Complications played a big part in our second session of Uni last night. However, at one point, one of the players controlled both a component that was building a dice pool for the Originator and a component that was building a dice pool because it was 'aligned' with the Target.

In effect, he received coins no matter which side won the complication.

Because the pace of the game was so fast last night, we agreed that although it didn't seem right, we'd let it slide just for that session (and take advantage of it ourselves). Does anybody have any thoughts on this loophole?

Cheers,
Steve

Hmmm, well i was hoping some of good forum folks would jump in and help hix out with this.

Generally in Universalis I tried to be very explicit about what and how things happen and when, leaving plenty of room for groups to alter to their liking but having a "default" answer for everything.

This issue however, I did not succeed in doing that. Complications probably underwent the most evolution and revolution of any of the rules during development. It certainly was the part we banged our heads against the most.

The way its "supposed" to work is that each complication has identifiable sides, and every players die pool can support only 1 of those sides. The side may be just a single players pool, or many players may combine their successes for determining the winner of a particular Complication, but count them seperately for purposes of spending the Coins.

Where it gets a little squirly is when there are numerous Components present involved in the Complication and the same player owns Components which would naturally seem to be on opposing sides.

There are a couple of tricks one can use at this point.

1) don't let this happen. Since Control can be taken for a Coin during any player's turn, make sure that if its your intention to represent a "side" in a soon to be started Complication, that you take Control of the "allied" Components first.

2) What happens if some of the Components you need wind up still in the Control of another player? Chances are they'll activate the Traits for free bonus dice and declare the Component to have joined your side. If they have the Component join the enemy side, you can always Challenge this per the normal rules.

3) What happens if the player controls Components that would be on two different sides and has already activated 1 of them and declared for the enemy?...your situation above. This causes a bit of a problem. I don't like the solution of playing both sides (although I applaud you for just winging the ruling during the game in order to keep playing) because that essentially turns Complications into a guarenteed payoff.

Well, assuming #1 isn't an option any longer I see three possibilities.

a) let it go. Whatever Traits that Component had just don't get used in the current Complication for whatever reason.

b) that player gives up Control voluntarily. Believe it or not its a fairly common occurance *before* a Complication starts to ask someone else to take control of a Component from you so as to enable a Complicaton to occur. Doing that at the beginning of a Complication to avoid the above problem would seem acceptable. From a "gamey" perspective it might not be a completely desireable solution, since you'd be essentially giving additional dice to your opponent.

c) a rules gimmick solution. For instance. "I pay one Coin and take Control of that Component away from you because it should rightly be helping my side". This technically breaks the rules which say Control doesn't change hands during a Complication, but then that's what Gimmicks are for. If no one Challenges your Gimmick, boom. Its yours. If someone (such as the current owner) does Challenge your Gimmick and has the Coins to make it stick, a little creative negotiation may be in order. Such as "Give me control of the Component so that I can use the Traits for additional successes, and I'll give you half of the bonus Coins those dice generate" I get the benefit of rolling the extra successes to help me win, and the other party gets some of the free dice from the Traits that otherwise they wouldn't get.

This section is not one of the most clear sections in the rules unfortuneatly.

Anyone else have any solutions you've found.

Anyone found that they like the idea of players being able to play both sides in the same Complication?

In effect, he received coins no matter which side won the complication.

Thanks for the feedback. I think I can see three options now. All of them rely on the essential point that the Originator and the Target of the Complication have to dedicate themselves to their own side.

So the first option is to follow Mike's idea and let everybody else hedge their bets. Cool, but it led me to wonder what happens to components the Originator controls that should naturally be supporting the Target in the story (or vice versa)? Are they frozen, unable to participate?

Ralph suggested:

c) a rules gimmick solution. For instance. "I pay one Coin and take Control of that Component away from you because it should rightly be helping my side". This technically breaks the rules which say Control doesn't change hands during a Complication, but then that's what Gimmicks are for. If no one Challenges your Gimmick, boom. Its yours.

Steve wrote: After long thought, a third (and probably more 'gamey') option occured to me. As soon as you declare for either the Target or the Originator of the complication, the components you own (that would naturally support the other side) become uncontrolled and go into the centre of the table. That means anyone who wants those components to support their dice pool in the Complication can pay them.

I suspect this creates a more tactical, less story oriented version of Complications. We'd be weighing up which side will give us more benefits - and the costs involved in letting powerful Components that support the other side of a complication get bought for one coin.

Does the idea of letting Components go uncontrolled like this violate something fundamental in Universalis?

Steve

hix wrote: Thanks for the feedback. I think I can see three options now. All of them rely on the essential point that the Originator and the Target of the Complication have to dedicate themselves to their own side.

So the first option is to follow Mike's idea and let everybody else hedge their bets. Cool, but it led me to wonder what happens to components the Originator controls that should naturally be supporting the Target in the story (or vice versa)? Are they frozen, unable to participate?

After long thought, a third (and probably more 'gamey') option occured to me. As soon as you declare for either the Target or the Originator of the complication, the components you own (that would naturally support the other side) become uncontrolled and go into the centre of the table. That means anyone who wants those components to support their dice pool in the Complication can pay them.

No, their traits are activated by people on the "right" side of the conflict. If I'm on the Target side, and the Originator controls Bob, who is sympathetic to the Target, I can activate Bob's traits to help.

That's key. Traits don't belong to anyone. Anyone can activate anyone else's Traits on their side of the Complication. Be it a wound on the opponent, or the Strength Trait of an ally. The only limit on this is that if you activate something unbelievable, it ought to be Challenged. But that's just the normal rule, not an exception.

So, Tony, no, all Components are always in somebody's Control, and locked when in a Complication (try it without this rule sometime if you want to risk spraining your brain). You can create new Components that, of course, start under your Control, and this happens all the time. But you can't Take Over any Components. But that really doesn't matter, because, as I've pointed out, anyone can activate any Trait, as long as it hasn't already been activated (and I've seen Gimmicks allow Traits to be activated for both sides, actually).

As a "tactical" note, since people don't like to get into Challenges unless things are abusive, try to steal all of your opponents Traits for your pool. If there's a fight, and your character is Clever, and the opponent Smart, then activate your Clever, and say that your character is using a ploy to turn the opponent's intelligence against him. As long as you state it plausibly, you'll "capture" your opponent's die without Challenge. The more you do this the less free Traits your opponent will have to come back at you with.

There's no reason not to continue to do it that way, Tony. Technically speaking its a Rules Gimmick / House Rule. But if it works, certainly don't stop doing it. As I said in the first post, the section on what actually goes on around the table during a Complication is the least tightly written part in the book.

I'm not being clear somehow, but I'm not sure the source of the confusion. It seems so simple to me... :-)

Hmmm. I'll try to make some points.

First, when a Component is introduced to a Scene whether it was just created, or it was already extant and just put into the Scene, the player who introduced it has Control. This remains constant until:

a. The Scene ends, or
b. Another player takes control.

so all Components are always in Control by somebody. When a Complication begins, the only thing that changes in terms of Control, is that players can't perform Take Overs. Whoever Controls a Component does so til the end of the Complication. One can bring Components into being during a Complication, but then they have Control of that until the end of the Complication. So there are never Uncontrolled Components available for taking.

Second, Control doesn't matter in terms of what Traits you can activate. Not at all. If you have Control of a Guy named Bud, with a Trait of Strong, and I have Control of a Guy named Jeb and he's shooting at Bud, I can activate Guy's Quick Trait to get a die for Jeb's pool. Now, if I can't explain why that makes sense, you'll likely Challenge it. But there's nothing besides the threat of a Challenge that prevents me from activating any of the Traits of a character that you control.

So, to answer your questions, all my "technique" is saying is that I'm using my character's Trait activation to explain why it makes sense for me to activate your Trait. So, in the above example, if Guy has Clever as a Trait, and I say, "I activate Guy's Clever for a die. He's trying to trick Jeb into coming out from behind his cover by playing on the fact that he knows that Jeb is Quick and will come out therefore if goaded. So I take a die for Quick as well."

That's a thin example, but it shows what I mean. At this point you look at what I've done, taking a die for the Clever Trait, and another for the Quick Trait, and you ask yourself if it sounds kosher. If it does, you'll let me get away with it. If not, then you'll Challenge. Ralph would Challenge.

The point is that I can use any excuse that I can manufacture to come up with why the opponent's Traits should count for my pool. Some are obvious, like wounds. But a creative player can use all sorts of ways to get the opponents's Traits. As another example, I could have paid for a die saying that there was a lot of slippery mud, making your Quick a liability. So I can capture your dice thusly.

Lastly, any Trait can only be activated once per Complication. So if I activate the Trait of a character that you Control, then you can't then use it yourself. So by turning Quick against you, I not only get a die, but prevent you from saying "My character is Quick, so he'll probably be able to dodge well."

This is why it's so effective. What I'm saying is that if you get to a Trait before your opponent does, then you prevent him from figuring out a use for it himself. Against more experienced players, I often Interrupt during Complications just so that I can get some obvious Traits on my side. Some players will Interrupt back, but this quickly becomes inefficient as it costs the same just to add a die without a Trait. But it can get really interesting and tense waiting for your turn to see what's left to pick over.

Mike

Ralph would Challenge

But, someone like Mike, who still has enough Coins to interrupt me, does so and activates most of my Traits against me in the Complication leaves me likely losing the Complication and not generating nearly enough free dice to make up for what I spent.

This is why it's so effective. What I'm saying is that if you get to a Trait before your opponent does, then you prevent him from figuring out a use for it himself. Against more experienced players, I often Interrupt during Complications just so that I can get some obvious Traits on my side. Some players will Interrupt back, but this quickly becomes inefficient as it costs the same just to add a die without a Trait. But it can get really interesting and tense waiting for your turn to see what's left to pick over.

Mike

so all Components are always in Control by somebody. When a Complication begins, the only thing that changes in terms of Control, is that players can't perform Take Overs. Whoever Controls a Component does so til the end of the Complication. One can bring Components into being during a Complication, but then they have Control of that until the end of the Complication. So there are never Uncontrolled Components available for taking.

Tony Irwin wrote: Geez I want to try that out! This has been really useful to me - it dawned on me yesterday that the only people I've every played Universalis with, are people who I taught how to play. Hope I haven't been passing on my misconceptions.

Whole fellowship is in the scene, Tony controls them all. Tony pays for an event saying Frodo drops the ring and Boromir picks it up. Mike immeadiately pays a coin to take over Boromir which creates a complication. Frodo and Boromir are committed already, but the rest of the Fellowship are currently uncommitted (not targets in the complication and haven't yet activated any traits for dice pools) and so available for Take Overs from out of Tony's control.

Sorry to drag this one out again! Many thanks for such detailed replies. I was rooting through the rule book trying to locate the passage where I'm getting all this from:

Chapter 6 Complications, page 64

Committed Components and Takeovers
Take Overs work essentially the same as described in Chapter 3, with the following restriction. During a Complication, Components that have been committed to the Complication are not available to be Taken Over. This rule is there to avoid the bizarre effects that could result from Components changing hands in the middle of a complication.

Committed Components include: Any Componet that is an identified Target of the Complication, any Component that has been identified as the source of the Complication, and any Component that has already had at least 1 Trait Drawn from it to add dice to a Dice Pool.

So from the way I read that if my event is only targetting Frodo and Boromir then they are the only ones committed to the complication. The rest of the fellowship is up for grabs, and player can pay to Take them Over from me, until they become committed through activating Traits?

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edit: it must seem like I'm ignoring everything you write and just typing out the same question again regardless. I guess my question for this post is have I interpreted this text wrongly, and if not should I regard it as errated?

... in which case expect a truckload of more questions about how you folks are running complications! I think I can see the point you're making - if anyone can activate any trait it doesn't really matter who controls the components, but I'm stumbling when I try to visualise this in my games.

Huh, I think you're right (I think I was just simplifying). But the point remains, what's the point of spending Coins on Take Overs? There's nothing really to visualize when activating Traits, IMO.

"I activate Aragorn's Destiny to be King Trait to help Boromir, I get one die."

Nothing happens until the dice are rolled. In fact, I've seen people try to play advancing things, and it only leads to impossible cases.

For instance, if I activate a character's Fly Fastx2 to get rid of a bomb, and say that he's flying it away, then I've changed the context of the bomb complication. Which can be tactical itself, which makes it really problematic. Narrate as little in terms of "results" as possible when activating Traits. The only case you need to make is that of plausibility of activation.

Does that make any more sense? Like I said, it really doesn't matter whether characters change sides. I just don't see how it pertains. I mean, do I have to take control to activate sword skill Traits plausibly, but not Take Over to activate a wound Trait? Or does it make sense to do it both times? Where do you draw the line?

I mean, if it somehow makes sense to you to do the Take Overs, well go ahead (it seems you have the default rules on your side). I'm just not sure what the point is in terms of a Complication. If you Take Over Aragorn, I'm still activating his Destiny Trait. :-)

Mike