[UA] Channelling Multiple Archetypes

[Chad Underkoffler]

> From: holycrow at mindspring.com
> Date: Tue, 06 Feb 2001 18:29:14 -0500
>
> My considered reaction to this idea is "Say, how come you 
> see so few fundamentalist Christians who are also practicing 
> animist shamans?"  The answer being, of course, that the two 
> are mutually exclusive.  Most people are variagated and 
> distracted enough that they can't channel ONE archetype.  
> Channeling two is like running at top speed both east and 
> west, at once.  
>
> That's the rationale.  Now for the rationale for the
rationale.

Interesting. I didn't see the "fundamentalist Christians vs.
animist shamans" thing. I mean, I did see it for Schools of
Magick ("Muslim atheist" is the example), but didn't necessarily
see it for Avatars. 

Again, I was coming at this from the Jungian perspective, where
everybody contains all the Archetypes. If the rationale is that
one chooses to focus utterly on one aspect of their psyche over
the rest, I can buy it. If its that they deny that other parts
of their psyche exist, I don't. (Indeed, I'd say that that
should call for Stress Checks.)

On the whole, I don't see it as people are too distracted to
channel a single archetype, its more that they're constantly
minmally-channelling a number of them. Everybody is at turns a
Necessary Servant, or a Masterless Man, or a Savage, or a
Confessor. It's just that they don't stick with it, groove with
it, and focus upon it.

> On the level of game balance, multiple archetypes are (quite
> simply) a fucking nightmare.  Sure, you can throw on 
> home-brewed restrictions -- the "can't cross 50%" is a good 
> one, until you get someone who figures out which three, or 
> five, or eight archetypes have first-rank channels 
> that don't require rolls and takes 1% skill in all of them.  

Sure, no debate there.

> On the level of game play, they're also a colossal pain the 
> tuckus. Sure, theoretically it's the player's duty to track
> his taboos and ritual actions, but since the GM has smackdown 
> duties it also behooves her to keep track of a character's 
> Do's and Don'ts.  I, personally, have enough trouble keeping 
> track of one set of taboos per character.

I dig. I find that small gaming groups composed of good
roleplayers and annotated index cards help, myself.

> But really, the reason that weighs most heavily against this
> for me is, for want of a better term, the "White Wolf 
> Baggage" problem.  I love the Wolfies and they've done better
> by me than any other game company -- but they ran into the 
> problem of supernatural proliferation early and hard.  There 
> are all kinds of rationales -- the vampires control 
> everything (or, as of Achilli, just influence everything) 
> just seeing some of these critters makes people nuts, you can 
> buy a cheap background that just makes people forget you... 
> but I wanted to get away from those dodges with UA.  I want 
> people to be unaware of the supernatural because it 
> really IS as rare as it's supposed to be in other settings. 

Um. I'm not sure your argument follows, Greg. I dig your point--
we've had enough conversations onlist and off about it.

I'm not sure multivatars necessarily lead to increasing the
overall amount of supernatural stuff in the world, but...

> In RPGs there's a natural tendency for the paranormal 
> elements in a game to bloat, because they're shiny and fun
> to play with, but I think that in the long run a game line 
> suffers from getting into the constant "But I can top THAT!" 
> loop.

...see your point about the "one louder" argument.

However, I was interested here in the psychological
ramifications on a world where Archetypes worked more in a
Jungian "everybody's got a full suite" rather than a "pick one"
world like the mainline UA setting. The game qua game issues
aren't what I was interested in.

> How do the multivatars affect this?  Because they lower 
> the bar for avatarhood.  If someone can follow more than one
> accidentally, it makes it very plausible for many people to 
> follow a single path accidentally (when in fact this doesn't 
> happen all that much at all). 

Weird. I got the implication that many people channeled
accidentally and unconsciously, at least below the 50% mark.
Maybe I read something into the book that wasn't there.

Granted, that would jack-up the overall amount of supernatural
in the world, but would it count if it were unwitting? I see it
something like how many people know enough to hijack power out
of a power cable? I mean, there are power lines everywhere, and
people can pirate electricity if they've got the tools, talent,
skills, and luck. Most people wouldn't know it was possible, and
some that did wouldn't know how to begin, much less do it
successfully.

Just an idea.

> If it's very plausible for many people to do it by accident,
> the question naturally arises "Well, why don't more people do 
> it on purpose?  Especially in the Internet Age when it's 
> presumably easy to find out about all these funky powers you 
> can get just by acting a certain way!"

Because the tenets of the game world say that it's rare, secret,
and difficult to do?

> Next stop, Shadowrun.
>
> So maybe a more appropriate question would concern, not 
> fundamentalist Christians, but neurosurgeons.  Why is it 
> that so few neurosurgeons are also professional NBA 
> basketball players?

Hm. I was seeing things in quite different terms. More like
"fundamentalist Christian basketball players."

A glib answer could be: "Because they can make more money and
serve humanity better by becoming neurosurgeons rather than paid
entertainers/athletes?" But I see your point. 

Out of curiosity, Greg, how would you represent an honest to
goodness, totally mundane polymath?



=====
Chad Underkoffler [chadu at yahoo.com]
http://www.geocities.com/chadu/index.html
"Hold your breath. Make a wish. Count to three."
  -- Willy Wonka

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Auctions - Buy the things you want at great prices.
http://auctions.yahoo.com/

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