[UA] The End of the World, and so on.

[Matthew Rowan Norwood]

> One thing that's always bothered me is that Xeno's paradox (the one most commonly presented, anyway, involving an infinity of halfway points) is based on a mathematical mistake (not dividing both sides of an equation by the same amount) and Aristotle pointed this out millenia ago, but people still keep bringing it up.

Huh... this must be a different version from the one I've heard. Isn't
Xeno's paradox the same as an asymptotic increasing value? You know, it
keeps moving forward but never passes value X because the rate of change
is decreasing exponentially, or however that math works out?

Or did Xeno leave out the change in the rate of change altogether, and
that's why his paradox isn't a paradox?

> >William Sidis is a good example from more recent memory, as would be Emily
> >Dickinson and Franz Kafka, both of whom left major works behind, published
> >after their deaths (in Kafka's case, he asked that they be burned).  There
> >are a few--all you need to do is find someone who gained their fame
> >posthumously.
> 
> Or perhaps authors or musicians who made all their really good music before they were known at all, but then they get a record contract (or published or whatever) and stop making anything worthwhile.  Some of the channels could involve doing amazing things as long as no one watches you.

Changeling deals with this phenomenon by saying that a faerie can glean
Glamour from inspiring an artist only for works that haven't been
distributed too widely.

UA should, I think, take a less kitschy approach to this phenomenon.
There's definitely something perverse about the way we denounce artists
who make it big, and also something perverse about the actual
deterioration of their art once they become successful. I'm inclined to
cast this sort of artist as an adept rather than an avatar: the paradox
is all too clear, and the archetype borders too much on the "Magus",
which encompasses all adepts.

What we're looking at here involves doing lots of work and creating
great art without benefitting from it or sharing it. Good foundation for
a magical school, except it's not very _playable_ (Changeling had the
same problem). How do you create art in-game? "Um, so, uh, I paint a
great painting." "Okay... it takes a month. Roll the dice." BORING.

It's similar in concept to Plutomancy (get money, but can't use it) or
Pornomancy (get sex, but don't like it) or Entropomancy (take chances,
but don't benefit from them). But unless it's more playable than those,
it should be more or less restricted to NPCs.

-Matt Norwood

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