[UA] Wraith/UA crossover

[rowan at media.mit.edu]

I've thought a lot about UA, Kult and the WoD as worlds that are pretty
close to each other in setting and cosmology, but each with its own
focus. UA is very playable and focuses on the human side of things. It's
a great game for playing everyone from Joe Schmoe to a whacked-out mage
trying to achieve immortality to a business scion trying to control the
world. The ins and outs of various supernatural entities and phenomena
are glossed over -- they shouldn't be immediately relevant to PCs, who
are all very HUMAN. The WoD is also playable but focuses on non-humans,
to the point of diminishing the humanity of the PCs and the world they
live in. Kult never struck me as playable, in part because it tries to
leave open both the human and superhuman options.

I really like bits of each of the systems, and really hate bits of...
well, honestly, only parts of Kult and the WoD. (Go Greg and John!) I've
thought about expanding some of the UA cosmology and its supernatural
settings and subcultures by using the WoD and Kult to flesh out things
like:

1. What's it like to be a demon? Who are the Cruel Ones? What motivates
demons, and what are the mechanics of their existence beyond the veil?

2. Are there societies of supernatural beings (e.g. Revenants,
Unspeakable Servants, Avatars)? What culture have they formed, and what
is their history?

3. What is the nature of the Invisible Clergy? What lies behind the
visions of the Statosphere? Do humans sometimes become more involved in
these visions than simple, momentary hallucination?

The first one provides the richest material, I think. I've thought about
using the Societies of Madness from Kult or the Changelings from WoD for
(2), although the former is a pretty farcical and immature view of
mental illness and the latter is overly medieval and romanticized to
work for me in UA. For (3), I'd love to use some of the great material
on Metropolis and the Awakened from Kult.

So, let's stick with (1):

- UA wraiths could use their three Passions in life to collect pathos in
the afterlife. I've thought about implementing a Passion score in UA
based on someone's degree of mental balance: basically a gradation from
non-hardened to completely hardened, with passions gradually getting
harder to evoke as someone slides into sociopathology. This Passion
score could exist into death, meaning that the more insane (i.e., less
hardened, more failed madness meters) are most able to channel the
passion of the living.

- I'd use Kult's Inferno and its minions as the Cruel Ones in UA. It's
never entirely clear in Kult whether the Nepharites, Razindes, etcetera
were originally humans in years or millennia past, and I like that
ambiguity. What _is_ clear is that there are sadistic, warped, immortal
cyborg demons who torture the souls of the good and bad alike in Hell,
and they pay special attention to those souls who escape and try to make
contact with the living.

- Kult also has some dark magical bits that work well with UA schools.
Thanatomancy is similar to Kult rituals that involve opening a portal
into the Underworld by killing someone or something, and using that
portal to commune with the dead or draw on the powers of death.

Anyway. There's lots of good stuff in there, and it doesn't need to
conflict with the UA cosmology. But it's probably a good idea to keep it
from overshadowing the human focus of the game.

Matt Norwood

> I mean, Revenants in UA are already pretty similar to Wraith's, the = 
> rules system is all based around 10's anyway and Passions aren't a = 
> million miles from obsessions etc.... (and Stolze has done some Wraith

> = stuff...)=20
> 
> Then what about using some of the cooler Wraith skinlands
> stuff in UA? =
> What about Benedanti (spl) duking it out with the Sleepers when the =
> discover that they've been storing up Ghosts in that Buddhist =
> temple...or what about the Orphic circle full of 
> Thantomancers, with a =
> small "old school" crypto presence?
> 
> And of course, you'd need Cruel Ones (are we ever gonna find
> out quite =
> what these are?).=20
> 
> Just kicking around ideas...


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