What's the deal with 4th Edition spirits?!? Options

[The Evil Mr Robo...]

Mages conjuring spirits of Man?
Nature spirits not limited by domain?

Huh??!!??

[paws2sky]

Mages conjuring spirits of Man?
Nature spirits not limited by domain?

Huh??!!??

Welcome to SR4. I had the same reaction when I first flipped through the magic section.
Once you get used to it, it works pretty well.

-paws

[Ayeohx]

I think with the flexibility of Traditions they had to break the old formula. Otherwise everyone would make their own traditions and hermetic and shamans would become a minority.

[DireRadiant]

Mages conjuring spirits of Man?
Nature spirits not limited by domain?

Huh??!!??

I heard they let orks and trolls vote and a dragon became president....

[Matsci]

Mages conjuring spirits of Man?
Nature spirits not limited by domain?

Huh??!!??

In 2067, A team of Research mages, in concert with the Great Dragon Schwartzkopf, Introduced the Unified theory of Magic.

It was so awesome that it changed everyone's view of magic forever.

[Heath Robinson]

Take Geasa against various things. Tada, tradition flavour restored. And you can do much more! You can use those other traditions in Street Magic. Like Shintoism, or Buddhism, or Chaos Magic! And they didn't need to build entirely new magic systems to do it!

You might be able to tell that I prefer the unified SR4 system to what I assume is a nightmare of conflicting systems.

[GreyBrother]

In 2067, A team of Research mages, in concert with the Great Dragon Schwartzkopf, Introduced the Unified theory of Magic.

It was so awesome that it changed everyone's view of magic forever.

Sorry, don't know if this is meant ironic or serious, but that's a complete different shoe and has nothing to do with the rules change, AFAIK.

[hobgoblin]

its the canon justification for the rules change, iirc...

and while i loved the voodoo chapter in awakening, being able to fit 10+ traditions in the same space is a win imo...

[paws2sky]

Sorry, don't know if this is meant ironic or serious, but that's a complete different shoe and has nothing to do with the rules change, AFAIK.

Okay then, blame it on the fluctuating mana level. Old boundaries are being broken. New ones discovered.

And there you go.

-paws

[Dwight]

Mages conjuring spirits of Man?
Nature spirits not limited by domain?

Huh??!!??

If you want to observe those old limits you have to use a mix of Geasa (which incidentally are different in that they no longer deal with Essence lost) and voluntary self restraint by the player.

[BlueMax]

its the canon justification for the rules change, iirc...

and while i loved the voodoo chapter in awakening, being able to fit 10+ traditions in the same space is a win imo...

A better wording would be "To name 10+ traditions in the same space". All of the traditions are really the same but pick 5 spirits. They all use the same rules.

This makes things easier on new and old players. There is a cost though.

[Cain]

A better wording would be "To name 10+ traditions in the same space". All of the traditions are really the same but pick 5 spirits. They all use the same rules.

This makes things easier on new and old players. There is a cost though.

Yeah, it's flavor. Yes, the new system is very flexible and allows for more real-world traditions to be brought into Shadowrun. The problem is, there's so much emphasis on the new system, there's almost no description. Hermeticism and Shamanism get about four paragraphs of flavor each in the BBB. Of all the new traditions, they get maybe two. Fewer traditions, with richer descriptions, would have been a lot better.

[Zurai]

Yeah, it's flavor. Yes, the new system is very flexible and allows for more real-world traditions to be brought into Shadowrun. The problem is, there's so much emphasis on the new system, there's almost no description. Hermeticism and Shamanism get about four paragraphs of flavor each in the BBB. Of all the new traditions, they get maybe two. Fewer traditions, with richer descriptions, would have been a lot better.

I would agree if these traditions were invented and the only source of info on them was in the rulebooks. Fortunately, all but maybe one or two (chaos tradition is the one I'm thinking of) of the magical traditions are based on, if not taken wholesale from, real-world theologies. More information is a Wikipedia search away. In that situation, fitting in more traditions at the expense of making players research the ones they find really interesting is the better choice, IMO.

This is actually one of the strengths of the Shadowrun setting. Don't know enough about <insert culture, geographical area, tradition, nation, etc>? You can look it up in any half-decent encyclopedia. You simply can't really do that in any game set in an invented world.

[Cain]

Sixth World Hermeticism and Shamanism are only vaugely similar to their real-world counterparts. Similarly, Shadowrun Voodoo and real-world Voudoun have hugely different practices. The others haven't been as prominent, but those three at least deserve more than a couple of paragraphs; they deserve some detailed history, maybe even showing how they've affected the Shadowrun world.

[Heath Robinson]

Fortunately, all but maybe one or two (chaos tradition is the one I'm thinking of) of the magical traditions are based on, if not taken wholesale from, real-world theologies.

Chaos Magic is a real world paradigm.

[GreyBrother]

Yeah, but Shadowrun 4 Chaos Magic should be called anything but Chaos Magic.

[Demonseed Elite]

Sixth World Hermeticism and Shamanism are only vaugely similar to their real-world counterparts. Similarly, Shadowrun Voodoo and real-world Voudoun have hugely different practices. The others haven't been as prominent, but those three at least deserve more than a couple of paragraphs; they deserve some detailed history, maybe even showing how they've affected the Shadowrun world.

I'm not really sure I agree with that, or at least I'd like to explain what you mean further. I know I personally haven't really run into many cases where I couldn't use real world research to apply to Sixth World magical traditions. Hell, that's how Peter and I wrote the traditions in Street Magic.

Yes, that real world research isn't going to include how those traditions (or any traditions) have impacted the Sixth World. But that's the responsibility of setting material in general.

[GreyBrother]

Okay then, blame it on the fluctuating mana level. Old boundaries are being broken. New ones discovered.

Forgot to answer, sorry. In my opinion there was nothing new discovered, it was just a rules change and the RAW magic rules of different traditions became geasa (if you would want to take them). There was no real distinction in magical traditions in third Edition, it all came down to what the magician believed and wanted to do. Fourth Edition just made that clear for itself and that's how the actual magic system came to be.
That's how i explained it to myself, be free to think something up for your groups. I'm just not happy with some In Game Justification of Tradition Mixing because "this and that happened and we learned from each other blurb". Not even the Unification Theory was that unified.

[hobgoblin]

so what is a tradition, if not a collection of geasa?

[Cain]

I'm not really sure I agree with that, or at least I'd like to explain what you mean further. I know I personally haven't really run into many cases where I couldn't use real world research to apply to Sixth World magical traditions. Hell, that's how Peter and I wrote the traditions in Street Magic.

Yes, that real world research isn't going to include how those traditions (or any traditions) have impacted the Sixth World. But that's the responsibility of setting material in general.

Simply put, in the real world Hermeticism and Shamanism encompass hundreds of different practices. In Shadowrun, those practices have more or less been unified for simplicity's sake. An Enochian is treated the same as a Golden Dawn member. There could have been more, much more, describing the unique Shadowrun flavor of the two major traditions.

[BlueMax]

Simply put, in the real world Hermeticism and Shamanism encompass hundreds of different practices. In Shadowrun, those practices have more or less been unified for simplicity's sake. An Enochian is treated the same as a Golden Dawn member. There could have been more, much more, describing the unique Shadowrun flavor of the two major traditions.

I would prefer to have less to describe the flavor. After all, I have access to wikipedia if I want real world data.

Mechanical differences were more interesting to me, as they would be unique and important for the game.

[Zaranthan]

The point is, if you want your Enochian to be different from a Golden Dawn member, you just take different geasa. They didn't need to release an entire sourcebook fill with page after page of geasa templates for half the players to just ignore and make up their own stuff anyway. You know your character much better than Catalyst does, so who's the better candidate to dictate what that character can and cannot do?

[WeaverMount]

I'm actually with cain on this one. The street magic write-ups are a really poor length. Either they should have been a sentence or two or a page or two. Why? As the mentioned Wikipedia. I don't feel like paying for the sound bit version of a magical tradition when I either know it already, or can look it u in a heart beat.

[Demonseed Elite]

I'm actually with cain on this one. The street magic write-ups are a really poor length. Either they should have been a sentence or two or a page or two. Why? As the mentioned Wikipedia. I don't feel like paying for the sound bit version of a magical tradition when I either know it already, or can look it u in a heart beat.

So how would a two-sentence description have helped you? We did what we could with the word count we had available, balancing trying to provide a general idea of the tradition as well as trying to present a number of different traditions. I think they do a good job of presenting the basic idea of what the tradition is about, which is the goal. Because, honestly, when you start getting into the deep details of a magical tradition, they will vary from one practitioner to the next, so it's either useless or overly constrictive to get into that sort of detail in a rule book.

[Zurai]

For the record, I think the Street Magic profiles are just about the perfect length. They give you enough info on the tradition to know whether it's something you'd be interested in playing. Two sentences would be useless from any standpoint, and two pages would be far, far, FAR too much when about 90% of the info they'd possibly put in those two pages is available for free online. Every page they waste duplicating stuff like that is one less page they can use to provide new rules.

And it's not like they've gone that in-depth into any other specific bit of Shadowrun rulefluff. Cain wants to know how Voodoo impacted the world, but if we give an impact statement for every tradition, why don't we get one for every piece of cyberware? I'd imagine Wired Reflexes have had just as much, if not more, of an impact on the world of Shadowrun, so why not two pages of backstory on that too? Where does it stop?