Okay.

One thing that is really been bugging me about the current implementation of Vodou and related traditions is that, played the strictly according to the mechanics, particularly making mechanically optimal choices, leads practitioners to commit horrific sacrileges.

Houngans and Mambos serve the Lwa. Even Bokors serve the Lwa. When a Mambo calls down a spirit and has it possess her, she isn't ordering around a servant; she's calling down a god and giving herself to it body and soul. Possession isn't a fucking combat tactic. It is a religious communion of the highest order. And a possessed Mambo isn't going to be giving orders to the Lwa. That completely defeats the point. She's giving herself over to it. She is serving it. She is giving it her body with which to do its will.

For the most part, this can be dealt with using purely RP flavor. Instead of giving orders, the Vodou practitioner makes requests. Before summoning any other spirits, the Vodou practitioner summons Papa Legba and asks his permission to summon, permission which may be denied. Having enemies possessed is right out, as is having inanimate objects possessed. A possessing spirit has mostly free reign over the summoner's body in these traditions and can do things like eat shards of broken glass and rub hot sauce into its genitals.

And then there is binding. A Bokor might bind the spirit of a recently dead person to his corpse to create a zombie, but not even the most depraved practitioner would attempt to bind a powerful Lwa. This was perfectly fine when there were spontaneous summoning traditions, binding traditions, and unique traditions somewhere in between. With the unified spirit format, it means that the Houngan sacrifices mechanical advantage for RP value. But, worse, it severely limits the use of Great Forms. Zombies shouldn't be able to call down Earthquakes. A sufficiently powerful Lwa should be able to do so. Yet, if one were to roleplay a Vodou practitioner in SR, the exact opposite is the case. Unbound Lwa cannot be invoked, and bound Zombies can. This is a rather unfortunate mechanical result of making Invoking part binding rather than part of summoning.

There are other ways to handle such traditions, of course, but they have their own problem. Major Lwa can be considered to be free spirits, but this is highly problematic since it potentially allows unbelievers to bind or destroy the entire pantheon.

Other religious traditions face similar dilemmas related to summoning. Catholic theurgy is perfectly feasible, but those hardcore Evangelical Protestants who think they are summoning angels really shouldn't be giving orders to them.

So a devout mambo can invite a Lwa to do it's will with her body - with a flavor that I find parallel to "Thy will be done" and "Insha'Allah" - but that is not the same action which the SR4 rules address.

Which raises the question of whether 6th World spirits as described in SR4 are the same entities as Lwa. Kinda like the question of whether the entities that Lucas dealt with in "Count Zero" were really Lwa, or just pretending to be Lwa.

I can kinda imagine a 2070s descendant of Fred Phelps summoning a spirit, calling it an "angel", and giving it orders, with absolutely no fear that his orders might conflict with divine will. But here's my bias: I consider Fred Phelps to be overconfident about his understanding of divine will, and his role as an implementor of divine will.

The SR4 rules address what happens when mages are in charge, whether it's Hermetic "by this authority I command you" or Shamanic "please do me this favor".

Hyz, you wanna write some rules for what happens if an Awakened mambo invites a Lwa to do as it wills with her body? Or if any sufficiently devout PC chooses to serve, rather than rule?

@hyzmarca

I totally agree with the view you have of Voodoo, ones does not command a possession but requests one, and makes the correct offering for such to occur.

Sometimes playing a character's role or point of view, is more important than mechanics.

In a game I am in, I have a shaman who does not bind spirits, he does not summon them but asks them for assistance with offerings and the like.

Mechanically he would be better for him to bind them, but too many times I see pc's automatically bind the max number of spirit(s) they are allowed or can afford, then the spirit(s) are bound for weeks and months.

I am working on Voodoo magical type, please post more ideas on this line, I will more than likely steal them.

WMS

I kind of have to side with Riley37, and against an objective ideal of a religion. The magician's religious mojo works because he believes it works. A guy conjuring "angels" believes his purpose is just. ("A fanatic is someone who does what god would do if god were in possession of all the facts." Or something.) A guy could conjure the Archangel Michael to level an abortion clinic, to pick an example out of a hat.

It would be interesting for a character who believes his power comes from the Catholic Church to be unable to cast any spells if he gets excommunicated, but he'd probably just turn to devil worship and be about the same, mechanically.

Heh, you may as well have titled this thread "When game mechanics make us hermetics" instead, because I know that's basically what's happened to me. I'd rather just play a Chaos mage or some other hermetic variant rather than blithely whip up some spirit that by all rights should be considered sacred and end up asking it to jump on a grenade for me.

So far my favorite mage to play was essentially a hermetic/chaos intuition variant who casted by seeking out and channeling mana already shaped in useful ways by other Awakened. Likewise he bought into the whole theory that spirits were essentially magical constructs that reflected their Awakened creators in some way and that by clearing his mind he could call upon other Awakened's Spirits without shaping them with his own subconscious (which is how he summoned guidance and task spirits; he would out Spirits created by people who knew things he didn't). Wrote a magical thesis and everything.

While this should primarily be a flavour thing, a problem does present itself when a practitioner of a tradition like this basically can't use the Binding rules (and the massive increase in spirit utility they bring).

A possible alternative would be to create a "Servant of the Spirits" 5-point flaw that can only be taken if you are a conjuring-capable magician who chooses to forego Binding because it conflicts with your views on the rights of spirits.

I don't think any additional rules are needed, just acknowledge that you're making a flavour decision to limit your capabilities and being rewarded for it in the same way that similar decisions are.

Two issues come to my mind in response to hyzmarca. First of all, Shadowrun is an alternate universe, believable enough for some of us, that allows us to play out ideas and characters in a society that feels real because it is close enough to our own to be scary/exciting/meaningful. In that alternate universe, things don't have to work exactly the way they do in ours (see combat, attributes, etc., etc.).

Second, look at how religions can change in a relatively short period of time when the impetus is right. The Catholic Church only took 400 years to admit Galileo had a point! Even if Shadowrun were not an imaginary alternate universe, 70 years and a plethora of ideology-twisting changes from now people of many traditions may see things differently.

I have to admit, hyzmarca, that I have to rethink my SR Missions houngan in light of what you say. At least, I should do some more reading to see what variance in attitudes fits that tradition in our world.

I especially like the idea of summoning and binding as a form of spirit pact where the conjurer is trading some sort of spiritual energy in exchange for services from the spirit.

Binding does not need to be the same as enslaving. Binding a spirit could just as easily be role played as convincing a spirit to remain on standby. If you have the Spirit Affinity positive quality, it might be more like a friendship or guardian angel relationship.

I have some ideas, though I'm not sure how well they'd work.


The first is the simplest. "Do whatever you want to do" is a Service. It is a Service few sane Hermetics would ever ask for, but it is a Service nonetheless. Like any Service, it can be canceled by the summoner. Such a Service effectively neutralizes all rules regarding Spirit/Summoner interaction unless it is canceled (A spirit usually can't harm its summoner, but can if given permission to do so).


The second as a -5 Point Negative Quality called Egalitarian Conjuring. A character with the Egalitarian Conjuring Negative Quality believes that the spirits he summons are his equals, possibly even his superiors.
Spirits summoned by this character and unusually willful. They perform services with personal flair and may refuse to perform a Service, particularly one which is certain to cause them injury, such as Spell Binding (a refused Service remains unspent). Such spirits are also able to stretch the boundaries of what constitutes harm to the conjurer. While such a spirit cannot use deadly force on its conjurer, it can cause both minor injury and major annoyance if given reason to do so. For example, a spirit given the opportunity to possess its Egalitarian Conjurer might choose to engage in extreme masochism simply for the experience of knowing what physical pain feels like.

The third idea is called Uncontrolled Summoning. A conjurer may forgo the collection of services in favor of a drain reduction. Summoning is done normally but drain is halved (round down) and once summoned the spirit is totally uncontrolled, owing no services to anyone. A spirit summoned this way will not attack its summoner unless provoked, will vanish at sunrise or sunset, can leave any time it wants, and is banished like a Free/Wild (banishing reduces its Edge).

Uncontrolled Summoning would mostly be used in religious services that require multiple unbound spirits. For example, a Mambo might summon the personal Lwa of several newcomers who she has never met before. In such a service, binding is impossible due to time constraints. Holiness preachers might summon the "Holy Spirit" into dozens of worshipers so that they can speak unknown languages and stage down ingested strychnine.
It isn't terribly useful in combat because the uncontrolled spirit can do whatever it wants to do.

Personally, I'm of the opinion that downcycle magic did work, it just didn't work reliably. Houngans were summoning Lwa in 1973, it just wasn't as easy. And James Bond fought the real Baron Samedi.

it's nice for NPCs. i can't see it being a very good thing to allow PCs to do, simply because the decision for what the spirit does is thrown completely into the GM's court. if he wants to help the PCs, the spirit helps them. if he wants to hurt the PCs, the spirit hurts them. if he wants to let the dice fall where they may and let the game rules decide whether the PCs a helped or hindered by their risky action, well, he's got to houserule the houserule.

Honestly, it is best done when both the Player and the GM are good roleplayers who are comfortable with each other and who both understand what is expected from the game. The player can be given control of the possessing spirit, if he can be trusted to roleplay the spirit instead of the PC. The GM can be given control if the players trusts him not to screw him. Ideally, it is a cooperative effort between player and GM.

But, honestly, I don't think that uncontrolled summoning is good for field use. For that, standard summoning is pretty much required simply to give set limits to the PC (an uncontrolled spirit may stick around for 12 hours or it may refuse to help at all, the range is too great for combat). For use in combat, I think that Egalitarian Conjuring is better (particularly for materialization traditions). The spirit will beat that guy up, but it won't throw itself on a grenade for you.

Glad you opened this can of annelidae!
Again... mambos and houngans deal with Lwa. Shamans deal with spirits. Is there any overlap between these categories? Are there Lwa that are also spirits of man? Or are they totally different things?

Summoning a spirit without constraining it to perform services could be good if the spirit's inclination matches your agenda. If you follow a Mentor Spirit and you tend to get spirits who want what your mentor wants, then that could be useful. For example, if you're a Snake mage, you sneak into a rival's lodge library, summon a spirit, and by Snake inclination, it will pick out the tomes with the juiciest secrets. If you follow Trickster, and you wanna get by some guards, summon a spirit; if the guards are the only people nearby, they'll likely become the victims of a prank. If you want a building to burn down, and you summon a Fire spirit...

Some campaigns emphasize pollution and efforts to reduce or contain pollution. If you actively work to reduce air pollution, then air spirits and/or Thunderbird might be grateful; this could be a good basis for a Spirit Affinity.

"Buffy the Vampire Slayer" had an episode about the backstory of a main character who had formerly belonged to a group that would invoke a demon to possess one of them, because being possessed resulted in a wildly exalted feeling. I gather that the group usually tied up whoever was taking their turn as the possessee. Of course, they failed to keep things completely under control.

I see no reason why game mechanics actually destroy the flavor. The fact remains that what these shamans experience and what they think they experience can be two wildly different things.

Take for example the observation that the sun revolves around the earth. For all intensive purposes, this statement can't be refuted without showing scientific fact and using mathematical proofs. For years, the religious completely refuted these claims without any factual counterargument. It wasn't until enough important people said that it was right that they finally shifted, and not for another 200 years did the church finally agree to acknowledge it.

When it comes to a Vodou shaman, they may think the spirit is helping them because the Lwa is blessing them, when in reality, their subconscious is issuing commands. It could also be the case that they still go into the same pseudotrance state they go into in the real world and believe they are allowing the spirit in, when they're actually allowing their body to produce excess aminoacids and make the choices for them.

I know this explanation essentially goes around the issue by saying what Vodou shaman experience isn't real, but there are plenty of experiences we all take on faith that can never be proven real and rely on a set of assumptions to even make sense in our mind. I don't see why magic should be any different. If you want a viable explanation, you belong in the hermetic tradition, and what the hermetic mages think and argue is going on is based solely on their experience and the evidence gathered, none of which they can have in a Vodou tradition.

This discussion has bought back to mind some ideas I've been playing with for mages in general. Mostly an additional set of options for describing the nature of spirits summoned. Spirits are either materialising or possessing; and one of three option (see below) that determine how much personality and how independent they are.

1) Construct - Basically the spirit is a manifestation of the summoners will, it will always follow orders and is basically a machine, it may develop personality if it is kept bound for a long time, mostly it will take on aspects of the summoner's personality. These spirits always follow orders in the spirit intended, and rarely attack the summoner if they become free usually just dissipating or rampaging around the area.

Examples - Elementals, Elohim (qabballah)

2) Embodiments - These spirits are thinking beings but are essentially manifestations of the spiritual energies of where they are summoned. Essentially like nature spirts of older editions they reflect the environment both in personality and form to some degree. Unlike constructs they can think independently and will apply some degree of interpretation to orders, this can be both good and bad for the mage. They are however mostly subservient to their summoner. Followers of Traditions that summon these types of spirits are the most likely to go toxic.

Examples - Nature Spirits of all sorts

3) Entities - These spirits are completely independent beings who live their own lives in the depths of the metaplanes. Often times the Mage will be pulling them away from their own lives. Thesesbeings should be treat with respect or they will easily turn on the caster. They will willfully misinterpret the orders of a caster who has not won their respect either through friendship or negotiation. However if well inclined to a caster they will tend to be more helpful than other spirits.

Examples - Loa, Fae, Demons

Obviously type 3 are the most common, and I see most traditions as being able to summon some or all these types of spirits. I'm also not sure if hard rules are required or if I should just keep them as guidelines. Mostly I figure that i affects if spirits will spend their own edge for the caster or to resist summoning.

I haven't got the time to hammer this out right now, but I will note the following, because I believe this discussion has largely missed an important element of Voodoun belief and is skewed by that misunderstanding:

In general, the voodoun traditions believe that the world is full of spirits (known collectively as les invisibles), the spirits of the recently dead, lesser lwa/loa besides the Great Lwa - though these are often members of the courts of the Great Ones in the hierachies of Guinee (which the houngan as a chosen one of a Great Lwa mait-tête enjoys some sway over).

In Voodoun, possession is rarely, in fact, accomplished by inviting a Great One into the vessel. Most often it is accomplished by visitation of one of these lesser lwa (effectively spirits). While you ask the blessing and intercession of Papa Legba or Baron Samedi, the possession is typically not a visitation by the Great Lwa itself - and those are only acceptable practice for the purest of the pure or spontaneously by the Great Lwa's own will.

Note that Street Magic especifically states you call forth les invisibles, (not the Great Lwa), and it also especifically indicates that conjuration in the case of voodoun practitioners is percieved as "courting and flattering", not commanding spirits (hence also the use of Charisma as a Drain attribute).

Furthermore I dispute any innate limitation on trapping, binding, and commanding lesser lwa, les invisibles, and the spirits of the recently deceased, into inanimate vessels and bodies of non-serviteurs (though I admit such practices are generally percieved as black magic). In fact, this is common practice in most voudon traditions (which is one reason I wrote that fiction vignette at the beginning at the beginning of the Initiation and Metamagics chapter) and unwilling possessions are often seen as the work of evil spirits sent by a bokor or even a "good" hougan you have pissed off.

Dealing with Greater Lwa is indeed another issue entirely. Hence assigning the Great Lwa/Loa as Mentor spirits, and treating lesser lwa/les invisibles as "normal" spirits.

Furthermore, despite claims above, there is little evidence that Shadowrun 4's streamlined Conjuring mechanics "lost" something that was present in previous editions in how they address these tradition's approach to conjuration.

Anyone who believes that should reread the actual mechanics in MitS. While in previous editions, Lwa and lesser voodoo spirits (see rules for zombies and gris-gris in MitS) were a unique subset of spirits, mechanically they were handled in much the same way as other spirits and little or no rules translation to the bargaining, flattering and cajouling of spirits into vessels (much like Shamanism in SR, it was always supposedly part of the tradition, but it never really translated into rules. Nature spirits were summoned up on an instant's notice and sent into the fray).

I'm obviously biased, but I don't believe that the mechanics somehow translate any less flavor and uniqueness than previous editions. Yes more is left for the gamemaster to implement, namely the description of individual invisibles. However, previous editions achieved this by shoehorning them into minor avatars of the Greater Lwa/loa, which is something I personally dislike.

Otherwise, Voodoun hierarchies of the spirit world actually map rather well to Shadowrun's mechanics system. Had someone decided to pick on Qabbalistic magic, Christian Thergy, or even some Shamanic cultures as rough points in the system those would have been better examples. Traditional/Orthodox Qabbalists would never consider binding elhoim.

I agree with Synner, in a nutshell the answers to life, the universe, and everything voodoo are all right there on page 42 of Street Magic:

This brings up something I've been chewing on as well. I'm new to SR, so I'm just assuming that SR has always treated magic and faith/religion as being the same - i.e. that what was once religion has now been understood as magic in different packages. This presents the exact problems as listed above - that RPing a magical "religion" necessarily violates the concepts of many religious traditions.

There's also the awkwardness, in my opinion, of people encountering (or RPing) their own faith/religion in the gameworld yet in a package or form that conflicts with their own experience or expectations in reality. To me, this has a lot of potential to be uncomfortable. (i.e. a person of a certain religious system encounters a person in the game world of that same system, but due to the magic vs. reality issue is handling said religion totally differently - or even the message of "oh, your faith is really just an expression of mana flow")

Personally, I prefer to have real world religion stripped out of my RPing for these reasons, because some real world religions do have a "magical" perspective on things, but others do not.

I would prefer to see in SR that not all religious systems have embraced magic as part of their faith system. I realize that's an OPTION - but the source material paints it that the majority of all religions and of all adherents have embraced magic as the "answer" to their religion. (i.e. using magic to summon spirits from their tradition) I'd much rather see that many religions embrace magic as a part of reality, but as SEPARATE from their religion/faith. I think this would be a much more accurate representation of how many modern day religions and faiths would respond to such an awakening - seeing the magical world as another aspect of the natural world, but still submitted to their deity. This would also allow for them to more fully and freely embrace the magical practices without conflicting with their faith or religion as written today.

In the end, this would produce a more generic (probably hermetic) approach to magic for these characters, but it would resolve a lot of the conflict between reality and game that I see.

It's more that many magicians treat their religion as THE ANSWER to what their spirits are and where their magic comes from. Islam is as a whole openly skeptical of magic and magicians. That they allow the faithful to consort with the Ifrit at all is kind of a probationary thing.

Obviously in more shamanistic sects, where the priests were always supposed to talk to spirits and have personal secret magical powers - the transition to a system where Priests == Magicians was pretty easy. In sects like Christianity and Islam where priests are overtly not supposed to do magical things, that's a much tougher sell.

-Frank

Agreed. There's a lot of religions for which there are rules or suggestions - but the religion itself would be opposed to the concepts behind shadowrunning.

At least with the other major religions I could at least maybe buy into the idea of a crazy person talking themselves into being some sort of instrument of vengeance or something without having a crisis of confidence. With Buddhists I imagine scenarios like a practitioner getting upset and swearing at someone and then immediately taking the Geas: Oath Of Silence just to cast again.

There's also the fact that there are some religions which aren't all that, well, mystical about the world around us.

I'm not sure one needs to be agnostic (or atheistic) in regards to the mix of magic and religion. It's possible for (most of!) the magical traditions to mix with most relgions...Sometimes with a better or worse fit, I grant.

Where it looks odd, it's helpful to me to remember the view (I've heard this -somewhere-, damn if I recall where!) that science (including magic in that for now) explains that which is within the ken of human reason. Religion picks up where things go beyond reason.

I'll clarify. I think its important to be agnostic from a GM perspective, in that its not important from a game perspective that there be an objective truth, as opposed to a game like D&D where a Priest of Thor (of the sufficient level) can just go ask Thor what he thinks about stuff. There's no ambiguity there, there's a guy named Thor and if you piss him off, there's consequences.

In Shadowrun, a mage can call upon the power of Thor, but its much more a personal representation than a guy with a planar street address. Even if someone comes across a Force 200 Great Form that goes by the name of Thor, does it really matter if it's the actual spirit someone worshipped a thousand years ago, or a spirit recently created out of the collective unconscious of people who believe in the things people made up a thousand years ago? (And even if it was the actual spirit that Norse god was named for, having people for the past thousand years editorialize-- for lack of a better word-- the concept of Thor would mean that the modern idea of the Norse god probably wouldn't have that much in common with the actual spirit, unless the actual spirit was modified by the modern conception.)

Or, to put another way, there should always be mystery.

Interesting note: after Christians, Buddhists have killed more people in religiously motivated campaigns than any other religion. Islam is catching up today, but it still has quite a way to go.

Even in 2007, Buddhist militias clash fairly regularly with the LTTE and perform attrocities on hindu civilians from time to time. The philosophy makes about the most coherant case for non-violence that any has ever made, but that ha never stopped anyone from going all warrior with it.

Hell, the Samurai Code is as much a Buddhist construction as it is Shinto. Street Samurai are supposed to read Buddhist philosophy. Every last one of them. Of course there are going to be Buddhist Shadowrunners, the surprising thing is how many Shadowrunners are anything except Buddhists.

-Frank

The best way to enforce nonviolence is to kill the violent.