I'm not sure I buy Dan's claim that the moral thing to do is expose the predators and kick off an inquisition and open war.

In Unknown Armies they call it the claws of the tiger - expose the supernatural, kick off a riot, get a lot of people killed, do no lasting good.

Well, hiding the knowledge supposes you are to act as the parent of all peoples, judging for them what is in their best interests.

The long term good of people knowing of the supernatural, is allowing people the choice to protect themselves.

That depends entirely on the setting. In The Adept, for example, being kept in the dark provides significant protection against metaphysical threats. Far more than most people could manage to conjure for themselves even if they were trained.

Thank you for this.

We've had a few listeners in the past who have posted minute by minute commentary as they listened. It felt less like commentary and more like an assignment being graded with a red pen!

FTFY

Thanks

As noted on the episode, obviously this varies from setting to setting. In some settings they've written reasons why this can't occur, wouldn't possibly work, or has been attempted catastrophically in the past.

But there are other settings where that's not the case. In those settings, I think Zzarchov put it right. One of our most cherished rights is that of self-determination based on all available information. In those settings, you end up with my three types of people: the guilty, the victims, and the conspiracy of silence. The last group only has the facade of being "good" by not being predators themselves or making some limited attempt to protect the victims.

With all of that said, let me stress two things to keep this in perspective...

1. It was a tongue-in-cheek commentary on the broken morality of fictional settings. This was not to imply that I have some equally un-nuanced view of the real world.

2. It was also done with a bit of persona for the sake of creating the foil in the banter topic. I played a Mage of Hermes in OWoD that didn't out himself or anyone else, and most of my hunters are more focused on killing the few than exposing the many.

Bubba Ho Tep is an excellent film. Not as a pastiche on mummy flicks (because it isn't really) and not because Bruce Campbell is in it (and playing Elvis, no less). It's just a good film that wraps both ancient horror/myth with modern American legend and the quiet tragedy of aging.





Shadowrun 4th ed. (which is the version I'm most familiar with) has tripped itself up on this point with some inconsistency in the mechanics. Spirits have Immunity to Normal Weapons but that very trait is misleading as, while your average hand gun will do no damage, certain combinations of high powered ammo with rifles will harm or kill spirits. Willpower or no. I guess you could call that "faith in firepower".

All SR spirits have a built-in vulnerability that is usually related to their nature - fire to plant spirits, water to fire spirits, etc. It's interesting to consider that those weaknesses stem from metahumanity simply believing the spirits should have them. It's just how the world works, damn it! This approach would throw a wrench into the Free Spirit angle. Spirits holding public office in the Native American Nations would suddenly disappear if the populace was convinced that they're figments of the imagination. It would change the tone of an election if an incumbent spirit's opponent used attack ads that proclaimed the incumbent was not only not human but wasn't even real. It would be like if everyone in a room turned their back on you and because your presence wasn't acknowledged... poof. That's a bit frightening to think about.

Insect spirits are a weird case. Although they look like and are categorized similar to terrestrial insects they've always been treated like extraterrestrials. They join with metahumans to create fleshform merges and have defined goals - consume, consume, consume, and move on to the next plane of existence.