[UA] Gaslight UA

[Gaston Phillips]

on 6/13/01 1:26 AM, Stuart Anderson at stuartanderson at qwest.net wrote:

> Gaston Phillips wrote:
> 
>> 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.
>> 
> I frequently drop comments on the list that sort of reawaken this topic at
> fairly regular intervals.  What you're saying about the post-modern tilt of UA
> is very true.  And I agree that the game changes greatly from time period to
> time period. But I would also offer that the two very best campaigns I ever
> ran were set in the 70s and the 50s.  They managed to feel post-modern as
> hell, despite their setting.  I think because the fact that we were playing UA
> was more important than the time period. Like how The Crucible wasn't really
> about the witch trials. Since Miller and the audience both knew what he was
> talking about and why, he could've set it on Gilligan's Island if he'd wanted
> to.


You know - I totally see what you're saying.  I remove my objection.  It was
just sort of a knee-jerk defense against the encroashment of, like,
"Old-School Thaumaturgy" and its ilk into the pristine neon of UA.

Sure, you can do alternate settings.  After all, Postmodernism is all about
appropriation.  I do, though, agree that it's got to be /hard/ to pull off a
game that's set that far in the past and make it feel postmodern.
Especially without broadcast mass media.  Which is the easiest way to make a
game feel smugly hip and pomo.

But if you used lots of "Dr. Phineas Prescott's Patented Guaranteed Cure-All
Pain Reducing Powdered Fizzy Water Supplements" -type adcvertisements,
maybe?  Or if you used lots of anachronistic digs at...

Man.  I don't know.  How /would/ you do it, Stu?

gaston


P.S. - yeah, this group is seriously literate.  I still don't like seeing
'The Book' (Infinite Jest) get kicked around.  Though I don't want to try to
defend it versus His Grand High Oyabun Stol-Tzee San.


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