Cliomancers/Power [Can my UAPBEM players skip this, please?]

[Gregory Paul Stolze]

At 01:48 AM 2/17/99 +0000, James Palmer wrote:

>I also think Cliomancy mass gossip effects should be clearly stated to
>wear off over time - otherwise Gnostic Gossip, in particular, can become
>devastating in between games.

The key thing to remember with Gnostic Gossip is that it doesn't make
people BELIEVE it - just seem to recall that they heard it somewhere.
Surely you've heard gossip about a co-worker or friend and dismissed it out
of hand because it was implausible, right?

>Incidentally, the Cliomancy rules also seem to assume an American
>distribution of important sites.  Here in England, they'd have more than
>they could use.  Take London - at a minimum and off the top of my head,
>the British Museum, the British Library, London Bridge, Buckingham Palace,
>the Houses of Parliament, London Zoo, Covent Garden, Trafalgar Square,
>Number 10 Downing St., Madame Tussauds, and the Tower of London all
>qualify for significant charges.  Every time a child sings "London Bridge
>is falling down, falling down, falling down" they give power to some
>cliomancer somewhere.

Oh, I know very well that Europe has more than its fair share of potent
Cliomantic sites.  

>The one exception is just by the Rosetta Stone, where any magician
>can go, spend a minor charge and leave a message for another - only
>readable by them when they look into the Stone.  The accepted way to
>determine whether somebody else is in on the Underground or not is to ask
>them whether they know Rosy Stone.  

That's really, really cool.

-G.
1899 Phrenologist: Your son has the sloping forehead of a sexual deviant:
better put him in an asylum.
1999 Gene Therapist: Your fetus has the "date rape" gene.  Better abort.