[UA] Risking it - Sunbjectivity or objectivity?

[rowan at media.mit.edu]

> >But is the risk subjective (based on what the entropomancer can
> possibly
> >know about the situation) or objective?
> >
> >If the risk must be objective, then you could take the argument to
> its
> >extreme and argue that entropomancy is impossible without entering
> >situations that involve the Uncertainty principle. Even when you're
> playing
> >Russian Roulette, either the gun will fire a bullet or it will not.
> The
> >universe "knows" which will happen, and so there is no risk - there
> is
> >certainty.

<snip a million posts that go on about "chance" and "probability">

Ahem.

"chance
  n. 

      1.
          a.The unknown and unpredictable element in happenings that seems to 
have no assignable cause. 
          b.A force assumed to cause events that cannot be foreseen or 
controlled; luck: Chance will determine the outcome. 
      2.Often chances. The likelihood of something happening; possibility or 
probability: Chances are good that you will win. Is there any chance of rain? 
      3.An accidental or unpredictable event. 
      4.A favorable set of circumstances; an opportunity: a chance to escape. 
      5.A risk or hazard; a gamble: took a chance that the ice would hold me. 
      6.Games. A raffle or lottery ticket. 
      7.Baseball. An opportunity to make a putout or an assist that counts as an 
error if unsuccessful. "

Okay then. Today's episode is brought to us by the words "unpredictable", 
"unknown", and "accidental", and the phrase "no assignable cause".

So here's the bitch: the concepts of probability and randomness are contingent 
on the notion that events have causes and that sometimes these causes are known 
or knowable, making them non-random, and sometimes the causes are so complex as 
to be unknown or unknowable, making them "random". To know and to predict 
require a subject: "known by ___", "predictable by ___". Something can be random 
from one standpoint if the outcome is unknown beforehand, but non-random from 
another standpoint if the outcome is known. If I pick a card from the middle of 
a deck, it is random to me, but not to the guy who stacked the deck. If I had 
more information at my disposal, such as knowledge that the deck was stacked for 
a specific purpose, the outcome would no longer be completely random to me.

For Entropomancy, all GMs seem to agree that if an event is non-random to the 
adept, it does not garner a charge. All GMs also seem to agree that an event 
does get a charge if it is random to "the Universe" (whatever that means -- 
Einstein insisted that God does not play dice, but a case can be made that 
quantum-level effects are acausal.) So that leaves us with the realm of events 
in between shooting yourself with a realistic-looking squirt gun you bought 
yourself and gambling on the spin of a neutrino or something equally ridiculous 
(I'm not a physicist.) Pretty broad realm there, in the middle.

The problem (most people on the list seem to think it's a problem) is that one 
man's chance is another man's certainty. If there exists a powerful clairvoyant 
somewhere in the world who can see inside gun barrels all over the world (and 
keep in mind that this is UA), does this negate the "randomness" of every game 
of Russian Roulette? The outcome is known by someone. The same goes for an adept 
going to sleep on train tracks: someone knows whether a train is going to come 
by that night -- it is not "random" from the railroad engineer's perspective -- 
but the adept doesn't know.

This would seem to argue for the adoption of a "random from the adept's 
perspective" POV -- but of course, this opens up the problem of other PCs 
secretly unloading the gun the entropomancer uses for charge-building, 
preventing tragedy but retaining magical charges. No good.

Clearly, the "randomness" of entropomancy must be driven by narrative concerns, 
not scientific ones. UA is supposed to be a tool for building great stories, 
right? This is a tricky line to walk, but I'm sure GMs can handle it. Just let 
him get away with anything involving throwing dice (as a player, I mean, not a 
character.)  And if you're the kind of GM who has non-random charts of traffic 
patterns on every street in the city, those are okay for charges, too, as long 
as the player doesn't see them.

Once he performs an act whose outcome is known TO OTHER PLAYERS, no charge. If 
he's been trying to scam free charges out of you and he howls in protest, ask 
him why he ever thought he understod how magic works. It is fickle. It is not to 
be taunted and teased. Hell, if a bodybag ever tries to pull anything like that, 
pull a bunch of Self checks on him and break his taboo. And if another PC tries 
to stack the deck for him, withhold charges and suggest that the tie to this 
other person -- who is actively working against his mojo -- is bringing him 
down. A friend of a bodybag eliminating chance from the guy's life is sucking 
out his mojo -- hexing him. Make it into a story. Everybody understands the 
spirit of the entropomancy rules -- and that's how the universe should operate, 
IMO.

There may still be some questions about cases where an NPC knows the outcome. 
Clearly, if this NPC is a no-name NPC (e.g., the train engineer), the charge 
should be okay. Otherwise, only deliberate tampering to protect the adept should 
negate the charge. So an adept rushing a guy holding up a bank with a fake gun 
should still get the charge, unless the goon was sent with a fake gun becasue 
his boss knew the adept would be there and didn't want him hurt. (The charge 
would also be eliminaged, of course, if the adept knew the gun was fake.) This 
could lead to an interesting story: an enemy of the adept decides that he's 
going to become the guy's "guardian angel" to eliminate his mojo.

Anyway, that's how I'd do it.

-Matt Norwood

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