[UA] UA Bitterness (long and mean)

Thu Apr 11 07:14:00 PDT 2002

Okay, don't get me wrong; I bought UA for a reason, and that reason still 
stands.  I think the basic plot(mages fighting eachother for power) is 
awesome, and I love the magick system to death.

However, I do have a serious problem with the lack of structure.  There's 
just no place to start when designing adventures.  When I first started 
GMing, I liked creating my own worlds from scratch, with plots and cultures 
completely of my own devising.  When I grew a bit longer in the tooth, I 
found that I perfered pre-created game worlds, since several skilled game 
masters have already put the work into describing and characterizing the 
towns, providing conveniant plot points and basically making it easier to 
keep the world whole.  UA is very "build it yourself", in many ways, and 
while I've done that before it's not as easy as it once was.

I can think of one instance where UA would be perfect, and the reason I 
bought it: My Home Group.  They're crazy, and they love working against one 
another.  UA would be right up their alley, and I originally got the game so 
I could play it with them, but My School Group decided they'd like to take 
it for a run, and it fell flat.  Splat.

Oh, the skill system... I don't care about the lack of skills, nobody 
complained.  On the other hand, I find it underpowered.  Characters kept 
failing Notice tests while running around with 70 Mind.  Finally, I let them 
add half their base attribute to their skill, so they could actually suceed.

I like the game, I'll keep the books, and I'll stay on this list, but I'll 
be waiting for a very specific allignment of the stars before I try to run 
UA again.

-Saul

>From: Royal Minister of Stuff <yokeltania at yahoo.com>
>Reply-To: ua at lists.uchicago.edu
>To: ua at lists.uchicago.edu
>Subject: [UA] UA Bitterness (long and mean)
>Date: Wed, 10 Apr 2002 14:39:28 -0700 (PDT)
>
>
>--- Saul Peers <rexmundis at hotmail.com> wrote:
> > I have taken this approach to Voodoo in the one game
> > I've run so far.  I
> > made the Loa(gods) be powerful sorcerer-demons who
> > mounted(possessed) to
> > hougons(priests) for several hours in exchange for
> > magical services
> > performed while controlled.  It worked really well,
> > the only part of the
> > adventure that did.
>
>You really don't like UA much, do ya, Saul?
>
>I keep getting this "your game don't work" vibe from
>these messages.
>
>I know how you feel.  Until I started playing UA, I
>was always poking around Wwolfie stuff, trying to find
>that one thing that seemed so close... yet it never
>worked for me.  I'm still kinda bitter about it (wait,
>no, I tell a lie, I'm really, truly, deeply bitter
>about, but I'm trying to control it.) It always seemed
>like there was potential but it never panned out.
>
>Maybe I'm wrong, since I've always been awful at
>reading between the lines.  Whether I've guessed
>incorrectly or not, what I'm trying to do is improvise
>and put out a call to the many, many experienced
>players and GMs on the list:
>
>UA obviously doesn't work for everybody, some people
>are looking for other stuff, but they drift into this
>game because it almost, but not quite, has what
>they're looking for.
>
>So, the question is this:
>
>What's cool about UA and what isn't? Nothing's perfect
>and there's going to be a new version of the system in
>a short period of time anyway.  What would you use to
>sell the game and what do you think would turn people
>off?  What kind of caveats would you give?
>
>I'll start.  I like the humanist angle that UA takes
>and its focus on characterization.  It uses in-game
>rewards to reinforce emotional roleplaying (most
>specifically, the rules revolving around Passions and
>stimuli.)  The world has a very "toolbox" feel to it,
>lots of little peices you can pick up and put together
>however you want.  Passions, cabals and a focus on
>grubbing for mystic power makes it pretty easy to
>motivate characters and set up subplots.  In addition,
>the skill system is not only wide open, but encourages
>people to make up their own take on everything.
>
>Now, what I don't like:
>Having no skill list scares off half the people who
>would, otherwise, be interested in the game.  I have
>the resources to compensate for this (namely a large
>GURPs library), but other GMs may not.  One page of
>organized "suggested skills" is usually enough to ally
>people's fears.  If there can be a one-sentence blurb
>by each skill, so much the better.  I don't like
>complicated defaults (which is why I don't play GURPs
>for as much as I buy the supplements.)  I prefer
>blanket defaults based on attributes (defaults which
>cover skills that WOULD be under that attribute, it
>would make freebies in driving, general athletics,
>etc. unneccessary) and I really hate telling players
>"you just can't do it, it ain't possible, no way, no
>how."  Maybe you don't think it's so hard to work out
>default rolls for UA and maybe you're right, but I
>think it's a valid criticism.  I don't like the sense
>of overwhelming frequency which seems to pop up in
>canonical UA, so I compensate by bombarding players
>with too much information.  Both can shut a group
>right down, but that's a GMing problem.  (Fortunately,
>Robin Laws' "Robin's Laws" has some tricks to help out
>in that area.)  And, finally, I don't like UA because
>it seems better than anything I could ever write and
>sometimes I wake up a 2am thinking about that.
>
>=====
>-- Rp Bowman, Royal Minister of Stuff
>The Electronic Nation of Yokeltania:
>http://www.geocities.com/yokeltania/
>
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