[UA] One o' them thar pwernomancers!

[rowan at media.mit.edu]

> Knowing about the various types of magic (pornomancy,
> dipsomancy, etc....) is out of character knowledge?  I
> kind of got the idea that everything in the UA books
> was, more or less, open knowledge to those in the
> Occult Underground.  At least, that's how I've end up
> interpreting it.  That approach made it the first game
> my wife really liked, too.

That's certainly the natural reaction after reading the rulebook. Unlike games 
like Call of Cthulhu or Kult, UA sets up a world with narration by well-known, 
beloved central figures of the OU like Dirk Allen, who seemingly travels the 
world, hanging out with every adept he runs into (e.g. Jeeter) and sharing 
stories about his extensive occult knowledge. The setting comes off as a kind of 
comic book, where Eponymous and The Freak have teamed up dozens of times to 
defeat the nefarious Randy Douglas and his Brotherhood of Evil Hillbillies. 

After reading the book and participating on this list for a while, I started to 
realize that the game had the potential to be something else entirely. Now, I 
ignore the tone of the rulebooks and try to see the elements one by one, casting 
them in more of a Kult setting and trying to bring out their richness. I think 
the game was written with multiple stlyes of play in mind, from action hero 
comic book to Arnold Schwarzenegger movie to absurdist noir to transcendental 
horror. It's a good idea to figure out beforehand what kind of game you play and 
read the books with that shift in mind -- otherwise, the tone of some of the 
writing will be jarring and incongruous. it sounds to me like you want to play 
more of an open OU, with clued-in PCs and lots of weirdness floating around. I 
think the game is great for that kind of setting, so don't get discouraged by 
people on this list who are running different styles of game.

-Matt Norwood