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Humbug Scoolbus
Apr 25, 2008

The scarlet letter was her passport into regions where other women dared not tread. Shame, Despair, Solitude! These had been her teachers, stern and wild ones, and they had made her strong, but taught her much amiss.
Clapping Larry
It never says what she is. Just that, the day after the Seventh Seal was broken she was so despondent she hadn't been called by something, she drank two fifths of vodka and puked on the church altar. Then it just cuts to the Mayberry description.

I think she is a demon actually.

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Berkshire Hunts
Nov 5, 2009

Hostile V posted:

Oh see I didn't even grok that angle, I thought she was a werewolf or a witch. That makes sense.

IIRC as of the d20 re-release she was possessed by a demon, but that may have been established in one of the free adventures released online.

MonsterEnvy
Feb 4, 2012

Shocked I tell you
Volo's Guide to Monsters: Giants: World Shakers Part 1

Previous Entry

Volo posted:

If there’s one thing I’ve learned in my life, it’s that any empire that rises will fall. They all come crashing down.

Giants are one of the primordial races of D&D coming into the world just after the dragons. The time of Elves, Dwarves and Humankind came long after the Giant's time had faded.

All Giants and their kin know they are sibling races, despite most humanoid races looking more similar then some giant types but lacking a shared heritage. All true giant trace their ancestry to their chief god Annam the All-Father, stating his wide number of consorts is why the various giant types are so different.
Despite the giants being some of the most powerful and fearsome creatures in the world, most have long gone into decline and isolation, and show little of the might of their forebears.

First Impressions
Giants give a pretty big impression to any creatures that encounter them.

Giants Are Huge. Giants can easily tower over buildings, and stuff like a giant's shield could be used a feasting table for humans.
Giants Are Heavy. Rumbling is common near giants, and a giant could easily crush a house or capsize a ship by shifting it's weight.
Giants Are Loud. The footsteps of giants are commonly mistaken for thunder, an a giants shout can rattle doorframes and knock dishes off shelves.
Giants Are Strong. A giant can easily uproot a tree, or kick a cart hard enough to send it smashing into a house, then level the house with the tree trunk club.

Children of the All-Father
Before Human's and Elves came to be, when all Dragons were young. It is said that Annam placed the first giants in the world. "These giants were reflections of his divine offspring and also children of the world, birthed from the marrow of mountains, the hot blood of volcanoes, and the breath of hurricanes."
Annam declared them masters of the world, their great height was so they could easily look down on all they ruled. He also placed a hierarchy upon them "the ordning" so they would all know the status between each other, and which ones were closest to his knee.
United the giants built a massive empire called Ostoria, and lived by the ordening. Storm giants ruled all, Controlling the ocean from undersea fortresses and lording over the land in castles in the sky. Cloud giants built floating cities and served the storm giants as their second in commands. Stone giants and fire giants, settled in the mountains were they carved and forged the greatest giant art and craft. Frost Giants served as the Empire's defenders on every frontier. (Not just their preferred cold one.) and Hill Giants went over the lands, subjecting lesser creatures by brute force.

Beginning of the End
The Empire dominated the world for four millennia. It's decline began with a genocidal war against the dragons that was later dubbed the Thousand-Year War.
Dragons had always lived in Ostoria, and conflict between dragon and giant was personal. "Differences were settled by individual contests of might, wits, or skill." Until a red dragon named Garyx enticed it's followers greed and envy by railing against the giants’ prosperity, causing them to attack.

However this is just stated to be what most giants believe happened. No one knows what really happened anymore. But when the fighting started all peace between dragon and giant everywhere stopped. The fighting happened everywhere in Ostoira. "There were no front lines or safe havens, only endless ambushes, sieges, and atrocities committed against giants and dragons alike." As the war went on, eventually there were no giants or dragons alive that had seen the start of the war age or violence claimed them all. The few remaining had spent their entire lives at war, and the war did not so much end as it wasted away to attrition.

Only a small segment of Ostoria survived and a few lesser giant outposts in the north, but those places fell as well with time. What remained of Ostoria was covered by ice, and the accumulation of years has covered nearly every hint of the old empire.
The giants still remember Ostoria and tell stories of it, but their empire and unification is gone. Though many giants still yearn for a return to greatness

OSTORIA AND OTHER WORLDS posted:

The tale of Ostoria is drawn from the Forgotten Realms. Think of it as a good example of how giants developed on many worlds, as it captures their rise and fall from prominence in a manner that is iconic to many D&D settings. In your own world, you can replace Ostoria with another giant empire or adapt it to create your own origin story.

VONINHEIM, THE LOST CAPITAL posted:

Voninheim (“Titan Home” in the Giant language) stood as the capital of Ostoria for millennia. It was an awe-inspiring structure of iron and stone, raised by magic as much as by mortal hands. Some attributed its construction directly to one or more of Annam’s sons, arguing that even giants couldn’t have erected such a monumental edifice. The palace stood firm and unshaken as glaciers that could flatten mountains assailed it and flowed around it, until only its iron spires jutted above the ice like great, gray fangs. Eventually the relentless ice buried it utterly, and Voninheim was abandoned. Many giants seek to rediscover its location: some hope to recapture the lost glory of Ostoria, but others want only to claim the mighty weapons of legend said to be entombed in its frozen halls.

Annam’s Offspring: The Giant Pantheon
When Ostoria fell Annam abandoned the giants and refused to hear their prayers or regard them again until they reclaimed their position as rulers of the world and reclaimed their past glory. Because Annam refuses to hear them, gaints worship his divine children and host of heroes and villains that make up the giant pantheon.

The most notable of the Giant Pantheon are Annam's six sons. Stronmaus (champion and favorite of storm giants), Memnor (cloud giants), Surtur (fire giants), Thrym (frost giants), Skoraeus Stonebones (stone giants), and Grolantor (hill giants).
While they most worshiped by the giants of the favored type. Many giants will revere many members of the pantheon or the gods related to were they live. For example a storm giant living by living amid blizzards and icebergs may worship Thrym instead of Stronmaus. And while a god like Strongmaus is favored by storm giants, he is not a storm giant himself, but a god. His temperament and interests are most similar to storm giants so most of his followers are of that type. Giants that give up in rising in the ordening may end up as followers of Vaprak the Destroyer the father of Trolls and Ogres.

Giants also worship some of Annam's consorts. Along with some deities said to be risen giants. Some also fall prey to Demon cults and worship Demon Lords like Baphomet the Demon Prince of Beasts or Kostchtchie the Demon Prince of Wrath. Worshiping a Demon Lord or any non giant deity is considered a sin against the ordening and giant-kind, any who do so that are discovered are cast out and exiled.

Next time Giants: World Shakers Part 2 Giant Tongue, Magic,and Attitude.

MonsterEnvy fucked around with this message at 00:21 on Nov 5, 2018

Ronwayne
Nov 20, 2007

That warm and fuzzy feeling.

Zereth posted:

Yeah, but anybody who's got the right mindset to be a dispomancer in the first place won't live a normal life. Being an adept isn't just "If I get drunk, I get magic powers", it's having a skewed view of how reality works and believing in it so hard that reality bows to your unbending will and you get magic powers from your crazyness.

My Serentity Adept can only gain charges when accepting the things they cannot change, having courage to change the things they can and should, and being wise enough to know the difference while being a wholesome, productive member of society with their needs, wants, hopes, and fears in balance.

Joe Slowboat
Nov 9, 2016

Higgledy-Piggledy Whale Statements



Ronwayne posted:

My Serentity Adept can only gain charges when accepting the things they cannot change, having courage to change the things they can and should, and being wise enough to know the difference while being a wholesome, productive member of society with their needs, wants, hopes, and fears in balance.

Ah, a Denial Wizard. You could probably get some depressing magic out of The Secret.

Halloween Jack
Sep 12, 2003

La morte non ha sesso

Kai Tave posted:

I mean for certain values of "relatively normal" sure, but pretty much every Dipsomancer is, or will inevitably wind up, a hardcore alcoholic. It's an entire school of magic based around needing to drink to feel powerful and in-control, you don't get to just flip a switch and turn that off when it's time to go into work for your 9-5.

Probably the most normal and least self-destructive adepts in 2E UA were Bibliomancers whose thing was essentially being book hoarders, one of the rare adept schools whose side-effect of accumulating inordinate amounts of books is something that some people might actually consider a virtue.
Chaos magick is my favourite school, and Entropomancers have little problem being functional if they want to be. They don't.

Humbug Scoolbus
Apr 25, 2008

The scarlet letter was her passport into regions where other women dared not tread. Shame, Despair, Solitude! These had been her teachers, stern and wild ones, and they had made her strong, but taught her much amiss.
Clapping Larry

Berkshire Hunts posted:

IIRC as of the d20 re-release she was possessed by a demon, but that may have been established in one of the free adventures released online.

I'll take a look at my copy of the d20 and post that info with the next update.

oriongates
Mar 14, 2013

Validate Me!


Halloween Jack posted:

Chaos magick is my favourite school, and Entropomancers have little problem being functional if they want to be. They don't.

I still consider Entropomancers to basically be the best designed adept school, which isn't totally fair because it would be almost impossible to do the same for other schools. But basically, Entropomancers are immersive like no other adept, putting the player in almost exactly the same position as the character. There's minimal ways to game the charging structure and it perfectly encourages players to try and push their luck and give into the temptation of just...just trying for one more charge. Just give that gun barrel one more spin and it's another significant charge. You'll probably be fine. Like 83% chance of success, that's really good. It'll be fine.

There's no other adept school that gets you so perfectly in the mindset of the practitioner. Your own separation from the immediate consequences of the action (you not actually being killed) almost perfectly mirrors the adepts own lack of concern for their own well-being.

Freaking Crumbum
Apr 17, 2003

Too fuck to drunk


Night10194 posted:

Not next to the real superpower: Having a rolodex and money. If you had real power you wouldn't be hate-farming nature, you'd be a US senator. But you don't have real power, so it's time to try to 360 noscope cornshot your way into it.

E: Basically, I feel like a lot of it is about how the Underground is mostly irrelevant to the 'real' world and mostly a bunch of fuckups knifing each other in a parking garage over who gets to be parking king. Until your campaign when it suddenly and disastrously becomes relevant and everything spirals out of control.

this is possibly the best cliff notes explanation of UA i've read.

Freaking Crumbum fucked around with this message at 03:40 on Nov 5, 2018

Ronwayne
Nov 20, 2007

That warm and fuzzy feeling.
The UA magic system seems like it would be experimented with during some kind of cold war u.s. govt psyops projects that's abandoned for being useless.

Like, the gov't knows about magic. It just doesn't care. Like, there's like a 500 billion dollar program trying to farm adept charges by getting people to self destruct doing dumb poo poo. None of it is useful but it keeps getting a senator reelected.

Ronwayne fucked around with this message at 03:32 on Nov 5, 2018

Dawgstar
Jul 15, 2017

Ronwayne posted:

The UA magic system seems like it would be experimented with during some kind of cold war u.s. govt psyops projects that's abandoned for being useless.

Like, the gov't knows about magic. It just doesn't care. Like, there's like a 500 billion dollar program trying to farm adept charges by getting people to self destruct doing dumb poo poo. None of it is useful but it keeps getting a senator reelected.

Certainly Alex Abel got by mostly on being super rich and able to hire ex-military sociopaths like Eponymous that trying to master the mystic arts himself, although he did keep them on hand. Probably for the same reason you keep a canary in a coal mine.

Ronwayne
Nov 20, 2007

That warm and fuzzy feeling.
What's the ratio on adept killers vs just regular killers in a successful magical plutocrat's retinue?

Ronwayne fucked around with this message at 03:40 on Nov 5, 2018

Freaking Crumbum
Apr 17, 2003

Too fuck to drunk


i feel like the new adept schools in 3E are all very much more sanitized than the stuff in 1E/2E. even beyond "now adepts are only moderately difficult to include in a PC group, instead of outright impossible" the actual schools themselves seem much more venal or unremarkable - someone that likes guns too much, or corny movies too much, or instagram too much, or haute couture too much are all people we each already know in real life, and depending on your own inclinations, they're mostly just annoying to deal with. i get the idea that magick is powered by obsession and that those things are the kinds of stuff that people tend to obsess about now-a-days, but it just feels so banal.

boozehounds, body bags, and skinners feel like they're "earning" their hosed up power more than "eric, the guy that won't ever take an Uber for reasons"

Night10194
Feb 13, 2012

We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

It's an interesting balance to have to strike with UA's general tone and thesis. In a game where one of the routes is everyone (or even just some of the players, or one of them) playing a deeply broken human being, but a hobby where the general assumption is you play a group of characters rather than a single solo viewpoint PC, it seems like a monumental challenge to accomplish having a play group with not compromising the tone.

Ronwayne
Nov 20, 2007

That warm and fuzzy feeling.
I guess its the difference between what would make a good novel vs what makes you able to have a character that can function. Similar to how 40krpg psykers can theoretically explode and that makes for a fun story but usually not a good game.

Also how Dorf Fortress stories are fun to read about but I would never actually play it again.

Chernobyl Peace Prize
May 7, 2007

Or later, later's fine.
But now would be good.

Freaking Crumbum posted:

i feel like the new adept schools in 3E are all very much more sanitized than the stuff in 1E/2E. even beyond "now adepts are only moderately difficult to include in a PC group, instead of outright impossible" the actual schools themselves seem much more venal or unremarkable - someone that likes guns too much, or corny movies too much, or instagram too much, or haute couture too much are all people we each already know in real life, and depending on your own inclinations, they're mostly just annoying to deal with. i get the idea that magick is powered by obsession and that those things are the kinds of stuff that people tend to obsess about now-a-days, but it just feels so banal.

boozehounds, body bags, and skinners feel like they're "earning" their hosed up power more than "eric, the guy that won't ever take an Uber for reasons"
Just because gun guy won't actually shoot you doesn't mean his walking down the street brandishing it to make a political point won't make you feel supremely uncomfortable (speaking from experience in the Texas capital of 'open carry assault rifles to make a point').
The functional movie guys aren't going to treat every romantic relationship like a romcom and every inconvenience as an opportunity to swear a Taken blood vendetta, but the less-functional guys are going to be borderline personality disorder to a degree that makes Crazy Ex Girlfriend seem quaint.

Basically, imagine if the people that are annoying to deal with in real life, have tangible evidence that being annoying like that will give them magic powers. Now they're using those magic powers. Which you don't have, because you aren't obsessed with things like they are, and are only learning magic's real when it's used against you or someone you love.

Keep in mind: There's hosed up compared to other insane fuckups, and there's hosed up compared to literally everyone else.

Kai Tave
Jul 2, 2012
Fallen Rib
Honestly a school of magic based around people fetishizing guns to an unwholesome degree is the most insightful thing Stole could have come up with for a game set in America of 2018.

Robindaybird
Aug 21, 2007

Neat. Sweet. Petite.

It was my take away from earlier versions of UA is you have to a lot of serious tweaking to make a lot of Adepts - especially Videomancers (which hilariously was already becoming out of date by the time it came out) - work in a group, either tweaking how they can get charges or otherwise disrupting the mood of the game.

The new ones balance 'mood setting' and 'actually functional in game' much better.

oriongates
Mar 14, 2013

Validate Me!


I honestly do feel like the new schools just aren't as interesting as the old ones. This isn't to say that some of them aren't relevant...but that's not a metric I personally value. Even if you wanted to make something like the gun nut a significant part of the magickal underground I feel like an Adept school is a bad way to do it. It just doesn't have the same resonance or interest and it's focus is so much more narrow. It feels like a school that's there as a statement rather than because it's an actually cool idea...like I get why being a gun nut weirdo is bad and stupid...but why would it still be interesting to play one? When I look at a dipsomancer or entropomancer I can see their appeal, I see why you'd want to play one while simultaneously acknowledging that they're immensely hosed up. It's like if Hunter S. Thompson was a game mechanic.

I don't get that vibe from any of the new ones. They don't feel like walking train wrecks. Some of them are bad and hosed up...but not in a way that also kind of makes me want to fantasize about being one.

I can't argue that they're almost certainly way better at being playable characters. But I'm also not actually interested in playing them. I'd much rather have seen the original adept styles redesigned to keep their edge while becoming more functional in game.

oriongates fucked around with this message at 04:10 on Nov 5, 2018

Bieeanshee
Aug 21, 2000

Not keen on keening.


Grimey Drawer
The old schools make for better NPCs and antagonists, I think. Bill in Four Parts, or that lovely adventure set in a farmhouse taken over by escaped convicts.

Halloween Jack
Sep 12, 2003

La morte non ha sesso

oriongates posted:

I still consider Entropomancers to basically be the best designed adept school, which isn't totally fair because it would be almost impossible to do the same for other schools. But basically, Entropomancers are immersive like no other adept, putting the player in almost exactly the same position as the character. There's minimal ways to game the charging structure and it perfectly encourages players to try and push their luck and give into the temptation of just...just trying for one more charge. Just give that gun barrel one more spin and it's another significant charge. You'll probably be fine. Like 83% chance of success, that's really good. It'll be fine.

There's no other adept school that gets you so perfectly in the mindset of the practitioner. Your own separation from the immediate consequences of the action (you not actually being killed) almost perfectly mirrors the adepts own lack of concern for their own well-being.
Also, like some other schools, you not only don't have to do chaos magick, but your taboo isn't that hard to observe. I imagine some entropomancers more or less getting by as part of Mak Attax (or just working any lovely job), acting like a Jackass wannabe way past their prime.

It's actually, say, the Bibliomancer, Dipsomancer, and the Videomancer who can never take a break from wizard poo poo. They've got a habit to maintain.

Halloween Jack fucked around with this message at 04:47 on Nov 5, 2018

Humbug Scoolbus
Apr 25, 2008

The scarlet letter was her passport into regions where other women dared not tread. Shame, Despair, Solitude! These had been her teachers, stern and wild ones, and they had made her strong, but taught her much amiss.
Clapping Larry

Bieeanshee posted:

The old schools make for better NPCs and antagonists, I think. Bill in Four Parts, or that lovely adventure set in a farmhouse taken over by escaped convicts.

In Media Res? That was a Call of Cthulhu adventure first, right?

Freaking Crumbum
Apr 17, 2003

Too fuck to drunk


Chernobyl Peace Prize posted:

Basically, imagine if the people that are annoying to deal with in real life, have tangible evidence that being annoying like that will give them magic powers. Now they're using those magic powers. Which you don't have, because you aren't obsessed with things like they are, and are only learning magic's real when it's used against you or someone you love.

Keep in mind: There's hosed up compared to other insane fuckups, and there's hosed up compared to literally everyone else.

as someone with emotional and anxiety disorders, i can absolutely empathize with the notion of "what if all the inappropriate feelings and dumb ideas my brain keeps feeding me 24/7 were actually correct and could legitimately allow me to do wizard poo poo". i'd definitely be at huge risk for never taking my meds again if doing so was actually the secret to really being a wizard.

i was looking at it more as a generational thing. "back in MY day we had to direct our unhealthy obsessions towards things that would literally kill us. none of this namby-pamby 'i can't let anyone see me naked' bull poo poo. i had to cut my own finger off to cast a spell, uphill both ways in the snow!" :corsair:

Bieeanshee
Aug 21, 2000

Not keen on keening.


Grimey Drawer

Humbug Scoolbus posted:

In Media Res? That was a Call of Cthulhu adventure first, right?

I'm thinking of Jailbreak, where the 'defenseless' elderly couple are a master Mechanomancer and the thing he turned his wife into.

Edit; Unless you mean the other one, in which case I blame this godawful cold.

Chernobyl Peace Prize
May 7, 2007

Or later, later's fine.
But now would be good.

Freaking Crumbum posted:

as someone with emotional and anxiety disorders, i can absolutely empathize with the notion of "what if all the inappropriate feelings and dumb ideas my brain keeps feeding me 24/7 were actually correct and could legitimately allow me to do wizard poo poo". i'd definitely be at huge risk for never taking my meds again if doing so was actually the secret to really being a wizard.

i was looking at it more as a generational thing. "back in MY day we had to direct our unhealthy obsessions towards things that would literally kill us. none of this namby-pamby 'i can't let anyone see me naked' bull poo poo. i had to cut my own finger off to cast a spell, uphill both ways in the snow!" :corsair:
It's a very 2010s change for the game that people's unhealthy obsessions are more of a risk to everyone else around them, than they necessarily may be to the obsessor, I think.

Wapole Languray
Jul 4, 2012

The thing about being an adept people don't seem to get is that it isn't something you can think rationally about. You're discussing choosing to use magick or not like there's a logical basis for it where the adept is doing cost/benefit analysis to determine the utility of their magick. That's not how it works.

Being an adept is literally seeing the universe through the lens of your magick. Adepts that don't do magick aren't not-adepts, they're just actively refusing to engage with what is to them a fundamental fact of the universe. Fulminaturges aren't "gun-nuts" in the way a normal person is. To a fulminaturge, guns are the single most important and powerful things in the universe. They don't see a machine, they see the physical embodiment of freedom, authority, power, & charisma.

And UA3 is very much not about "useless bumfights". Magick in UA3 is real and it is powerful. It's the metaphorical lever big enough to move the world. It is real, legitimate power. The question is just what are you willing to pay and how far are you willing to go to get what you want?

Oh, and to clarify: Adepts can do poo poo they don't have Formula spells for. You can just do magickal poo poo. It costs more charges than if you make it a formalized formula spell, but yeah, they can improv poo poo if they want.

Barudak
May 7, 2007

Touching on murder grandma in The End- 2 people a month mysteriously die in a town of 266. In a year nearly 10% of the population is dead. Theres pulling numbers from your rear end and theres not even doing napkin math for the hard numbers you provide.

oriongates
Mar 14, 2013

Validate Me!


It can definitely be hard to grok that Adepts are a completely warped point of view. If you're trying to play a dipsomancer on the weekend you aren't getting the idea. To a dipsomancer sobriety is the nightmare world that everyone else lives in and alcohol is the only way they can wake up from the nightmare. The world only makes sense when it's kind of fuzzy...AA is like a group of cthulhu cultists worshipping some mad, evil god they can't understand.

They might dabble in sobriety in order to blend into normal society, but they do it the way a priest might dabble in dark magic in order to fight against the forces of evil, knowing that they're playing with awful forces they can barely control.

And while a clued-in normal with money and connections can be an absolute terror in the occult underground, using their "sanity" and their "ability to hold down a job" against the crazier elements UA. But that doesn't change the fact that magic is a big deal. That's the whole idea of cosmic-level games in 2e. While normals get the opportunity to push things around a lot, it's the Avatars who get to actually become gods and cast the vote for what the next universe is going to be like. The occult underground may not be able to get their poo poo together enough to run for president or become a celebrity, but they're the ones who get build the universe after the world ends.

wiegieman
Apr 22, 2010

Royalty is a continuous cutting motion


And high level Avatars can do some powerful stuff. My favorite thing to come back to is a powerful Merchant avatar who just keeps his nose clean, makes deals, and turns into a filthy rich superhuman who's going to live for 300 years.

Kai Tave
Jul 2, 2012
Fallen Rib

oriongates posted:

It can definitely be hard to grok that Adepts are a completely warped point of view. If you're trying to play a dipsomancer on the weekend you aren't getting the idea. To a dipsomancer sobriety is the nightmare world that everyone else lives in and alcohol is the only way they can wake up from the nightmare. The world only makes sense when it's kind of fuzzy...AA is like a group of cthulhu cultists worshipping some mad, evil god they can't understand.

They might dabble in sobriety in order to blend into normal society, but they do it the way a priest might dabble in dark magic in order to fight against the forces of evil, knowing that they're playing with awful forces they can barely control.

And while a clued-in normal with money and connections can be an absolute terror in the occult underground, using their "sanity" and their "ability to hold down a job" against the crazier elements UA. But that doesn't change the fact that magic is a big deal. That's the whole idea of cosmic-level games in 2e. While normals get the opportunity to push things around a lot, it's the Avatars who get to actually become gods and cast the vote for what the next universe is going to be like. The occult underground may not be able to get their poo poo together enough to run for president or become a celebrity, but they're the ones who get build the universe after the world ends.

This is an extremely important point. Unknown Armies isn't really playing some long-form "gotcha" about magic. All the stuff about normal non-magical people being able to hold jobs, have positive relationships with others, etc, that stuff is important not to try and tell you the reader and/or player "god these adepts are so fuckin stupid for doing this," it's to emphasize that magic exacts a terrible cost but people still pay that price because magic is still real powerful poo poo. If magic was both insanely costly and self-destructive as well as being completely worthless the entire premise of the game would fall apart. Which isn't to say that a lot of adepts don't wind up face down in the proverbial (and literal) gutters, but UA is in large part a game of "what are you willing to do to try and grab a handful of real power?" There's a reason that Alex Abel, a man who by all accounts had won at life as hard as it was possible to win, bent his vast fortune towards the pursuit of magic instead of just bankrolling his own puppet US President or something.

The Lone Badger
Sep 24, 2007

But he doesn't actually practice magic himself. Because it's better to get some other poor sucker to pay The Price while you reap the rewards.

Freaking Crumbum
Apr 17, 2003

Too fuck to drunk


Wapole Languray posted:

The thing about being an adept people don't seem to get is that it isn't something you can think rationally about. You're discussing choosing to use magick or not like there's a logical basis for it where the adept is doing cost/benefit analysis to determine the utility of their magick. That's not how it works.

ehhhh, that might be one way to look at it, but it's not the only valid interpretation. a significant portion of the 2E setting fiction dealt with avatars and adepts and little slice-of-life moments in their warped lives, and there were plenty of characters that were completely capable of being rational, or of exercising judgment about when and where they chose to use their magick.

hell, one of the main setting conceits for "why don't wizards rule the entire world already" is the sleeping tiger principle (the idea that 10 pissed off normies motivated by primal fear are more than a threat for an adept) and even if you kill 10 normies with your wizard powers, some much higher level dukes are going to put the whammy on you and make sure your hotdog bullshit doesn't put the rest of the underground at risk.

if adepts couldn't choose when and how to apply their magick, the whole scene would be regularly razed to the ground every time normal society caught wind of it.

Poltergrift
Feb 16, 2014



"When I grow up, I'm gonna be a proper swordsman. One with clothes."
Not to the extent that they're incapable of choosing not to use magick, no, but I think on average an adept is someone who a) is fixated enough on their magick that they'll try to use it to solve as many problems as it can (since it's axiomatically an obsession identity and the best tool the adept is going to have), and b) would probably still be doing all their ridiculous charging/taboo bullshit even if it didn't let them leverage reality. A dipsomancer isn't a guy who drinks because it gives him telekinesis; it's a guy who drinks because sobriety is a state of nightmarish illusion, with telekinesis as a neat incidental.

Ratoslov
Feb 15, 2012

Now prepare yourselves! You're the guests of honor at the Greatest Kung Fu Cannibal BBQ Ever!

The Lone Badger posted:

But he doesn't actually practice magic himself. Because it's better to get some other poor sucker to pay The Price while you reap the rewards.

Also, Able is rich, so he can often pay The Price for other people out of a rounding error in his wealth. For example, see the Plutomancer he's got on retainer that he pays in goods and services rather than cash.

Nessus
Dec 22, 2003

After a Speaker vote, you may be entitled to a valuable coupon or voucher!



wiegieman posted:

And high level Avatars can do some powerful stuff. My favorite thing to come back to is a powerful Merchant avatar who just keeps his nose clean, makes deals, and turns into a filthy rich superhuman who's going to live for 300 years.
A lot of this is why I am enjoying this new UA writeup more than the old one, because y'all have been adequately persuasive that efforts to use the rule system to accomplish tasks are self-destructive-at-best and that the most powerful figure possible in the game is the representation of modern capitalism. At a certain point it just turns into the cruel part of a Grant Morrison comic, except Flex Mentallo never shows up; it's just awful forever. And I don't get the impression that the PCs are supposed to be the ones who tip the cart.

Dawgstar
Jul 15, 2017

Ronwayne posted:

What's the ratio on adept killers vs just regular killers in a successful magical plutocrat's retinue?

Well, Abel would use anybody who was effective and at least a functional basket case. Off the top of my head, his premiere hit squad had two 'regular' humans (as regular as can be with when you're a hitman working for an occult conspiracy) but one was an Avatar of the Executioner.

Mors Rattus
Oct 25, 2007

FATAL & Friends
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2014-2018

Nessus posted:

A lot of this is why I am enjoying this new UA writeup more than the old one, because y'all have been adequately persuasive that efforts to use the rule system to accomplish tasks are self-destructive-at-best and that the most powerful figure possible in the game is the representation of modern capitalism. At a certain point it just turns into the cruel part of a Grant Morrison comic, except Flex Mentallo never shows up; it's just awful forever. And I don't get the impression that the PCs are supposed to be the ones who tip the cart.

In 3e, the PCs are absolutely the folks who can and should tip the cart, from what I can tell. A 3e PC group, by design, will have a goal that is incompatible with the status quo.

Strange Matter
Oct 6, 2009

Ask me about Genocide
The difference as I see it between UA2 and UA3 Adepts is that UA2 Adept schools are about behavior while UA3 schools are about culture. In UA2, more adepts come off as being a cross between drug addicts and OCD patients. They're obsessed with some activity or behavior that has become an irrevocable lens warping their vision of the universe.

In UA3, the focus is shifted away from discrete behavioral patterns and more towards material or conceptual obsessions. Dipsomancers are obsessed with booze because their lens tells them that the world only makes sense when you're blasted. Cameraturges are obsessed with photography because cameras are a magic light box around which the laws of nature are warped and yet perfected. Epideromancers cut themselves because that's the only true form of control a person can have, while Agrimancers hate-farm the earth to prove their superiority over nature. In a sense, UA3 schools are more high-concept than UA2 schools.

It comes down to UA3 recognizing core aspects of the previous editions and focusing in on them. It's why Shock Meters are your core characteristics. With Adepts, the idea of symbolic tension and "doing it wrong" is front and center. In UA2 it would be easy for some rando to encounter an Adept and just think that he's some crazy magic bum but not truly know what his deal is. In UA3, Adepts wear their school on their sleeve (literally, in the case of Vestimancy).

Which one is better I guess depends on your viewpoing. Playing an adept in UA2 is about exploring how far into the gutter a human being is willing to dive to find a sense of purpose and understanding the world. In UA3, playing an adept is more about how fully can you devote your life to some specific obsession. They're less self-destructive, but also much weirder, which I really dig.

This gets into the metaplot a bit, but this change reflects the fact that UA3 is as much a sequel to UA2 as it is a revision. The events going on in the background of the game flipped things such that the universe is slightly broken, which is why adepts are now charging up on farming, literally the oldest trick in the book.

wiegieman
Apr 22, 2010

Royalty is a continuous cutting motion


I'm not actually super clear on the plot between editions. I know the Statosphere filled up and the universe was reborn but that's basically it.

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Strange Matter
Oct 6, 2009

Ask me about Genocide

wiegieman posted:

I'm not actually super clear on the plot between editions. I know the Statosphere filled up and the universe was reborn but that's basically it.
That's actually not quite what happened.

As I understand it, that did happen, and the universe was supposed to end and be reset on March 3, 2003 (3/3/03), with the Comte de St. Germaine ascending as the First and Last Man as scheduled. But he crossed paths with The Freak (The Godwalker of the Mystic Hermaphrodite/Sexual Rebis) en route, and the two of them hatched some kind of occult agreement and entered the Rooms of Renunciation, and had their identities essentially reversed, with the Freak becoming something called The Human Eternal and the Compte becoming Old Mother Apocalypse. The implication is that this somehow broke the standard rules of reality, the ramifications of which I'm not fully informed on. That's how you wind up with adepts charging off farming and wearing clothes.

Strange Matter fucked around with this message at 14:54 on Nov 5, 2018

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