[UA] The Hotel of Renunciation

[Mike Dewar]

-----Original Message-----
From: Chad Eagleton [mailto:ceagleto at yahoo.com] 
Sent: 29 August 2006 04:53 PM
To: mike.dewar at crysp.co.za; The Unknown Armies RPG Mailing List
Subject: RE: [UA] The Hotel of Renunciation


--- Mike Dewar <mike.dewar at crysp.co.za> wrote:
  
>> My impression, based on the Rooms as written, is
>> that they're not especially
>> good at communicating their goals to their minions.
>> Roscommons had no idea
>> he was serving Upheaval - he thought he was serving
>> pure Renunciation and
>> was the only one of his kind.
***
>I don't have the book in front of me, so I can't
>comment on Lila Morgan. But as far as Roscommons--Is
>it really that he didn't "grasp" his rooms goal as
>much as it was he didn't understand that he served one
>room and there were others. And as long as the spirit
>of the idea is there, does the room care? You know if
>the room is about Upheaval, does it care if you
>fulfill that through politics? I mean Upheaval is
>still being served.


***

Got to disagree. According to the book, Roscommons also misunderstood his
Room - he considered it pure Renunciation. 

That's also part of what attracted me to the idea - that the PCs are serving
a cosmic force which they don't fully understand, and whose goals are not
entirely clear. They may become clearer over time, but it's not a case of:
Alex Abel handles you a dossier. 

An ethically dubious Renunciation becomes even more dubious if you're not
always sure why you did it. Ah, self-doubt...


***
>Sure, but then we revive the whole discuss who we had
>a while back about whether you're average adept
>recognizes everyone else in his own terms.
***
Wasn't there for that so can't comment. 


>In my example the players were from the Room of
>Science are said adept were suggesting they work their
>magic on an avatar of the Savage he was having
>problems with. Putting the whammy on an avatar of the
>Savage seems like it would fit in the Room's agenda
>pretty well.
***

But, to return to my point about Rooms being easy to misunderstand. If
*Agents* frequently don't fully understand them, how do total strangers
successfully identify the Room of Science's true agenda? Okay, Science
(being a fairly obvious change - the homeless man starts working in quantum
physics) may be pretty self-evident to everyone, including its own Agents,
so it's possibly a bad example. What about a subtler Agenda, like Upheaval? 

Also: 
It's Global level knowledge to know that there are Agents of Renunciation
out there, and that they can flip around your identity. 

It's Cosmic to know about the House and that different Rooms have their own
Agendas and to maybe know one or two Agendas. 

That's why I still say that the majority of the OU, IF they know about
Renunciation at all, are likely to respond with fear to this totally random
(as far as they know) force. After all, no threat is greater to an obsessive
magick worker than being forced to Renounce his own psyche.
Comparatively few would have the knowledge and the guts to try and ally with
something like that. 

***
>> They're
>>slightly off-side from the Underground, as opposed
>> to right in the thick of
>> it. Ironically, Sleeper games run to a similar vibe.
>> Sleepers may have a
>> presence in the OU in their "private capacity", but
>> they don't advertise
>> their Sleeper allegiances to the OU as they're well,
>> very unpopular.

>Sure, but again we hit what we talking about before.
>How much other OUers know about you. I ran a Sleepers
>game for quite sometime. My players characters had
>"buddies" in the occult underground. But they didn't
>know what the players could do, because they'd never
>seen them "working". They also had "normal" people as
>friends who knew nothing about any of the weird stuff
>going on.


***

Again, I'm not saying that the PCs can't have private lives (and "private
OU" lives, in which the other weirdos haven't seen them "working"). What I'm
saying is that I still think the focus of the campaign needs to be on the
Renunciation as the main plot, and that's the whole reason for my query.
Running *that* aspect of the game, not coming up with other aspects to
replace it or support it. 

- Mike