[UA] The Future of UA?

[Zach Johnson]

 > I think a lot of gaming is tied up in power fantasies, and the steady
> accumulation of additional power. Typically, the price you pay for increased
> power is spending lots of time demonstrating how powerful you already are --
> i.e., use your power to gain experience to improve your power to use your
> power to gain experience etc. So, the wielding of power itself makes you
> more powerful, and the whole thing is a very rewarding, reinforcing
> experience.
> 
> UA offers a fair amount of power, in the RPG sense: spells, magic artifacts,
> guns, and so on. But it extracts a sizable price, as often as possible: the
> costs of doing magick, the madness meters, the deadliness of combat. To some
> extent, the game tells players they don't want power, and should even feel
> guilty for seeking it.
> 
> Which, it turns out, does not appeal to most gamers. This really souldn't
> have been a surprise, but I thought there were more of us out there.

And yet, that can't be the 'problem' because the carrot/stick ratio isn't
nearly as bad as 'Call of Cthulu', which is what I always liked about the
game.  In CoC, madness is a countdown to NPC-dom, and magick is
EVIL.  There is no possible reward for using magick; no higher goal that
can be achieved (other than undoing the bad things of other magickal
effects).  In UA, you could always shoot for the Statosphere or the Grail
that is a Major charge, and have something good happen.  The rub is that
you will do horrible things to get there.  There are no Lawful Good
adepts.  Which is how different from the d20 wizard saying 'I have to kill
how many things to get how much XP to get how much more mojo' (I know,
different paradigms).

But still, I feel that 'Power and Consequences' is a worthy concept for
exploration for a tabletop, and that UA delivered.

Z