[UA] Tim Powers

[Michael Daisey]

Michael Daisey wrote:
> 
> I am not convinced Tim Powers is all that and a bag of chips, to
> coin current idiom.
> 
> I have read "Last Call" and "The Anubis Gates", and while Powers is
> a lot of fun, his characters seem pretty flat.  They have epic and
> mythic qualities, which works well with his writing, but the lack the
> grit and grime of the James Ellroy book, "Black Dahlia", that I'm
> reading now which is making me consider a UA campaign set in the 40's.
> 
> In fact, I would say that UA owes more to Ellroy than Powers.  While
> the godwalker idea seems pretty directly derived from him, the basic
> idea of people emulating their archetypes goes back to priests and
> their gods.  In fact, in a weird way the godwalkers remind me of
> clerics, bruisers of fighters and adepts of magic-users in the old AD+D
> style of play.
> 
> It just seems to me if there was ever a game designed to take its cue
> from the real world and make it fantastic, rather than drawing on the
> fantastic primarily, UA is it.


	To comment on my own comments, I'd rather not be flamed
	as some kind of fantasy-hating schmuck.  It just seems that,
	very often, RPGs are interreferential: players are more
	likely to discuss how to import WW Vampires into a CoC
	campaign, or Nephilim into Ars Magica, than using 
	sources derived from outside the gaming field.

	Specifically, most games have a poor grasp of history, if
	they are based in an Earthlike setting, or have an even
	poorer idea about how anthropology, law and other social
	science fields would be applied in an intelligent manner.

	Eh, I'm just complaining.

	I'm not pointing fingers at anyone, but we all know them--
	and the truth is most gamers are underread and underdeveloped
	on the above areas, while also having a deep and abiding
	knowledge of (in my case) the history of the Forgotten
	Realms and Lovecraft.
 


> 
> 
> --
> Michael Daisey
> ----
> "It is not the oath that makes us believe the man, but the man the
> oath." Aeschylus (525-456 B.C.), Greek dramatist. Fragments, no. 385.

-- 
Michael Daisey
----
"It is not the oath that makes us believe the man, but the man the
oath." Aeschylus (525-456 B.C.), Greek dramatist. Fragments, no. 385.