Shawn

A possible taboo – You can’t ever lack cell phone coverage. Got a long distance trip? Avoid planes – they make you turn off your phone. Car trip might work, but you’d better get those coverage maps to avoid “dead zones”… and the middle of North Dakota is a bitch. Also, you should hope that you never have to go too far into a big building or basement – the signal can’t always reach in there.

Sure, this could suck, but hey – nobody said being an adept was easy. Besides, it produces the correct obsessive confirmation that “I’ve got signal, right?”

Next question: what was the “Can you hear me now?” guy up to? Mapping the mystic ley lines of the cell phone network?

First, I think that the New Inquisition and the Sleepers are not really cast as the “good guys”. From thier own perspective, they are doing good. From an outside perspective, they may be doing more good than harm, but it’s hard to tell. Certainly, both of them have high goals, but they are using dark means to get there.

That is a constant theme in Unknown Armies – the question of “what are you willing to do to get what you want?” Are you willing to cut yourself to get the power to kill the child rapist? Are you willing to risk your life to save your friend? Are you willing to live a life conforming to mystical forms in order to make the world a better place when/if you ascend?

True, UA casts magic in a somewhat negative light. Most people could not be adepts and live normal lives. This is because UA focuses upon the fact that in order to gain something, you must sacrifice something. It is assumed that adepts are sacrificing thier normal lives.

When you say “puritanic horror morality”, I’m assuming that you’re referring to the fact that there are magic schools fueled by sex, drugs, gambling and alcohol, and it’s assumed that these are self-distructive actions. The answer is that these aren’t depicted as self-distructive, any more than an interest in history or an interest in mechanics. It’s obsessing about these things which is self-destructive.

Which ties into the idea that magic is self-distructive. Yes, that’s an element of UA. Without it, UA becomes a game of powerful mages who hide from society, similar to the World of Darkness games. Basically it removes the “transcendental horror” from the game. If you’re problem is that magic is depicted as evil, then I would ask what you define as evil. If evil is self-destructive, then that means that people must choose if the ends – magical power – are worth the means – slow self-destruction.

I haven’t read the book yet, but I’m assuming taboo for the herpemancers is “cannot give up a snake to anything other than a good home, and can’t harm a snake.” Ok, fine. Couldn’t you buy the snakes, get the charges, use them up and become ten years younger… then kill the snakes? Sure, it’s cruel, and it’s sick, and it doesn’t seem like something that someone who worshiped a snake would do. But heck, that just means you’ve got to be insane somehow – we always hurt the ones we love, after all.

As I said, I haven’t read the book yet, so I might be in left field here.

Now, the clincher question…

When the fleshworker in question is contemplating this as a way to get a major charge, do you tell him how much he has to sacrifice first? I like not telling him. Make him wonder. Then, if he only gets a sig. at first, make him smash the other one (if he can make the stress tests…)

Hm. I see a dangerous possibility for someone to get rules lawyery with this. If I need to loose a hand to get a major charge, what if I chop off the fingers first one at a time? Do I get five significant and then a major?

Me personally, I’d hit ’em with more violence and self checks, and hopefully they wouldn’t take this route in the first place.