One interesting thing about Mentor Spirits that makes them so attractive to players are the personality write-ups that shamans must adhere to - Dog shamans are loyal, Shark is a fighter, etc. Not that we are not capable of creating our own personalities for our characters, but this makes it much easier to get a distinct flavour to characters, often in ways we wouldn't have thought of. It gets the imagination rolling and opens a lot of doors.

In fact, this "typecasting" is pretty much the basis of the WoD Vampire clans. Toreador are artsy, Bruja (sp) are rough and tough fighters, etc. Which really is ingenious, because, even as a rare breed of people that like to roleplay, we are not always that great at coming up with distinctive and flavorful characters (how many of you have had players that seem to "roleplay themselves" every time they play a new character!).

So my question is, why not spread the love? Only Mentor Spirits provide preset personalities, so non Awakened characters can't pick from them.
Picking up a concept from many other roleplay systems and an idea thrown around for SR every now and then, perhaps we could have "Backgrounds" for sammies and hackers and stuff.

My (crappy) examples are

Ex-Soldier Background
Ex-Soldiers tend to like to plan by the book. They are mentally disciplined and can operate without comforts without complaining.
Advantage: +1 to Will when resisting the effects of fatigue
Disadvantage: Must make a Will+Cha (1) test to agree to a plan that isn't "by the book"

Go Ganger
Go-Gangers are wild and freedom loving. They have no respect for authorities and live for the thrills of life.
Advantage: +1 to social tests involving other Go Gangers
Disadvantage: -1 to social tests involving figures of authority

Anyway, I'm at work and haven't fully though it thorigh, but the basic idea is to create broad (stereotyped) personality types, similar in write-up to what Mentor Spirits are like, that provide a few simple bonus and disadvantages. Characters could then buy Backgrounds for 5BP like an Awakened character would with Mentor Spirits.

I don't know I've heard the WoD pathes called "The Path of... Whatever I Was Going to Do Anyways"

I'm not totally opposed to the idea. Especially if the bonuses stayed firmly in the land of non-combat bonuses. Otherwise everyone will be running around with "Former Blackwater/Navy SEAL/Force Recon/Delta Force/Airborne Operator" +Yes to everything involving killing people. -4 to Log+Cha(4) test to avoid flipping out and killing everyone.

I particularly like the idea of a social bonus with a particular group.

Don't get me wrong, I like playing WoD (the real one, not that new stuff:P). One of the things I never liked was the stereotyping you have to follow in case you get a storyteller who runs by the book - be it annoying humanity/path rules or the crap about how all vampires of a clan are alike. Fortunatly this got broken up alot in additional sourcebooks.

And why would a Go-Ganger be worse at intimidating an authority figure?

WoD (both of them, thank you very much) is some of the best gaming around, when its run right. It is, however, almost never run right, imo.

That being said, if you look at mentor spirits as a guideline, most grant a +2 in two types of specific situations for a specific downside. I'd say the soldier example should have the equivalent of the Guts Quality coupled with something akin to +2 to fatigue resistance. Then make it a WILL+CHA (3) to act on their own when given an order by someone they view as an authority or some such thing (the (3) threshold being the important part) illustrating their training to follow orders. Really my main point is it should be a +2 to two situations and a drawback that can possibly be avoided.

I think this is a really interesting idea. And combat buff is okay, as long as it has a combat drawback as well. Sure, it falls pray to the "what I was going to do anyway" effect, but that's what I had when I choose Dragonslayer as my mentor spirit...

The WitchCraft RPG by Eden Studios has got a neat selection of character concepts.

Plus, they give it away as a free pdf :

http://www.edenstudios.net/witchcraft/index.html

The concept description starts on p. 44 of the pdf (p. 41 of the original book).

I always wanted to run a 2nd ed. game where everybody had a totem. It would be just like shaman totems, only with just the fluff, instead of actual boni and penalties. Say your Bear street sam doesn't get any extra dice for healing spells; he could still be RP'd as a gentle giant that only gets ferocious when provoked.

One of my favorite RPGs is In Nomine, where everybody has a band or choir (which are kind of like "races"), and a prince or archangel (who are kind of like permanent Johnsons), and BOTH factor into your personality, because they're not only the guiding principles by which you set about to complete every mission, they're also integral aspects of your creation. It makes me feel like I already know the character, so I can jump right in. In most games, I'm pretty quiet the first few sessions, while I try to find some aspect of the character to latch onto and flesh out. With In Nomine, it's already right there.

Legend of the 5 Rings also has typecasting, I just remembered. Your ninja clan dictates your behaviour.

Anyway, I guess next step is to come up with some Backgrounds that work. Ideally, bonuses and disadvantages should not apply to skills in general, but to skills in specific situations. +2 to Unarmed is bad. +2 to Unarmed When Fighting Girl Scout is better. That way it limits min-maxing. You can control what skills you want to max, but you can't control the situations the GM will throw at you, so it acts as a limiter.

Plus, it's not all about the bonuses. The personality typecast should act as general guidelines, like Mentors do.

Post here and we'll have fun bashing encouraging each other's efforts

I have always strived to not be "typecast" when playing a with a totem/mentor spirit. I try to think up interesting ways to be true to the ideology, but still be different.

I once ran a racoon shaman NPC (One of the player's contacts for life).. sure, he was extra clean and had an aversion to combat, but instead of playing him stuck up and prissy, I played him as having a bit of an OCD type guy.. he really despised getting dirty and was this close to suffering from combat paralysis. He was quirky and a little Monk-ish. So, when the characters' hoops were really in the frying pan while fighting a dragon in a cliff, this guy reappearing from the "dead" (they all thought the support helicopter went down and blew up) hanging out hte cargo door of a helicopter and throwing fireballs at the scaly beast, clothes in disarray, bloodied and anything but clean, it was a major moment. The guy had pretty much lost it and was ONLY there to save/avenge his friend: "Frag you, you fraggin' Dragon. Eat this! *Whooosh goes the fireball* Like that? How about a little more, you scaly bastard! *Whooooosh* Oh yeah, it was awesome, because hte PC's really thought it was the end. The adept, in fact, was about to "Diehard" from the cave opening on his rope and plant his weapon focus katana between it's eyes, knowing it was sure suicide.

Currently I have a Mystic Adept that follows Raven. I play the guy as not really giving a frag about anyone else but himself. Sure, his fellow runners are a notch up, but, really.. he takes that whole "other's misfortune" thing really seriously. I wrote his backstory to say that he was a corp security guard that was tossed to the wolves to cover up a piddly shadowrun gone wrong (a rival corp exec was accidentally murdered during a bit of interrogation) sponsored by a junior exec in his corp. Left for dead before he could testify against the junior exec or the 'Runners, that is when his mentor spirit showed up. Now, he believes in Frag em all. He doesn't seek out killing but he doesn't have a problem with it. He always has an eye to seeing hte holes in ANY system that he is involved in to turn a profit.

I really agree that the mentor spirit/totem is a great personality builder, tho' No matter whether you go the generic route or try to play it a little topsy-turvy, you still wind up having something to from which to hang your hat. For me, I always try to come up with a backstory explaining where the guys skills come from and what his motivations for running are, even without a MS.

Vlad

I give it the fail stamp! I am not opposed to the idea of helping everyone to pick a "type" that makes them more interesting and colorful, that's great. But let's not copy/paste mentor spirits onto mundanes. It just doesn't fit. People with certain backgrounds don't have special plusses and minuses. They have these nifty things called skills and attributes, which develop as a direct result from the background. Your idea assumes, for instance, that nobody who isn't a soldier will be as resistant to fatigue as someone who was a soldier, and anyone who was a soldier will be a non-adaptive kind of drone person who only likes sticking to plans. It just doesn't make sense to cookie cutter it like that. Mentor spirits are magical, they mold you into their own way of existing and provide effecitvely magical bonuses and penalties. But your background can't do that, there is no sensible reason for it to be a) above and beyond your skills and attributes or b) uniform. Non soldiers can train just as hard as soldiers to resist fatigue, and not all soldiers are that stuck on the whole by the book thing.

I think this whole thing could be handled by qualities. You could develop a whole list of them, or just create them on the fly. But +1 or even +2 to resist fatigue is a perfect 5 point quality. And being stubborn about "by the book" is a good -5 point quality... I guess my point is you're hammering a square peg into a round hole by trying to fit mundanes into the mentor spirit mechanic. Just pound the square peg into the nice convenient square hole, the qualities system, ffs!

I have to say I quite agree with Larme, but if you decide to go with the mentor spirit outline, be sure to keep the original outline of mentor spirit qualities. I'm not sure I agree at all with the fail assessment because whatever man it's your game.

There are NO NINJAS IN FIVE RINGS.

ABSOLUTLY NONE.

NOTHING TO SEE HERE MOVE ALONG.

I don't disagree it's totally stereotyping. "All soldiers are hardass and can't think independently" is total bullshit. But it's still a neat system. I was playing Neverwinter Nights 2 not too long ago, and at character developement, you can pick these backgrounds like "ex-militia" and "ladies man" and whatnot. I though it was cute. I opted not to take one, but the principle that I had +2 negociation but -2 intimidation because I was a ladies man was funny. If you go by the logic that backgrounds shouldn't gave packaged bonus/penalties because that assumes it's impossible to behave like a soldier even though you never were a soldier, well, you'll just never do anything.

It IS a stereotype, which by definition means it is incorrect. Still fun though. Also, the reason why I don't want to just isolate everything into independant positive and negative qualities is that I think it presents an interesting character building challenge to hyave to pick a bundle that has both a bonus AND a negative. Which again is part of the fun of Mentor Spirits.

I just see this being used for min-max reasons. I've seen it with Mentors and it will happen with whatever you want to call this.
Since SR4 I have not seen a single magician without mentor spirit. Sure it's nice to have some help outlining your char, but adding Mentors makes it mandatory to take because you get a game relevant bonus.

That's probably true, if for no other reason than the existing Mentors look weird when applied to mundanes ("great, my street sam would get 2 extra dice for manipulation spells, if he could cast them!"). But trying to fit mundanes into the mentor spirit fluff would be a neat idea.

IMO min-maxing is a player problem, not a rule problem

QFT

I think its great flavor

Hey, you got issues with having to play your totem?

Coyote!

Freedom incorporated! Just don't try and tell him he can only have a half-hour for lunch.