[UA] Unspeakable Servants, Unnatural Phenomena

[Susan Dohnim]

Assuming there's either: 
 
1) An appropriate McGuffin the characters can track down/create that will reduce or end the effect, or 
2) A way to deduce what the servant's next move will be, so that the characters can figure out a way of sneakily trapping the servant even if they're in lost-time land, 
 
I think it's completely fair to be "unfair". Is it fair that the characters can change reality just by thinkin' about it? :) 
 
It could get very old, though, if it's not clear what they can do to end the effect and the servant's actions are so random that the characters aren't doing anything except cleaning up afterwards. I think the general rule for something like this is that the first time you do it it should confuse them, the second time it should annoy them/suggest a pattern, and the third time it will really piss them off/confirm the pattern -- but make it so that the powwow they have after the 2nd or 3rd time leads to a promising path to resolve the issue. In my experience with stuff like this, if you draw it out even one or two more times (without allowing/suggesting a path to solving the problem), it'll end up having a negative effect on the game. 
 
> Date: Mon, 12 May 2008 17:15:31 -0400> From: foranney at vassar.edu> To: ua at lists.unknown-armies.com> Subject: [UA] Unspeakable Servants, Unnatural Phenomena> > Some idle thought (players, don't read into this) has lead me to wonder something. I've got a question about unspeakable servants and the phenomena they can cause. Let's say that a group of people has upset a significant servant, and it wants to mess with them by dropping its one significant phenomenon per day. Can it just choose to have the group all suffer an hour of lost time - basically, to disappear and give it time to do whatever it wants in the meanwhile? That just seems ... unfair. Might it be appropriate to let characters resist the effect with a Soul roll, or is it fair to be unfair? I don't want it to look like a GM deus-ex-rulebook moment.> > Short story: what are the sensible limits of a Servant's unnatural phenomena, especially as regards lost time?> > Thanks for the help.> _______________________________________________> UA mailing list> UA at lists.unknown-armies.com> http://lists.unknown-armies.com/mailman/listinfo/ua
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