Hello!

I'm quite new to Universalis (one session so far), I really like it, but - of course - my gaming group has encountered a situation, were we are not sure how this should be played (or how it is meant to be played).

In the scene a player wanted to ambush a starship with two other starships. So he Introduced these 3 starships. Although actually he wanted to start a Confrontation - so he asked us if we would take over the ambushed starship. We agreed and then he started the confrontation - so there was no real problem, but I am asking myself if there is another way to do this.
How can I start a confrontation, in which I want to set the Scene?
(This is sometimes necessary, because other players may never start the scene, e.g. where the starship jumps into the system, but go directly to the point where the ship is landing.)

I hope I managed to explain somehow what I am thinking about :)
Any ideas?

What you did (asking someone to take over a component) is fine.

Other ways:
- make the scene threaten something another player cares about (has paid to introduce). In this instance, maybe the spaceship under threat has a connection to an organisation created by another player. You would then hope the affected player would jump in to defend their creation.

- point out that there's a juicy opportunity to make some coins out of a complication, and then keep narrating and pushing your description of what happens between the 3 ships until someone can't stand it anymore and jumps in.

- pass your turn, wait for the next person to narrate one fact (or take over one of the ships), then interrupt + take over a component (the attacking spaceships, for instance) + initiate a complication.

Additionally, I think you could just initiate a complication yourself. Simply take dice for one side of the Complication (the attacking spaceships, and pass the turn so that anyone else can jump in on the other side. If I remember right, other players can draw on traits belonging to Components you control. That's what we did in our Russian Fairytale game, anyway.

Steve's got some good tips (except the last one that begins"Additionally"...that's technically not Kosher without a Rules Gimmick).

The best solution depends alot on why the player wanted a ship to be ambushed by two other ships.  To go into that at any length would depend on several factors such as 1) whether the various sides these ships were on had previously been established, 2) whether there was existing conflict between those sides in the fiction, or 3) whether this scene was intended to establish those sides and the conflict.

I'll assume here that #3 was the case -- that both the ships and the sides they represented were being invented by the player who wanted to use this scene to illustrate that larger conflict.

There are a couple ways this could go, both of which would involve the player Creating/Introducing the 3 ships.  This could be done on a budget with basically only 2 or 3 Coins apiece (Something like "Light Cruiser", "Excelsior"), or one could go full bore with Master Components to cover "Light Cruiser" and naming the respective Captains, etc.

Method number one works well with the budget approach.  Player invents ships on the cheap, narrates the ambush, narrates the result of that ambush himself, and moves on.  There is no Complication per se, but the function of illustrating the two sides and the conflict between them is accomplished.

Method number two is to do exactly what you did.  This could be done either with budget ships...where most of the ship details would get filled in as part of the Complication, or with more detailed ships where alot of the details were already filled in.  Filling in the details in advance all yourself is way more expensive, but it has the advantage of setting precedent on the nature of ships and their armarment and capabilities the way you want them to be.

Method number three starts out exactly like number two, but what will typically happen with experienced players is you won't need to actually ask.  As soon as you set up a situation where one side is beating up on a second side you are almost certain to have a player spending a Coin to Take Control of one of the sides...thereby forcing a Complication.  The more details the player has added to the ships himself, the more likely the other players will be tempted to Take Control...because they'll be able to claim alot of dice that they didn't have to spend Coins to purchase themselves.  So adding some detail to the ships is an effective way to tempt the other players to Take Control and get involved.

New players might miss the opportunity in Method Three, and thus leave the player narrating everything himself (method one) or effectively asking them to Take Control (method two).  In the long run, however, you'll find Method Three becomes the standard.

I'm not sure if we're getting the question right. It sounds to an extent like he might be asking how to avoid other players framing past opportunities for conflict?

Have Ralph and Steve got it right, or is there something else going on here?

Mike

Thanks for all the answers! That's exactly what I wanted to know.
To make it interesting for other parties to involve in a scene without explicitly asking for it, sounds like a good idea!

Thanks again for the fast respones!