>How do people get chosen for these rituals? Particularly the really
>distasteful ones where you get stuck playing a hideous chaos horror >that gets beaten to death? And, if the ritual involves combat or some >other competition, what happens if you in the role of the villain end >up _winning_? I have visions of a chaos player winning and ending up >getting a chaos feature....
Think Medieval morality play, not all-out re-creation. These are your neighbors, after all, and no one wants to have to pay wergild just to worship the gods. The action will _look_ real, but no one should be in danger of anything more than some minor bruises.
And the "right" outcome is guaranteed by the script, same as in Hollywood. This is ritual magic for the whole village, and no member of the village is going to want to destroy it by changing the ending.
As for the cast, if you picked someone at random last year, and he/she did really well, that person will have that role as long as he or she wants it. Or you type-cast: the guy who can make horrifying faces with his ugly scar becomes the villain. Maybe you make the puniest man in town the villain, to make the villain seem ridiculous and contemptible. A large city might use some expendable criminal, with more real damage, but small places won't have enough people to be so casual.
Ed Tonry
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