Is it mostly New Age stuff? I think this is a question for freelancers.

one part D&D, one part Not D&D.

The part that is D&D pretty damn small, I think. As in it is almost the antithesis of D&D magic. Or was that D&D's contribution, an inspiration to NOT make it like that?

Actually, there's almost no Vancian quality to SR magic at all. I also wouldn't compare it to systems using mana or spell points, because theoretically with the right rolls a mage in SR never has to stop casting spells.

At the moment, I can't think of another system like this, although Burning Wheel might use something similar (cast until you can't because you're tired/damaged). Midnight's channeler might be similar too, but it has been an while since I read it. WoT maybe as well. (So I guess I can think of a few that are somewhat similar, but none that really strike me as influencial due to the timing of releases.)

I ran into this a while back about SR, and it mentions how magic got brought into SR and where they got their original inspiration from.

SHADOWRUN: The World Behind the Cards

Hey, cool article. Thanks.

No problem.


One of my favorites is the Big D part.

To no one's surprise, the dragon Dunkelzahn won by a landslide -- but it surprised everyone when, in the very moment of the dragon's victory, FASA announced his assassination.

"It was so unexpected," says SR line developer Mike Mulvihill, who masterminded the election adventures. "We made it feel like an actual press event. I had people calling my hotel room at 1 or 2 in the morning, asking if it was true. I'm amazed at how well it turned out."

SR cribs off of D&D-style/Jack Vance magic in the style of its spells, and in the character of its mages. the whole concept of mages that cast flashy effects like explosions, magical zap beams, and the like was largely popularized by D&D. there are certainly other sources, but it seems to me that D&D is central to the RPG/fantasy novel industry's concept of magic.

i also see D&Dism in SR's concept of 'elements'. especially in 2nd ed, they were always expanding on the original earth-air-fire-water setup--paraelements, quasielements, yadda yadda yadda, until the whole concept got kinda blurry. 'element', somewhere along the way, kinda lost its original definition and mutated from "basis of all matter and energy" into "different ways you can deal damage". SR picks up right where Planescape left off, with its lighting and sand and wood and what-have-you.

and, of course, there are the parallels between the D&D mage class and hermetic magic: bookish guys whose magic is fuelled by education rather than intuition. not that all SR hermetics (or even all D&D mages, these days) conform to that type, but that's the default style of both.

I suspect that part of the change in magic in 2e and 3e were also influenced by the author's own personal knowledge and biases with regard to RL magic (or at least, a very specific aspect of it), which also includes the creeping change in tone of derision towards that bookish hermetic class.

It is New Age-ish to the extent that there is a class of existing magic(k) that deals with concepts that directly translate into Shadowrun's magical rules like astral perception, projection, Shielding, warding, and ritual magic. However, I would hardly put Shadowrun at the forefront of appropriating those ideas into its game.

I'd noticed that as well, which was why I liked the different paradigims in SOTA. Hermetics became the whipping boys for a while, most shadowtalk was shamans slamming hermetics, with little bits of fluff backing them up. We need a New Hermetic Rennaisance.

No, we needed Steve Kenson to take his own personal beliefs and shove them up his ass.

Because, in case you didn't know, he believes in and practices "real" magic.

Everybody knows that hermetics are really just a bunch of nerds that need a good beating up.

Dude, binding elementals rocks.

And all the shamans are a bunch of tree huggers who smoked one too many...

Nah, shamans are cool, too.

What did Steve Kenson do to hermetics?

Kenson is , IIRC, in to Wiccan, and doesn't really care for hermetic, at least by his writing style. Read Magic in The Shadows and some of his other work, and you'll see a general lean away from hermetic and moretowrds shamanistic or totem stlye magic.

But... but hermetic magic rocks!!! :.(...

Is this a measurable overt bias, or yet another rumor induced "I see it! I see it!" reaction, he wondered.

Yeah, I was gonna say, it came from Stephen Kenson.

I'm not sure Kenson hates hermetics, though. Isn't Talon a hermetic?

No it doesn't. It stays home and studies astrological charts while the shaman next door goes out and listens to neo-tribal-goblin-rock.

And it doesn't like it when you cry either.

Or possibly Druidic?

If I may toss in my $0.02.....

I believe that SR magick is a combination or New Age, classical, 'traditional' and natrual-world-view concepts mixed in, with a healthy dose of consequence thrown in.

Let me explain.....

Back in the days when I played AD&D, long beofre WotC bought them out, the fantasy-magic was easy to play....almost too easy. There was no real consequence to miscasting a spell, enchanting, spirit summoning, ect. The higher you went in level, the more powerful you got. If you blew it on a cast spell, even Create Food, it just didn't work, the spell was used up & you had to wait until you could cast it again.
Huh?
Sure, the caster could get 'fatigued' slinging spells all day, but so what? A little rest, a good meal, and the mage/cleric/shaman/ ect. was up & ready to go at it again.
I remembered one of the Voyages of Sinbad films, one starting (a relatively unknown) Tom baker as an evil wizard trying to thwart Sinbad's current quest. When he created an alchemical flying spy (a homunculus, by SR standards), which drained him slightly. But when the spy was discovered & killed, the wizard felt it & aged rapidly! Magic had a price!

It was not long afterwards that someone sent an article into Dragon magazine detailing some of the effects of miscast magic (I cannot recall who, when or what issue).

After being burned out on all the then-releasing books coming out for AD&D (SpellJammer, Planescape, ect), I discovered a flyer for 1st edition SR & looked through the book. Magic, it seemed, had to be channeled throught the nervous system of the caster & into it's effect. If it miscast, the mage paid for it in Drain! It had me hooked. The sci-fi elements, as I was just getting back into cyberpunk fiction (Gibson's Neuromancer, Burning Chrome, Mona Lisa Overdrive,ect.) was the icing on the cake.

So, I would say, that's what SR's magic is. What you make of it.

Hehe, so I guess Burning Wheel tosses in an unhealthy dose of consequence. Because not only do you have to set aside dice while sustaining a spell, but if you fail the casting you get a random spell effect that basically is some sort of perversion of the spell you tried to cast. One of which can be ripping a hole in the fabric of whatever that lets a deamon step through and own your ass. Oh, and the only way to learn a new spell is try casting it when you don't really know what you are doing and the odds of screwing it up are much higher. You also can't just do this in the comfort of your comfy abode, it has to be in the line of duty as it were.

But definately I agree with you BookWyrm.

P.S. I'm not sure how far it goes back, but there were a few spells like Haste that had consequences in prior versions of D&D. Of course for some races, specifically Elves, the consequence was usually that you became more kickass.

Adult Red Draon becomes Great Wyrm Red Dragon by learning the 1st edition version of haste! Yay!

I think the miscasting spell effect would be awesome in SR. Finally, all those pictures of mages that burned themselves with a new spell in the lab would come true. I wonder if they just thought it would over-complicate things.

Oh, and James, I think you're right. I think Kenson is pagan, not into wiccan. Thanks, that makes more sense.

*wanders off picturing SL James dressed as a girl scout with a bad blond wig in pig tails singing camp songs around the fire*

Seriously.

Least. Hermetic. Mage. Ever.

Worst of all, the only time I didn't think Talon was a tool was in the DHS, and that was because it was written by someone else, and so SK couldn't cum all over himself about how cool his former PC-turned-Mary Sue novel protagonist was.

I've never read any books about Talon, I was talking about Kellan Colt. Who, granted, was subject to a big helping of deus ex machina because of the amulet, but who never struck me as being particularly un-hermetic. She was very green, and didn't own a library yet, but her training, and her mentor, were about as hermetic as it gets.

Thank you, blakkie. I don't read The Burning Wheel series myself, I have enough to keep up with.

All this awesomeness....

Every once in a while, I think I should dig back and read some of the "classic" SR novels. And then someone reminds me about Talon.

See the first half of that second sentence there.

~J

Yeah, but you're saying it's a rare case that writing about your own character isn't a bad idea. Your experience probably differs from mine, but I find that people who can pull it off aren't so uncommon that they should be considered an exception. In fact, many of the best fanfiction that I've read stars characters that were actually used in a game - they were fleshed out so much during the course of the game that little extra work was required to bring them to life on the page.

To answer the original question, some of the idea behind magic in SR was due to Larry Niven's The Magic Goes Away, and various parapsychological phenomena (astral projection, etc.)

More recently, the individual interests and personalities of the writers have strongly influenced the flavor of various traditions, metamagics and abilities.

Time to go to the library. Thanks, AH.