Questions and Ideas from an Idiot n00b…

Okay, after having been curious about it for quite a while, I just got UA for Christmas. It’s great. It beats the hell out of the WoD, for one, and it has as liberal a helping of Cool Things as Exalted. That said, I’ve already come up with a few questions about the plausibility of the setting, as well as a few ideas for it which I want feedback on. Here goes…

First, the questions:

—Hypocritical Avatars. They don’t make sense. If barely anyone knows about the Invisible Clergy, how can someone choose to follow one for its own sake?

—The Savage and the MVP. These seem more like stereotypes than archetypes. While most of the archetypes are loose, flexible, universal ideas, they have rigid, specific cultural contexts and requirements of lifestyle and appearance that make them seem more like character descriptions than splats. They could easily be re-worked to be more flexible; the Savage could simply be someone who makes a point of living outside of mainstream society and ignoring its expectations and the MVP could be expanded to include any popular and accomplished trendsetter at the top of their game.

—Simple one: at what point does one become an adept? Is it a certain degree of obsession? Seperating one’s mindset from that of the mainstead to a certain extent? Recognition by some supernatural force? What?

—Adept Taboos. A lot of them seem really arbitrary, especially considering that Adepts are supposed to be extremely individualistic. Does it really make sense for *all* Urbanomancers to have a problem with parks?

And now, the ideas. Basically, they’re two new schools of magick:

—Liberturgy. Magick through the defiance of authority and accepted norms, and encouraging other people to do the same. The paradox is that despite holding free will above all else, a liberturge won’t accept that anyone can be content in their servitude, nor acknowledge the value of security. Spells could include causing people to become discontented with their positions in societ, breaking physical bonds and breaking the law while inexplicably not getting caught.

—Zoomancy. Got this idea from the thread where everyone was complaining about Herpemancy. Basically, a Zoomancer would be an obsessive animal lover, whether of a certain type of animal or across the board. Basically what I’m getting at here is the stereotypical crazy lady with fifteen cats, the old man who sits in the park feeding pigeons all day and the like. They’d get charges for things like taking in animals, rescuing injured animals and going out of their way to pamper their animals. Obvious benefits would include talking to animals, commanding them and seeing through their eyes. The paradox would be finding companionship by divorcing yourself from humanity.

Wow. You know a game is great when it makes you think this much two days after receiving it. Thoughts??