[UA] Help me pleeeeeease!

[Ryan Fitch-Davis]

I've really liked the discussion on the Mage vs. UA topic here, and 
after reading it through, I saw something of a historical prespective on it.

Mage was published in 1992 if I remember right. The year the Berlin Wall 
came down. That was the year the '80s /really/ ended. It looked for a 
moment that the world might not get blown into radioactive cinders and 
things changed.  But Mage is an artifact of this time, with it's 
style-over-substance world and millenarian themes. And that's the 
difference. Mage is a /modern/ occult game, and thus is about 
alienation, isolation, and paranoia. And IMHO, it's a darn good one.

UA is, by it's own definition, a /post-modern/ occult game. Alienation 
and isolation are given and accepted as part of everyday existance by 
now, so much that we don't think about it the way people used to. 
Instead, UA looks at the fundimental structure of reality. We're 
alienated and paranoid... but what does that mean? (Modernism with some 
failed Self checks ;) )

I /do/ like them both. I like UA better. Now, if I had this option in 
'92 and was asked, the answer might have been different.

UA might not have made sense to me back then... and I suspect it 
wouldn't have been within the conceptual space of it's authors. Mage had 
trouble selling at the time because many people found it innaccesible.

Annother basic thing I've heard discussed is really a version of the 
simulationist/gamist/dramatist thing. The desire for more intense 
resolution mechanics for non-magic tasks is a cry for dramatism, the 
topic that started this off was someone trying to patch a gamist idea 
into what is essentially a simulationist game.

Anyway, just my own thoughts on things.

-- 
Run down by the drunken taxicabs of Absolute Reality.

sithriel at earthlink.net


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