Twisted Mages, worse than hired killers?, Ham-fisted morality in Street Magic... Options

[Rad]

I just picked up a copy of Street Magic today. I loved every part that I read--until I got to the section on The Dark Paths.

I could almost understand the D&D-esque "Player-Characters can't be evil, but your gamemaster can always change the rules, wink wink" bit. Role-playing games get a lot of crap from conservative nutcases who see them as recruiting tools for Satan--so it makes sense to dodge some fire with a "we don't advocate evil" disclaimer, even if it does seem a little thin in a game where you're playing professional criminals.

What really pisses me off though, is the spew of blantantly BS propaganda that fills the chapter on twisted magicians. The writers are bending over so far for conservatives who would never play the game anyway, that they need to sustain a levitate spell to keep from sitting on their heads!

...

You have no idea how many times I had to edit that sentence to stay in keeping with the TOS. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/ohplease.gif)

My problem is this: This is Shadowrun! The closest thing to a "good guy" is a character who doesn't stab his friends in the back--in their sleep--if he can absolutely help it.

Look at the sample characters in SR4: You have a mob enforcer, an eco-terrorist, (with 10 kilos of high-explosives) and a ganger who's first description line calls him an "urban predator!"

If these guys were awakened, they'd be twisted at least.

That's not even counting the Combat Mage, Gunslinger Adept, and Street Samurai, whose job description boils down to: "Kill people for fun and profit." Even if they're not hired specificly to assasinate someone, their purpose on the team is still to frag gaurds and otherwise use violence to aid in the comission of a crime.

I guess the part that pisses me off the most is the sidebar on page 138.

...Though not as deranged as toxic magicians, the twisted typically exhibit strong asocial tendencies, socio- or psychotic behavior, and varying degrees of schizophrenia. Most twisted are contemptuous of and disaffected by society's rules, values, and morality, and do not balk at crimes such as murder, rape, or defilement.

Emphasis mine. What pisses me off is that they're basicly describing all shadowrunners with the italicised statement, and parts of it could apply to the people who play shadowrun as well. I didn't realize being contemptuous and disaffected by society's rules made me a schizophrenic psycho, though I've heard a few prozac salesmen argue that point.

(I've also read an article in National Geographic that described love as a mental disorder best treated with prozac--incidentally one of their frequent sponsors--hence my contempt for society.)

...For example, blood magic is a ruthless practice that involves the cold-blooded murder of a living creature for fleeting empowerment. It is the kind of heinous act only a completely callous, unscrupulous, or highly-disturbed individual might mommit. Despite some runner's reputations, such activities are not conductive to a long career and acceptance in the shadows...

Right. So the Street Sam who slices a corpsec guard to gain access to a facility is just your average Joe, while the mage who slices the guard and then uses his blood to resist drain on an invisibility spell is unscrupulous and disturbed?

I mean, killing a guy is one thing, but having his death serve an actual purpose besides just getting him out of your way? That's messed up, man.

It's interesting to see the devs displaying the same prejudice and fear towards the awakened that they warn us about in earlier chapters.

...Additionally, the twisted gain acess to obscure arts and unique metamagic techniques that can be potentially unbalancing in a player's hands; gamemasters should carefully consider before allowing them into a game...

Ah, so now we come to it. Two pages of prejudice, character assasinaton, and bullshit, just to get to the fact that twisted magicians are potentially unbalanced as player characters. Why not just say that, like you did in Augmentation with Jarheads and cyberzombies, instead of insulting everyone who plays the game?

By this book's definition, I am twisted. And if I was awakened, I'd be trying to use my copy of Street Magic as a sympathetic link to sling some really nasty ritual mojo at the devs intead of bitching about it on the forums.

Hell, with the new spell creation rules, I could probably make some really good ones. "Jock Itch of Insanity" anyone?

[edit]

Fixed the post, apparently it got cut off for some reason.

Also, after reading the section on toxic mages, I'm probably closer to the toxic Havoc agenda than just twisted. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

[killerdbz]

I took it as more of a Chaotic Evil perspective. At least that is how I read it.

Using your street sam as the example, when you need something you would kill for it. You would go to the store kill the clerk and steal the item in question yes?

Well a toxic mage would go to the store, kill everything and everyone on the way, torture the clerk, burn the store and while hes at it poison the nearby water supply. And when hes done he forgot the item in question. Why? Because hes batshit crazy.

[Blade]

You know combat spells (including toxic waves) and mind-manipulation spells are quite "evil" in many cultures but in Shadowrun your mage can have them and cast them regularly without being a toxic mage.

[ravensmuse]

It's a matter of degrees.

To start off with, your, "everyone stabs everyone in the back!" comment fits your version of SR, not mine. I certainly don't write characters that way or run games that look like that. I've got players that would do it, but that's entirely their own perogative and not something that I encourage.

Secondly, violence and criminal activity is a means to an end for every example you've given. The mobster has to enforce the family line. Sure, they break faces, but they know its bad business if they do it to every single shopkeep that says no. The ganger has to show other gangers that he's tough; if he doesn't, they'll move in and take his territory and possibly kill him and everyone he loves. The eco-terrorist...well, imo she's skating a thin line towards toxicity, but that's neither here nor there.

Combat magi, street sams, gunslingers, same deal. Criminal activity is part and parcel of shadowrunning. Why do they shadowrun? Well, why do your characters shadowrun? Exactly. Do they walk up to every Joe Star and say, "hey copper - I don't like your face!" and plug them in the piehole? Nope. One, that would be stupid. Two, that's bad for business.

Twisted lack that sort of control. Some do it as part of a "devil's bargain" like the magician in the intro to that particular chapter of Street Magic; he took the easy way out and now he's paying for it, and it's slowly killing his humanity. Bugs just don't see humans as anything more than food or new bugs. Most toxics are batshit crazy if you dig down enough.

Put it to you this way: Why does Character X kill someone?

Mobster: He wouldn't pay the protection money. And I did warn him.
Ganger: Because omae, he killed my brother last week!
Combat Magi: Do YOU want a Force 12 fire elemental on our ass?
Street Sam / Gunslinger: I wouldn't be able to get into the warehouse if I didn't. Besides - tranq rounds.
Toxic: Humanity is scum! Lower than the cockroaches they kill!
Twisted: Oh my...I'm...I have to...Lenore...
Bug: Hm? Oh, I was too busy summoning the Queen to give two shits. Click-click-clackity-click. You look pretty tasty.

[Dr Funfrock]

I took it as more of a Chaotic Evil perspective. At least that is how I read it.

Using your street sam as the example, when you need something you would kill for it. You would go to the store kill the clerk and steal the item in question yes?

Well a toxic mage would go to the store, kill everything and everyone on the way, torture the clerk, burn the store and while hes at it poison the nearby water supply. And when hes done he forgot the item in question. Why? Because hes batshit crazy.

See right there you've nailed my disagreement with Rad on this.

I've yet to play a street sam who would go to a store, kill the clerk, and steal some stuff instead of just paying for it. In fact of my two street sams currently in play, one is a struggling catholic who's currently retooling his arsenal to load up more gel rounds and cs gas, because the mage in the party is a priest who constantly chastises him for being a cold blooded killer. The other is a generally all around nice guy who just has this massive hatred for the government (after being trapped in bug city), and half the money from his runs goes into funnelling medical supplies into the containment zone (it's a 2057 game).

Neither of these guys is a cold blooded psychopath. The first comes close, but only when he's working, and only if the other guy is a genuine threat. He actually rates as fairly bloodthirsty by established shadowrunner standards, because he prefers live ammo to gel (current religious revival not withstanding).

This is the part you've missed, Rad. The opening chapters of the book make it clear that most runners are uncomfortable with Wetwork. It actually takes a particular class of psycho just to be willing to kill people on their runs. A lot of runners just do datasteals, heists, sabotage, espionage, all stuff that doesn't require you to kill anyone. The Shadowrun arsenal makes non-lethal takedowns easy and effective, and they're actually preferable because it means less legal fallout and less chance of the corp coming to get you afterwards. A runner could go his whole career without killing a single person, and he wouldn't really be considered odd or out of place.
This doesn't mean all runners are flower loving pacifists, and even those who try to avoid bloodshed will probably resort to lethal force when their backs are against the wall, but I doubt they'll feel entirely good about it afterwards.

There's a world of difference between being a bit jaded, or having a contempt for law and order, and the kind of psychotic behaviour that twisted mages are supposed to indulge in.

If you want your shadowrun games to run in a darker, more bloodthirsty world where every runner is a hardened and contemptuous killer, sadist, and rapist, who blows a guy's head off just for looking at him sideways and never buys what he could just steal, then be my guest. Personally, I think that sounds boring, one dimensional, and a whole lot like playing FATAL, but if that's the kind of game you actually enjoy then that's your deal.

[FrankTrollman]

Basically I'm totally with you. You should have seen the earlier drafts, the inappropriate moral judgments are actually toned down at the request of the other writers, if you can believe that. Actually you probably can, because it looks to me like the Dissonance section in Unwired looks like it was written by the same dude and the ham fisted and unjustifiable moral soap boxing is even worse.

-Frank

[Eryk the Red]

"A psychopath kills for no reason, I kill for MONEY..."

Seriously, that's the difference. I don't want a player in my game to be a sociopath. At worst, they should be callous and self-serving, but that's not the same. They do bad things because it's helpful to them to do so; for survival, personal gain or somesuch. The threat mages largely do bad things for the sake of it. Murder isn't a means to an end for them, it is an end. Quite simply, they are more interesting as villains.

[CircuitBoyBlue]

I think it's a bit of a cop-out to say that the moral difference between PCs and Twisteds is a matter of self-control. If Twisted magicians lacked that sort of control, they wouldn't be a threat to society, because they'd be relatively easy to deal with. For one thing, they wouldn't have the attention span for their dark rituals if they acted the way they do in your example. I think Rad has a really good point, and most runners' morals aren't that far off from the Twisted. If you make a mundane eco-terrorist, you get a spot in the main book as a playable archetype. If you're a magician eco-terrorist, you're a "threat," and not a viable player character.

The only real reason I can think of to forbid playable Twisted magicians is if they're spirits would break game balance. I don't know if that's the case or not, because I don't have SM on me, but it's the only thing I can think of. And, of course, Twisteds don't usually hang out with shadowrunners, so it could just make the game awkward.

[FrankTrollman]

The only real reason I can think of to forbid playable Twisted magicians is if they're spirits would break game balance. I don't know if that's the case or not, because I don't have SM on me, but it's the only thing I can think of. And, of course, Twisteds don't usually hang out with shadowrunners, so it could just make the game awkward.

Toxic spirits aren't particularly unbalanced. Unfortunately, they also aren't fully written up. Rather than create a system for creating toxic spirits or exhaustively writing up all the possible toxic spirit types, the chapter author chose to have every toxic mage get a unique spirit set and then proceeded to make a series of "example" spirits based off the original 10 (sort of).

Unfortunately, there are nine sample spirits and each magician gets five. And mostly it just makes incomplete sets. For example: while the Poisoner gets Acid, Nuclear, Sludge, Smog, and Contagion; the Reaper gets Harbinger, Harrow, Carnage, and Contagion (4), and presumably some fifth spirit that you make up. And that's where it gets broken. Broken as in "doesn't work" rather than specifically overpowered or anything. There's nothing stopping you from making a Plague Bearer spirit (Toxic Beast) or a Reclaimer spirit (Toxic Plant) for your Reaper magician to have, but I honestly can't tell you if it is balanced or not, because it doesn't yet exist.

-Frank

[Ryu]

Just a thought, but if the mundanes of your group can be considered twisted, your mage can be twisted, too. The roleplaying police is too afraid to kick in your door.

Who can blame them? That kind of attitude makes you into a dangerous threat, magical or otherwise. On the other hand, if you believe all runners are evil, your worldview needs way more grey for SR.

[CanRay]

Simple, Shadowrunners are Predators. No denying that. But they kill to eat. They don't kill for the fun of it. Usually. Exceptions have been made, but they're usually of the "We're making the world a better place by adding some Chlorine to the Metahuman Gene Pool" variety.

Toxics, are like Richard from "Looking For Group". They kill for killin's sake, and, often, have the agenda to kill THE ENTIRE METAHUMAN RACE.

Even the most aggressive, evil, psycopathic Shadowrunner doesn't want that.

I mean, if he killed everyone, there'd be no more Shadowruns. And, honestly, where's the fun in that?

[Chrysalis]

I am with you Rad on this.


-Chrysalis

[hyzmarca]

Toxics really, are defined by one thing. They have been tainted by things that are metaphysically antithetical to life as we know it. This is, usually, no fault of their own. Like any good comic book hero or villain, their discovery of the wonderful power of toxic waste is quite by accident.

Some rage against this state and attmept to protect others from it, though often going overboard. Others embrace it and either attempt to spread it or enhance their power. Sometimes they go a bit overboard.

The only ones who might actually want to kill everyone are the steriles, who draw their power from barrenness. And even then most seriles aren't that stupid and would rather just live a life of solitude in a deserted wasteland just close enough to a city to get pizza delivery.


Most of the Twisted ways are twisted for no good reason, except perhaps the magician following them likes his work a little too much.

The Path of the Dead is about putting spirits in corpses. Any Possession magician can do that.
The Path of demons is about worshipping beings, which may or may not exist, whom are conventionally considered evil. But one religions' evil demon is another religion's benevolent god. Most demons are considered evil simply as a propaganda ploy to justify persecuting another religion that worships them.
The Path of Blood is all about knowing the Sacrificing metamagic, which isn't bad at all unless one misuses it.
The Faustian makes deals with Free Spirits. Anyone can make deals with Free Spirits.
Zealots have religious beliefs.

Invae and their Shamans are Communists, pure and simple. And as everyone knows, the only good commie is a dead commie. They are antithetical to the anarcho-capitalist ideals that most Shadowrunners hold and the Conservative capitalist ideals of most wageslaves. It isn't a concept that any sane resident of the Sixth World could possibly wrap his head around.
The exception is the Mantids, who are sex-positive radical feminist Objectivists, which is sufficiently compatible with both Conservative capitalism and anarcho-capitalism to make them seem reasonable by comparison.


Really, getting rid of Potency was a mistake, if not in game balance then in flavor. The difference between the twisted and a normal magician is devotion. The twisted is so devoted to his ideal or his method that its importance is blown out of proportion and it consumes his life.

[Sweaty Hippo]

What is it about being a Toxic Mage that causes you to gain an intense loathing for metahumanity? Couldn't you decide to be a Toxic Mage, but justify your actions or use your powers for good?

I can understand that Insect Mages lose their free will, but what causes the change in a Toxic Mage's mind?

[Chrysalis]

What is it about being a Toxic Mage that causes you to gain an intense loathing for metahumanity? Couldn't you decide to be a Toxic Mage, but justify your actions or use your powers for good?

I can understand that Insect Mages lose their free will, but what causes the change in a Toxic Mage's mind?

Arguments like these.

-Chrysalis

[CanRay]

What is it about being a Toxic Mage that causes you to gain an intense loathing for metahumanity? Couldn't you decide to be a Toxic Mage, but justify your actions or use your powers for good?

I can understand that Insect Mages lose their free will, but what causes the change in a Toxic Mage's mind?

Have you SEEN Humanity lately?

Add in Metahumanity. And there you go!

I know a number of people today that would like to give the Cockroaches their shot. If we gave them magic... Scary!

[Pendaric]

Arguments like these.

-Chrysalis

LOL
Damn, I near choked to death! (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

[CanRay]

Oh! Thought of another reason!

Former Tech Support Agents!

If that doesn't make you want to kill all of humanity, I don't know what will!

[Johnny Jacks]

Oh! Thought of another reason!

Former Tech Support Agents!

If that doesn't make you want to kill all of humanity, I don't know what will!

Speaking as a Former Tech Support Agent, Can's dead on about this one.

[hobgoblin]

What is it about being a Toxic Mage that causes you to gain an intense loathing for metahumanity? Couldn't you decide to be a Toxic Mage, but justify your actions or use your powers for good?

I can understand that Insect Mages lose their free will, but what causes the change in a Toxic Mage's mind?

shit if i know, but there seems to be some near-militant treehuggers out there. and if any of those where to awaken in some way, i could see a percentage of those go toxic...

[Stahlseele]

Speaking as a Former Tech Support Agent, Can's dead on about this one.

speaking as a 2nd level tech supporter for 3 major ISP's . . yes, he's still dead on target with that x.x . .
as for wanting to kill all of humanity?
my reasoning is: kill 'em all, let whatever deity feels responsible sort 'em out

[CanRay]

Speaking as a Former Tech Support Agent, Can's dead on about this one.

Respect to a fellow veteran!

[Rad]

Okay, I've been up all night and I'm prone to ramble, so I'll try to keep this brief and to the point, since there's so much to respond to.

First, I was talking about twisted mages, not toxics. Toxics are just nuts, even I'll agree on that.

Second, many of the motives and justifications given here and in the core rulebook for a shadowrunners' actions are the same justifications that supposedly mark a twisted magician as insane. I don't buy that the same things that make shadowrunners "morally ambiguous" make twisted mages psychotic and evil.

I also don't buy the idea that twisted mages are automatically batshit crazy sociopaths--any more than I buy that about street samurai. Do they walk the line sometimes? Yes, but having a flexible or skewed moral outlook is a trait shared by all runners--it's a requirement for living in the shadows. Having a different perspective doesn't make you a psycho.

The morality of shadowrunners is supposed to be a grey area where characters may occasionally stumble back and forth over the line, but Street Magic paints twisted mages as all black--as likely to rape a kitten for fun as kill a guard in order to complete a job. Some of them might--the same way some any other type of character might, but not all of them are like that.

In some cases, a twisted mage might actually be more moral than a normal shadowrunner, because they have a reason besides just getting paid for what they're doing. Most people may not agree with their reasons, the same way people might disagree with a hacker's veiws on the free exchange of information or a shamans' views about preserving the sanctity of nature, but which is more callous? A runner who hurts people because it's "just biz", or the the twisted mage who is forced to hurt people in pursuit of a higher purpose?

Going back to my example with the street sam and the blood magic user, if your team is in a situation where they have to hurt or kill someone, isn't it better to give as much purpose to their deaths as possible? I can see blood magic being used with the same mindset as native tribes who praise and thank the animals they kill, and make sure to use as much of the corpse as they can out of respect--rather than letting it go to waste by just leaving the body to rot.

Also, keep in mind that blood magic doesn't require the spellcaster to kill their victim. Invoking blood spirits does, but just inflicting wounds to help you resist drain doesn't sound so bad--especially if you use the wounds you were already going to inflict during combat.

Both the razorboy and the blood magician occasionally have to cut a guy, so whats the difference if the blood magician also uses those injuries to power his spells, at no extra cost to the victim?

The way I see it, the difference between a twisted mage and a toxic one is that a twisted mage might be a darwinist who eschews traditional morality for "Survival of the Fittest", but still tries to promote his views in a socially acceptable way, while a toxic mage would be a nazi who thinks his race/metatype/whatever is superior and attempts to exterminate all others by "divine right."

Regarding the "Chaotic Evil" analogy, the standard Street Samurai could be seen as "Lawful Evil"--he may kill for money, but has a code of honor he believes sets him above common mercenaries. As far as gel rounds and the like go, anyone who invests that much time, effort, and nuyen into making themselves a souped up combat machine and then chooses a career where they're frequently "forced" to defend themselves is lying if they say they don't intend to kill people.

[Pendaric]

Read Watchmen by Alan Moore.
What makes a villain, villainous?
Twisted path wizzers are there to be antagonists of runners. That is their part in the drama of the game.
There comes a point where a 'bad thing' becomes 'evil'. The inference is twisted path followers embrace passing that line. Shadowrunners are pitched as anti heros. To be hero's of any stripe you must oppose villains. In this case there must be villains to face. Ergo twisted path followers.
We as adults know morality is a spectrum of choice, in a roleplay game with heros, even anti heros, the dev's have to draw lines for you to have villains.

[CanRay]

Yeah, with my group, even without steering them around, the worst I had to deal with is a Character whose only reason to be around is Survival.

Even my characters from my stories aren't "Bad" people. "Money" Johnson actually thinks himself a pretty decent person.

And Nas, well, he's just a junkie. He just changed addictions.

[hyzmarca]

The best example of the line between someone who is offbeat and someone who is Twisted would be the Twisted Sports Adepts that a GM could make using the rules in Magic in the Shadows. Remember all of those [insert stupid pointless game or sport] is serious business anime series? Remember The Karate Kid I and III and similar 80s tournament movies?

Cobra Kai is an exemplary example of the Twisted Way, particularly its leader, and so is Quicksilver of part III. It is about being so obsessed with a stupid high school martial arts tournament that won't mean anything in the long run that you are literally willing to cripple people to win.
Seto Kaiba from Yu-gi-oh is another great example.

In the early manga, Seto becomes the world champion of the new card-game craze, "Duel Monsters." Discovering that the grandfather of his classmate, Yugi Mutou, owns the Blue-Eyes White Dragon, Seto steals the card by switching the real one for a fake one. Yugi - possessed by the spirit of the Pharaoh Atem from within his Millennium Puzzle - challenges Kaiba to a game of Duel Monsters with the card as a prize. Although Kaiba nearly wins, the magical nature of the game prevents him from attacking with the stolen Blue-Eyes, and Kaiba is defeated.

Bitter over the loss, Kaiba plots an elaborate revenge. He successfully acquires the other three Blue-Eyes White Dragon cards in existence and builds "Death T," a "theme park" comprised of many deadly games and challenges designed to end the lives of Yugi and his friends. After being subjected to the hazards, Yugi and his friends witness a Duel Monsters match between Seto and Yugi's grandfather, who was forced to participate when Kaiba threatens Yugi's life. Kaiba wins and tears up Sugoroku's Blue-Eyes White Dragon. Kaiba then challenges Yugi to an immediate rematch. Although Kaiba proves formidable with the three Blue-Eyes in his deck, Yugi ultimately wins by forming Exodia. Yugi then uses the power of his Millennium Puzzle to subject Kaiba to a Mind Crush, shattering his mind to pieces and leaving Kaiba comatose. Kaiba eventually regains consciousness later in the manga during the Duelist Kingdom arc.

This guy loses a collectible card game street match and thus builds an elaborate death-trap theme park so that get revenge by killing Yugi and all of his friends. You beat me in a card game so I'll kill you and all of your friends using a series of overly elaborate deathtraps. I assume that we can all see how this is just a little bit irrational.

This irrational obsession is the hallmark of the twisted.

Imagine, if you will, a Twisted Hopscotch adept. This is a man who has dedicated his entire life to the noble sport of hopscotch, forsaking friends, family, and love interest and taking a vow of eternal celibacy so that nothing will distract him from his mastery of hopscotch. Then, one day, he learns that a young girl at a New Orleans elementary school has beat his hopscotch record. Furious, he sets in motion his plan to regain his honor.
He kidnaps her parents and tortures them horribly, mutilating them and sending her a videotape of this torture along with some of their body parts and a message to meet him at the hopscotch court at sundown or else they will die. She arrives to find her parents crucified but alive, forced to watch what comes next, and with determination she accepts his challenge.
They hopscotch from sundown to sunup without break, evenly matched, and continue well into the afternoon. The sun takes its toll on them both, but more so on the child. Having hopscotched for nearly twenty hours nonstop without so much as a single break or a single drink of water both are tired and dehydrated but both are determined to win. Determination, however, is no substitute for rest or for fluids or for decades of ascetic adept training and the endurance-enhancing powers that come with it. The little girl inevitably collapses due to heat exhaustion, forfeiting the game.
And the adept gloats. He calls her a loser, worthless, stupid, weak, pathetic. He calls her the vilest names that you can imagine tells her that she deserves to die for being such a loser. He tells her that her parents should be ashamed of her poor performance and that she should be ashamed, that if he were as weak as her he would just kill himself. And he gains magical power for doing this. Then, her gives her a bottle of water and removes the wooden spikes from her parents' wrists because she played as he demanded he isn't some evil bastard.


And that, chummers, is what being Twisted is all about. It isn't that they do things that are conventionally immoral. It is that they have no perspective. They think that their preferred thing is the most important thing in the universe, or at least the best since sliced bread, and they're going to go overboard because of this lack of perspective. In previous editions, this absurd excess in the pursuit of the ideal that they are devoted to gives them Potency, which is like Magic only better. Potency, unfortunately, does not appear in 4th, probably for game balance concerns. (A Twisted character with reasonable Potency was very powerful in 3rd but would be godlike in 4th without extreme nerfing of the mechanic. )

A magician who knows and uses Sacrificing isn't Twisted. Neither is a magician who creates blood spirits. The Aztec priest who feeds the hearts of criminals to the hungry gods is perfectly sane and reasonable. The guy who is so obsessed with making sacrifices that he systematically kills and destroys everyone and everything that he loves and then just keeps on sacrificing, he's Twisted.

The magician or adept who has no perspective, who has no clue that there could be anything more important than his little obsession, and who gains magical power from his obsessive actions - magical power that a sane magician could not gain from performing the same deeds - he's Twisted.

[Glyph]

I guess I've never seen the supposed "hypocrisy" because, to me, the difference between a shadowrunner and a twisted way magician is the difference between light-to-medium gray and really, really dark gray. Shadowrunners who are virtually indistinguishable from twisted way mages should have high notoriety and trouble getting any but the dirtiest jobs.

But default shadowrunners seem to be anti-heroes who struggle against the system that they are still part of, who have some scruples, and who sometimes do some good. And opposing these morally ambiguous antiheroes, you usually have enemies who are even worse in some way, so that the PCs can still be the protagonists.

[hobgoblin]

The way I see it, the difference between a twisted mage and a toxic one is that a twisted mage might be a darwinist who eschews traditional morality for "Survival of the Fittest", but still tries to promote his views in a socially acceptable way, while a toxic mage would be a nazi who thinks his race/metatype/whatever is superior and attempts to exterminate all others by "divine right."

there was not much religious about the nazi, outside of himmler, his SS and their rituals...

the nazi ideals where very much "darwinist", in that they believed that the problems of germany was a dilution of the "germanic bloodline" or genepool...

note that the nazi's where not the only group in europe that had this view, but it was the ones that took the idea of its most extreme.

it was basically this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugenics

or if you will, selective breeding of humans. something that one could say have been going on for quite some time, in one form or another. marrying ones own social "class" anyone?

as for the diff between a runner and a twisted path? the runner does it, but do not like it (its a case of survival). the twisted one loves what he does. problem is, that can very well break down when your playing someone that have a high lifestyle but still do runs using live ammo and other lethal means...

but i guess its a bit like star wars. unless your force sensitive, you dont really have to care about the dark side...

in a way, its a case of great power, great responsibility...

[Zhan Shi]

I don't think that "twisted" (as opposed to toxic) must always equate with evil. A good comic book example of a twisted adept would be the Punisher. He is perfectly willing to murder and torture to acheive his goal of ridding the world of criminals. Yet he does so in a manner which leaves the average joe untouched. In fact, at the end of the Welcome Back, Frank series, he kills a trio of vigilantes because their sloppy planning lead to the death of single innocent woman...a cleaning lady, I think. He even let one crook go, after the man pleaded with him...then killed the guy when he renegged on his promise to turn his life around. My personal opinion is that the twisted are people who are willing to go outside of society's rules in the pursuit of their dreams. Those dreams may be good (fighting crime on one's own terms, as the Punisher does), or evil (killing all metahumans, Alamos 20K style).

BTW, if you've never read the above mentioned Punisher series, it's a must. Also check out the sequel, where he nukes an entire island worth of scum.

[hobgoblin]

now where the hell did a guy like that get hold of a nuke?!

and now im trying to recall the quote from bloodline when you ask the "fixer" for a tac nuke (IMG:style_emoticons/default/silly.gif)

[Zhan Shi]

If I remember correctly, he did not bring it with him. The nuke was already on the island (part of an arms deal or something); he justdecided to make good use of it.

[hobgoblin]

heh, only good way of getting rid of them, permanently (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

[Rad]

I guess my disagreement comes in with the specific way twisted mages are described in Street Magic. The descriptions you guys are providing make sense, but IMO that's *not* the way the book presents them.

For example, compare the introductory story about the hospital mage trying to revive his wife with the story from SR4 about the run to sabotage Buzz! Cola's latest product.

In one, you have a team who intends to spike a shipment of cola syrup in order to ruin it's flavor. They're doing it for money. Only they find out they've been deceived and would actually have poisoned millions of metahumans had they succeeded.

On the other hand you have a medical mage who failed to save his wife and unborn child, and is still trying to find a way to revive them. His motivation is love for his family. Only he finds out he's been deceived and has loosed some kind of hostile spirit upon the world in his wife's body.

The main differences I see are this:

1) The medical mage's motivation is far nobler (Love instead of nuyen)
3) The mage's goal is far more socially questionable (Resurrecting the dead, vs spiking a tanker of coke syrup)
2) The medical mage succeds in unwittingly doing something really horrible, while the shadowrunner team was prevented from acheiving their goal by security forces (Not really a point for or against either of them--just the luck of the draw)

So what we have is, the mage took a bigger risk, for a better reason, and just had crappier luck. If they had both failed, or both succeeded, which one would have the moral high ground?

I'd say they're about even, with the mage's nobler reasons balancing out his more questionable methods, but he might be slightly ahead since his intentions were good (restoring life), while the runners' were trying to wreck both a company's profits and their customer's good time.

I guess what got me is that they go from "Where the line is drawn (if at all) is left to the individual gamemaster" in the "Perception of Evil" sidebar to drawing that line with arc-bright neon paint just two pages later.

I should have paid more attention when they said that references to evil in that section were intended to "illustrate the general opinion of the man-on-the-street." In that context, it makes sense. Today most people are poisoned against the ideas of Darwinism and applying the principles of evolution to humanity because it sounds too similar to Nazi propaganda.

The irony is, the Nazi's clearly got it wrong because diversity is a critical survival trait.

In the same sense, twisted magicians could be perfectly sane and good people who just have differing views--but your average Joe will still see them as crazy and dangerous, because of popular prejudice. Same thing that happened to metahumans in Japan.

[FrankTrollman]

there was not much religious about the nazi, outside of himmler, his SS and their rituals...

the nazi ideals where very much "darwinist"

You mean how virtually all Nazi equipment had "Gott Mitt Uns" stamped on it? Or the way that they banned the Origin of Species?

We were convinced that the people need and require this faith. We have therefore undertaken the fight against the atheistic movement, and that not merely with a few theoretical declarations: we have stamped it out.

Secular schools can never be tolerated because such schools have no religious instruction, and a general moral instruction without a religious foundation is built on air; consequently, all character training and religion must be derived from faith ...we need believing people.

I wish to express my church's sincere and joyous preparedness to cooperate as best they could with the government now ruling that had set itself that tasks of promoting the Christian education of the people, repelling ungodliness and immorality, developing readiness to make sacrifices for the common good and protecting the rights of the Church.

I am now as before a Catholic and will always remain so.

Please. If you're going to Godwin this thread, at least get your facts straight. Fascism in Europe was an explicitly Catholic movement. Cardinal Stepanic? Father Tiso? Mussolini? Franco? The Legion of Archangel Michael? What the hell dude? In what possible way is that movement anti-religious? It's not secular, it doesn't have the pretenses of being secular. They shoot secularists.

-Frank

[Fuchs]

SR always had rather questionable "forced morality". Just check how different Tamanous and Humanis (not Alamos 20K) are portrayed in the books - the "cannibalistic organlegging murderers" come off far better then the "keep metas down and away" policlub. And don't even get me started on how positive in comparision eco terrorists and SoS are portrayed.

[Dumori]

Both the razorboy and the blood magician occasionally have to cut a guy, so whats the difference if the blood magician also uses those injuries to power his spells, at no extra cost to the victim?

I have the urge to go make this runner now. To see how he plays. Its a grate idea for a semi antagonist. The ones I like best the ones the players can fight with or against depending on the runner's morals.

[Riley37]

Hyz, awesome example about perspective, obsession and twisting.

The comparison to BuzzBlitz is missing some rather obvious points. The protagonists start with a deal to do sabotage in exchange for nuyen. At the start of the job, they knock out the guard, whom they could just as easily have killed. They fail at the sabotage job; when attacked, they use guns, against gunmen. The survivors then set out to avenge their fallen comrade, not against the guards, but against the Johnson. They didn't have to do that; if *all* they wanted was nuyen, the story would have ended there. Then they discover the poison plot, and they go vigilante. How much they're working to avenge their fallen buddy, and how much they're working to kill a genocidal poisoner, is hard to say because they accomplish both by capturing the poisoner and making him drink, but in the entire second half of the story, they are NOT in it for the nuyen.

Many, many Dumpshock threads have included posts from people whose PCs have some honor, goodwill, sense of community, and other traits that conflict with going on a purely evil twisted path.

Going against the dominant paradigm of society is one thing. Making yourself an enemy of all metahumanity is another.

[Rapier]

Ok, although some people of the forum have done a marvellous job explaining why the toxic/bloodied awakened are evil and NPC (for the sake of the game) still people are doubting about if they are really bad or not-that-bad player character.

I'll say it that way: you can do them what you want, it's your game, it's your rules. It's a pity to see them in a playable way, but we won't stop you from doing it.


Although that i suggest you to see a shadowrunner as it was told before: between light and medium grey.Also, if you have such team of shadowrunners they sure would like to go to Redmon, maybe in a zero-protection zone they'll feel more comfortable killing desperate people and monstrosities everyday.

But, if you really want to know the normal way of playing Shadowrun (or at least know how a normal shadowrunner is) i suggest you to read the prologue of the book, after that see some of the campaigns of 3rd edition like brainscan, year of the comet, and think about how a group of bloodthirsty warmongers would finish these kind of games. If you haven't had enough with that, just read some shadowrun novels and take ideas of the teams used in them. Twisted people are common, but not the norm.

Just for curiosity: Rad, are you GM or player?

[FrankTrollman]

An available character to play is a Bounty Hunter who specializes in hunting down and killing ghouls. Such a character's job is to find where ghouls live, go there, and kill all the ghouls of all ages and take body parts back to an authority that approves to the point where it will trade the body parts of those ghouls for money and praise.

Another available character to play is a ghoul rights activist who is either a ghoul themselves or closely related to one. Such a character will spend a lot of time talking to ghouls and authority figures attempting to reconcile the needs of the ghouls and the needs of humans to live against the desires of ghouls and humans to stab each other in the face.

Now, one character's actual job is to hunt down the brother of the other character and murder him for no reason other that color of his skin and the shape of his teeth. Both characters would be entirely willing to gun down the other in cold blood without a second thought or pang of regret. And they are both player character concepts that you can play. They are both player character concepts that I have played. And despite the complete lack of common ground between the characters, they are both able to justify their actions and beliefs as sane.

And yet, being a Maho and talking to Tengu is beyond the pale? What the hell dude? That makes no sense, at all.

-Frank

[Fuchs]

Although that i suggest you to see a shadowrunner as it was told before: between light and medium grey.Also, if you have such team of shadowrunners they sure would like to go to Redmon, maybe in a zero-protection zone they'll feel more comfortable killing desperate people and monstrosities everyday.

But, if you really want to know the normal way of playing Shadowrun (or at least know how a normal shadowrunner is) i suggest you to read the prologue of the book, after that see some of the campaigns of 3rd edition like brainscan, year of the comet, and think about how a group of bloodthirsty warmongers would finish these kind of games. If you haven't had enough with that, just read some shadowrun novels and take ideas of the teams used in them. Twisted people are common, but not the norm.

I doubt there is a "normal way of playing Shadowrun". In the novels I read, there was a distinct lack of "professionals" - runners that are mercenaries, and do their job - compared to "exotics" - runners that are superpowered, special, just on the verge of breaking into the business, retired runners coming back, bored nobles, undercover cops, and so on.

[ravensmuse]

I doubt there is a "normal way of playing Shadowrun". In the novels I read, there was a distinct lack of "professionals" - runners that are mercenaries, and do their job - compared to "exotics" - runners that are superpowered, special, just on the verge of breaking into the business, retired runners coming back, bored nobles, undercover cops, and so on.

In other words, player characters (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

"I have three billion nuyen because I'm the heir to a great megacorp! I'm just slumming it!"

[Fuchs]

In other words, player characters (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

"I have three billion nuyen because I'm the heir to a great megacorp! I'm just slumming it!"

Actually, in more than 15 years, I have seen far, far less "special snowflakes" among PCs in my group than in the novels I read. Most PCs, even in the high-powered "eat your heart out, Mister Bond" games we did in the 90s, had "average" backgrounds - competent professionals, often ex-military or ex-corp. We had one shifter, that was it. They might have ended up rich, but that was through running, not through being Villiers heir, or a special Drake, or a Dragon's hachetman.

[Fuchs]

If you haven't had enough with that, just read some shadowrun novels and take ideas of the teams used in them. Twisted people are common, but not the norm.

I used to take plots from SR novels back in the 90s, and ran my group through them. Judging from how very often, those runs went far more smoothly, and with less troubles, than in the novels just for the PCs acting professionally, and doing their job, I'd say the novel characters often are closer to being twisted in the sense that personal motivations take precedence more often for them.

[Drogos]

The main difference I see (and the book doesn't do a great job of explaining it) is a twisted mage is coldblooded to the umpteenth degree (and thus gains massive noteriety for their actions). They kill without any thought of another alternative. They slaughter as many people as they have to in order to achieve their goal, sometimes needlessly slaughtering them. They revel in the power that allows them to wreak such carnage. Even shadowrunners have a defined socially acceptable set of behaviors. If you do not follow those guidelines, the Shadowrunner community excomunicates you. Your teammates begin to wonder when you might decide it is easier to just kill them rather than split the pay with them. That's not to say that a Street Sam who acts similarly is a good guy. He would gain just the same noteriety. People seem to forget that shadowrunning is a subculture, and just like any other subculture, if you get a certain reputation, you are not welcomed with open arms. Yes, runners are somewhat sociopathic by nature. They "shoot people in the face for money". A twisted does as well, but he also shoots people in the face because he crosses the street and they honked their horn at him or because he enjoys the rush of the mana flowing through himself and into them. He has been initiated to a power that no normal person can comprehend and he is drunk with that power. His only limiter is the danger that something might be out to smack him down for his actions, so he's careful. The main difference is runners are sociopathic, twisteds (and other 'evil' runners) are psychopathic. At least that's how I see it and, since my current PC is on the path to Twisted, that's how I play it.

[Shiloh]

For me, the main difference between the Razor and the Blood Mage is that one is a Mage.

The overall picture I've formed in my head over many years of the cosmology of the SR universe (and, yes, I admit this is a personal interpretation, but it produces results that seemd to fit the way the writers depict Twisteds) is that magic is somehow entwined with the nature of the Earth, which is everyone's future. Twisted/Toxic traditions strike directly at that inherent nature, and harm the world in a way that will eventually, if unchecked, bring an end to everyone. Intent of the Mage is irrelevant. It's all about *what* you *do* to get *mojo*. I wouldn't call cannibalism and organlegging "twisted" in this context, since they're not necessarily about magic. Ditto your unawakened psycho serial killer. Even a Mage who ritually carves up sex-workers, unless the mutilation is a part of their magical practice, it's just plain common-or-garden psychopathy.

I'm not *certain* about this, but it seems to me that it's a theme running through the material I've read (mostly modules).

[CanRay]

When you do the Twisted Things to get Magic... Something's happening.

The Blood Magic Ritual that was the Great Ghost Dance did something. And, in fact, it was Shadowrunners that had to help clean it up!

Little things add up. And something out there likes those little things adding up. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/vegm.gif)

[ornot]

Hmm..

Doesn't doing extremely unpleasant things to people in a completely mundane way cause background count? I would argue that a mage should be more inclined to be less twisted than a mundane runner, since they can see the damage they cause on the astral.

[CanRay]

Hense why the Twisted Paths are even more evil.

They can see the damage they're doing. And. Just. Don't. Care.

Or, even worse, REVEL in the damage! Like Street Punks driving down the street in a beater shooting out streetlights, making the world that just a bit darker.

[Apathy]

I liked hyzmarca's twisted hopscoth adept. In my mind, being evil doesn't inherently make the adept or mage twisted. Being crazy makes them twisted. The fact that they're bat-shit manically insane gives some (not all) mages a different perspective and different ways of thinking that open doors to power that the rest of us aren't even aware of.

[Rapier]

Even shadowrunners have a defined socially acceptable set of behaviors. If you do not follow those guidelines, the Shadowrunner community excomunicates you. Your teammates begin to wonder when you might decide it is easier to just kill them rather than split the pay with them. That's not to say that a Street Sam who acts similarly is a good guy. He would gain just the same noteriety. People seem to forget that shadowrunning is a subculture, and just like any other subculture, if you get a certain reputation, you are not welcomed with open arms.

Excellent mention of what reputation can do to the runners. We can say also that reputation is also establishes the kind of jobs you'll get from corporations and others. In essence, a shadowrunner is a professional merc with enough contacts and enough skill to do things in a discrete way. Although may be some exceptions, mind problems tend to be a negative point when a Johnson search the kind of guy mentioned before.

talking about razors and bloodiers, the thing is that the world of shadowrun is, at least, a dangerous. We see cities like Seattle, where crossing a street in some limits is like stepping into the hell. Cities like Los Angeles, where swimming around some beaches is a call to Death and where problems where solutioned by placing a concrete wall with turrets around conflictive zones. As a result, is normal for existing urban predators an things alike. Without them, such places wouldn't exist and shadowrun would loss some of the background that has. Also we paint the CyberSam as a bloodthirsty monster. If it was like that, he wouldn't step into shadowrunning, he will stay where he is fighting for surviving with people like him and other dangerous creatures, because he likes it that way. Maybe a shadowrunner street sam is the kind of guy who wants to escape from there, who wants to be like a normal guy (of course can have some mental scars) and may be he wants to recuperate the flesh in his body, the one that refused time ago to survive in the streets. Maybe he wants to get better equipment to have some edge in that perilous ground, maybe he wants to improve his living in that zones and protect some family or friends that refuse to leave that place. Maybe he doesn't want to leave that places, because if he does that, he will feel that he is fleeing or losing something.

Of course there are a lot of point of views, for every kind of character, for every kind of class in shadowrun, the thing is that exists can be as good or as bad as we want it to be.

Although that, we can say that everything can be a shadowrunner. I can make a 85 year old man who has a cancer and decides to live the rest of his life in excitement and emotion. I can play a 14 year old hacker who escaped from his parents and now lives in a coffin hotel working in the shadows. The door to the world of shadowrunners is as big as a football field. The trick is to endure that path. Of course anything can take misions (if the johnson is willing enough), of course it can behave as a lunatic or as a normal person. Only the ones that work with enough mind to know when in necessary to talk, when it's necessary to fight, and when it's necessary to do both in a silent way would become a respected and appreciated shadowrunners. The ones that not may fall in the process or may end up with such a bad reputation that people wouldn't hire them or maybe they will end up only doing dirty jobs (at least is what they like to do).

Maybe the examples of novels isn't very good, but what i mean to say is that in modules like brainscan, runners end up doing the things they do because of their moral, they sense of duty and because they are so pissed of that they have done to them that they want to tell everybody that anyone that tricks them gets what they deserve.

In the year of the comet, where shedims start to appear, twisted mages may end up favouring them or a bloodthirsty cybersam may ignore the problem, because he doesn't give a crap about that. GM shouldn't be happy with that kind of spirit on his players (as it can ruin everything on a run or limit the game options) and that is why it isn't encourage to let players grab this kind of characters.

[MYST1C]

You mean how virtually all Nazi equipment had "Gott Mitt Uns" stamped on it?

"Gott mit uns".

Here's a nice piece of dialogue from the movie Stalingrad (spoken by a Wehrmacht chaplain):
"'Gott mit uns' steht auf der Gürtelschnalle des deutschen Soldaten. Und deshalb ist der deutsche Soldat niemals allein. Im Gegensatz zum Bolschewik, auf dessen Gürtelschnalle kein Platz für Gott ist."
Translation:
"'God with us' is written on a German soldier's belt buckle. And that's why a German soldier is never alone. In contrast to the Bolshevik who has no room for God on his belt buckle."

[hyzmarca]

1) The medical mage's motivation is far nobler (Love instead of nuyen)
3) The mage's goal is far more socially questionable (Resurrecting the dead, vs spiking a tanker of coke syrup)
2) The medical mage succeds in unwittingly doing something really horrible, while the shadowrunner team was prevented from acheiving their goal by security forces (Not really a point for or against either of them--just the luck of the draw)

So what we have is, the mage took a bigger risk, for a better reason, and just had crappier luck. If they had both failed, or both succeeded, which one would have the moral high ground?

I'd say they're about even, with the mage's nobler reasons balancing out his more questionable methods, but he might be slightly ahead since his intentions were good (restoring life), while the runners' were trying to wreck both a company's profits and their customer's good time.

The problem with the magician is that he's trying again as evidenced by the last paragraph of the story. It is implied that he disrupted the malevolent spirit that he had inadvertently summoned but that he has learned nothing from that and is trying again. It won't work the second time. We know that. He should know that. It is almost certain that he'll try a third time and a fourth. It is almost certain that he'll keep trying until he calls up something that he can't put back down, something that puts him down instead.
Someone once said that the definition of madness is performing the exact same actions over and over again yet expecting a different result. It is the irrational obsession, an obsession that has ruined his life, that puts him over the edge and into the realm of the twisted.

[Stahlseele]

Someone once said that the definition of madness is performing the exact same actions over and over again yet expecting a different result.

sounds like experimenting like a scientist to me somehow O.o

[CanRay]

They call it "Mad Science" for a reason.

[PlatonicPimp]

I'll let Jayne Cobb say it:

Hell, I'll kill a man in a fair fight... or if I think he's gonna start a fair fight, or if he bothers me, or if there's a woman, or if I'm gettin' paid - mostly only when I'm gettin' paid. But these Reavers... last ten years they show up like the bogeyman from stories. Eating people alive? Where's that get fun?

[Stahlseele]

empty tummy ain't runny? *snickers*
but yes, about killing people that cobb person is more or less on to something there ^^

[CanRay]

I think Alice put it best.

[Oni]

The way the twisted path's have been portrayed is deffinatly been downplayed but for more reasons than perceved liability. The easiest one for me to address is bloodmagic so ill use that. I looked into bloodmagic and the what makes it so bad is its a power seeking practice.

Now IMO a mage sacrifices a guard to cloak the team... thats not really that bad. But it becomes an issue of being a munchkin.

Grab NCP, Sacrifice NCP, Cast magic (kill enemy's), repeat.

Also as everyone else has pointed out its a SR morality issue, bloodmagic is taboo and thus the Dev's create a spectrum of morality for SR. In a sceranio I've read it was an option for a mage to learn bloodmagic, if a mage did the instructions where to remove the character from the game. The reason is that no PC should have that power and that with bloodmagic being taboo the other PC's would/should look at the PC bloodmage as evil. but bloodmagic is a "path", you dont just sacrifice someone and *BAM* your a bloodmage. Also bloodmagic twists the user hence twisted path's.

So is a Twisted Mage worst than a hired killer?

IMO yes, the hired killer has more room for morality and is 86ing people for money/greed/need. The twisted mage does what he does for power and works toward godhood. so in the end it's all about motivation and why.

[Siege]

Motivation:

Question: "Why did you nail the cat to the door?"

Mobster: "So I wouldn't have to burn his house down or break his bones to convince him I was serious."
Samurai: "Because I said I would. My word is my bond and I honor my debts."
Evil: "Because I wanted to know if the cat's screams sounded different than the kids' screams when I nailed their scalps to the wall."

Or Hollywood example: "Con Air" - the thugs, crooks and so on are unpleasant and downright vile. But they all differ from Steve Buscemi's character who drove through three states with a person's head as a hat.

You can rationalize or justify almost anything - even the "Evil" character has a reason for his actions. But the key difference is the personal gratification found in the act itself, in the means rather than the end.

Just my two simplified bits.

-Siege

Edit: Expounding on Martin Blank and Jayne Cobb's wisdom. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/grinbig.gif)

Edit 2: You can also toss in conscious choice - as in "I choose to do this" versus "I have no control over my desires, impulses or actions" - one is arguably more "evil" than the other, although your mileage may vary.

[Rad]

I think alot of people are confusing twisted mages with toxic ones here. If you look at the actual text on the motivations and philosophies for twisted mages, they don't sound that different from your typical shadowrunner--but then they tack on: "and this makes them completely incapable of both reason and morality."

A toxic mage does bad things for the sake of doing bad things, a twisted magician does bad things for a good purpose--or else they simply disagree about what qualifies as "bad".

Ok, I'll get right down to it: I see the official take on twisted magicians as prejudiced. Let me explain why:

IRL, my outlook would qualify as twisted, quite possibly toxic.

I have a *very* Darwinist perspective on morality, and I do not value human life the way other people do--a fact I try very hard to conceal because of the way people react to me when they find out. I view civilization--any civilization--as an inherently flawed concept that is more harmful than beneficial, I have a pretty low opinion of humanity (compared the arrogant, "better than sliced bread because we invented it" attitude that most people don't think to question), and spend my days waiting impatiently for society's collapse.

Does that make me a psycho? Maybe. I think it's normal people who are twisted and insane, but I recognize that it's all a matter of perspective, and ultimately there's no way of knowing who's right and who's wrong--another radically different belief I have. :look:

But I haven't reached these conclusions because I'm nuts or emotionally distraught, I reached them as the logical result of a long, rational study of society and human nature. People often try to dismiss ideas as crazy or irrational when they don't like their conclusions, rather than examining them objectively.

Do I go out and randomly kill people?

Well, you'll have to take my word for it, but no. As a matter of fact I go out of my way to avoid conflict even when someone is trying to pick a fight with me. I may not think hurting or killing someone is inherently wrong, but it's still not a decision to be taken lighty. Also, I don't want to get arrested. Like the "good" runners who are sometimes forced to kill, evil runners might be forced to not kill for various reasons.

Am I as likely to murder/rape/desecrate the corpse of someone's grandmother as I am to talk with them? No. Functionally, I'm a very normal guy, if a bit repressed since I'm constantly watching out for other people's prejudice.

I may not have the same strict moral inhibitions as other people, but I am a responsible enough person that I don't need a leash to keep me in line. My point is that theres a double-standard here for twisted magicians, and that having a twisted outlook doesn't automatically make you a mad dog.

Of course, now that I've admitted all this about myself, Rapier's probably going to react with even more prejudice towards me than he did to Twisted Magicians, because I'm real instead of imaginary, and therefore much more threatening.

I guess he'll either see my point or go into bigotry-induced apoplexy--either way there's not much more to discuss on the topic.

I simply contend that the attitudes described as making a magician twisted do not inherently make them crazy, and that the depiction of twisted mages shows a moral bias not present in the rest of Shadowrun. If you want to say that the conditions for being twisted are to have these views *and* be crazy, that's fine--but Street Magic specifically says that they are crazy because of their views--which just doesn't wash.

Given that the sidebar on page 136 says the descriptions are written from the average person's perspective, it is enough to assume that the average person in the sixth world is uninformed and intolerant of twisted magicians.

As a final thought, CanRay mentioned street punks who revel in destruction. I should point out that the punk movement was born of the idea that we were all going to die in nuclear war in just a few years anyway. People were really convinced it was going to happen, and that it was imminent. So not only was our society evil for allowing this to happen (and thus deserving of being trashed) but we were all walking corpses anyway, so the consequences of our actions (the basis for most moral judgments) had very little meaning anymore.

In that context, do punks still seem crazy and out of control? Or did we make a hard, but rational choice in the face of an irrational situation? That choice being to embrace our inevitable destruction, and cram as much enjoyment as possible into the time we had left.

That's what I mean when I say a twisted philosophy isn't necessarily crazy--it's not even necessarily wrong.

[Riley37]

Hm. Evil is not a subset of crazy, nor is crazy a subset of evil; they are overlapping sets.

"Street Magic" is about as clear on those distictions, as society at large... and in my view, that's NOT a full, nuanced, comprehensive approach which both has useful overall rules of thumb and room to account for unusual circumstances and outliers on the probability curve. I was once juror, in a case which raised the difference between how legislators used certain terms, and how psychiatry used certain terms, and it was tough for most jurors to sort that out.

Modern psychiatry wants to consider the sociopath insane. If, however, you measure insanity by whether the person tends to get in their own way, and do things which work out unsuccessfully, then some sociopaths are not, by that measure, insane.

On another hand, although I don't see Rad as anywhere near top of the list of threats to my life and well-being, I really do see civilization as essential to my life (since I lack the skills to survive long as a lone hunter-gatherer, and am not aware of other options), and our agendas are theoretically in major conflict. Rad, if you had real world powers along the lines of Magic 6 or higher, I *would* be worrying. In the meantime, live and let live.

I'll say this, though: reason and observation and science can tell you how things *are*, and having the courage to face things as you see them, rather than what you would prefer to see, is a great gift. But those, alone, do not determine how you want things to be. Any agenda, for all civilization, against all civilization, or for some and against other, involves, somewhere along the line, an assumption or stipulation of "X is desirable". It's darn common for people to consider their own survival, and the survival of those connected to them (one way or another), as a Good Thing. But that's not an observation; it's a stipulation.

[Rapier]

I think alot of people are confusing twisted mages with toxic ones here. If you look at the actual text on the motivations and philosophies for twisted mages, they don't sound that different from your typical shadowrunner--but then they tack on: "and this makes them completely incapable of both reason and morality."

A toxic mage does bad things for the sake of doing bad things, a twisted magician does bad things for a good purpose--or else they simply disagree about what qualifies as "bad".

[...]

Of course, now that I've admitted all this about myself, Rapier's probably going to react with even more prejudice towards me than he did to Twisted Magicians, because I'm real instead of imaginary, and therefore much more threatening.

[...]

Sorry to cut most of the post. About the comentary, i'm not from the inquisition so i'm not going to try to burn you in a pile of wood (IMG:style_emoticons/default/grinbig.gif) . About the feeling that people that surrounds you is a moron that deserves being shoot is something everybody experiences during his life, during every month o maybe everyday. The thing is, as you say, you are a normal guy without training, without guns (or at least you don't have tendency to use them) and without magic.

The thing is, as Riley 37 said, the difference from you and a twisted magician (i think you're right that i was packing them with toxics, sorry about that) is that he has at hand one of the big powers of the 6th world: magic. I don't know you, but if i had magic, i would crush some faces and surely i would steal a bank (take the chance while you are the only awakened (IMG:style_emoticons/default/rotfl.gif) ).

Just some reference. From my point of view and athough i don't like to mention star wars examples, Anakin in the last movie is in some way walking the path of a twisted one. He starts with the visions of his wife dying during the birth of his sons, he starts to seek a way to avoid that, and after a lot of things, he end up half man half spending machine, twisted and powerfull.

Finally, i want to say about personal experiences of players who try to do that kind of character (a gothic friend of mine can't stand doing normal players) always end up demanding attention because how much special his character is (explaining actions with high-boring descriptions, talking in every conversation,...) and usually ends up compromising the group because of his actions. Don't take me wrong on that sentence, what i really want to point is that this kind of character can affect gameplaying and may fed up other player's (runners can choose his working team to avoid that, players under a GM usually not).

But as i always say, play the way you like, but please, have in mind GM and other players.