[UA] UA Junior

[Chad Underkoffler]

> From: "Joshua Knorr" <j-knorr at uchicago.edu>
> Date: Wed, 21 Feb 2001 10:10:53 -0600
>
> I'll concur with everyone else and say that UA Jr. sounds
> pretty keen. Quite frankly, sounds disturbing as hell also 
> but I can live with that.

Definitely. I like it.

> I'd definitrly do it as a sourcebook, with new rules that
> represent the differences between kids and adults. Thankfully 
> UA already does a pretty good job on handling psychology, so 
> all it takes is a modification of pre-existing rules.

All-in-all, I think vanilla UA works very well for a junior
high/high school game.. we should also get the English public
schools in on this. 

The Big Idea: "It's like Harry Potter... meets Dead Poets
Society! With horror!"

Indeed, part of me thinks that UA is built for exactly this
genre-- we've talked before about how some of us feel "furious
action" a la John Woo doesn't necessarily fit with the high
rates of failure. However, if I'm not playing Chow Yun Fat, Mob
Assassion, but Emerson Walpole, Chess Team Captain, well,
failing  in a fistfight doesn't hurt my feelings/gameplay nearly
as much.

> Adepts: As has been said before, childhood and obsession (can)
> go hand in hand.  Particularly for the kind of screwed-up 
> personality types and lifestyles that the bread and butter of
> UA.  I'd say that the vast majority of adepts practice 
> self-developed schools because finding an adept stable enough 
> to teach a child and yet depraved enough to be willing to do
> so is pretty damn rare.  So those kids with the knack will
> pick it up around idiosyncratic tendancies.  A couple 
> exceptions may be things that translate easily such as 
> bibliomancy (comic books, anyone?) and the occasional
> entropomancer.  What's changed is that even though child
> adepts are strong-willed, they still haven't fully developed 
> psychologically (see more on this below with Madness Meters). 

> The practical upshot of which is that sitting on charges, 
> particularly sigs or majors, will start to "bleed" into
> a kid's psyche and do some serious damage.

Hmmm. Thoughts below.

> Avatars: Very rare, again for the reasons of having an 
> underdeveloped psyche and sense of self.  Being an adept is 
> "relatively" easy because it's all about the dominance of 
> one's ego.  Avatars have to walk a delicate line between one's
> Self and the Other one is following.  What you'd get, at 
> best, is a kind of hero-worship where the kid has latched onto

> a particular personification of the Archetype (possibly the 
> current IC member) and does something similar to Idolmancy 
> with it.  At worst, the first time the kid taps strongly into 
> the Archytpe he/she is overwhelmed by the sheer power of
> it all and his/her soul is almost completely burned out.  
> Result: a 'godtouched' child who may represent a way for the 
> Archetype to meddle in the physical world without all the 
> unpleasant consequences.  For a little while, at least, until 
> the kid completely breaks down and either dies or goes 
> catatonic.

Okay. Here's some thoughts:

* Slightly higher weirdness/weirdness focused adepts/avatars
than the general canon UA poulation. Not Hero High level, but
strong talents ranging from the Scooby Doo to Buffy level.

* Most adults are oblivious to the supernatural, and only see
the effects. However, if you rip off two of Principal
Weatherbee's fingers using fleshworking, he's gonna realize
something is amiss.

* Adepts: Tend to be younger. Tend to be quirks. Random magick
only, only one or two formula spells. Can *lose* their Obsession
skill in Magick if subjected to enough Stress Checks.

* Avatars: Tend to be older. IC should be redesigned to fit
"kid" archetypes: The Jock, the Nerd, the Tramp, the
Cheerleader, the Burnout, the Bully, etc. All channels should be
limited to random-magick-esque power level.

* In general, as the population of adepts decreases, the
population of Avatars increases. This can be seen as conforming
to the way society wants you to be. Plus, the teen images
dominate the zeitgeist more than the pre-teen.

> Madness Meters: On one hand, it doesn't take much in the way
> of psychological trauma to seriously warp a kid for life.  On 
> the other hand, kids can be surpringly resilient, sometimes 
> even moreso than adults.  There isn't as much garbage in a 
> kid's head to color his preconceptions of things. One idea is 
> that kids get positive shifts to their Madness checks - a 
> kid is more likely (than an adult) to take a stimulus and 
> assimilate it into his worldview than to freak out about it.  
> The downside to that is when they fail, some very serious 
> damage has been done that may not be easily repaired - matched

> failures leave you with 2 notches and may have an effect
> on your Fear stimulus.

Interesting. I like it.

Let's see, Top Ten source material:

1. Grease 1 & 2 (Sandy was channelling the Virgin, then switched
to the Hot Stuff; Michael was channelling the Cool Rider)
2. Happy Days
3. Ferris Bueller's Day Off
4. Fast Times at Ridgemont High
5. The Breakfast Club
6. Heathers
7. Fame
8. Weird Science
9. That 70s Show
10. Carrie

Honorable Mentions:
21 Jump Street*
The Archies
American Graffitti
American Pie
Back to the Future
Batman Beyond
Better Off Dead
Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure
The Blob
The Chosen
The Class of Nuke 'Em High*
Dead Poets Society
The Facts of Life
Footloose
Harry Potter
High School Confidential*
I Was A Teenage Werewolf
I Was A Teenager Frankenstein
Lean on Me
My Bodyguard*
The Outsiders
Parker Lewis Can't Lose*
Pleasantville
Porky's et al.
Saved By the Bell
Square Pegs
Stand By Me
Teen Wolf
That Was Then, This Is Now
West Side Story

* Alas, never saw this, but heard it was excellent.

Special Mentions:
National Lampoon's Animal House
National Lampoon's Class Renunion
Revenge of the Nerds


I like this idea. Bunches.



=====
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