[UA] Re: UA digest, Vol 1 #1257 - 17 msgs

[mattias.ostklint at husqvarna.se]

Big answer, deserves a big reply, no? Ok, here we go:

>   Message: 20
>   Date: Thu, 27 Mar 2003 04:13:37 -0800 (PST)
>   From: Chris Cooper <insectking at yahoo.com>
>   To: ua at lists.uchicago.edu
>   Subject: [UA] Writing new schools
>   Reply-To: ua at lists.uchicago.edu
>
>   I want to stress that this is MY view on the topic. I
>   get a daily digest so have no other clue to what has
>   been posted here - before and after.

Duly noted. I get it as a digest to.

>   So Mattias...

Yo, Chris?

>   You want to tell people what they can and cannot write
>   up as magic schools or archetypes. Well you can't
>   because I said so.

No. I wanted to piss people off and start them thinking. Worked for you!

>   Your point of view assumes the would-be adept is
>   studying the school because he wants to get magic.
>   This is wrong because you're describing old-school
>   sorcery.

I don't think I am, but I could be wrong, go on!

>   Firstly,

Yo.

>   ?Adept-styled magic is not actually about the magic at
>   all. Adepts are unhealthily obsessive about their
>   focus obsession that eventually reality becomes
>   schizophrenically loose enough to bend to the adepts
>   wishes. The more the adept self-referentially enforces
>   his way of looking and dealing with the universe as
>   the only correct way, the more the universe does what
>   its told, proving the adepts way is right.

I don't agree. Kleptomancers are not obsessed with stealing. They are
obsessed with ripping the parts of peoples souls they have left attached to
their possessions away and using it as they see fit. Someone obsessed with
stealing will merely make an exceptional thief. Every adept I have seen
published are obsessed with (from the first edition)
Magick's history and historical magick, Mabel Rinegold
Transgressing the laws of reality with magick, Dirk Allen
Magick, specifically, she's obsessed with the tangles of historical truth
and belief that form her fathers school of sorcery, Angela Forsythe
Magick and the societies that form around it, Cletus Crowe
The influence that the past magickally exerts on the present and the
future, Monica Barberry
The magickal connection between blind chance and deliberate action, Harvey
Duopoulous

And that's just the last five adepts in the book (exept a third of Bill).
Or from page 32 in 1:st ed "(If you want to play an adept ? someone who
follows a school of magick ? you must pick "magick" or something closely
tied to your use of magick as your obsession. Only the terminally
fascinated ever get good enough at magick to make it work.)"

How is that for an obsessive bit of besserwisdom?
The first adept I had playing in my first MUAC, I allowed to have stealing
as obsession as kleptomancer. It was WAY to powerful. I say that rule is
there for a reason.

>   And that's all magic is, you tell the universe to do
>   something your way and it does it.

There's a sacrifice involved, you know?

>   Magic is a by-product of the adept's obsession. A way
>   of saying you are so screwy, reality has eventually
>   gone screwy with you. To decide what an obsession is,
>   is something your adept would get a sexual buzz about.
>   Any sort of sexual congress with the obsession
>   involved will give the adept a satisfying orgasm.

Some people are obsessed with washing their hands. I can see a school built
around this. But the difference between an adept and a cleanliness-freak is
that the adept washes his hand for magick. The other guy just gets an
orgasm.

>   Saying the phobomancers are extinct because of pop
>   culture acting as some sort innoculation against fear
>   doesn't compute. People have been using fear as a
>   source of entertainment for millenia not to suddenly
>   start now.

I think it works, and they specifically say it's not around anymore?

>   All the phobomancers are alive and well in Brazil. As
>   well as the few remaining, dying SS magicians can be
>   called alive and well.

Oh, I really dig the idea that the last few phobomancers live from
frightened streetkids in Brazil. But it is not a school that propagates.

>   The magic taboo is actually an obsession taboo. If
>   your prototype adept would violate his obsession ?
>   violate the very thing that keeps him getting up in
>   the morning to stay unemployed ? then he violates the
>   privilege to do magic. An adept on Prozac could
>   neither get more charges, nor spend any. And if he
>   violates his taboo, his taboo is violated ? he loses
>   all charges.

What are you trying to say here? I don't get it.

>   In Postmodern Magic (pg.35), two new forms of magic
>   where given. One of which is the mageekian, the lone
>   nut that discovers a new personal school or a twisted
>   variant of an existing one. These feature paradoxes
>   because the magic is an externalised, actualised
>   fantasy. A weirded-out spider magician that is an
>   arachnophobe is a paradox to use.

YES! As I said, "Give me a cool adept?". It is an idea that rocks, but it
is not a "school" that you could sell anyone else on. Now, how would he
charge up? Minor charge: let a spider walk on his body. Significant: eat a
large spider, swallow without chewing, Major charge: Live naked in a room
covered with spiders, at least 10% poisonus, eating nothing but spiders and
never removing one from his body, for one month. Self checks apply all the
way:-)

>   I would insist the cantomancer's taboo would be to
>   create any original music. He may play original music
>   as a session musician, remix someone's song or as a
>   member of a boy band. But as soon as the  cantomancer
>   discovers the normal method of creating music or by
>   redoing a cover that becomes more popular than the
>   original's release (being obscure doesn't help), he
>   loses all charges. The cantomancer is a whore to
>   music, a wannabe musician without any talent to do it
>   on his own.

Are you saying Puff Daddy could be a Canto? And "as soon as the cantomancer
discovers the normal method of creating music? ?he loses all charges"? So
now that he has discovered it, he can cast magick no more? It's not
something you can forget having discovered you know, not in that school
anyway?

>   A minor charge would be listening to music solidly for
>   one hour ? any music.
>
>   A significant charge would be performing solidly for
>   an hour ? live or in studio.
>
>   A major charge would be just playing a dead platinum
>   musician's unrecorded song. The musician would have
>   some way of never playing music again for this to work
>   and his name would have to be known by at least half
>   the world's population.

No, to easy. You can make a comfortable living making 4-6 significant
charges a day. I don't like that. It would be like accountomancy, getting
charges from doing peoples accounts?

>   Secondly,
>
>   ? I can make any Avatar as goddamned post-modern as I
>   want. If I build my Messenger-channelling creep and
>   make him a Thanatomancer to boot and call the whole
>   caboodle Marty the Assassin, the Messenger of Death ?
>   I have a post-modern Avatar! Wheeeeee! Much like
>   Dermott Arkane doing the whole Heisenberg's Messenger
>   is redressing the Messenger in a post-modern way.

Yep, no objections there. You just can't make any postmodern archetypes
without my say so. And I don't say so.

>   All post-modernism is (in art, my area) dressing up
>   old or traditional forms, updating them with
>   pop-cultural references. Another big thing with
>   post-modernism is its lack of descriptors. There is no
>   single set of rules that determines

Oh, cool, let's discuss what post-modernism is and truly signifies, it's
not like it's been flogged to death 25 times already.

>   I created Guede as an Avatar replacement of the Shaman
>   merely because the character I wrote up about was a
>   little more hard core and sneaky than the previous
>   incumbent. As just because as a GM I feel the Guede ?
>   otherwise known as the necromancer or witch doctor (in
>   Africa) ? has become the modern replacement of the
>   shaman, he ascends.

Of course. Doesn't mean I have to like it. I like zombies as much as the
next guy, and my players will run into them if they head down to New
Orleans, or just any odd place I feel like it. But they will be made with a
ritual with plenty of black goat blood, chanting and symbols like these:
http://www2.msstate.edu/~amc11/achupa/vodun/loa.html
And the godwalker of the shaman is living in the jungles of Papua New
Guinea, and Western New Age schmucks have nothing on him.

>   Thirdly
>   Anything can be anything else ? in the same way the
>   Pornomancers are adepts not channellers, and both
>   Messengers and Infomancers exist. There's no Unknown
>   Armies Watchdog Committee of the Purity of Gaming
>   Magic Rules that will drag you off at three in the
>   morning if you don't run to specifics.

Of course there is! John, Greg, tell him!-)

>   So at the end of my argument I raise your beating me
>   with a belt and buckle with my prising your kneecaps
>   off with a hammer and chisel.

Righty!

Mattias, hobbling off with his kneecaps in a plastic bag



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