[UA] Invisible Rules

[holycrow at mindspring.com]

>And the Soul just bothers me. Are we so callous as to rate our Souls >low? 

In a word, yes.

>Do we not think a moral compass is important?

In a word, no.

Okay, I'm being sarcastic and flip.  I do believe that those qualities measured by Soul in UA -- sensitivity, empathy, creativity -- are undervalued in American society.  They are the values that make you vulnerable, and vulnerability has a bad rap.  But perhaps more importantly, they're not instantly perceived as terribly valuable in a game you play for fun which is quite explicitly advertised as "transcendental horror and furious action."

Part of the fun of RPGs is often the chance to play someone who is tougher and more powerful than yourself.  Cage is my sample character.  Instead of being a slender, gentle, SNAG*, I get to act out as a crude, boorish thug -- in a safe, unreal setting.  It's fun.  It's my bag.

Other people like doing the whole fragile, thespian, playing-through-the-mental-breakdown thing.  Cool.  That's fun too.  I hope UA can support both styles without selling out either.  But I really don't think it's much of a cultural comment one way or the other that people drop Soul or max it.  

>And what's the correlation between gamers having high Minds for those 
>Stress checks, yet the news stories continue to trickle in of gamers 
>confusing fantasy with reality?

Well, that was also something of a kluge.  The guy who pointed out that each stat has it's Real Immediate Use (hit points, initiative, suriving madness and using the funky powers) was bang-on.  To perfectly model human mental stability as I understand it, one would actually need a stat measuring how f-ed up your childhood was, how supportive your friends are now, what sort of intimate emotional support network you have.  But that would have made the game really clunky, so realism was sacrificed for playability.

-G.

*SNAG = Sensitive New Age Guy

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