Tradition Mechanics, tl;dr warning: rambling Options

[Ancient History]

You can't believe everything you read on the internet, that's how the EuroWars got started.

Shadowrun Traditions Are Nothing Like Real Life
Let's be clear: real-life magical traditions have very little to do with the mechanics of magic as it works in Shadowrun. Don't get me wrong, there are a lot of the elements of real-world magic in SR: summoning spirits, enchanting magical tools, casting spells, all good. The thing is, all of these traditions are horribly impractical. Not even kidding, some of the ceremonial magic from the Medieval and Renaissance grimoires is ridiculous in what it's supposed to do, even the ones that aren't obvious forgeries.

I should mention at this point that magical traditions are syncrestic as hell. You get to a point reading through some histories where it seems like at the best of times a couple magicians are stealing everything they can from everyone else. Hearing about umbandistas using the Grand Pullet is strange and bizarre on the best of times, and then you read about some of the really strange shit the OTO got into...really strange shit. Anyway, you should all be thankful for the New Age shit because they're the ones that really started the idea that "All paths are valid," and that it's belief in your system, as opposed to the Age and Validity of the Ancient Tradition.

Anyway, point being: in real life, plenty of magicians begged, borrowed, stole, and invented whatever they needed as needed. In Shadowrun, I reckon pretty much the same thing happened; it took damn near sixty years but we've arrived at a point where pretty much every tradition can do what every other one can do. Hey, that segues into my next ramble:

SR4A Traditions Are All Alike
Some explanation for the history-impaired: Shadowrun started out with two magical traditions (Hermetic and Shamanic) and two flavors of magical ability (magicians and physical adepts). Things quickly got complicated as Shadowrun's collection of traditions grew, because the early game authors were following two separate principles (it should be mentioned that these are entirely hindsight observations, and I have no idea what was actually running through said authors' heads):

1. Every tradition has to have some unique and special mechanic. They are all perfect little snowflakes.
2. Every tradition has to borrow from the existing traditions. Players should feel comfortable with all of them.

What this means is that Hermeticism and Shamanism quickly became the "default" traditions and all the other traditions either had some mechanical advantage (or just completely different mechanics) or purposely had some quirk (often stolen from another tradition's mechanics) to set them apart. This was especially noticeable in the location books - every damn country seemed to want at least one unique magical tradition of their own, to the result that Britain had three flavors of Druidism and Tibetan buddhists were using hermetic circle rules to draw mandalas. The very worst of course was the Tir na nOg sourcebook, but it was far from the sole offender. By the time SR2 came to a close, the Shadowrun traditions were a mess.

SR3 wasn't much better. Magic in the Shadows took a stab at sanity and organization, but you were still stuck with, roughly speaking two camps - those traditions that had totems (idols, loas, etc.) and those that did not. Beyond that, the main details were in what type of spirits you could summon - nature spirits, elementals, loa spirits, or "spirits of the elements" (If you're asking yourself what the difference was between elementals and spirits of the elements, you'll note that this is part of the reason SR4 doesn't distinguish) - and even then there were internal distinctions such as who could summon ancestor spirits and who could not. Things continued to get muddier with every book, though the general shaman/not-a-shaman divide remained.

Hermetics, it has to be said, got the short end of the stick; while shamans or related traditions got to play with a couple new options - ancestor shamans, pantheism, totemists and obeyifas - hermetics were stuck with the old (but reliable) elementals which pretty much defined them as a tradition. On the other hand, pretty much everybody loved totems of one stripe or another. You had idols, loa, animals, elementals, paracritters/mythological...granted, most of them were some variation of "shaman," but the options were there.

Okay, skipping to the chase: SR4A collapsed this shit down. The number of spirits was cut down to ten, largely by removing a lot of redundancies (Water Elements, Undines, Lake Spirits - yeah, no, all Spirits of Water), and now everybody can get a mentor spirit - but believe it or not, those were pretty minor changes in the scheme of things; it was the changes in summoning that really killed one of the most fundamental differences. Used to be every hermetic needed a hermetic circle and - y'know, fuckit, just take my word for the fact that the mechanics were a lot more different and complicated than they are now. Most of the minor or incidental mechanical differences - the ability to collect animal reagents, summoning a spirit that can possess you, being able to stuff a spirit into a little widget - were opened up as options to most everybody.

Which is where we (finally) get back to the point - SR4 traditions don't have different mechanics to really enforce the fluffy differences, and decisions on what to play are less based on what you can do mechanically (okay, some munchkinny bit with drain attributes aside) than what you actually want to play. Or that's my story and I'm sticking to it. Honestly, I think the consolidated mechanics help make the game run faster and smoother; it's not that I don't understand the appeal of having different mechanics for each tradition, it's just that now yo can write your own tradition for whichever magical system that hasn't been covered yet without making up a bunch of new mechanics, and it'll be compatible with every other one in the game. Hell, you could try to build a tradition around the Simon Necronomicon if you really want to.

Not that you would want to. I mean, have you read The Necronomicon Files? Jesus wept.

Bringing It Home
Shadowrun's magical system is actually fairly flexible enough that with a bit of imagination you can mimic most real-world magical traditions to a surprising degree. Even necropants fall well within the range of unique enchantments. Of course, that doesn't mean you're literally going to be summoning up demons out of the Lesser Key of Solomon, but there's no reason why you can't go through the same motions and get that Spirit of Fire you really need. So for players and gamemasters that really want to get into the meat of their characters' traditions, for all the fun role-playing potential that exists there, go for and shine on you crazy diamonds.

[Bugfoxmaster]

Wow. I'm amazed, but I actually READ all of that. And it was good. And yopu know what? I agreed. Can you create a tradition based on Pastafarianism (or Scientology; either one will do)?
Joking, of course. But very true, all of it.

[Derek]

Good explanation as usual, AH

[underaneonhalo]

I have yet to see an AH post that is TL;DR.

[Kumo]

Ancient History's right, I find new rules for Traditions better than in former editions.

[Stahlseele]

What do you mean with "tl;dr"?
That wasn't even one screen of text, that's nowhere near too long or wall of text.
And as usual, i quite enjoyed reading what you call your ramblings ^^

[GreyBrother]

You're a captain, so, you're entitled to ramble on about something everyone knows.

Slightly edited quote. Whoever guesses it wins a free cookie and a hint for who the Milkman really is.

Alternative: Loved reading it but i too can't see the TL (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

[Ancient History]

Well, the first go at it included a half-page rant about "druids" in SR versus "druids" in real life, including my favorite Warren Ellis quote of all time. But there was some trouble uploading that version for some verdamnt reason.

[Dragnar]

Slightly edited quote. Whoever guesses it wins a free cookie and a hint for who the Milkman really is.

Star Trek: The Next Generation, if I'm not mistaken (and the Milkman part is a Psychonauts-quip)


And Ancient History: There's no harm in trying to upload the rest of it again. I, for one, would like to read the rest...

[GreyBrother]

The Architect is the Milkman, Dragnar. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

I too, would like to see a ramble on druids vs druids. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

[CanRay]

Only thing I can add to this conversation is that I'm now having to figure out a Tradition based on Body Modification, and another one based on Mr. T.

My players drive me insane sometimes, but then I remember that I'm already there.

[Bugfoxmaster]

Chuck Norris Tradition: Drain Stat: Strength (What? It's not allowed? FEEL ROUNDHOUSE KICK!)
Combat Spirit: Roundhouse Kick
Detection Spirit: Rondhouse Kick
Health spirit: Roundhouse Kick
Illusion Spirit: Roundhouse Kick
Manipulaiton Spirit: Roundhouse Kick

[BlueMax]

Ancient....

I have more respect for you than I should. Also, you are one of the holy ones blessed with the hair mutation of the gods and yet I dislike this post.
This post isn't about traditions in SR4(a), its about SR(4) as a whole. The entire system was presented in an open fashion for players to create their own beauty. While an argument on the merits of a such a system to the players, the game system and the industry could be debated, this is not the place.

With the exception of fantasy future, Shadowrun 4 Core Rules have a foundation for any type of game and any embrace of color, *at* your table. To say this applies to only traditions, it to treat only the light currently striking my eyes and not the horribly light sensitivity migraine.

For those of you who live in California, this message was brought to you by
"Pick Five and a Drain stat, taping into a game systems mechanics during the earliest stages"


BlueMax
/who is high on pain.

[Ravor]

Aye, excellant post Ancient History, although personally I'd like to see the "Threat" Traditions get the same treatment that the normal ones did as well, I mean Blood Magic is actually a playable and not unbalanced "tradition", but from what I remember Toxics aren't and Insects are just "wonky".

*EDIT*

However with that said, personally I'd rather see the traditions slowly phased out as magical research in UMT continues to bare fruit as it has in Spirit Summoning and Bid D's amused words about self placed limits are proven true... Not quite sure how a person coudl mantain balance in Spirit Selection though...

[Ancient History]

Listen, Druids burned more people than Torquemada, stabbed more people than Ted Bundy, had more politico-religious clout than the Pope and Ayatollah Khomeini combined, and did not go in for crystals and New Age stuff in a big way.

Druids scared the living spit out of people.
from Druid #1

Druids hit Shadowrun like a donkey punch during painfully awkward sex on prom night. At first you feel hurt and confused, the bowel-clenching surprise of the blow hurts as much as the sudden knot in the back of your head, and yet somehow you know you were never more open to getting hurt that way. We were wide open, we let our guard down hoping everything would be as good as they say (this being a complex argument concerning how well-received druids had been in certain other roleplaying game systems, such as Dungeons & Dragons), and then it knocked us silly. Unfair, really, even if we were asking for it.

It was the London Sourcebook what started it (okay, maybe it was the Grimoire, but the LS is it's own little universe of weirdness and ties in better when I bitch about Tir na nOg later). While ostensibly centered on the Smoke, it was really basically the Neo-Anarchist's Guide to Great Britain. It included no less than three variations on the druidic theme (four if you count Cornish bards, more on that later), and was the first real go at diluting the shaman/hermetic waters. You see, druids could be hermetic mages or shamans; it was a kind of metalabel. If you were a druid, you got to use all sorts of ley lines and druidic gear; this seemed like a good deal compared to regular hermetic and shamanic magicians who had no such advantages. (You could argue that mages and shamans had their own little power sites, but /very few of them/ were ever published; ley lines were, and are, comparatively more accessible and powerful than most).

Digression: Leylines. Don't let anyone blow any smoke up your ass about lines of magical force or anything like that, these things are a comparatively recent invention with no known connection to druids or anything more paranormal than human beings' amazing pattern recognition abilities. This is not to say that the general concept of lining sites up and the magical power of straight lines is complete bullshit made up on the spot, because there are some real oddities in anthropology and archaeology (like the water glyphs on 37°00'04" latitude) and some real-world occult basis (go read After Dark by Manly Wade Wellman). That said, the first idea of them in Britain dates all the way back to 1921; the fact that they exist in SR can be attributed to either the fact that Alfred Watkins got lucky or the positive happy thoughts of far too many New Agers. End digression.

Druid shamans were nominally Celtic, but came in distinct ethno-national flavors...since as we all know, every damn nation has to have "unique" magical whatsits. In LS this meant some totems were reserved for Scottish or Welsh druid shamans, in Germany this meant idols were the province of German/European druids, and in TNN there were some Irish druids. I have no doubt if Shadows of Europe had been any longer we'd have some Manx and Guernsey druids too. As it is, the druids of Brittany got screen time and got to play around with faeries and dangerous forces. Hell, one of the elven paths of Tir na nOg was a druid. For anyone counting, that makes (at minimum) three distinct types of druid (hermetic, shamanic, and elven), with the shamans split on national lines (general Celtic, Scottish, Welsh, and German/European idolaters).

(It should be noted that there are good things that came out of this. Originally totems were exclusively critters; the expansion of "elemental" and "mythological" totems like Wyrm and Oak paved the way for the more open atmosphere of mentor spirits we enjoy today.)

At this point I would like to point out that Druidism is not a surviving pagan religion or possess anything remotely like a continuous tradition. The original druids were, as Warren Ellis pointed out, scary priest-figures and pretty much all massacred by the Romans. Hell, the best remaining records of druidic practices occur in the war diaries of Julius Caeser, which were noted propaganda devices. There are some claims - and I myself don't keep current on these things, so I'm basing this on reading Numa Denis Fustel De Coulanges' The Ancient City and a subscription to Archaeology magazine.

In brief, large parts of Indo-European civilization can (theoretically) be traced back to a sort of common precursor; this didn't mean late cultures weren't distinct (special little snowflakes again), but there were some enduring similarities between, say, the early Greeks and the early Indians in terms of certain practices and approaches to religion, castes and so on. Anywho, the Celtic cultural model was a very widespread one in Iron Age Europe, particularly in Gaul (modern day France) but also the British Isles, Germany, down into the Iberian peninsula, etc. Comparisons with Indian culture and religion at the time include a belief in reincarnation and possibly definitive caste systems, though I've read arguments for and against that. In any event, everybody agrees that druids were active in Gaul as politically powerful priest-figures, and that after the Romans killed most of them they hung on for a while in Britain and finally Ireland before being killed or converted by Christians - and even then, there were some holdover practices.

So, with all the druids dead and practically no writings - the druids did not, as a rule, believe in writing anything down and relied instead on significant oral traditions - all SR-era (and, really, "real life") druids are in fact proponents of Neo-Druidism. You could actually make a strong case for each of the different (and I use the term loosely) variants of pre-SR4 druidism being based on one of the (now usually considered historically inaccurate) reconstructions of druidism from the last century or two. Animists (Celtic druids), ceremonial magicians (hermetic druids), neo-pagans (idolaters) and tree-hugging hippie Luddite fantasyists (nature totems) are all well accounted for. [Horrible and depressing fact: there are 24k or so druids dressing in dodgy sackcloth robes in the United States right this very second. If real druids came back today, they'd have these people's guts nailed to the great tree and no mistake.]

We also have - and I love this - the Cornish bard. Depending on who you ask, bards were either a sub-caste of druids or a lower-caste group that the druids looked down on and eventually betrayed them to the Romans. Either way, classic. The Cornish Bard is one of the first real aspected magicians in Shadowrun, starting a long and bloody tradition of blessed with suck. They got the Centering magic right off the bat (provided they didn't mind learning Cornish), but could never initiate. Ever.

Wow. Sucks to be those shamans.

That's right, they were shamans. Druid shamans. They could sit on a ley line and sing Cornish leys and get laid by free spirits on the ley. You could even be extra special and be a totemist, which meant that you could only use magic according to your totem. Not because it would give you more points, just for lols. That was almost as bad as the Option D magic choice in the Germany Sourcebook, where you could use Astral Sight but only if you paid 1 Karma each time.

Druids' rap for blood magic (i.e. gutting you and nailing your guts to the tree, or burning you in a wicker man) are based mostly on Caeser's propaganda and a little book called The Golden Bough by James George Frazier. Like The Ancient City, this was another attempt to identify a common cultural link or underpinning in ancient mythology and cultures - Frazier's case, his idea that a king was ritually sacrificed to ensure the fertility of the land, and idea stolen and abused in far too many modern fantasy novels (and science fiction, and comic book, and movies, and...). Really, we can come up with a lot of strange shit about ancient cultures if we try. Look at Margaret Murray and The Witch Cult in Western Europe. Which, like The Old Straight Track dates back to 1921. Lot of crazy out that year.

SR3 did not fix druids, though Magic in the Shadows did try to filter out Teh Crazy a little bit. Teh Crazy cannot be denied, though, and was brought back in Shadows of Europe and State of the Art: 2064, which is part of what prompted the complete reform in SR4.

I must not fear teh Crazy.
Teh Crazy is the mind-killer.
Teh Crazy is the little-death that brings total obliteration.
I will face my teh Crazy.
I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path.
Where teh Crazy has gone there will be teh Crazy.
Only I will remain. Teh Crazy.

I did get to put Wicker Men in SR4, though, for which I am eternally grateful.

[the_real_elwood]

There's a reason people read whatever AH writes, and that's because it's exceptionally well written and makes some good points. Nice posts, AH.

[RunnerPaul]

Can you create a tradition based on Pastafarianism (or Scientology; either one will do)?

While I can't think of a cannonical example of anyone being touched by his noodly appendage in Shadowrun, the Universal Brotherhood is just Scientology with the serial numbers laser-etched off.

[Stahlseele]

It's stated that you can actually create Traditions BASED ON YOUR FAVOURITE SATURDAY MORNING BREAKFAST TIMe CARTOON SHOW!

Also, people like AH's stuff because it's understandable and funny.

[Pendaric]

All valid points, but declines to address the down sides of a unified system. I like unified systems, I liked in WW mage, I liked in it Everyway. But it is open to abuse in another way, that the fluff not backed up with crunch has no difference mechanically. So the essence of the differences between tradition may be ignored by players and/or mainipulated for max stasticial advantage without defference to the metaphor of the game world.

The essence of difference between traditons lacking re-enforcement from the rules, the source for diversity for the game magic and a source of great roleplay is easily lost, paticularly to new players. combine with the simplicity of a general spell list set ups a misunderstanding that every magicain is the same as the next as they all do the same thing. Because description can and is often lost with out specification.

This is the exact problem White Wolf had and miffed so many gamers when they tried to explain what they were aiming to engender in their fan base with their writing.

So I agree it is now more accessable and resolves the above detailed issues but simple creates others. We are lucky the fan base has enough experence it is a minor issue.

[Ancient History]

I might be going mad, but as I recall White Wolf for a long time had a "I don't care what your tradition is, use this system" for their Mage: the Ascension game, and managed to piss off all the fanpeople in Mage: the Awakening by declaring "There is only one true tradition, Atlantean, use this system."

[underaneonhalo]

@AH
I'm pretty sure you've posted it before (hell I might have asked it in the past) but just what exactly do you do for a living? I'm guessing encyclopedia proofreader.

[Ravor]

Aye, of course the ironic thing is that I happen to like the entire "one true system" in Mage.

[Pendaric]

I believe the quote to paraphrase here, Is you can please most of the people some of the time....but you cannot please all of the people all of the time.

As I said I appreciate why it was changed but lets not believe its perfect.

[Ancient History]

@AH
I'm pretty sure you've posted it before (hell I might have asked it in the past) but just what exactly do you do for a living? I'm guessing encyclopedia proofreader.

University student. Got my Bachelors in Electrical Engineering (Minors in Electronic Music and Technical Writing), going for a Masters in Electrical Engineering (Graduate certificate in Technology Management).

As I said I appreciate why it was changed but lets not believe its perfect.

No, it's not perfect. There are advantages to both ways of doing things; unique mechanics add to the distinctiveness of a given tradition and can be tailored to that tradition's actual structure and belief. At the same time, however, that can really complicate the game and there are many overlapping or grossly similar aspects of many traditions - or as I've said above, magical workings which are not traditionally associated with a tradition but which have been adapted or invented once it was realized they were possible in the Sixth World.

[MYST1C]

That was almost as bad as the Option D magic choice in the Germany Sourcebook, where you could use Astral Sight but only if you paid 1 Karma each time.

Was that an actual rule in the Germany Sourcebook? Because the original German Deutschland in den Schatten did in fact contain a special new rule concerning Astral Sight that worked rather differently:
Assigning Priority C to magic made your character a "Spökenkieker" (a reference to Frisian mythology/folklore) which translates to English as "Ghost/Spirit Watcher". Such a character had a Magic attribute of 6 and could use Astral Sight, nothing more. No projection, no spells, no summoning, no focus use.
If the character's Essence ever dropped below 1 his Astral Sight was gone. If the character ever got cybereyes his Astral Sight was gone, mo matter how much Essence left.

Of course, this rule construct was made obsolete when Astral Sight was made generally available as an Edge (SR2/3) or Positive Quality (SR4), respectively.