[UA] Re: Adepts/Avatars (was Thoughts on Fan Based...)

[George Guy]

*...difficult to avoid, or archetypes...

On 5/3/06, George Guy <meebler at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Yes.  I agree.  Therefore, there shouldn't be adept/avatar comboes that
> are difficult to avoid archetypes that easy to stumble upon while following
> a certain school.
>
>
> On 5/3/06, Chad Eagleton <ceagleto at yahoo.com> wrote:
> >
> >      In my earlier comments I never said it wasn't
> > possible to be both an adept and an avatar. I was
> > speaking of rarity, not feasibility. Being both should
> > be rare and probably drive you crazy; not to mention,
> > make you really really lonely. Even in the main rules
> > it says this: "the three forms of magic are not
> > exclusionary". And then it goes on to say that, yes
> > realistically, you'd be crazy.
> >      And if we look at the three examples from the
> > book, the ones that X mentioned, what do we see?
> > First, Gerlinde Unger. The write-up mentions that
> > she's what—crazy. Juggling her roles of Sleeper,
> > Cryptomancer, Mystical Hermaphrodite avatar, and cabal
> > leader in Berlin has driven her totally insane. And
> > her avatar rating is constantly in flux.
> >      All the things she is grew out of her obsession
> > with power—magical power. Not because she sat down to
> > plan her life out and thought, you know I could follow
> > this avatar path, pretty easy and it'd help me be a
> > better Cryptomancer, because the
> > taboos…blah…blah…blah. That sort of thinking comes
> > from you the player setting down and thinking how you
> > could be a better badass.
> >      I don't think any player should start out with
> > all those sorts of things. I think there's enough
> > role-playing potential in just one. And if they want
> > to be both, that should be the thrust of the game.
> > Look at the Unger background again and you see it. She
> > started out knowing nothing, but wanting to piss her
> > parents off. Hence her association with the occult.
> > Once there she saw a way to power that didn't care if
> > she was a "girl". Then things began to snowball in her
> > quest for power as she picked up something new and
> > then something else and so on until her whole sense of
> > self eroded and now she's nuts. Powerful, but nuts.
> > There's a game. There's a background. That's
> > appealing. Not, I sat down and read through the book
> > and I think these things go together without too much
> > conflict, and, well, this avatar path will help me be
> > a better adept. That's power gaming to me. And if that
> > works for you, that's fine. But it works for you
> > purely because you want a better badass.
> >      I could excuse it if you had a whole story behind
> > it and were capable of role-playing all those
> > conflicts in their complexity. Or if I were the GM,
> > and you came to me and said, I want to be this and
> > this—let's do it in the course of the entire story.
> >      Then we have Vernon Henshaw. Pretty normal. No
> > raving insanity. But he's a badass. Pure and simple—a
> > badass. Hell, he's even nice to old people, helps them
> > cross the street. Probably calls his mother every
> > Sunday.  Honestly to me, not a particularly
> > interesting character. But is he supposed to be—I
> > don't think so. He's just a badass. He's a Sleeper.
> > He's the guy you don't want on your trail.
> >      And again look at his background. One thing
> > slowly grew out of another. He didn't come striding
> > into the occult underground a Hunter/Bibliomancer.
> >      Finally, there's the Freak. What is the Freak?
> > S/he is a cosmic level lord. No stats given in the
> > book. It's an enigmatic monster. A…plot device.
> >      So, of the three examples from the book—two are
> > from Hush, Hush…the book about the Sleepers, who are
> > feared by everybody. Of those two, one is insane and
> > the other is just a badass. While the third example is
> > a plot device. A Deus ex machina. Able to do whatever
> > you want him/her to do. All three are basically the
> > boogeymen for your players in the course of the game.
> >      Seems pretty rare and special to me.
> >      Without rarity, I think you lose the feel of the
> > game. The world isn't chocked full of adepts or
> > avatars. For the most part, they don't swim in the
> > same ponds. When one encounters the other, chances are
> > they look at each from their own standpoint. Oh, he's
> > an adept who practices some weird magic with not a lot
> > of effects. Or, oh, he's channeling an avatar, but
> > he's putting all this needless crap in the way. Either
> > way, I don't see how that fits into a mindset of being
> > one and looking at the other as a means to be better
> > at what you do.
> >      And then to make a mixture of the two common?
> > Enter my White Wolf comment…to me you might as well
> > make every homeless man an Urbanomancer, every hot
> > chick a Pornomancer, stick a Dipso in every bar, make
> > sure the bike messenger beside you is channeling his
> > archetype, give every fast food restaurant its own
> > magic conspiracy, make sure all the villains are
> > Executioner/Thantomancers and bring on the demons.
> >     But beyond all that—hey, it's whatever works for
> > you.
> >
> >
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