[UA] Alternate UA Magic

[John C]

>From: Royal Minister of Stuff <yokeltania at yahoo.com>
>Reply-To: ua at lists.uchicago.edu
>To: ua at lists.uchicago.edu
>Subject: [UA] Alternate UA Magic
>Date: Tue, 9 Apr 2002 10:42:31 -0700 (PDT)
>
>
>--- John C <john1x at hotmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > But to return to Gaiman, I found that _American
> > Gods_ got me thinking about
> > an alternate magic system for UA.  Anyone out there
> > familiar with GURPS
> > Vodoo?  Steal the system from that (long story
> > short: Adepts call upon the
> > Loa to "ride" them, and work magic through them),
> > make some changes to make
> > it fit into the UA rules, and have the players
> > calling upon Gaiman's "New
> > Gods".
> >
> > There something about the idea of rituals designed
> > to call upon the God of
> > Cars that really amuses me.
>
>Well, it's that "level of abstraction" thing that
>Stolze is always going on about, i'nnit?
>
>I, of course, love the GURPS sourcebooks and am
>looking through Phil Master's Arabian Nights right
>now.  For instance, if you wanted a game with a sort
>of Modern Day Aladdin* feel, you could make demons a
>bit more powerful or revenants a bit easier to control
>and all of a sudden, you've got Djinn.  Or maybe you
>could have a ritual about controlling beings of
>smokeless fire (only to find out it's "electricity")
>and there you go.
>
>I think you could take the same kind of approach with
>Voodoo.  You already have "demons" which can possess
>people.  What if a group of ghostly adepts made
>themselves out to be Loas and developed a small cult
>or contacted a houngan or a boca (waitaminute, that
>means "mouth," what's a zombi master sometimes called?
>Bouch? No, that means "mouth," too, different
>language... Tango?  No, that happens IN the Boca...)

For a while now, my approach to this has been that ghosts that are old 
enough and powerful enough actually *become* demons, or gods, or what have 
you...or, more accurately, they honestly believe themselves to be such.  The 
Loas would be a case in point; they've been playing a role for so long that 
they have forgotten their original identities, and have become consumed by 
their godly identities.  After all, the only people who recognize and 
respect them think of them that way....

My feeling is that your average ghost doesn't have much in the way of a 
strong self-image after a few years of death.  They become reduced to their 
obsessions, with a few scraps of personality left clinging.  They'll 
desperately adopt anything that promises to give them an identity.

This would be distinict from the "Modern Gods", though, who would fit into a 
simliar cosmological place as the Clergy in standard UA.

John Crimmins
john1x at hotmail.com
http://www.voicent.com/~johncrim

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