[UA] those magical paradox thingies

[Kintaro Oe]

I've been thinking about magick in UA again, and whenever I get around to
magic, I'm torn. On the one hand, I love it. On the other hand, I don't lik
how sometimes it almost feels rigid with the schools. It's the idea that to
create a new "school" of magick would be so difficult in some ways, I
suppose. I have a feeling that my confusion will all be nicely cleared up
in PoMoMa, but there's something I'd like to ask now - specifically how
people handle the paradoxes of the schools.

What I mean, is, if you want to make a new school, how do you do it? If you
want to broaden an existing school, how do you resolves/create/understand
it's paradox?

Some schools are easier to figure out than others. Mechanomancers for
example, are able to "build the future using the past" in a way (including
using memory to power it). Pornomancers are able to manipulate desire by
denying their own desire (although their taboo isn't much of one for those
adepts who aren't in love). Entropomancers, as the book says, are able to
manipulate chance by bowing to it.

But that doesn't explain why a dipsomancer can telekinetically beat people
with shit. So how far does the paradox extend into the school? What effect
does it have as far as effects go? I would think that since it is really
the only law of magick that is unique to each school, it would be the
defining feature of the effects.

For example, I'm trying to gather ideas and rules together for a melding of
Everway and Unknown Armies (I think that the inclusion of the fate deck in
Unknown Armies could be a nice way to increase the Weirdness (maybe draw a
card before scene or something, or at important event), although mainly for
character creation.

The primary use for this new system (the "Untold Ways") would be as an
engine for the brilliant setting of Planescape (so what if I'm a gaming
scavenger?). Now aside from issues like the clergy and whatnot, I'm mainly
worried about magic. How do I get enough of the fantasy feel while keeping
the paradoxical and obsessive nature of magic in UA? I can use rituals to
give greybearded and pointy-hatted magi power, but what about the schools
themselves? How, for example, do I create a paradox that could give rise to
an Elemental School of magic, without saying "Um, yeah, well they gain
control over fire by losing control over it."

I'm kinda stumped, myself.

- kabael - Kintaro Oe - Derek Guder - 

"It has never happened if the memory is not there."
	-Serial Experiments Lain

kabael's netbook - http://kabael.8m.com
the McGuffin Group - http://members.xoom.com/McGuffins

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