[UA] Re: UA Digest, Vol 5, Issue 172

[Mike Lake]

F. A. R. wrote:
> But please, can we have some symbolic tension that's
> actually tense? And symbolic? This is a far cry from the examples set by
> Entropomancy and Personomancy. We may not be Tynes or Stolze, but that
> doesn't mean we ought to lower our standards even a single notch.
>   
I found your rant--if anything this mild and polite could be called a 
rant--welcome, but then, you're not directing it at me.

Perhaps a reminder that UA uses not just the term "symbolic tension," 
but "paradox" is in order.  I'd recommend any would-be -mancy designers 
to embrace the word, but too few people understand what a paradox is.  
Paradox isn't just odd behavior; it's an internal contradiction, and, 
like contradictions in mathematics, the contradictions in magic turn 
back upon the source.  Maybe "Catch-22" still has enough teeth to 
capture the sense I'm trying to convey.

Paradox is the marrow of many canon schools.  Plutomancers control money 
by adopting a lifestyle where they can't actually *use* money.  
Dipsomancers control the world by losing control of themselves.  
Epideromancers control the body by destroying it--and a body destroyed 
is beyond further control.  (Incidentally, this theme could be exploited 
by a Glutomancy school: Glutomancy is about acquisition, and that which 
you acquire is consumed in the process.)  Personamancers gain iconic 
power at the expense of their own selves... including, ultimately, the 
desire for and will to accomplish whatever they sacrificed themselves to 
achieve, because the mask doesn't share that obsession.  In a more 
general, vague, and symbolic sense, -mancers become slaves to the very 
thing they seek to control.

A recurring theme in UA magic is that it's a losing game; you can't get 
out of it more than you put into it, and you quite probably get less, 
maybe even a lot less.  -Mancers occasionally do what they do because 
they haven't grasped this fact, or because they're desperate, but most 
often, they do it because they are obsessive, to an unhealthy degree 
over unhealthful things.  They do magic because they're so deep into 
their obsession that they can't even imagine the mundane world behaving 
in a properly mundane fashion.  They'd keep feeding symbolic coins into 
their mystical slot machines even if magic never spilled out into the 
tray.  Magic isn't empowering; it's a silver lining to a 
self-destructive world view..  If your character can make a reasonable 
cost-benefit analysis of his obsession, he's not deep enough into it to 
do magic at all.  I, for one, find the UA canon schools that do not put 
the paradox front-and-center dull; your take may differ.

Try framing a prospective school's symbolic tension as a Catch-22.  If 
using the mojo doesn't at least risk rendering the sacrifice that powers 
it moot, if it isn't likely to spiral out of control, and if it doesn't 
make players wonder whether it's all really worth it, please keep trying.