[UA] Otherwheres

[Matthew Rowan Norwood]

> >The actual events of the game sort of match an old list discussion of the
> >>4A.M., but not exactly.
> 
> Yeah, something UA might grow into is the idea of these Other Spaces that
> you can stumble into and get lost.  There was one in Hush Hush, but it was
> artificial instead of... er, I don't want to say "natural" so I'll say
> "spontaneous."  But there's on in "Weep," Tynes' piece "My Favorite
> Things."  I'm putting a passing mention of one in Special Orders too -- a
> place where the clouds in the sky are huge babies, weeping blood onto the
> ground below...
> 
> -G.

All I can say is: tread carefully. Look at where so many others have
gone before you, and make sure that UA's marvelous grounding in the
mundane doesn't get swallowed up by weekly dreamquests in the Land of
Nod or searches for magical energy in the Ethereal Plane.

Kult does the "alternate dimension" thing better than most games, I
think, but the entire game revolves around the idea that these "other
places" are the only true reality and that our world is an illusion. The
excitement of these other places is how they intermesh with our world
for people on the edge of sanity. UA is very explicit in its contention
that _this_ is the real world. This, the one where I'm pounding my meaty
fist into your magic-working gut again and again until all your
memorized mystical correspondences disintegrate into pleas for your
mommy and instead of aligning your spirit with the Ein Sof you're
convinced that I am God as long as I will stop hurting you. And if a
Duke runs into a ragged, bearded sage on the street who talks about
urgent problems in the Umbral Realms, the Duke does what everyone else
does: tells him he doesn't _have_ any spare change.

I really like Oneiromancy, for example, because it steers clear of all
the "dream magic" cliches from RPGs. Dreams are the children of an idle
brain, begot of nothing but vain fantasy.  This does not mean that
they're not magical, but then getting drunk and making lots of money and
acting in porn movies are also magical. I would love to write up an
Oneiromancer (or better yet, just a groupie following around the
101001101 from rave to rave) who's wrapped up in the amazing spiritual
significance of how the magic allows him to connect to entire other
realities and interact with powerful spirits of the dreamlands, when
really he's just spiralling into solipsism and narcissism.

The House is an "Other Space", and Statosphere significantly explores
its manifestations. I'm actually kind of inclined to declare "other
places" off-limits for PCs: I liked Lili Morgan as an NPC, someone who's
been Somewhere Else and is no longer quite human. Insofar as even its
agents do not understand the nature of the House, though, it is
acceptable for use with PCs.

The Astral Plane is also an Other Place/Other Frame of Mind, but it gets
almost no coverage in the rulebook. Is this going to get addressed at
some point? Right now, it seems a little bit like a piece of errata
rather than an actual feature of the game world.

Finally, there is the world Beyond The Veil. I applaud your decision to
draw, um, a veil over that. If we're lucky, it will be years before we
see supplements with thanatomancers who are high-level avatars of the
Deathwalker and act as messangers for the Cruel Ones, using their
Entropic-powered Etherships to navigate the Astral Plane. Not that
there's anything wrong with that kind of game, mind you, it just doesn't
play on UA's unique srengths.

-Matt Norwood

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