Mentor spirits - do they define a tradition? Options

[Hat]

Ok, when my players started creating characters one of the guys making a mage made a hermetic with a mentor spirit. To me a mentor spirit is what defines a shaman. So does a shaman need to buy the mentor spirit quality to be a shaman and if you buy a mentor spirit are you by definition a shaman?

Thanks!

With a sweep of his...

Hat

[Pendaric]

In SR4 rules no.
But the mentor spirit is a big influence on a magicains magical life and therefore thought pattern. The advantages are balanced and complimented through roleplay.

[Cabral]

The shaman concept is pantheistic. He may pay homage to bear when he needs strong healing, but he will pay homage to wolf for defense of his tribe.

The Mentor Spirit means that you have a particular spirit/totem that guides your character and influences your personality and magic. In SR1-3, all shamans (and shamanic traditions like druids) had found this kind of spiritual guide by default. In SR4, the guide is optional and available to all traditions.

[Larme]

In SR3, that was the case. Shamanism and Hermeticism were two different kinds of magic, and they worked differently. And that dichotomy was ok, except they started introduced CRaZy new variants almost at random, like Wuxing and Voodoo, which worked differently because the devs arbitrarily said so. What SR4 did was bring every kind of magic into one unified system, so that the system is a lot easier to deal with.

Mentor Spirits used to be nature totems, but they are not like that any more. Some of them deal with nature, others deal more with mankind. Hermetic mages usually (always?) invoke dieties or spirits to empower their magical rites, and having a mentor spirit means they just follow one more than the others. It probably wouldn't make sense to have a Hermetic mage that worshipped Bear, but when you're talking about Wise Warrior or Horned Man or something, it's much easier to picture.

[Chibu]

It always seemed to me (though admittedly I haven't studied it in detail) that mentor spirits too a much more active role than the totems of the previous system. They seemed to me more like an unbound ally spirit that happened to like you or something. And they seemed to me to be more personal than the totems. The followers of a totem seemed to actually be following the same entity, whereas mentor spirits seemed to be different for every person.

Is that how it is, or do I have the concept entirely wrong here?

[Glyph]

Larme: I think you have hermetics confused with shamans. Hermetics are the ones, in SR, who take a more logical and analytical view of magic. Their view of mentor spirits would tend to be abstract (mentor spirits can be concepts), psychological (this manifestation of an armored knight must represent my subconscious desire to be heroic), or even mercenary (okay, so this astral entity will grant me power if I further its goals, picking me because my own goals are similar. Sounds like a good bargain).

Chibu: Mentor spirits are similar to how Totems have been - they can talk to the mage in dreams or visions, and usually their advice is fairly cryptic. They have always varied by culture, and sometimes they can be individualistic even if they fit one of the "established" archetypes - someone who loves thrash music, and has dreams where a guy in a glowing mohawk talks to him, might be following the trickster or adversary mentor spirit. Their true nature (are they real, or in the mage's head? Are they universal concepts given form, or unusually powerful true spirits?) has always been intentionally nebulous.

[Cabral]

It probably wouldn't make sense to have a Hermetic mage that worshipped Bear, but when you're talking about Wise Warrior or Horned Man or something, it's much easier to picture.

Well, the name of the Mentor is not set in stone. Look at the back of Street Magic for examples of how they use existing mentors to represent different concepts or dieties. A Hermetic might not find particular insight from Bear, but rename bear Growth or something and it becomes a more likely.

[Larme]

Larme: I think you have hermetics confused with shamans. Hermetics are the ones, in SR, who take a more logical and analytical view of magic. Their view of mentor spirits would tend to be abstract (mentor spirits can be concepts), psychological (this manifestation of an armored knight must represent my subconscious desire to be heroic), or even mercenary (okay, so this astral entity will grant me power if I further its goals, picking me because my own goals are similar. Sounds like a good bargain).

Lollers, no I don't. I'm thinking of hermeticism, as described here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermeticism. Hermeticism isn't some kind of mathematical way to do magic. It incorporates belief in gods and otherworldly beings whose powers are invoked. You might not call it worship or religion, but there are certainly entities in the hermetic tradition that a hermetic might "follow," as in having them for a mentor spirit. We're not disagreeing, I think you just took issue with the words I used to describe it.

[Cabral]

The typical view of hermeticism in Shadowrun is that of the "science" of magic. In SR4, hermeticism has taken on a more occult twist.

[Glyph]

I'm talking about the hermetic tradition as described in the books, which is considerably different than real, actual hermeticism. This isn't just SR4 - they have consistently painted hermeticism as being the logical, psuedo-scientific one since First Edition, to contrast it with shamanism I suppose.

[Shev]

In SR3, that was the case. Shamanism and Hermeticism were two different kinds of magic, and they worked differently. And that dichotomy was ok, except they started introduced CRaZy new variants almost at random, like Wuxing and Voodoo, which worked differently because the devs arbitrarily said so. What SR4 did was bring every kind of magic into one unified system, so that the system is a lot easier to deal with.

Easier to deal with, but also a lot more bland and lacking in flavor. But that's just my opinion. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

And I just didn't involve the variants a whole lot. Magicians in SR are rare enough as it is, so the way I played it was that running into one outside of their usual turf was rare to the point of gaping shock at actually meeting one. In a year of constant playing, my players only ever had dealings with one variant, and they didn't even know he WAS a variant.

But yes, Hermetics have always been the "scientists" of magic. They study how mana interacts with the real world, and appy theorems and formulas to it. It might seem silly to try to "rationalize" something so mysical, but then, look at quantum physics. We've had over fifty years to chew on that one, and we STILL don't know how the hell it works. Einstein, one of the brightest minds of the modern age, HATED the very concept. So, be nice to the little mages as they make their little theories. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

A mentor spirit might be viewed as an "inside source" by a mage. Some part of him made manifest that helps him in his studies, perhaps. I'd have to agree though, that a mage that starts "following" any kind of spirit or ideal is drifting away from being a mage, and leaning more towards being a shaman.

A shaman gets his power by following and embodying some ideal, be it one encapsulated by an animal totem (the clever helpfulness of Mouse) or by a broader, more generalized concept. If he drifts from those ideals, his totem penalizes him until he makes amends.

A mage gets his power by quantifying magical processes in ways that he can understand and shape. One could say that his power is less limited than the shamans in that there's no restriction on his behavior. On the other hand, he has to go it alone, where the shaman can rely on guidance from his totem.

[Cthulhudreams]

I've think that a mentor spirit gives flavour to a tradition and helps define it.

Say for an example I have a jungian tradition that belives spirits are a reflection of the collective psyche of metahumanity, or whatever. However, each mage is, of course, totally free to put his own spin on it.

And I think you can see how different the spin might be if a mage's mentor is

A) The Dark King

B) The Owl

C) The Dragonslayer

[Larme]

A mage gets his power by quantifying magical processes in ways that he can understand and shape. One could say that his power is less limited than the shamans in that there's no restriction on his behavior. On the other hand, he has to go it alone, where the shaman can rely on guidance from his totem.

Correction: a mage gets his power however he wants to. Or rather, however his player wants him to (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif) Magic is flexible enough that even within one tradition, you could have multiple schools of thought. Regardless, even the pseudo-science version of hermeticism could involve gods and mentor spirits, it would just be a matter of quantifying and invoking those, too. In SR4, hermetics have every right to get a mentor spirit, and there is no requirement that they go it alone.

[Pendaric]

A stylistic debate in essence. The what is defined by the rules the why is defined by co-operative roleplay. There is no right answer here only shades of different styles of thought on the matter. Which is the best form of converation in my opinion.
Taking hermeticsm in SR there is room for variation between different hermetics. The stuff in SotA 64 gives an insight into the different ideaologies and the strengths and weaknesses of each.
Clasiscal hermeticsm is closer to what Larme describes while Renewed hermeticsm, the scientific step child of classical hermeticsm practised mostly in north americas, is how Glyph has correctly stated its presented in the BBB.

Ideally the paradigm of magic should to a degree define the character's out look on life and lead to fun roleplaying. When two magicains of the same paradigm cannot agree on the metaplanes other than they exist, mentor spirits become important on the effects rather than the specifics. Consequently each magic user developes their own personal relationship shaped by their outlook on life and themselves. It would also feed back and effect the magicain in question.
Just make it internally consistent and its all good.

[JBlades]

Well, as far as hermeticism goes, the word does in fact derive from Hermes, the Greek god, as in the tradition is derived from his teachings. So even while being described as "scientific", there is certainly space for a mentor spirit within it.

Though if I remember correctly, somewhere in one of the older magic books (maybe Awakenings?) it talked about the fact that SR's hermetics and current hermetics are actually 2 different traditions. When the awakening came a couple newly awakened folks got together and, starting with hermetic theory, they put together a totally new tradition based on scientific experimentation and the result is what is referred to as "hermetic" in SR.

There's more on that in a write up on that university in Prague somewhere (maybe SoE?), I think, and there being divisions within the tradition over how scientific vs. old school traditional hermetic different groups of mages are in their thinking/practice. I imagine a certain subset of the scientific ones might drift toward chaos magic.

Been awhile since I read through that stuff, so my guesses at which books it was in might be way off...

[Larme]

Here's how it probably came about: the original authors of SR said "how do we combine Cyberpunk 2020 and D&D?" And part of that is that they had to have two kinds of magic users, mages and clerics. Hermetic was therefore based not on any real world tradition of sorcery, but rather was supposed to be D&D wizards in the future (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

[O'Donnell Heir]

It's also entirely possible that a hermetic might view the Mentor Spirit as simply a rather powerful free spirit.

Of course, it's all up to the player to decide how they want to role it. I personally never liked how bland the Hermetic became next to the shaman when it came to shear power or roleplaying aspect, new rules made it better.

[fool]

In SR4 anyone who is awakened can have a mentor spirit, even an adept. I think one of the major aspects that people are forgetting is the word Mentor, which in it's most basic meaning is teacher. The mentor spirit teaches (gives extra dice etc.) the awakened on certain things and charges something (the penalty) for others. This is probably how a hermetic would see it at least, a different tradition, say a shaman, would see it as the mentor spirit as as an ideal perhaps.

[CircuitBoyBlue]

I like the thought of some of the mages that developed mentor spirits between the 2060s and 2070s assuming they were going insane, and were hearing hallucinatory voices.

[fool]

and the shamans thought they were going to go insane since they no longer felt connected to their totems.
And spirits basically did go insane and decided they were going to radically change how they did things.
And all those newbies using other traditions obviously are insane because everyone knows that's not how magic works, or wait is it?

[Synner]

Taking hermeticsm in SR there is room for variation between different hermetics. The stuff in SotA 64 gives an insight into the different ideaologies and the strengths and weaknesses of each.
Clasiscal hermeticsm is closer to what Larme describes while Renewed hermeticsm, the scientific step child of classical hermeticsm practised mostly in North America, is how Glyph has correctly stated its presented in the BBB.

I was never completely taken with what I thought was a rather bland approach to Hermeticism in SR1-3 (particularly when compared to Shamanism), especially when the real world tradition had so much potential and versatility (there are reasons why Gardner and Crowley both borrowed liberally from Renaissance Hermeticism). That's why when the opportunity came up to expand on the premise of modern day Hermetics my co-writer Audun and I ran with it in SoE and later in SOtA64.

[Therumancer]

Well use a bit of creativity here. In fantasy there are plenty of examples of Knowlege-Based wizards who gain knowlege/teaching/advice from spirits.

I don't know all the great secrets, but the guy could have a link to the spirit of some uber-mage who died in the previous age of Magic (Earthdawn) and shares his knowlege and advice.

Think of Bob from "The Dresden Files" (either TV show or the books which are much better). In the books Bob is a spirit of knowlege straight out, and helps Dresden with advice and such, and all of Dresden's magic is VERY logical/hermetic type. But Bob telling him how to do this or that helps him out in his preparations and makes him a lot more powerful. In the TV show Bob is the spirit of an uber-mage tied into the skull.

So basically the "Mentor Spirit" of a Hermetic type mage can be any kind of spirit that has the kind of knowlege that the mage uses and shares it with him. Who knows, it might be a knowlegable Shaman thing, but instead of casting based on faith, it's providing the wizard with the knowlege he needs for his tradition. This could be something like a Loa just flat out saying "here is how you cast a spell" when asked/called devoid of all the ritual and religion stuff (which might freak a Vodoo themed Shaman out in a way).

Basically I'm just thinking it sounds pretty easy to work with.

Heck, if the guy has a magical family or a deceased teacher maybe the spirit of some family member or the teacher periodically shows up and pulls an "Obi-Wan". (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

>>>----Therumancer--->