So an acquaintance and I were having a little discussion about Unknown Armies, and he brought up his issue that Agrimancy doesn't have a Paradox like the other schools in book 1. I don't see one either. Can someone clarify, maybe it got left out of the book by mistake?
Eslington over on RPG.net answered: Eslington said:
The central paradox of Agrimancy is you're at war with that which sustains you. Not just that you have to stab your prize porkers in the neck to bring home the bacon, but that tending to the land involves pulling up what grows naturally (weeds!) and carving scars into the earth to make it better suited to your needs.
It may not be a very deep or complex paradox but it's one repeated and reinforced across the history of civilization and that row continues to be hoed every day and will be until humans get tired of beer, meat and vegerable oil.
This is a very, very old thread. But my wife and I were making up a postmodern school she'd be comfortable playing. Now we're both cityfolk, so we'd never play agrimancers, but she DID create a magical school that could not have gotten past anybody on the old 2nd Edition boards for love or money. Non-violent (no blast), high-omega (the charges are ridiculously easy to get and all the spells are ridicuously expensive) but when we were done, she was delighted with it (it's basically a school of magic for her character that compulsively organizes flashmobs.)
So, even though agrimancy is a weak, WEAK school (having grown up on a ranch and never wanting to get lanolin on me ever, ever again, I would only have villainous characters practice it), it is cool in that it shows that now, in 3rd edition, you really can make up the magic you want in the game. (And if you take a page from the general UA philosophy of making your magic something that messes up your life, you can still have fun. My wife's school of magic charges up by singing at inappropriate places and times, like funerals or police interrogations, and then pretending nothing just happened. That's her taboo. If you admit you just burst out in song or did anything unusual, you lose your charges. Fun! ...but with all the arguing over "central paradox" that used to go on, her fun little magic school would never have flown. Now I've got the rules on my side for some truly stupid... but personally important ...which is what matters... schools of chaos magic.)