From: wildcard@nevada.edu ( WildCard !!)
Subject: Re: SRUN: Questions from the Minotaur: The Next Generation
Organization: Shadowland BBS, MageChek(tm) Division
Distribution: usa
Date: Thu, 3 Sep 1992 18:14:45 GMT

In article <BtzHzF.KD9@news.cso.uiuc.edu> pmwg1641@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu (Peter M. White) writes:
>mancinis@mentor.cc.purdue.edu (steven mancini) writes:
>
>>1.  How do you other GM's deal with the glut of Magically Actives? It 
>>    seems more and more people are wanting to play magicals and the 
>>    traditional street samurai is losing his appeal. Is this prevalent 
>>    in any other gaming groups?
>
>Sigh.  Unfortunately, I have seen this too.  I think with Shadowtech
>stuff available, those sams are a notch up in effectiveness.  It
>is only natural that, in a world with magic in it, players will
>like characters who have a piece of that action. 

Actually, in the campaign I'm running, we have one mage, a PA and a mixture of
other types. The mundos do *not* want a piece of the action. They see magic as
a very uncontrollable force while technology is easy to understand/harness.
This belief comes from our mage who often uses magic and gets in over his head.
He'll get pissed and say, "I cast my Hellblast:6 at the guy. I'm gonna fry that
SOB!" At which point he neglects to realize that it is an area effect spell and
they are very close to the target. Then he neglects to allocate dice to cut
the area down to something safe, so almost everyone gets hurt by his spell. 
Couple this with the knowledge that being a mage is like wearing a bulls-eye
on your chest, and the players would rather be subtly chromed and blend in.
  As for PAs. My players don't like them. They like using StimPatches and not
having to worry about losing their neato abilities permanantly when they are
mortally wounded. 'Wear can be fixed by a techie but you gotta spend Karma to
initiate to get your abilities back.

>>2. Do your magically actives assense EVERYTHING? It seems like no matter 
>>   what room, it is assensed, no matter who the person is, as soon as 
>>   he/she/it is introduced, it is assensed, no matter what the object, 
>>   it is assensed. 
>
>This is my *major* gripe with the SR magic system.  Overall, I really
>like it ascetically, but access to Astral Space is far too easy.
>Except for masked initiates, which should be uncommon, assensing
>someone tells most everything you need to know about a person.  It

I agree and disagree. It does tell you a great amount about the person or place
or object *if you know what you're looking for*!  I require that for all but 
the most basic of knowledge (is it alive, is it magically active, is it a 
spell) the player must make an AuraReading test and our mage is too Karma-
stingy to get one so he is almost useless. He says "I assense it." And I have
to tell him "It is like nothing you have seen or read about before." He often
makes guesses as to what he is assensing and frequently gets everyone into
trouble for his guesses (btw, he always tells the other players that he is
sure he's right so they believe him :) )

                                    - WildCard !!

+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
+  "It's like Sartre said,'Consciousness (in this case The Matrix) is a being +
+  such that in its being, its being is in question insofar as this being im- +
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+                                   - WildCard !!                             +
+                                     [ "Plex Personalities," Shadowland BBS] +