If this question has been addressed somewhere else, forgive me.

I'm a bit confused as to components and starting new scenes. The book states that when framing a new scene in a new location, all the components in the last scene are assumed to automatically have travelled to that new location. If you don't want them there, you have to pay for them to exit. Is that right? I can see how that would be helpful for a story that follows the same characters around the whole time, but for a scene where you want to show what the bad guys are doing, or for a story where there are lots of different characters in lots of different places, this can get downright expensive! If Return of the Jedi was your story, every time you wanted to cut from the battle on Endor to the Emperor's Throne Room, you'd have to pay to exit Han, Leia, 3P0 and R2, Chewie, the Ewoks, the Stormtroopers, and the various other imperial forces, then pay to enter Luke, Vader and the Emperor. Am I reading this right? Do we need a Rules Gimmick if our story will be character hopping a lot, or am I just misunderstanding the text?

Oh, BTW, played my first Universalis game last night--loved it! And my two friends, you could not have gotten two more stubborn, more skeptical guys to play. Took my wife an hour and a half to convince them, and they loved it, too!

Good question.

That rule does not apply to ALL framing of new scenes.  Only when you are returning to continue with a prior scene.

In other words, when you do one of those "meanwhile, back at the ranch" scenes, the people who were there at the ranch when you left will be there when you cut back.  Unless you pay to have had them exit in the meantime.

Also of note, the person who frames the new scene "back at the ranch" gets Control over all of those Components regardless of who had had Control of them before (primarily because its a lot easier on bookkeeping that way).

Similarly if you change locations in the same scene all of the Components that were already in that scene are assumed to come along to the new Location unless you pay otherwise.

Reread that section and let me know if you were just misreading it or if I really flubbed the text.

Glad to hear your session went well.  Love to have you write up a synopsis like whats out on the website for me to to post up there.  The real test will be if those guys want to play again.

But if you're starting a brand new scene with a brand new location (or the same location but signficant time later or earlier), you start from scratch with no Components.

Well, I can't find the part that confused me; I found the part that clearly states what you just said, so I must have just read it wrong.

We spent somewhere near 3 hours on one scene and had to quit after that; we probably could have broken it into smaller scenes, but everyone was having fun so all's well. Hopefully we'll continue the story this Wednesday!