sophist

Given all your viwes about postmodernism, all interesting and justified in their own right, I return to my thought if UA does unterstand the dynamics of postmodernism in a sense who those posmodern writers would have understood it.

To be clear, the question is not wether the authors of UA misunderstood postmodernism!
They wanted to do a game of “posmodern horror” and use the concepts they found lying around. The Question I want to pose is this: are the definitions with guide the interpretation of what is postmodern (i.e. Merriam Webster) only superficial reconcructions of postmodernism?
And woundn’t these defintions misguide UA into a parody of the crirical potential inside the postmodern writings?

Obviously, I believe this to be the case. The Systems and rules of: characters and things and human beings are simple enpough and carry no applicable cosmological content.
But at one point, by the way of making the character more “real”, a modern theory of subjectivity is introduced: The madness meters.

Implied here is the theory that magic moves people away from a primal wholeness, this wholeness being normalcy. “PoMoMa” has especially emotove passages on how miserable and broken the life of the adept is, and “Stratosphere” echos that for the avatar.

But instead of taking this broken state as a critique of the state of affairs, it becomes a guiding totality. Even when “Americas chackras are awoken”, the only thing dukes and cabals can think about is fighting for a prize. Fate is once again decided by bloodshed and the “winning of the fittest”.

Antagonism thus does not become productive, as deconstruction proses to be, but a cynical revel in the death throes of modernism, endlessly repeating modern sentiments of the totality of truth.

It is in this respect foremost that UA maybe contain more of “an age that is dying” than one “coming to birth”.

In the end post-modernism is about understanding the truth that the other holds, not plunging so deeply into your own that its limits destroy you. But here is the point where the reconstruction of “broken modernism” from a modern perspective and the implications in the wrings of those who are being reconcructed fall apart.

For all it aesthetic indication of post-modernism,
at heart, UA still fights modern fights.

(see: Beckett “Endgame”)

If we can do the PbP here, that is no problem for me. It’s cool, even =). I developed the plot now in major ways, so that it is now easier for you Americans to hook up with my plot (See link above), i. e. you can come to the place of action from outside, too. No Germans required.

Reading Alan Moore and Adorno didn’t
hurt either. =)

If you want to play please submit characters (or at least outlines) including the school and/or Archtype you want. Mention any special skills you want.

Oh, and if we can play here pls let me know.
(You can post your char here, but if we cannot ultimatly play here, you should be aware of the possibilty that we might need to migrate to ENWorld)

I started the thread at EN World.

I would like you all to post around 3-4 times
per week, I could handle every weekday at most, and my minimum is about 3 times
per week, so that we can get things done. I bleive that is not too much to ask.

I am sorry if my last comment came across as if I think UA as inferior. I just want to break out this mold of self-destruction into which many schools of magic are cast, because I see UA as having a very good apporach to integrating the symbolism of magic into gameplay. And i do like the charge system.
In addition, the sanity system works great, too.

OTOH, what really disturbs me that evil dominators like Abel and the Sleepers are supposed to be the good guys of the setting. (e.g. see the description of the Sleeper sourcebook at the very end of UA2).PoMoMa has pages upon pages how the pursuit of magic ruins your life and how many people end up insane.
In many ways, the idea of domination, abuses of power and
antisocial practice of magic are deeply modern puritanism.
Aspects that all the postmodern and poststructuralist philosophers I know of would reject. (and being an avid student of philosophy, I studied quite a few)

Please understand that critizing UA is for me a way of gaining a somewhat deeper understanding of the points
contained therein. Particulary if other insightful individuals add their POV, too. It is a way of philosophy that has been practised since Sokrates & Plato.

I am also testing the reach of the ideas of UA, because many of them are so good that they could be used to improve other games, while the modern puritanism still deeply
ingrained in the occult underground backdrop could be deleted.

If there’s interest i could post a longer analysis of the “puritanic horror morality” baggage in an otherwise brilliant game.

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So, in the end there is no support for this so-called tiger that will devour
us all, if we use a minor charge in public. And even if there were fear of
the unknown that dives people to do outragous things, this fear is born out of
ignornance. Ignorance the Sleepers preserve. Thus the Sleepers do nothing but
perpetuating their own existence. Not funny, is it?
And there is more. While reseaching the history of the underground, I found no
mention of the sleepers before World War II. This is most curious. The journals
and underground treament in my possession are quite conclusive on that point.
All this reeks of manipulation.

In the end the “Sleepers” are not our protectors. They are people with a hidden
agenda who make a sport of killing people. If a duke can hold them accountable,
they talk about “evil sorcerers” or a riot myth that doesn’t exist. It clearly
fits the “Sleepers” that dead men can’t talk, no?
The only sleep these killers have to with is the sleep of reason. And the sleep
of reason, as we all know, breeds monsters.
Join our crusade to free the underground and destroy the Sleepers!! Our cabal of
dukes and several other will do everything we can to ruin them. Schemeing
Sects like these and their friend Alex Abel are the true evils of magic today.