[UA] Gaslight UA

[Gaston Phillips]

on 6/12/01 9:29 AM, Mark Baker at mark at lange.demon.co.uk wrote:

> Greg Stolze <holycrow at mindspring.com> writes
>> But asking someone to absorb the Victorian details of a setting alongside
>> the UA elements -- no, sorry, overload.  Gaslight UA would appeal most to
>> people who are already playing UA.  It would be too much to swallow for new
>> players to whom UA is totally alien and Victorianism is fairly alien.
>> 
> I can't really agree with this argument. Many game systems introduce
> both pseudo-historic setting and weird elements to new players and are
> still successful. 7th Sea might be a good example, though you could
> possibly argue that Theah isn't that dissimilar to earth; Deadlands is
> more weird in many ways, and spawned a second weird spin-off setting in
> Hell on Earth.
> 
> And the Victorian setting isn't so alien when you consider that players
> are running existing games in that era - Castle Falkenstein, Cthulhu by
> Gaslight, GURPS: Steampunk, Ravenloft: Masque of the Red Death - to name
> but a few; and Grey Ghost games are currently playtesting yet another.
> 
> There are probably a wealth of other reasons not to produce UA by
> Gaslight, but I don't believe your argument is a valid one.

Um.  Unknown Armies, from what I've gathered, was written because a very
bright young man read a very dense and painstakingly researched italian
novel and decided that traditional occultism was over.  He therefore, along
with another very bright young man, decided to invent a new occultism.  One
which was at every level decidedly anchored in contemporary postmodernism.

If you set a game in 'Gaslight' - what's that - 1890?  1920?  Well, either
way - PostModernism is hard to do before 1980, and I'd say impossible before
1950.  

So, UA by Gaslight would be... just a very different game.  So different as
to not really be Unknown Armies anymore.  Sure, you could have the
mechanics, but moving the setting that far back in time would drain the game
of the PostModern aspects that help make it truly, truly great.

gaston


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