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Aberrant RPG - Aberrant Ruminations


michaelnenonen

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I've been thinking about Greek tragedy and how it relates to the Aberrant metaplot.

In Greek tragedies, disaster generally isn't brought about by vice, but rather by misapplied virtue. The tragic hero encounters a challenge, over-learns the winning value combination (or ideology, or system of ethics, or philosophy of life, or configuration of virtues, or whatever you want to call it) to overcome this challenge, and then applies it with catastrophic consequences in new and fundamentally different circumstances. In some tragedies, the tragic hero afterwards transcends his or her initial value combination in such a way that allows for the restoration of the ethical balance disrupted in the catastrophe. ("Kingdom Come" is, perhaps, the quintessential example of this scheme in the superhero genre.)

If this scheme is applicable to Aberrant (and it may not be), then who are its tragic heroes? What were the initial challenges that they faced that caused them to over-learn their idiosyncratic value combinations? What are those value combinations? How do these value combinations lend themselves to the central tragedy in the metaplot...the Aberrant War? What kind of role does tragedy play in the wider superhero genre?

I'm curious to find out how people might answer these questions, as these answers may influence how I run my campaign.

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I'd Like tho echo the Statements of Kraig Blackwelder when He said: It's all about Mal.

After reading Teragen I'm pretty certain That Divis is THe closest thing you've got to a greek tragic hero.

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Tragic heroes generally have a flaw which proves to be their undoing. This "flaw" may in fact be a virtue (such as Antigone's loyalty to her brothers) but in the end proves their undoing.

Cestus Pax and the Aeon society believe that they are doing the right thing. Mal also believes that his path is correct. The Directive see another way forward. It is their inability or unwillingness to see each others points of view and their dedication to their own vision that undoes them.

Ironicly the biggest problem that the Directive and Aeon have with Novas is that so much power is placed in the hands of a small group of individuals...much like themselves.

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Mal's role in Aberrant is a problem for me. In the tradition of the Sabbat and the Shadow Court, White Wolf seems to have once again decided that the only group with an ethical outlook worth detailing is the one committed to rampant egoism. Therefore, the Teragen have had reams of paper devoted to their philosophy, while the Aberrants, Project Utopia, and every other Nova group are, at best, alotted paragraph-long platitudes, and, at worst, depicted as paragons of utter hypocrisy (take a look at Caestus Pax).

This seems to betray a fundamental lack of comprehension on the designers' part about the nature of tragedy. In order for tragedy to work, you need to give equal time to both the Apollonian zenith and the Dionysian abyss. Without the Dionysian abyss, the Apollonian zenith illuminates nothing and becomes cloying (as demonstrated by the Oprah show); without the Apollonian zenith, the Dionysian abyss loses depth and proportion (as demonstrated by Marilyn Manson).

In order for Aberrant to achieve this, the setting has to provide ethical visions just as credible and persuasively argued as Divis Mal's for each of the other major players (like Max, Sophia, Caestus, and Antaeus). These people need to be given their due. To provide only Mal's view with sympathetic and sophisticated elaboration would be like presenting a version of "Kingdom Come" that devoted all of its time to one of the major characters (like Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, or...more to the point...Magog) without trying to articulate the perspective of any of the others.

This would be unfortunate. The Aberrant setting is sufficiently astute to allow for some rather interesting explorations of the human condition, but, so long as only Mal is allowed to sermonize on the mount, it runs the risk of degenerating into a sort of propaganda for Ayn Rand's philosophy of life.

Of course, I could be wrong. I posted this thread in the hope that I was...that is, in the hope that the tragic dimensions of characters other than Mal would be presented. I'm still hoping that this is possible...I mean, have I missed something? If you can demonstrate that I have, I'll be grateful, as this information will necessarily enrich my game.

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I find Team Tomorrow members to be equally tragic. They are betrayed by their own organization with the Eugenics program and White Wolf has pre-ordained that their struggles and triumphs will be meaningless. If anyone looks for a White Wolf product to have fair-minded social and political insight, they are going to be saddly disappointed. Don't get me wrong, I do appreciate all that they 'try' to do, but they have never been fair or even-handed in any of the political or social material they have ever put out. They have their biases and their products should be read with that in mind.

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White wolf only devotes more time to the "Badguys" because they need allot more explaination. I don't really think you need to read Project Utopia's Mission Statement. It's painfully easy to see what Utopia is about, I mean it's a common goal they are out there to make the world a better place, through whatever means necesary. THat's a phillosophy that dosen't need allot of explaining to most people it comes part and parcel with the modern "western" World-view. not to mention that there are myrid scources of real life info people could look up on similar organisations. THe terragen on the otherhand (and the sabbat and shadowcourt etc..) is a much more alien organisation that canot easilly be summed up, nor are there many representations of similar institutions in the real world

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The bay guys are always more interesting right? I'd like to know why people do things like try to save the world. Are they doing it out of guilt, greed, responsibility, a need to impress or what?

I think the Terragen are less alien and more along the lines of A. Crowley or A. Hitler. Nothing really special about the dark side of human nature, its the fact that some people within utopia (not its manipulators or its brains but the people on the ground) feel the need to save the world.

In order to create a good story you need to create a dynamic and "cool" villian. For a great story you need to do the same for the hero too.

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I don't know about you but the thought processes of Alistair Crowley and Adolf Hittler are pretty alien to me.

On the utopia front. Allot of people want to make the world a better place. the theme of "With Great power comes great responsability" goes a long way for a utopia game. Someone gave these people extrordinary powerand they are doing what they should with it. Well that's the theory at least. Allot of people like Caestus Pax only do good for the fame and PR.

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Guys, lets not forget the Peace Corp, Doctors without Borders, Amnesty International, the Red Cross/Cresent, Unicef, and the like. There are tons of examples of normal humans who risk their lives and put their careers on hold to help out their fellow man. Mother Teresa, Ghandi, Count Bernadotte, and others are out there counteracting the human horror stories of Hitler, Stalin, and Pol Pot. It is just easier to remember the wars and the war leaders than the peacemakers and those who work in silence to make the world a better place. I don't recall any aid workers doing it for the money.

What makes Utopia scary for me is that not only is it possible, but highly probable as well. Few people want to look like heels or come across as villians. Utopia gives them the nice warm fuzzy of saving the world on a daily basis and making it a nicer planet to live on. The paycheck doesn't suck, either. You have your cake and eat it too. I can see many human-come-novas going for this in a big way.

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Varchild: Philosophies that embrace compassion need just as much elaboration as philosophies that embrace selfishness, if not more.

Remember that what we inherit as part of our cultural legacy isn't so much a series of arguments for virtuous action, but rather a series of unsupported exhortations about the need for such action. We tell people to behave, and tell them that this is worthwhile, but we fail to explore and shore up the arguments that support these statements.

In a pop culture that prizes consumerism and the greed that drives it above all else, this is an unsettling lapse of ethical and intellectual integrity. Without any argumentative foundation, there's a real risk that compassion will come to be seen as just so much fluff tossing in the breeze...and possibly hypocritical fluff at that. When, on top of this, philosophies of selfishness are provided elaborate argumentative justification, we run the risk of confusing selfishness with profundity in the pop cultural forum.

The ethical philosophies of such people as Hitler and Crowley are actually quite simplistic, banal, and commonplace in comparison to those of, for example, such people as Theodore Roszak, Martin Buber, Margaret Duras, Mary Shelley, and Immanuel Kant. Providing the former with elaborate exposition is hardly more necessary than providing similar exposition to the latter.

In short, it's unforgivable that Divis Mal's given more of a forum than Antaeus, or the Teragen more of a forum than the Aberrants. This kind of facile pessimism in White Wolf products underlies the widespread prejudice against White Wolf material among many gamers. For example, many of the gamers I know have come to believe that, Vampire: The Masquerade is little more than masturbatory material for solipsistic serial killer wannabes. They have a point. Compare the amount of thought and work that went into the "paths of enlightenment" described in the Sabbat and Montreal By Night packages to the amount of effort put into Anarch, Inconnu, and Camarilla philosophies, or the concepts "Humanity" and "Golconda", in other Vampire supplements.

There's a line in Thompson's "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" that comes to mind whenever I'm reflecting on this tendency among White Wolf game designers. Although I don't remember the exact quote, it runs something like, "This is what the whole hep world would be doing on Saturday night if the Nazis had won the war". It's unfortunate that Aberrant, which corrects so many of White Wolf's previous mistakes, is recreating in this new setting the most damning flaw to be found in the World of Darkness.

Man, I hope that future Aberrant supplements prove me wrong.

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So essenitally what you are saying is that white wolf should put the effort into the books on people like the Aberrants that it does into the Terragen. Good notion but remember also that they have two points to consider:

1. From a game point of view it helps STs if they know the enemy really well and can make them believable. Players usually prefer to make their own way. This of course assumes that the players are not Terats, Sabbat, Infernalists, Shadow Court, Formori, or Spectres. (Did I leave anyone out?)

2. Evil and Darkness sell. Thats what the world of darkness is based on. Thats what attracts us to Aberrant; its a nasty/realistic version of what happens when superheros appear, not another 4 colour game.

On the point of people doing things out of the goodness of their hearts, those people are a tiny proportion of the whole population, only 2-3 of them may ever erupt. Utopia gets people because it is a legal organisation, which offers good money and has a killer PR department. It makes Novas feel good about themselves and pays the bills. What more could anyone else want?

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I see all of what's being laid down here. Another reawson I have about why Utopia is less detailed and that's because of the one central figure that we don't know much about. Maxwell Anderson Mercer. Reveraling the underlying Phillosophies that Utopia was founded on and the conflicts with that might reveal too much about the guy who started it all and they want to save that for adventure.

I admit that that's annoying but it's white wolf's MO they're marketing stoytelling here over game products.

Hell if they were marketing Game products they'd have a better rules system.

and be called Steve Jackson Games.

and not make nearly as much money as they do.

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