[UA] Risking it

[Royal Minister of Stuff]

--- Bailey Watts <didi_mau at hotmail.com> wrote:
> If you call it fair, it ain't magic.  Magic screws
> over its practitioners 
> regularly.  At least IMUAC it does so regularly.
>

Well, yes, but I was hoping it wouldn't screw over me,
your ever-lovin' blue-eyed GM.  I mean, yeah, this may
be a universe where a door can be open and closed at
the same time, but, if that's true, why make up any
rules at all.  You can just say: "The Universe Works
by the Whim of the GM" and not even give a nod to
natural or, as it were, unnatural law at all.

I know that magic is supposed to be capricious and
arbitrary, but I also know that I get enough of that
just trying to understand magical thought in my daily
life.  I play games because they offer a degree of
certainty I can't be sure of in any other aspect of
existence.  I mean, you can live using what few
logical principles you may have picked up, such as
myself, but, in the end, I gotta make that one
assumption: there is one true universe.  I may not
know what it is, but, one I've committed to that fact,
I can walk down the street without fear of falling
into the sky.  It may HAPPEN, but I'm not as afraid of
it anymore.

In a game, even something as notoriously arbitrary as
an RPG run by your average
the-players-are-stupid-because-they-can't-see-inside-my-brain
GM, part of the appeal is the rules.  You KNOW what
the natural law is going into it and you can make
faster, flashier and more accute decisions based on
your knowledge of those laws.  You can make a plot
move along or add some adventure because you are
certain that the same thing which happened last time
will happen next time.  It's simple and it works, the
two things all scientists want of natural law.

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

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