Subject: Re: RES: [UA] Old groups and power

[Royal Minister of Stuff]

--- Derek Johnson <eclectic at datasync.com> wrote:
I agree with many of your points, except for the idea
of having a special 'talent.'  Aside from the talents
implied in learning any unusual skill, adepts in UA
don't really need any special magical qualities.  All
they have to be is obsessed with the paradox that
makes their magic work.  Anyone could learn to be a
dipsomancer if they obsessed on it.

Had to throw that in.  Something just really irks me
about magic systems where you have to be born special
to chuck mana about.  Apart from being born with a
special tendancy to focus on drinking too much, I mean
really FOCUS, UA seems to say that anyone can learn
any kind of postmodern magic.

> 
> Aside from all that you have to ask yourself what
> makes a magician
> capable of casting magic? Should every scholar of
> Hebrew magic be able
> to build golems? No. Just like not every pitiful
> example of human
> wreckage on Bourbon Str. is a dipsomancer... some
> are just drunks. One
> thing that all magic seems to have in common is a
> 'talent' for it. One
> person could slice and dice their body all day long
> and still just wind
> up under psychiatric care. Someone else might
> casually cut their finger
> while chopping vegetables and inadvertantly put the
> whammy on their
> boyfriend whose an hour late for dinner. 

In UA, as I understand it, the person who whammied
their boyfriend by cutting a finger would have to be
fairly fixated on the idea of transforming the flesh
in the first place.  

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

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Games - play chess, backgammon, pool and more
http://games.yahoo.com/

_______________________________________________
UA mailing list
UA at lists.uchicago.edu
http://lists.uchicago.edu/mailman/listinfo/ua