RE: Building a Better Bird Base

From: Jane Williams <janewilliams20_at_...>
Date: Fri, 22 Oct 2004 12:00:23 +0100


> On Fri, 22 Oct 2004 19:28, John Hughes wrote:
> > An enigmatic, origami reference? It must be Friday....
>
> That it is, and the Friday before a long weekend, at that.

It is? (checks diary) no, doesn't look that way.

> A question: if you can draw on the power of your descendents,
> what does that imply about predetermination and free will?

Yes... Anything that involves messing with the future sounds dangerous gaming territory. Good place to set stories in, where one author can control things, but in a gaming world I can just see someone trying to alter the past by murdering someone's descendents. And the House of Sartar thought *they* were being picked on :(

Or *is* it the future we're looking at?

>> reincarnation is an accepted fact. Ontosnans can draw on the magic
and
>> power of their unborn descendants as well as their ancestors.

>> Rather than 'body and soul' and the opposition of body and spirit,
>> body *is* soul. There is no autonomous realm of spirit, ...

That sounds contradictory to me. What do you mean by "reincarnation", if not a soul being "freed" from one body and then inhabiting the next one?

But if you can know in advance which soul will inhabit the yet-to-be-constructed body of your *unborn* descendent, and then draw on the power of that soul before it gets there (but not after), that makes for interesting plot without playing time-travel games.

How do you plan on using the various HQ magic systems for this universe, BTW?
> And why is it so tempting to create a society and then place
> characters
> outside it? Is this just the role-playing dilemma of getting
> players started
> in a world where they don't know the social rules?

Because interesting characters are those with conflict built in? And being "outside" society in some way is both a cause and a result of conflict?

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