Atlantis (was: Re: [UA] Commercial)

[Royal Minister of Stuff]

--- Bailey Watts <didi_mau at hotmail.com> wrote:
> >Not to rain on your parade, but what'd they do when
> >you told them you weren't psychic?  Sometimes
> people
> >get really mad when I manage to pull a trick like
> that
> >on them and sometimes they laugh, but they always
> seem
> >to remember "the New Zealand" factor of the
> >experience.  I think you might have opened a few
> eyes,
> >congrats.
> 
> I never tell them that I'm not psychic.  That would
> be like tacking a bit 
> onto the end of a satiric article that says, "This
> is satire.  If you don't 
> understand that you are stupid."
> Why should I stop acting psychic?
> 
Well, technically, it's unethical to act psychic and
then not tell people after you trick them.  I can tie
that into UA, too, but it'll take a moment.  

You can pretend to be psychic for lots of reasons, but
they usually boil down to profitably fooling people or
teaching the victim a lesson.  Both have their good
and bad points.

When you fool people by pretending to have a power or
ability that you really don't have, you victimize
them.  You profit by feeling superior.  Anyway, I do. 
You also reinforce a view of the world which could,
and probably will, leave that person open to even less
scrupulous pretenders.  If you convince one guy that
you've got psychic powers and he goes away beleiving
it, then the sucker will walk right into the next Bujo
or spiritualist grift that comes their way.  Now, I
like to beleive that humans have some sort of
supernatural potential, but there are an awful lot of
people who take advantage of that for more nefarious
purposes.

I'm not saying that you, Bailey, rip people off, but
every time you walk away from someone leaving a false
impression, you set them up for another, more harmful,
shake-down.

Ethically, if you know something isn't real and you
beleive you've fooled somebody into thinking
otherwise, then you have an obligation to correct the
error.  Otherwise it's detrimental rather than
educational.

Of course, no one says you have to be ethical.

Which brings me to the UA tie-in.  Con Artists have
got to be a major problem in the Occult Underground. 
Lucius Zarcia is an example, but probably not the best
example of one, but Dr. Henrietta Apoida is.  A con
artist does not always have to pretend to have magic
powers to pull off a dodge.  In fact, pretending to be
on to illegal money-making schemes, slightly immoral
procurement and, well, cheap sex are just as
profitable as fortune telling and faith healing. 
That's because a good con artist knows how to use "the
blow off" and this should work on the average player,
too.  The Blow Off makes the victim of a con unlikely
or unwilling to go to the authorities.  Say you have
your players run into a real slick customer named
"Soapy" (There was a Colorado con artist named "Soapy"
Smith, kind of a local legend.)  The characters have
got to know that Soapy isn't on the up-and-up, just
because of his stupid name.  But Soapy actually
delivers on his first claim (be it a couple thousand
dollars -real attractive for Plutomancers- or some
rare book or artifact.)  This used to be called "The
Sweetner."  The next time they want something from
Soapy, though, he'll demand a bigger fee (mostly
because they hurt his feelings or something), then,
right in the middle of "Procuring" what the players
want, Soapy gets busted (by sympathetic cops or fellow
con men or even just by phoning you up and pretending
he's in jail, he's careful to ask you to send a lawyer
over to the police station in order to help someone
else, like "Jose Brown." Soapy claims he was working
under a false name.) Or he gets killed or badly hurt. 
The players never get what they asked for, but they
are out a lot of money, or a magical favor or any
number of other things.  Maybe Soapy even makes them
feel bad for him (getting additional money or help for
bail out of them)  and promises to "Keep working on
it," but the players will never see him again. 
(That's probably how Dr. Apoida works, too.)

The other thing that's probably important in UA, and
that is touched on in the books, is the difference
between being Clued-in and clueless.  In "The Psychic
Mafia" by Allen Spraggett, he discuss the difference
between the "shut-eyes" and the "opens."  Shut-eyes
are like clueless cabals.  They have no idea what
they're doing and just grab on to any magick that
seems to work.  The Opens are not clued-in people,
however.  They are people who are part of Occult
society who realize that most magic either doesn't
work or only works on a very personal basis.  The
clueless cabals and the opens (or operators) are the
major forces which draw people into the Occult, and,
for most people it would seem to be as far as they go.
 They get ripped off either by accident (the clueless
people get them hurt, killed or arrested) or to make
some quick dough.  Then, they return to be screwed
again and maybe, this time, they'll hit that
one-in-a-million guy who is actually clued-in and
tells them to go away (or gets them both messed up.)

It's always tempting to give con artists and swindlers
a taste of "real magic," to send them packing, but, in
this way, Lucius Zarcia is a good example.  It takes
more than a slammed door or a thump on the nose to
send a salesman packing and a con artist, if nothing
else, is a Very Good salesman.

=====
-- Rp Bowman, Royal Minister of Stuff
The Electronic Nation of Yokeltania:
http://www.geocities.com/yokeltania/

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