" with 1 Trait ("Cherry Red") Importance of 3.

Now I want it to be repaired and remove the trait of 'mangled wreck' but restore 'goes real fast' and 'picks up chicks'.
What's now the difference between restoring these traits and restoring it's importance?

None.  You don't have to restore the importance seperately.  Every increase or decrease in Traits has a direct effect on Importance.

Related to your question above, rules as written, if you paid to reduce a Component's Importance seperately from reducing Traits, then you could pay to increase a Component's Importance back to the original level.  

Or is importance more of a meta-game term linked to traits?

Little design history:

Importance exists as a compromise between Mike and I.  As I recall (and Mike will be sure to correct me if I misremember) he was in favor of simply treating the death or destruction of a character / component as just a regular Trait.

"John", "Married to Sue", "Owns ACME Widget Factory"

Becomes

"John", "Married to Sue", "Owns ACME Widget Factory", "Dead"

I balked at this argueing that you shouldn't be able to eliminate a component that some one spent a bunch of Coins on for a single Coin.  

Eventually after several abortive ideas (which included the idea of Importance as a seperate Trait bought on its own like the "numbers" Trait)we decided (and I can't recall if that was a together "we" or an "I" that Mike went along with) that eliminating a Component should cost the same as it cost to buy the Component.  An idea that from there evolved into Importance (which I have to claim credit for in all of its awkward uncertain implementation).

So yes.  Definitely a Meta Game tool.

I think it works well to give some consistency and continuity to the game (players can rely on important components being around and not being written out right and left).  But as I say above, I might try accomplishing the same idea differently in hind sight.

[Lxndr]

Quibble: "Ferrari" with 1 Trait ("Cherry Red") Importance of 3.

Metaquibble:  Isn't it "Ferrari" with 2 Traits ("Cherry Red", "Mangled Wreck"), Importance of 3?

[Valamir]

Ack, yes.  Ignore my quibble entirely.  First I made a typo, meaning to say " with one Trait Importance of 2", second, I completely missed the addition of the "mangled wreck" Trait which means the original was 100% correct to begin with.

Nothing to see here folks...move along...

[Caynreth]

*trying not to mock game-designer-quibble* ;)

Yes, that's perfectly clear (at least I hope so).

I'm planing a Universalis session for Saturday with some rule-nit-pickers and I want to be prepared ;D.

[Valamir]

I'm planing a Universalis session for Saturday with some rule-nit-pickers and I want to be prepared ;D.

Excellent.  I look forward to hearing how it goes.  We're happy to address any questions your nit pickers throw at you.

*wondering why Caynreth is planning to bring a carpenter's tool to his Universalis session.  Perhaps he hopes to make play more smooth* ;)

[Lxndr]

How will he know how to perform his planing?  Universalis doesn't have any levels!

(Okay, I'll stop)

[Caynreth]

Caynreth's New Year's resolutions:

-improve your english
-use a better dictionary
-use a spellchecker
-use female usernames

;-D

[Christopher Weeks]

So is it a rule worth having?  Would I write it that way if I were doing it today?  Hard to say.  I'm tempted to say that I'd skip defining Importance as a seperate entity altogether and simply have a rule that says "at any time you can spend a number of Coins equal to the total value of the Component to eliminate it from the game".  But as I say, I'm waffling a bit.

I think I'd write importance out of the rules just to streamline for simplicity.  And maybe introduce some kind of shared expense rule (though maybe it's best handled as a gimick) to allow multiple parties to buy a component off together.

Chris (trying to help the waffle)

[Mike Holmes]

On the history note, Ralph has it right as far as he's put it out there. I too had problems with the whole "dead" Trait thing, really, I just liked the elegance. Actually this is part of a larger metaphysical conundrum. But the important thing is that we both decided that, essentially, you have to "unbuy" the thing.

Given, however, that said thing can be brought back again (call this the "Victor" phenomenon after the character from Days of our Lives who apparently has more lives than a cat), just hitting it with loads of Traits often is enough to simulate the event anyhow. That is, if you give the car Mangled Wreck x5, theoretically it can still enter a Complication, but it'll tend not to be too effective. So just because it can't technically be "written out" it may effectively be that way. It's effectively very little different than buying down the Importance.

What's cool using this method is that the wreck still exists, and that can have meaning (corpses, too). I'm reminded of a movie I saw that was about purchasing the wreck of James Dean's Spider. It may have been totalled, but that didn't seem to affect the car's Cursed x3 Trait.

The point is that if you play fast and loose with it, it'll probably work out fine. If you find that you've come up with some combination or Traits/Importance that seems to have a problem in application, then Challenge it into shape as you see fit. If it's not really a problem, then just keep playing.


People playing Universalis make "mistakes" constantly. Its unavoidable that the rules will get used inappropriately at times just due to human error. When that happens, you have the above two options: use a Challenge to fix it if it's really a problem, or let it ride. It's a feature of the game that errors don't have to be addressed if you don't want to address them, IMO. Which is often the best option for something that's not likely to come back and bite you. That is, if somebody puts "wreck" on the Ferrari, people will get the idea. It only becomes a problem when somebody tries to exploit the loophole - which happens rarely as players understand that the Challenge is there waiting to put them down when they do.

So errors are rarely a problem, IMO. Play conscientiously, but without fear of mistakes. It'll all work out in the end.

Mike

[Christopher Weeks]

In the spirit of playing conscientiously, if you do end up with a car component that has 'fastx2' and 'wrecked' as traits, and a scene is narated in which the car is used as able transport and someone challenges it, who gets to double their Coins' power?  The party claiming fast(x2!) or the party claiming wrecked?

My inclination, and I'm pretty certain that no one will have a problem with handling it this way, is to say both/neither (it doesn't matter) and steer the challenged parties into a complicaiton instead of a challenge through suggestion.

But what would you do?

Chris

[Valamir]

Technically by rule on page 28

Any player can attempt to bring a fact into play during a Challenge, but if there is any doubt as to its applicability a majority vote of players can determine it.  If a player doesn't agree with the decision, the outcome of the vote itself can be Challenged.

Universalis is generally a game which plays best when players aren't trying to out pedantic each other, but one thing I did want to provide is hard answers for those moments where such inevitably occurs.  I don't know that I caught them all.  But I tried to provide little backstop rules like this for most situations I could think of at the time.

Technically speaking the section earlier on page 27 gives some additional pedant type guidance.

The full bore rulesy approach would be that, when a player trys to put "wrecked" as a Trait on the car, to Challenge right then on the grounds that "wrecked" directly contradicts the existing Trait of "fast".  The Challengee would have the leverage bonus.  The full bore rulesy response to this would be to pay to eliminate the "fast" Trait first and then apply the Trait "wrecked", thereby avoiding the leverage.  Which is really the "proper" way to do it.

Generally, in Universalis play, its not necessary to be so prim and proper (though as the author who agonized over rules like this I have a tendency to be so -- which causes me to grit my teeth at Mike and Mike to roll his eyes at me when we play)...but the rules are there should they be needed.