[UA] Stolze's Schaudenfraude (was: Re: [UA] Bill In Three Persons Survey)

[Gregory Paul Stolze]

At 12:53 PM 12/14/2000 -0000, you wrote:
>I don't think so. To me, UA is a dark game, not heroic. I imagine 
>that's more or less the view of most UA players. But throughout the 
>books, there are options and viewpoints that could be taken as 
>positive. Alex Abel could be trying to make the world a better place. 

IS trying.  He definately needs to believe he's a great man, like many
people who do terrible things.  Whether he's succeeding or not is open to
interpretation and will probably STAY open to interpretation.

>The Sleepers are trying to prevent a war breaking out amongst 
>humanity. OK, so they're not doing it in the nicest way possible, but 
>that just means they're not purely heroic.

They'd probably argue that the they've succeeded.  Though there you fall
back on the argument of the magic tiger-repelling stone.  ("How does it
work?"  "I don't know.  But you don't see any tigers around, do you?")  

>For want of a better 
>description, it would, IMO, be perfectly possible to play a "darkly 
>heroic" UA game. I'm sure somebody, somewhere, is.

All the sample characters are decent folks.  Daphnee is strong-willed and
kind of mean to Zarcia, but I don't think it's down anywhere that the NG
sect has had anyone killed.  Andrea has her heart in the right place.
Derek Jackson's practically a saint, especially compared to the two groups
that precede him.  

There's also the typical RPG bias to consider.  When I'm writing an RPG, I
don't WANT to put in too many heroes.  That often reduces PCs to the role
of sidekick.  (L5R's card/RPG hybridization had this problem, I think.  How
do you act like a proper hero when the Emerald Champion is running around?)
 It's not a setting that makes it easy to be heroic.  That's part of the
realism...

-G.
Critics are like medical students: they always think a writer is suffering
from the very disease they happen to be studying at the time.
		-Milorad Pavic

http://www.waylay.com
http://www.thehungersite.com/index.html


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