[UA] RE: UA Digest, Vol 4, Issue 271

[Mike Dewar]

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Message: 2
Date: Sun, 27 Aug 2006 13:04:12 -0400
From: "Eric Bertish" <eric.bertish at gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [UA] The Hotel of Renunciation
To: "The Unknown Armies RPG Mailing List"
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> That's how I tend to see it, at least: Being an Agent involves
> carrying the Room's agenda (or rather, what you *think* the Room's
> agenda is), which involves more than simply bringing people to the
> Room to get Renounced, something that may not be practical or feasible

It occurs to me that the Stratosphere, unlike the OU, doesn't give one whit 
about whether or not the tiger wakes up. So perhaps this room wishes to 
*increase* the presence of magic/the occult/grand high weirdness in the 
world -- basically renouncing the notion that the world is staid, mundane, 
predictable.

This approach has several nice things going for it:

1)  Adventure latitude -- as long as you're doing something which is 
promoting magic or opposing the mundane, you are in accord with the House's 
wishes.

2) No lack of ideas -- you can freely plumb all sorts of wacky stuff. Ken 
Hite's _Suppressed Transmission_ books alone should provide you with plenty 
of material.

And best of all....

333)  A built-in war against the Sleepers. Who, now that I think about it, 
might very well be serving a Room of their very own. The players could very 
well end up as pawns in a war between two archetypes: Overt vs Covert. The 
Magician/Priest/Shaman vs The Hermetic/Ascetic/Cloistered.


 *****

Not sure about the sustainability of such a campaign. The Maks at least have
a "gently use magick for betterment of masses" manifesto - a Room that just
wants to blow the lid and isn't particularly concerned about the Tiger has
it comparatively simple. 

After all, all it takes is a one adept to do something blatant on national
TV, or maybe just open a magick door through the Room into say...the White
House and things get very ugly very fast. 

Either the PCs crack the paradigm in one very short display, or the Sleepers
find out about them and crush them like bugs. Sure, the Sleepers aren't
infallible, but they're well-armed and -equipped enough that the PCs should
get stomped with overwhelming force. It's one thing to be on the Sleeper's
Hit List. It's another thing entirely to be at the TOP of that list. 

Needless to say, you could look at a game in which the PCs break the occult
news in the start and then make the remainder about them surviving the
consequences of that (riots, Sleepers, governments etc.)...but that's not
really UA's world anymore. 

I guess the Room could have a "gentler agenda" - something about provoking
individual magickal enlightment - taking people who have the potential for
adepthood, but have been so comfortable/sheltered/sane that they've never
been driven down that road, and then cracking them into true mystic power.
It doesn't care what type of magick or what they do with it, just that more
people start exerting their obsessions on reality. 

Then the Sleepers might still want to step on this "adept-factory" if they
find out about it, and other groups might want to exploit it - TNI would
drool at the possibility of "mass-produced magick". 

Thoughts? 

- Mike