Does there exist a master flowchart for the game?  I'm working on one to get my head around the flow, it's going to be quite large (but helpful for my purposes; ease of intro and to clarify Rules Gimmicks when they are proposed).  Has someone done this already or am I breaking new ground?

Also, has anyone used cards instead of dice for Universalis?  I'm a bit of a sucker for cards. 

This is what I was getting at

[img]http://ogcesix.pbwiki.com/f/UniversalisSetup.PNG[/img]

And one more, what the heck.

[img]http://ogcesix.pbwiki.com/f/UniversalisTenets.PNG[/img]

(Am I down with OCD? Yeah, you know me. :D  )

Ryan, I'm finding these inspirational. Thanks for posting them.

hix wrote:
Ryan, I'm finding these inspirational. Thanks for posting them.

They look accurate to me, good work! You might want to just post links to them though.  The images break the CSS plus the mod will probably remove them.

Ah, I didn't realize that.  I forget others don't have wide monitors like me.  I'd edit the posts if I could.

Bidding for a Scene is here:

http://ogcesix.pbwiki.com/f/UniversalisBiddingForAScene.PNG

As we go on my flow charts become more and more suspect.  Am I doing this one right?  Also, is it possible to deadlock, that is, have no Coins left with any player when it's time to Bid?

These are being done in Word 2003, if anyone is interested.

Now it starts to get really, really complex, and I'm less confident I've got it right.

http://ogcesix.pbwiki.com/f/UniversalisFramingAScene.PNG

Specifically, if somone is setting a scene in the Future, and they are Challenged and defeated, do they get the Coins they paid to each player back or do they keep the coins?

Wow really nice.  I don't see anything at a high level that's innaccurate.  Seems like you grasp the flow pretty well.  The only niggling thing, which is more of a terminology point than a flow change, is that your "does someone challenge" boxes makes it seem like spending the Coins is the "Challenge" and the little discussion loops are something that happens before the Challenge.  From a rules perspective the discussion loops are the Challenge and the coins spending is the escalation of the Challenge to bidding from negotiation.

This doesn't change your diagram arrows really, but I point it out because you'll see me advise players to make frequent use of Challenges, or that this thing or that issue can be resolved by Challenge.  When I say that, I'm referring to the discussion loop not the spend-coins-and-goto-F loop.  I rarely ever get to F in my games because the discussion loop usually makes it apparent how much support each side has...and thus making it obvious who would win the bidding if it ever came to that...so it rarely does go that far.

From a useability standpoint, I think including all of the discuss / modify / challenge loops repeatedly throughout is going to get increasingly cumbersome to diagram and make it look a lot more complicated to trace play.  Maybe you want to start the "Goto F" routine earlier, or find another way to break out the subroutine.  Since essentially anything can be Challenged you're going to need that loop everywhere.  I don't know if its kosher in standard flowcharting rules (or whether its easy to do in Word) but perhaps a little icon in each of the statement boxes (or even an asterix) that jumps you to the Challenge Subroutine without embedding it in the main flow would be cleaner.

Anyway...really slick.  If you want to send me the files when you're done I'll be happy to host them on the site (which may take awhile as its currently under heavy reconstruction).

Thanks.  Its always a great thrill to see someone interested enough in the game to spend so much time working on it.

This might be clearer (despite the fact that I haven't written section F yet):

Here's the suggested change in the Tenets section, is this more what you mean, Valamir?

http://ogcesix.pbwiki.com/f/UniversalisTenets.PNG

Framing a Scene is now updated, and I'll soon be attempting to write the Discussion / Challenge algorithm: http://ogcesix.pbwiki.com/f/UniversalisFramingAScene.PNG

Challenges:

http://ogcesix.pbwiki.com/f/UniversalisChallenges.PNG

I farmed Bidding for a Challenge off to a separate page because it has its own logic and might not be needed.

Bidding for Challenges:

http://ogcesix.pbwiki.com/f/UniversalisBiddingForChallenges.PNG

I re-read Bidding for Challenges and saw that you can challenge votes... so I updated the UniversalisBiddingForChallenges.png above.

I keep telling myself I'll pause and wait for some feedback on whether I'm doing this right, but then tinkering more.  Ah well.

I've got Introducing Components done, although again, I'm in uncharted territory here, I may have missed something but I tried to avoid that possibility by farming off new subpages.

http://ogcesix.pbwiki.com/f/UniversalisIntroducingComponents.PNG

During a Scene doesn't fit on a page for obvious reasons, so I split it in two:

http://ogcesix.pbwiki.com/f/UniversalisDuringAScene1.PNG
http://ogcesix.pbwiki.com/f/UniversalisDuringAScene2.PNG

I think there's only 3 more sections to do: Creating Components, Changing Components, and Complications (which may be another 2-pager).

I'll post the .doc files when those are done; basically I'd like to have a stable version of the .doc file before others change it around so there aren't five or six versions that float around.

Any comments right now about whether I'm doing this right would probably save me a lot of work later.

Hey Ryan, sorry I haven't got back to these sooner.

Some Comments:

On Challenges you have the "does anyone object..." diamond.  The "yes" choice from there should probably lead to another choice box "Does the Player who made the proposal revise it?".  "Yes" from there can lead back to the "All players discuss" box.  This cycle is "Negotiation".  A "No" from there should lead to a "Is the objecting player willing to spend a Coin to back up their Challenge" choice.  A "No" from there should go to "The Proposal is Accepted" (there is no impasse) while a "yes" from there leads to "K".  Mechanically it gets you to the same place, but I think this way makes the spirit of the rule a little more clear.

In the bidding section the first box about selecting a number of Coins to bid is technically correct, although I've never seen anyone lead off with more than a single Coin.  Its funny how this section takes way fewer words to just write out than it does to diagram.

The Introducing Components flow looks correct but you may have tied it too specifically to scene framing.  Any player can do all of the things listed here on their turn not just the scene framer.  The scene framer just has an uninterruptable first crack at it.  So you may want to revise the first couple of boxes (maybe move them back to the previous flow) so that this flow is generic and can be used for all instances of Introducing Components (which technically can also be done during the Tenet phase).

The During a Scene Flow looks pretty complete in that I can't think of anything obvious that's missing.  Only comment here is that I don't follow the logic of having the "Exit a Scene" option feed into the "Event" cycle.  Seems a better fit to flow into the "other details / Facts" cycle.

Interestingly I'm in the middle of a project at work where, having designed a 20 page work procedure we've enlisted one of our business analysts to help find some efficiencies.  The first thing she did was flow chart it all out.  I must say I'm very pleased that the business procedure I designed is no where near as convoluted as the game I designed :-)

Its also interesting the way people's minds work.  I find following the train of a well written narrative far easier to grasp than following a flow chart.  Flow charts for some make complex concepts simpler to follow.  For me they make things look far more complicated than they really are.  Similarly in our recent Robots & Rapiers playtests Seth has taken my well written narrative (ahem...that is to say...desperately in need of a good editing narrative) and boiled it down to little "Conflict Diagrams" which, while not strictly a true flowchart, do make the question of "who is doing what to whom" pretty easy to follow.  I never would have even thought of drawing diagrams like that...my brain just doesn't work that way.  But now I can see they're essential support to the text.

I fear these diagrams may be a bit too ambitious in capturing every detail and nuance...soon they'll turn into a book by themselves;  but I'm certainly intrigued by the process.  It may be more practical to scale back a bit and see if you can't diagram the whole game at a higher level on just 4 pages.  A tenet flow, a during play flow, a page with some of the more important subroutines (like challenges), and a complications flow.  That may (I stress may here) be more useable at the table as a reference.

But I'm loving this, so please continue in whatever fashion adds the most value for you.

Ralph

A quick question:

Is the Scene Framer the only one who can end a scene? 
Is their end of the scene subject to challenge?

My wife pointed out that by putting the stuff about Recording into the Challenges section rather than the other sections, I can take a lot out.  I'm going to see how that looks.

Ryan wrote:
A quick question:

Is the Scene Framer the only one who can end a scene? 
Is their end of the scene subject to challenge?

Ryan wrote:
My wife pointed out that by putting the stuff about Recording into the Challenges section rather than the other sections, I can take a lot out.  I'm going to see how that looks.

What if the name of the F algorithm was "Discussion, Challenges, Fines, and Recording Results"  ?

It's a long name, but the fact you are "Recording Results" doesn't get buried that way.

Try it and see how you like it.

I tend to think subroutines as working best when they capture things that don't happen every pass through the chart...like Challenges and Complications.  You don't do those every turn so setting them aside is effective.  Recording stuff, on the other hand, happens continuously.  So they seem best suited to being the main end points of the main flow.  But as I said, I don't really think in terms of flow charts so I may well be off here.

Ralph

Looking deeper, it actually makes more sense (I mean flowchart wise) for the "recording" notes to be in the Challenge section because what gets recorded isn't necessarily the same thing - or even the same kind of thing - as the Proposal.  So I'm going to rename that F subroutine "Discussion and Recording Results"

Re: your anectdote, funny enough I'm a business analyst at work, and I spend between 4 and 10 hours each workday on process design.  When I was thinking "Man, Universalis would be really hard to turn into a process document" I also thought "Hey, I should get more comfortable with those flowchart drawing objects in Word."