[UA] Risking it

[Royal Minister of Stuff]

So what you're saying is that magic is like a drug and
the universe is some huge, soulless pusher.

I can buy that.  I can understand that and, more
importantly, I'm sure my players could understand
that, too.

I still think drugs work in a consistent manner.  I
think, next time, I'll run a game where magic works
with a sort of law of diminishing returns.

By the way, the counterpoint to Spinoza's Doctrine,
the "White Crow" arguement, doesn't deny that unique
events don't occur, it just points out that they
aren't very useful.  A single magical moment in
someone's life would be a wonder, but attempting to
reproduce that moment and failing over and over again
would sort of tarnish the wonder.  It's great to visit
Oz once and a memory to cherish, but I'd like to know
if I could ever go back again.

I don't care what old C. Staples Lewis said, it's a
lot better to be able to create a nice sensation at
will than to have it happen once by accident and never
have it occur again.

Non est ars quae ad effectum casu venit.

--- Tim Toner <thanatos at interaccess.com> wrote:
> 
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: Royal Minister of Stuff <yokeltania at yahoo.com>
> To: <ua at lists.uchicago.edu>
> Sent: Sunday, May 06, 2001 9:47 PM
> Subject: Re: [UA] Risking it
> 
> 
> > 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.
> 
> During the Great Magick Debates on
> rec.games.frp.misc, various people
> espoused their theories on what magick is, was, and
> ought to be (in RPGs and
> RL).  Most people wanted magic to be reproducible,
> but many pointed out that
> magic is the core and essence of irreproducibility. 
> Whether magic worked or
> not depended on the individual in question--some
> were born to the Art, and
> some were not.  There were big arguments over
> whether the Art was genetic,
> or if it could be learned.  In the end, I walked
> away from the debate
> because there was too much clinical dissection for
> my tastes.  It robbed the
> sense of wonder that, to me, is really the soul of
> magic.  As I left the
> debate, I pointed out the problem I had with many
> skeptics who do not adhere
> closely enough to Spinoza's Dictum -- just because I
> can't make it happen
> again doesn't mean that it never happened.  In UA, I
> think that the first
> time it happened, the Universe gave the proto-Adept
> a free hit, so to speak.
> It tied into something the character was already
> fairly obsessed about, and
> hinted at a greater truth.  Much later, after
> studying and sacrifice, the
> character develops a degree of control over these
> forces that are difficult
> to comprehend.  The control is not total.  The
> universe still exacts its tol
> l on the Adept through the paradoxical actions that
> generate charges, and
> even then, the magick does not flow exactly as it
> should.  Still, the very
> fact that an adept can do something that 99% of the
> planet cannot is more
> than enough reason to suck it up and keep trying. 
> Think of all the stupid
> crap we do as a species to promote our individuality
> and supremacy over
> others.  Magick is simply the pinnacle of the
> Stupid/Powerful pyramid.  The
> most dangerous actions of magick should be the
> charge gathering, because it
> represents our willingness to break from the herd. 
> And as we see in the
> wild, it's the wildebeests that break from the herd
> that get picked off.
> 
> 
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> http://lists.uchicago.edu/mailman/listinfo/ua


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

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