[UA] Yet another newbie with his bunch of questions

[maksim stseglov]

Yet another newbie with his bunch of questions…

Hello, list. My name is Maksim and I'm a boozehound...but you didn't want to 
know that, did you ? ;-)

I’ve recently got into UA - had the main rulebook for quite a while but 
never got a chance to GM it until now. As soon as I did GM my first session 
a month ago I went out and bought the rest of the books. So, armed with 
knowledge of the books and having spent two weeks reading through your 
archives, I still have a few questions to ask that AFAIK were not raised 
before.

1) OK, I know that Greg Stolze is on the cover of the main rulebook. 
However, Tim Dedopolous (apologies if I misspell the name) is pictured as 
Derek Jackson, the leader of Mak Attax. There's also a Harvey Duopulous 
standing next to him, implying some kind of switcheroo here? And in the 
small print for One Shots, someone apologises to Tim and Mr. Jackson for 
this.

So, who is Mr. Jackson and what was it all about ?

2) Who is the Eye Biting Man and where is he mentioned ? My only guess would 
be a nod to Neil Gaiman’s Corinthian but I have not seen anything to prove 
or disprove it.

3) Question about Epideiromancy. Is it really worth it trying to get minor 
charges? If I cut myself up big time I’ll get 23 points of damage at worst 
(roll 00 => 10+10+3 for a match) and I can then split it into 10 minor 
charges that I would need to lose 30 wound points for on their own. Am I 
missing out something here?

4) Dipsomancy. It seems to me that boozehounds are either too underpowered - 
"no famous cup, no siggies" – or too overpowered with siggies coming as easy 
as the next drink. It’s rather hard for a GM to decide whether he wants a 
dipsomancer PC to have a chance at getting one of those beauties. How do you 
deal with it ?

5) Does anybody else think that the skill "Create Desire" that some 
pornomancers have, is actually WECHBY Avatar skill’s first channel? It would 
make sense that in order not to lose their skill (or the ability to use it), 
they would have to watch the tape of NG’s ascension.

For example, performing Ritual Of Union can give you Avatar: Mystical 
Hermaphrodite skill if you switch genders, so why not this? Their activities 
as pornomancers would prevent them from advancing WECHBY Avatar skill the 
"normal" way.

>From a world POV rather than game system POV the difference between using up 
mystical charges and slowly losing your Avatar skill is not that great, 
considering the recharge method.

6) The Bad Man rocks. I’ve had the opportunity to witness him as done by Tim 
Dedopolous (the creator!) and I was very impressed. As to his seeming 
invulnerability that seems to annoy quite a few people – he’s just covering 
his bases and any PC in his place would have done the same thing, if not 
better.

7) I actually found Team Salvation very useful. My PC’s stumbled into them 
after some local Mafia thought PC’s had the Ajna ring (Talisman’s ring) and 
threatened the PC’s with bodily harm if they do not give it back. The PC’s 
have found Team Salvation and spent the whole session laughing at them and 
generally considering them as utterly worthless.

The point that I want to make with TS, however, is that a bunch of friends 
who have diverse talents but more importantly, trust each other and will 
protect each other, can stand against superior odds and win. I want the 
players, who spent way too much time backstabbing and generally pursuing 
extremely selfish purposes, to see some real good being done in this world.

Naive? Maybe. But where would our world be if not for the most unlikely 
heroes?

8) I have a character whose player is very fond of Desire from Sandman. His 
character actually has Avatar: Desire skill at first channel, allowing him 
to create basic and short-term desires in people (same as first channel of 
Merchant). Thinking about it, I decided that Desire is not really a 
humanocentric archetype and thought of changing the skill to make him either 
an archetype of WECHBY or just make it a freaky skill of influencing 
people’s emotions. Any suggestions as to what he may be able to get at later 
levels as a WECHBY?

9) My PC’s are a start-up negotiations company based in Chicago – just a 
couple of dukes out there to make a buck. I was thinking of giving them a 
mundane scenario or two to play with, but have run out of ideas. Can anyone 
help with that, please?

Also, I would rather have the odds in these cases to be stacked against the 
PC’s – they need a lesson in humiliation, I feel. I really felt the game 
going wrong when one of them signed the basic "You’re my slave" Bad Man 
contract and the other two laughed at her.

10) Chicago in general. What landmarks are there? I have read a Vampire book 
on the city but can’t remember anything beyond it having three universities 
and Magnificent Mile. Oh, and the city’s standing on Lake Michigan, right?

11) Entropomancers’ significant charges. How risky must the activity be for 
Entropomancer to get a sig charge off it? Playing Russian roulette is enough 
but what about less risky activities, like going bungee jumping etc. It’s 
just that the people who risk their life on regular basis probably calculate 
their odds in advance and a 16% chance of death would be laughed at, while 
bodybags seem to have to go against such odds on a daily basis. What' their 
life expectancy like and how do they ever manage to survive their training ?

Thanks,
Maksim

***

The usual statements follow: 1) UA is the best! Vampire pales in comparison. 
2) Sorry for any mistakes, English is my second language. 3) I am allowed 
not to know any American geography on account of coming from former USSR.
_________________________________________________________________________
Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com.


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