Um ... they didn't!

Maybe, I think the entire types of spirits available and how they are summoned is bigger. I like playing shamen most of the time, and usually forget to add in totem bonus dice. So that is why I would disagree.

Hold up, maybe that is just poorly written. It is like having a Spell Pool, Sorcery skill, or Conjuring skill modified by the totem modifier. Not the Force of the spell or spirit.

They just made them virtually indistinguishable and useless props.

God forbid magic can only be practiced in one or two ways, and while you can try to shoehorn your religion into one of those ways, being a Wiccan doesn't override being a Hermetic Mage. But no... Goddamn pussies. Then again, extra traditions were first added by just the worst sourcebooks you can imagine (except for PR, which was only written by the two authors of one of those mental abortions). Adding religion to magic and making them interoperable was probably the second most stupid thing ever done in SR.

Yes. Magic worked two ways. It was a harsh, rigid, inflexible master. It made it clear who was right and who was wrong. That's the only decent thing they did with extra traditions, adding one that was explicitly wrong (but then gave it different abilities from the two true paths anyway).

But couldn't be used to jack into the netherweb, where everything operates on a giant version of token ring.

The customized street sam couldn't conjure gun spirits.

A mage can choose different spells or emphasize on conjuring or spellcasting. A Shaman can do all that, and have a varying totem besides. Both of them can also do extra stuff on the side—they can even be more machine than man. There is no reasonable argument that magical characters were somehow uncustomizable.

Also, while some of the totems did indicate a personality type for the character, no such guidance exists for hermeticism. You are no more "stuck" with being a bookworm than the decker is "stuck" with being a caffeine-addicted social outcast.

~J

And don't forget that hermetics can have mentor spirits (the equivalent of the old Totems) now, too, for those same dice bonuses.

On the flip side, shamans can bind spirits too, now.


The differences between hermetics and shamans are more cosmetic, in SR4. I kind of approve, though, since they are using the same magical forces, and they should follow the same basic rules. And over time, with things like Universal Magical Theory, you should see more blending of previously stratified traditions. The main differences now are in the Drain attribute used with Willpower, and the types of spirits that can be summoned.

As far as the bookworm stereotype for hermetics, it is like the stereotype of trolls as tanks - you don't have to do them that way, but the rules make it the optimal path. In the case of hermetics, one of their Drain Attributes is Logic, which encourages them to take those academic and technical skills that also use Logic.

Also, there are more traditions now. Things like chaos magic or wicca are separate magical traditions now (although I still would have liked to see the three-fold rule for wiccans -"I manabolt him for 6 damage!" "All right, resist 6 damage three times." )

If you have no creativity and adhere strictly to stereotypes.

Because that is accompanied by a Wiccan mage walking into a mall or a sports staduim and costing Orgy on several hundred people at once.

Is there any other kind?

Unfortunately, the unified magic rules mean that there is no mechanical advantage to being a Native American hippster except for the fact that they get to double-dip with their Charisma (and you could just make up a tradition that gets to do that).

Which is how it was designed. To be stereotypical. Yes, you could juxtapose things, but that is not the same as creativity.

After a fashion, I agree. I don't necessarily want seperate rules sets for the core X traditions, but just more of the old flavor. While some of the new trads are logically separate from the old hermetic/shamanic model (the Buddhist/Hindu trad, Wuxing, Vodoun, and the whole Paths garbage [yuck]), virtually everything else is just a variation of that general theme (or could be done either way - Druidism, Wicca). Having a separate set of spirit associations/Drain atts for each one of these minor variations (cause really, Hermeticism, Black Magic, and Gardenerian Wicca for example are so damn close in practice that they pretty much are the same trad - especially since the later two spawned from Hermeticism) is just kinda pointless.

And as usual, I solved it with a house rule. [sigh]

[rant]But please, for NERPS-sake call Black Magic friggin LeVayan Satanism - that's what it friggin is and reads like. I mean please - in a game where the evil word fuck is used, assassination for hire is common place, sex slavery via technonology is so common there is a word for it, and alternative sexual preferences are normal - all of these in the BBB - the designers of a game like this run away from the idea of calling the bogeyman religion [rolls eye] by it's name (except in a foot note the "Paths of the Twisted and Corrupted" section waaaay in the back of Street Magic) when you have a tradition that reads like the same damn thing in the main traditions section of the book! You talk about pussies SLJames, if this isn't a major example of being pussywhiped I don't know what fucking is.

But y'know, LeVay would be rolling in his grave from sarcastic laughter if he knew about this - cause it just proves that even 40 years after the Church of Satan was founded he's still getting the shock value he wanted and society's still so pussywhiped that people are affraid to mention the "religion" he put together in a friggin roleplaying game sourcebook.[/rant]

Y'know, that sounds like one hell of a good geas

A growing percentage, based on the circles I travel in at least [shrug].

If there is, I haven't encountered one.

Must... resist... urge... to...

You know what I think. Dogs know what I think (those are scary dogs, too) when it comes to the flavor/tone of books like MitS, especially in regard to how different traditions are portrayed.

There are, and I have.

What eidolon said

I know SL. Normally I'm willing to put up with horrifically bastardized simplications of real world trads and chalk it up to lack of space, author ignorance, or "The Awakening changed stuff", but something as simple and stupid as the name of a trad....well, it irks me on ocassion s'all.

The Black Magic tradition in the Paths of Magic chapter was never intended to reflect LaVeyan Satanism exclusively, in fact, it was intended as a catch-all tradition that reflected the magical practices of several different Satanist/Luciferian traditions/lineages that are quite common but distinct in Western cultures. While LaVeyan Satanism may be the best known in the US, it is only one of many similar practices in the Western world (Theistic Satanism; Luciferianism/modern Prometheism; Setianism; Hermetic Demonolatry; Daeva-worship, etc). All share superificially similar rituals and some symbology, but their beliefs are different (in some cases fundamentally different) and more importantly some are even more popular in other Western countries than the Church of Satan (which Americans seem to have limited their sights to...)

Hence Black Magic rather than Satanism - and why it gets equal billing, equal bias and space to Christian Theurgy.

If you're having problems with why there's a separate mention in Paths of the Twisted and Corrupted, I suggest you take another look at that material again - the Darkness Within section might be a good place to start. You might also be surprised to catch a passing reference to Theurgist zealots in there too, on equal standing to boot.

Or your assumptions could just be wrong. But hey I'm just one of the authors of the material being reviewed, what do I know? And for future reference that I am not a Wiccan, nor was any Wiccan involved in writing the Paths of Magic material in Street Magic.

Now there's something we agree on.

First of all Synner, please allow me to say this - I like Street Magic, giving it a 10 out of 10 on the Cool, Useful, and Balanced scales. I like the traditions included therein and the writeups thereof.- the gripe about tradition proliferation is minor, and something easily dealt with via house rule. Just so you get where I'm coming from on this, ok?

Also note that I am well aware of the different flavors of Satanism and Demonolatry that are out there. The reason I specifically mentioned LeVayan Satanism is this line:

While that could apply to the various types of Theistic Satanism and Demonolatry around, anyone who has read LeVay's writings or descriptions of the COS could be forgiven I think for immediately thinking of them so apt is the description. Given the way the Black Magic trad is written, and the references to Satanism-as-inverted-Christianity, Faustian, and Goetic mages in Paths of the Twisted and Corrupted I was under the impression that Theistic Satanism, Demonolatry, and Daeva-worship (the last being something I know little about and consider kind of a Hindu version of demonolatry) were considered to be twisted/corrupt paths in this book, like the Petro version of Vodoun. An assumption yes, but a valid one I think considering the way the sections are written and the common societal biases regarding those traditions.

That being the case, I must thank you for enlightening me regarding your vision and intention for the Black Magic trad - you've given me a wider view of the possibilities that were intended. Please accept my apologies for offending you due to my short-sightedness and consider my rant retracted - Black Magic is indeed the best title for the trad as it was intended.

Also, please note that when I mentioned "author ignorance" I was not refering to Street Magic - the authors of the trads therein appear to have a reasonable familiarity with the trads mentioned, or to have done there homework to some extent. Any lackings in said department in SM I chalk up to the other noted reasons.

Wuxing had spirits of metal as well in that list of 5.

Your original plan to get ahold of MitS was a good one. Lots of good useful information in there for a game in 3rd, and also ideas you could incorporate into a 4th game with some tweaking.

The guy was called LaVey, not LeVay...

Apologies if I read too much into your comments and I understand no harm was intended. I was simply attempting to clarify. Constructive criticism is always appreciated, I'm just not too fond misinformation.

As to the proliferation of traditions, while I would agree with you to some extent when it comes to things like Gardnerian Wicca or even Theurgy, I submit that even in those cases the magicians practicing those traditions believe they are addressing fundamentally different forces than a traditional Hermeticist. Since belief is such a powerful tool of paradigm, trope and ritual definition we decided to keep the divisions set out in SR3 in those cases.

Note, however, that I was also the co-author of the Hermetic sub-schools in SOTA64 and think that Hermeticism as a homogenic tradition is overrated, even back in the Renaissance period there were variants ranging from Dee's spiritualism to Alchemical Qabbalism... I was unsure whether these would require modifiers in SR4 (which is partially why they weren't included in Street Magic) but in SR3 it felt very much justified.

Jason Levine and I were the writers of the expanded Tradition material in Street Magic and we both did our homework on the relevant traditions.

Street Magic was never intended to present each tradition into a paragraph as previous Magic books had been forced to (a legacy issue we wanted to deal with, since the previous tradition material had to shoehorn all traditions into the 4-5 which had distinct rulesets). In fact, we wanted to give the player enough information that they'd be able to develop magicians of these traditions as unique magic users rather than basterdized Hermetics or Shamans. Personally I'm quite pleased with what we accomplished in so short a space.

Daeva-worship is actually the left-hand path of Zoroastrian magic and very similar to Demonolatry (at least in the profusion of demons and patrons). It has been adopted/adapted by several "satanist cults" in Europe (I'm not as familiar with the North American scene), as have elements of Qabbalistic lore (which can be rather ironic given the fascist right wing tendencies of some of these groups).

No, wuxing has a branch of metal, but its closest spirit representation is the sylph as there is no branch of air.

I would, too, if I thought for a second any of those applied.

It was inconsistent, made moreso by authors who seemed to treat the "coldly logical and rational" idea of Hermeticism with utter disdain. However, I find it perpelexing how Hermeticism adhering to one set of rules could be "overrated." I mean, I thought one of the whole reasons for creating a new magic system was because there were too many rules systems for magic, including yours. Why shouldn't all of these people with their own pet beliefs not have to adhere to a set of rules that means they can't just whip out the Bible or anything else and say, "here's my magic textbook."

Much has been said about how Shamanism has been (and still is) focused on a mix of specific Native American beliefs even though it applied to all shamans whether they were from Athabaskan tribes, a Pueblo, or a Chinese-Caucasian whose only exposure to nature is flipping past the Discovery Channel. I don't see why Hermeticism should be rendered limb from limb while Indian shamans still use the same magic system in spite of vast differences between tribal, individual, and Native American Church practices.

I'm inclined to agree with that to an extent.

You misunderstood me. What I said was "that Hermeticism as a homogenic tradition is overrated," referring to a homogenic Hermetic paradigm not the ruleset. As a rule set I think it worked pretty well.

Actually, you will note that we added no new rules in SOTA64, only modifiers to the basic magical mechanics (unlike say the Paths, Voodoun, Wuxing). In fact, part of the reason I took it down this path was my dissatisfaction with the Elemental schools of Hermetic magic in MitS (which are more AD&D than any Hermetic school).

SR4's Magic mechanics mean that the fundamental distinction between tradition's is no longer hardwired to rules, but instead linked to the practical roleplaying aspects of beliefs, symbols and tropes of each tradition.

In SR4 they can and do. All characters adhere to the same fundamental rules and mechanics. What changes is the outwards appearance of their practices. A Hermetic's codex is mechanically the same as a Wiccan's shadow grimoire which is the same as a Qabbalist's Book of Sepher... because even though conceptually they're dealing with entirely different forces than a Hermeticist or even a Qabbalist mechanically they're playing by the same rules.

Quite different from what happened in SR3 where each new tradition had to face one of two solutions: either be shoehorned into the 2 "legacy traditions" (ie. Wicca, Hermetic Druidism, Qabbalism, Black Magic, etc) or have its own set of rules (ie. Path magic, Wuxing, Voodoun).

You are assuming that in SR4 Chinese animism isn't a tradition in its own right, and that Inuit manitoos fall under the same tradition as Athabaskan shamans. This is an erroneous assumption.

My bad....I can never remember how to spell his name

No prob To add to what I said eariler, the reference to Black Magic as a "modern Western tradition" and the clasifiction of the Path of Maho as a corrupted/twisted path also added to my previous erroneous conclusion (remembered after I posted), especially as the latter section states:

Given this, perhaps something in the FAQ or errata to clarify your intent maybe? Not that this is major issue or anything - I'm satisfied with your explanation - just a suggestion [shrug]

Despite what I said about Drain atts and spirit associations, I don't see that as the biggest problem with trad proliferation. Cause frankly, in SR4 trad proliferation is envitable as the system is pretty much built for it - and the only non-fluff way to differentiate those trads is Drain att and spirit association, so that's kinda a necessary evil. Because in my little mind, trad proliferation ala the way it's done in Street Magic is good - the trads are based in real life trads. Personally, I'd much rather see that than dozens of totally made-up-from-thin-air trads.

My biggest issue with trad proliferation is actually cross trad compatibility for purposes of ritual magic, joining ritual groups, and the like. To me, it makes little sense that a Hermetic, a Gardenerian Witch, and a Chaos Mage who aren't part of a magical group can't join together in a ritual - there are marked differences in their trads, but they share enough that they could concievable work together. That's why I use the "close enough rule". Of course, Chaos Magic is close enough to everything due to its nature

Doh! I was thinking deva = daeva, thus Hindu. Thanks!

I hesistate to ask, but what do you ascribe it to?

I didn't mind the elemental schools much - chalked them up to a post-Awakening developement.

One has to admit, that does make for a lot of work though...

As one of the only people to enjoy playing a Psionicist, I feel obligated to defend against this statement.

When was the last time your mage cast a spell to Astrally Project or to Astrally Perceive? What you don't understand is that almost all mages are also Psionicists who have fallen into the path of Magic because it's easier to grasp. The Astral Plane is a reflection of our minds, its very existance proof of Psionics. Nobody in the world doubts Magic exists, including Psionicists, we just rather not use it. Rather than 'channel' the astral energy, we opt to become part of it, admittedly limiting our abilities to perform parlor tricks, but also letting us exceed in other areas.

The real power of the current version of Psionicists is the ThoughtForm. What are the chances anyone will ever get 6 successes on a Magic Fingers spell (TN: 6)? My character could summon a ThoughtForm at Force 9 with multiple successes, cross any domains with it, and have a Strength-9 Quickness-9 "Magic Fingers" at my call whenever I wanted. Telekinetically, the Psionicist just couldn't be touched, and in a 'stealth/theft' sort of situation, the telekinetic has alot of potential use.

Anyhows, they simply were NOT worth the 30 points, I agree with that, but from a thematic point of view, they weren't quite as hilarious as it may seem, and the only Tradition that could use Psychokinesis in a Shadowrun type situation (in a building). However, I mostly played them for theme.

Sssh. I may get suspended again.

Never?

About as often as conjuring a Force 9 spirit with multiple successes and resisting the Serious Physial drain. Plus being able to use foci to aid the summoning and resist drain.

Thought Form Strength = F-2, Quickness =F+2, so F9 >>> S-7, Q-11.

For stating your opinion? I didn't think this place was....that way. Oh well, there's always PMs

Badgers? We don't need no stinkin' badgers!

for the most part, it isn't. some people get really uppity when you say anything bad about Stephen Kenson, though.

ohnoez! i've let the secret slip. since it's already too late to delete what i've typed or even simply not post this, i'll go ahead and explain more completely. basically, Stephen Kenson's contributions to SR magic strongly favored touchy-feely shamanism over logical hermeticism. the general attitude was that a logical approach to magic was "wrong" because it had no soul, or something.

i'm not saying hermeticism is better than shamanism, understand. i just don't think it's worse, and i'm not the only person that's annoyed about the bias. the fact that Kenson's married to a relatively well-known Wiccan writer doesn't help. nothing wrong with being in love with a Wiccan, but it does kinda support the idea that Kenson's stuff was biased.

Which I find kind of ironic, since his best-known (non Adept twinkie) awakened character is a hermetic mage named Talon.