cinematic v. horrific, or what i did on my summer vacation

[Kevin Mowery]

----------
> From: sp!ke <spike at memento-mori.com>
> To: UA at purpletape.cs.uchicago.edu
> Subject: cinematic v. horrific, or what i did on my summer vacation
> Date: Thursday, February 25, 1999 1:32 PM
> 
> >Of course, Mage is a bit more cinematic than horrific... but there's
> >some horror in there.
> 
> question:
> 
> what's up with all these buzz-words floating around game-geekland? 
what's
> the difference between horrific and cinematic (i think i know...but just
> wonder what everyone else thinks)?  i think that UA definitely falls
closer
> to the cinematic side, having more in common with a game like feng shui
> than with kult.

	I think UA has more in common with Kult than with Feng Shui.  Kult's a
game where heroes are, quite often, the dirtiest sumbitches on the
planet--ruthless, unstable, and only the good guys by virtue of the fact
that at least they're (still mostly) humans.  Feng Shui is about
larger-than-life heroics, melodrama, and wild action sequences.  Stuff
that'll kill you good in UA.
	UA can be a "cinematic" game.  Not in the sense of wild, wahoo action (the
action tends more toward the brief bursts ending in lots of dead bodies),
but in the sense of plotting.  But so can any game, really.  I don't think
UA is a cinematic game.
	Is UA horror?  Well, it's got horror elements and a killer system for
determining mental problems, but I don't think that necessarily makes it a
horror game.  Yeah, man's inhumanity to man and all that, but if I took
every hint of the supernatural out of the game it would resemble good
noir-style movies or stories more than anything else.  And what's horrific
at the start becomes old hat on the cosmic scale of playing.  Okay, so
we've got wierd living vampires and avatars of nasty archetypes.  Once the
players figure out what something is, it's essentially another fantasy
thing.  Dark fantasy, yes, but still fantasy.
	I think UA is more really dark urban fantasy (or if you prefer, fantasy
noir) than horror.  I'll take as an example C.S. Friedman's fine "Black
Sun" series (which is science fantasy and not especially good source
material for UA but bear with me).  Here's a series with vampires, demons,
evil sorcerors, etc., but even though bits of it are somewhat horrific,
it's not horror.  Two reasons why: the bad guys are often the good guys
(okay, I take it back - the character of the vampire sorceror Gerald
Tarrant is a perfect example of the exchange that all serious players in
the Occult Underground make: humanity for power) and even the horrific bits
aren't unknowable, they're just wierd perversions of the natural order. 

> so what's up with y'all on the list?  everyone seems to be really into
the
> magickal aspect of ua but what about the gritty urban stuff?  me?  i
don't
> really enjoy that whole "_____________" (historical figure) was a
> "_____________" (school of magick-er/avatar).

	I enjoy the historical avatars, but only insomuch as they can imply a
hidden reality beneath the veneer of mundane history.  Tesla's bizarre,
ritualized habits could have an occult significance.  His rivalry/enmity
with Edison could have been a struggle for ascension.  Ambrose Bierce
disappeared mysteriously.  What's up with that?
	I don't want to see every major historical or pop culture figure turned
into an occult insider.  That would be ridiculous.  But little hints here
and there that some people *might* have been.  The ability to unknowingly
follow the path of an avatar helps.  Was Quejo an avatar of the Killer On
the Road?  If yes, then did he know what he was doing, or did it just turn
out that way?
	Good conspiracy theories take a lot of things under their wings.  The best
I've read in a while is about silmultaneously a cover-up of SETI signals,
ancient Egyptian mythological references at NASA, and bizarre weather
patterns.  It's at Hoagland's website, but I can't recall the URL offhand. 
Anyway, what I'm getting at is that because the occult is by definition
hidden sometimes it can be in plain sight and no-one sees it.  Perhaps the
Kennedy assassination was a "killing of the king" ritual, but because the
adepts involved weren't about to go blabbing this to the press, the only
way we hear about it is through the rantings of conspiracy theorists who
try to find how often the number three crops up in the assassination.  Was
it really occult?  Who knows - that's something a whole campaign could be
devoted to finding out.   
	

Kevin "Professor Bobo" Mowery _____________________ profbobo at io.com
"The entire dismemberment of Vash Gar reveals an ignorance of anatomy so 
deep that I begin to question whether the author does, indeed, have a
body."
                       --ratmm's Norb on the "Seven Stars MSTing"
     **See the "Seven Stars MSTing" at http://www.io.com/~profbobo **