[UA] Thoughts on LA riots of 1992?

[Gregory Paul Stolze]

At 10:00 AM 06/14/2000 -0400, you wrote:
>
>>In UA, as in most RPGs, there's a tendency to give everything a
>>"supernatural" explanation.
>
>There's a very good reason for that.
>
>Because you *can*.

That's a reason, but I don't know that I'd consider it a good reason.  

>Presuming that we know what can be known, in the real world nothing has a
>"supernatural" explanation. Things happen for mundane reasons - complicated
>or simple. Roleplaying games like UA offer a chance to imagine fantastic
>motives for everyday things, and it always puzzles me that people complain
>when fans conjecture about them. (This is not entirely you. I subscribe to
>multiple mailing lists for modern fantasy games - In Nomine and Vampire
>among them - and this sort of thing comes up quite a bit.)

Well, I guess my feeling is that having there be a reliable paranormal
explanation every time encourages lazy thinking and lazy roleplaying.  If
you know you're ALWAYS going to find a mage or critter or some odd thing at
the bottom of weird goings-on... well, then it's less of a shocking
surprise when do, obviously.  

To take a pop culture example, "The X-Files" as originally conceived was
going to have roughly a 50/50 balance between "supernatural" episodes and
"weird but normal" episodes.  Now, due to fan pressure they skewed a lot
more towards the Mulder end of the scale, but they still do the occaisional
Scully episode (like the two stage magicians plannning a bank robbery or
the giant hallucinogenic fungus), and I find those to be some of the better
ones.

I guess part of it goes into the FEEL I wanted UA to have.  The paranormal
elements of RPGs are so shiny and attractive that they often overwhelm all
the other elements of a setting.  Soon you get a meal that's all dessert,
and your tongue goes numb.  I think one of the strengths of CoC has always
been that there was a strong leavening of normal investigation and activity
working up to the rare, weird climax.  (At least, that's how the books are
written.)  I wanted magick to be present in UA, and for it to be an
unpredictable loose cannon element, but I didn't want it to be the be-all
and end-all trump suit.  

Every time I wrote up a paranormal skill, I gave it the sniff test "Is this
substantially more dangerous than a Firearms skill at the same level?"  If
the answer was yes, I threw on more luggage--that's where taboos and
charges came from.  I guy like Eponymous, who's got no mojo but is good
with a gun and doesn't mind gouging someone's eyes out, should be able to
do very well in the UA setting.  Much as I like the WoD, I recognize that
no mortal gunslinger is going to make the cut.

>Now, I've heard at least one counterargument that says that if everything
>is supernaturally influenced, humankind has no control over its own destiny
>and exist only as a backdrop for the unnatural. I can see the wisdom in
>that. Can we agree to say the question presumes that the scenario (or
>person) *was* affected by the unique traits of the setting and start there?

Well, the setting *is* one in which mundane things have much more of an
impact than supernatural things...

-G.
It's an honor just to be nominated.

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


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