It is very easy with Universalis to use an existing background from a book, a TV serie or a movie.

Those backgrounds are filled with pre-existing components (characters, locations, and so on...)

I was wondering what kind of rule gimmicks you would suggest to bring those components into play.

Let say that we are playing in a Star Trek setting on the original Enterprise. What happen when you want to bring Kirk into a scene ? Do you have to "create" it ? You probably don't have to pay to impose your vision since everyone knows what kind of characters it is and I suppose that most groups would not allow him to be killed since it does not fit the spirit of the serie even if he do not have "importance" to protect him.

However, in complications he definitively should have some traits to draw. But paying to give them don't seem to worth it since we don't invent anything...

What are you suggestions ?

Each player gets to nominate one Trait for free and the player introducing Kirk (or Buffy or Jack Bauer) gets to introduce two. All these free Traits are open to the normal Challenge mechanic.

Cheers,
Steve

hmmm... I'd disagree and say that if you want to draw on a Trait (thinking specifically of Complications here) you have to pay for it

outside of Complications, the benefit is that you all know Kirk, so introducing him as just Role: Captain [1], Name: James T Kirk [1] is enough to get you going without having to add Always scores an alien babe [1] or other traits

BUT, remember that nothing is a fact until paid for, so (considering Jean Luc, who I'm more familiar with...) you might want to add the trait Resistant to Borg technology [1] during the story

what does this mean? well, it could be Challenged out of hand, or you could justify it by placing it in a particular point in the Trek timeline, or you could say "hey, for this episode, he just is, and later he loses it because of... um... dilthium crystals, yeah!"

in other words, just because you're working from a canonical source shouldn't let you feel restricted

you may also consider ignoring adding Traits and rather adding Tenets and Rules Gimmicks that reflect the structure of Trek episodes or movies (This is a holodeck episode [1])

to summarise, I think Traits are core to Uni (Importance, Complications...), and paying for Traits emphasises player investment in the game, so I wouldn't do away with that mechanic

My personal preference (and by no means official rule) is to play as Kwill describes. The tenet(s) I'd add to the game are "This is set in the Star Trek Universe during the original series (when Klingons where greasy and smarmy)", "All Components, Complications, Challenges, and general narration should adhere to standard STOS conventions"

After that all of the game would be played exactly as normal with the Components being informed by the players understanding of those conventions and using the above tenets as Fact when Negotiating/Challenging their appropriateness.


However, that is only 1 way of doing it. I can't remember now if its in the book, on the website, or on an earlier thread here, but one option for creating an existing background is similiar to Azmodan suggestion and having the canonical Components exist for free. I think my suggestion was creating the key onesl in advance of play and treating them exactly like Components that were created in a previous session.

I do like Hix's suggestion as a way of creating free Components on the fly. If using it, however, there would probably need to be some consideration given to how to determine when a component is worthy of being given such free traits.

I'd gimick a world-building phase after tenets and before the first scene in which everyone received a bank of coins to spend on defining starting componenets. Whatever of those you didn't spend, evaporate. This way, you're starting play in an enriched universe, you haven't mutilated the system's trait assignment/use rules, and even the "known" world in which you are playing is still reflective of the consensual understanding of the group in question -- maybe Romulans end up being more important to your game (then they ever were to the show(s)) because a couple of your players think they're the cat's meow, but you're still playing in Trek.

Chris

Hum... All good suggestions but I particularly like Christopher's one.

But I'd add a twist that would be useful for universes with lots of existing material.

Imagine that we are playing a The Simpsons game. There is a lot of character and most of them probably won't be seen during the game. So we create the Simpson familly before the game stats as Chris suggested and characters that we are almost sure that will show up.

Then, after the game is started each already know component introduced (let say we want to have Abe Simpson involved in the storyline) will trigger a period where players will get the opportunity to give traits for free. Each player takes a turn and give a trait until the character is sufficiently fleshed. However, challenges are done with your real coin. You may challenge because you don't agree with a trait or because you think that the character don't have that much importance and no more traits should be added.

This process only happen once for each components, every trait added or removed after must be paid.

It could also be used to create master components (Klingons or Trills for instance in a Star Trek game).

I think that's it's a nice mix of Chris and Hix ideas. What do you think about it ?

Another tack-on to this idea might be to come to some understanding of starting importance before play. If you know you're playing Simpsonversalis, then agree (how?) that Bart=6, Homer and Lisa=5, Marge and Abe=4, Maggie and Moe and Principal Skinner=3, etc. Then everyone is taking turns filling in the "blanks." That would reduce Challenge expenses to remediation of inappropriate trait assignment like "Bart is studious."

Chris

Another way to do this is to put in the Gimmick: Everything from the Star Trek Universe as seen on TV and in the movies is free to create as components and to give appropriate traits.

So, if you want Kirk to show up, you just say he shows up (still costs a Coin to get him in the scene). Then any traits you declare for him don't cost anything. Of course players can challenge them if they feel that they're not canonical, or abusive (taking the color of Kirk's hair as a trait, just to get a higher importance for him would be abusive). Since the player making the trait or component hadn't paid for it, they wouldn't have the original coin to count in the challenge pool, giving the "lead" to the player willing to spend even one Coin to defend the world.

In practice we did something like this in the first UniWiki where I declared that anything that could be found on the internet about Gosnold and the Elizabeth Islands was automatically fact for the game. This was slightly different, but it allowed for people to easily challenge people who altered any fact about the area, making the setting have a lot of weight in the game.

Mike

Christopher Weeks wrote: Another tack-on to this idea might be to come to some understanding of starting importance before play. If you know you're playing Simpsonversalis, then agree (how?) that Bart=6, Homer and Lisa=5, Marge and Abe=4, Maggie and Moe and Principal Skinner=3, etc. Then everyone is taking turns filling in the "blanks." That would reduce Challenge expenses to remediation of inappropriate trait assignment like "Bart is studious."

Chris