[UA] Thoughts on LA riots of 1992?

[sneadj at mindspring.com]

Jason Schneiderman <jadasc at ma.ultranet.com>
> 
> >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*.
> 
> 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.)

One of the most powerful reasons to give mundane events, 
especially horrific mundane events, an occult cause is to explain 
them (at least in the context of the game).  While in our own world 
events like Columbine High School, the LA riots, & similar horrors 
occur for vague, highly complex, and occasionally completely 
inexplicable reasons. In a game we can make it all the work of an 
occult conspiracy who can be stopped, thereby stopping further 
horrors.  I like being able to do this.  Since none of us have any 
chance of influencing events like this in our own world, it's 
comforting to be able to explain and deal with them in a game.


-John Snead sneadj at mindspring.com  



_______________________________________________
UA mailing list
UA at lists.uchicago.edu
http://lists.uchicago.edu/mailman/listinfo/ua