It strikes me that people have been messing around in the Astral for a long time without some more efficient method of communicating evolving. It get's confusing when a "window" is just like a "wall" but really, they're both like "curtains" since you can walk through them.

"Dude. Your aura. It's... it's.... dude, just look at it."
"I see what you mean, it's all... um. yeah."

Is there an astral "language" I've managed to overlook?

I've always played it as people use their normal spoken language in astral. You think in your spoken language. You also think in images and things, but images wouldn't be that easy to use to communicate succinctly.

You could always use interpretive dance.

Oh look, another use for the artisan skill.

I read this sentence like:

"Hey, how do you do?"
"Comment?"
"Ja, du mich auch."

\o/
I
LL


_o_
I
II


_o/
I
/\


Which means "There is a F9 fire spirit behind you."

editited for formating

"Oh man, I can hear the lust dripping off of you!" "Yeah, sorry, flew by a rave on the way here. eX is really cheap at the moment."

The smartass in me was going to say, "Stunbolt".

The evil GM in me is saying, "Read Minds"

-Tir.
Pay no attention to the troll sharpening his combat axe behind me. He's Bruno, my stylist."

That agression is soooo out of style this week. You should try some <3

I have that problem in my campaigns....how does the rest of the team communicate with the astrally projecting mage? She can't just tell them what she sees. We had one time where she was just telling us what she saw, and the GM said, assume that she told you all that stuff when she comes back....but then she got knocked unconscious while projecting so it didn't really make sense. How do you guys handle stuff like that. Like a hacker could by still speaking with the team through the commlinks about everything he sees.....but what about an astrally projecting mage?

An astrally projecting mage can still Manifest, right?

Otherwise, if you are talking about an astrally projecting mage communicating with the team "real-time" as the events he sees in the astral are happening, I'm not sure. Via a spell maybe?

There is an mention of automatic writing in the spell Catalog (pg 167 Unwired). A similar spell using automatic writing to communicate could possibly be fashioned based off the catalog spell. Such a spell would be one way communication I suspect.

Leave a Watcher behind!

Not the Watchers, anything but the Watchers!

A Mindlink spell works very well for this. Not sure about now, but it used to be you could split one spell casting among multiple targets; doing this with a mindlink spell allowed you to link up the whole party with a single mindlink spell, than slap that spell into a sustaining focus.
This both allows the astrally projecting mage to communicate with the party, and provides communication between the party members. In theory is should be as good as (or superior to) a tacnet, but I guess you'd have to design a different spell if you wanted those benefits. And obviously, there's the magic vs tech security / counter security issues to consider.

Ya mindlink...or I think summoning the watcher would be a great way to do it....because there's a mind link to the watcher....so you could just have your watcher maintain the communication...great idea.

I like that you have to take special measures; being the one astral guy shouldn't be too easy.

All sarcasm aside, watchers are fine for the communication...if limited.

We use (group) like the fact that the mage's resident companion familiar spirit can relay the info realtime. But that's a helluva investment when a watcher will do fine for the short-term.

-Tir
"Hey, does your house normally smell like fuel?"

Ok, now that is funny.

Except for the times when it does smell like fuel.