[UA] Darkening Children's Tales

[rowan at media.mit.edu]

> > The tough UA vibe to capture is the approach to the supernatural.
> 
> That's interesting. Personally, almost all the films I see as useful for
> UA
> have no supernatural content at all. I honest;y don't see the
> supernatural
> as being all that central to UA; it's a major motif, but not a major
> theme.


The only thing that strikes me as unique to UA is the way it makes magic into a 
personal sacrifice in very concrete terms. While CoC and Kult both have some 
vague "magic will drive you insane" rules, UA is very down-to-earth and 
practical about magical power. The sacrifices are up-front and well-defined. You 
want to be a wizard. Okay, cut off your leg. Or become celibate. Or spend 70% of 
your life in a drunken haze. By defining power in such a personal way, UA 
manages to ground its metaphysics in an everyday context, which leads games to 
focus on the characters as people with "normal" lives that they disrupt horribly 
with their fucked-up power fixations.

I've never really thought about it in exactly these terms. This makes it clearer 
to me why I disliked Annihilomancy and can't deal with Cliomantic 
charge-gathering as written: the former is too much of a generalization of the 
way magical power works, while the latter involves no sacrifice.

-Matt Norwood

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