I picked up Universalis a several months back and I've been dying to play it ever since. Now that I might have the chance to try it out with my group in the next couple weeks I've been going over everying to make sure I have firm grip on all the rules and concepts.

The only thing that can see that might gimick right away is the dice mechanic. While it works, I have current aversion to large dice pools, as they tend, IMHO, to slow down gameplay. Sorry, I'm a Exalted refugee. I was wondering if anyone has created any alternate dice gimicks in their own games. I for the life of me (or maybe the laziness of me) can't seem to come up with anything that is still balanced on the 'coin return' end of Complication resolution; though I am leaning towards a single or several (2-3) die method. Any ideas?

Don't worry about it. Universalis is not Exalted. In Universalis, you don't do that much dice rolling in complications.

I mean, let's say there's a fight. What you'll do is roll your dice, and the other side will roll their dice. Once. So, yes, there could well be a fair number of dice involved. But unlike Exalted you don't have to keep rolling and counting, rolling and counting.

I cannot emphasize enough how much faster and smoother Universalis runs compared to Exalted. A fight that would take an hour in Exalted to resolve will, in Universalis, take a couple of minutes. And I'm playing a wuxia Universalis game.

While I understand that in Universalis there are at most two pools of dice, each rolled once for any given Complication, I was wondering if anyone had introduced any dice gimicks in their games that didn't involve dice pools. And if so, what did you come up with?

I haven't. And like the other Chris, I don't think you need to. But...

What if you draw on Traits as normal and when both sides have their numbers, each side rolls one or more dice where the number of sides equals two times their Trait numbers. The side with the highest total is the victor and gets Coins equal to the roll. The losing side gets half their roll.

It adds the dimension of chosing several smaller dice or fewer larger ones, which you may or may not consider a good thing. It also complicates how to resolve Complications with several participants on a side. But you could just extend the 2xsides idea to each participant.

The payout isn't going to be the same, but I think it's a workable amount.

Chris

Hmmm, I'd have to agree that the level of dice pool tossing in Uni probably isn't going to trip your annoyance triggers if those triggers were set by the standard of Exalted dice pool tossing.

But in the interest of see what we can come up with.

How about use a single die whose size (number of faces) is closest to without going over the size of the largest die pool, then treat the difference in the die pool as plusses to the roll. The loser would get Coins equal to their die pool as normal and the winner would get coins equal to the total rolled on their die+mod.

So you you have 7 dice and I have 9, you'd roll ad8 and I'd roll d8+2, if you had 5 and I had 13, you'd roll 1d12 and I'd roll 1d12+8.

Its not going to give you a bell curve...the results are going to be statistically completely different. But it would mostly capture the same ideas I think.

This is exactly the kind of thing I was looking for! I plan to play our first session using the standard rules, but I wanted a gimmick I could quickly propose if the dice pools got too out of hand.

Out of curiosity, is the method described above statistically better than, say:

Each 'Dice Pool' would roll a die whose size is closest to, without going over, the size of their individual pools, with a (additive) modifier to their roll equal to the difference between their Pool Size and their Die Size.

Forex: If I have 7 dice and you have 11. I'd roll 1d6+1 and you'd roll 1d10+1. Or if I had 5 dice and you had 15, I'd roll 1d4+1 and you'd roll 1d12+3.

I'm no good with statistics, so I'm just curious as your choice in dice methods.

[edit: added question.]

You could also add in a gimmick.

Low Dice Pool Rules Gimmick
When rolling Pools of dice. If the smaller dice pool amount is more than 6 dice (or pick whatever) then subtract 5 dice from each pool. Repeating until the smaller pool is below 5 dice. Then, roll the dice as normal.

The above Complications will result in smaller rewards, unless you adjust upwards for reward.

To make this adjustment, first give 5 Coins to both the Winning and Losing Sides for each reduction taken. Second, give the Winner 1 extra for winning...so 6 Total.

(Losers would get 1 for each die, Winners would get 1,2,3,4,5,6-10...rough ave about 6 successes...)

Not perfect, but would get you close.

Kar, you'd get alot more randomness with that method. Die pools provide a pretty tight range of results that cluster pretty well around their mean (especially with larger pools), so if one large pool is significantly larger than the other, the larger pool has a very significant statistical advantage. 1d6+1 vs 1d10+1 is a much greater chance of low pools winning much more often.

Ah, I see. Well that makes sense, the smaller pools would tend to have a higher 'minimum total'. Well hopefully I'll be able to try this gimmick, as well as the standard method when I hook up with my group in the next couple weeks.

Thanks, Valamir and all the rest for all the input and suggestions.

Karasu wrote: I for the life of me (or maybe the laziness of me) can't seem to come up with anything that is still balanced on the 'coin return' end of Complication resolution

There's also a good gimmick on the Uni webpage that gives you a d6 rolling method. A much easier type of dice to buy.