[UA] "Real-World" Syncronicity

[Stuart Anderson]

> I've seen players have deep emotional responses to the game, and I still
> remember the looks on their faces in some sessions, sessions that neither I
> nor they will ever forget.  People can tell me all they want that only
> "deep" games like UA can give that sort of response, and I'll know that
> they're wrong, because I've seen that any game can cause you to really feel
> for your characters and their pain and good times.

    I spose I should reluctantly admit that I originally bought UA because it
looked kinda beer & pretzel to me. I don't mean to provoke a shitstorm, and I've
played enough to know how deep it can get. But you can probably tell from my
posts that I don't go too much for the subtly shifting psychological
undercurrents. I've got some players that do. And man, the game sucks it out of
them. My buddy Juanita (aka Delta Greene) gets the corded neck muscles and the
veins in her temples. I'm less worried about a psychological meltdown than her
blood pressure.
    But the reason I picked up the game was the unapologetic stance on violence
and insanity in general. Most of the 'deep' games go for a 'role-playing is
about more than combat' attitude. That's true. It certainly is. You don't want
to turn your table of lively, talented actors into mechanical constructs that
could just as easily come out of a console game. That's probably the number one
complaint of us older GMs who've circled that block a few times. However--I
don't care how enlightened and psychologically complex your group is, sooner or
later they ask: so when do we get to kill something? That's why I love UA.
There's no shortage of stuff to kill. Hell, we're killing stuff all the time.
But the game has this great 'actions have consequences' dynamic, which is the
one thing I think really separates the kid games from the grown-up games. I just
didn't really pay much attention to it until we started playing. I read it and
knew it was there, but it's sneaky. A notch better than the Sanity or Willpower
dynamics we're used to. The boys did a really good job with that part of the
game--both in constructing it, and in camouflaging it a little.
    I've always advocated that any game can be played any way, and I've run
campaigns perversely against the spirit of a game's rules to prove it. But UA is
the very first game I ever played that snuck up on me with a dynamic I had
underestimated. I'm a little jaded and that was a great surprise. So--in
summary--you can get all kinds of responses from any kind of game, but I got a
neat response from UA because of the game itself.
--Stu


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