First of all, hoi everyone, longtime lurker here...

One of my players recently showed great interest in creating a houngan character who would worship Petro Loas. The problem is, SR canon clearly presents Petro houngans as one of those bad, bad guys, i.e. one of the Magical Threats, strongly suggesting using them only as NPCs (I don't remember if it is said explicitly anywhere, but that's the impression I get).

Did any of you tried that? And even if you didn't: how would playing as Petro houngan differ from playing as "normal" (Rada) houngan (except from the obvious one, i.e. worshiping different Loas)? One idea that came to my mind, is that Petro Loas probably have much stronger influence on the houngan's mind and personality, so that the houngan would gradually lose his free will, consciousness of his own actions etc., and GM(=me) would take control over him more and more often, eventually making him an NPC. What do you think about that?

And the last question (that I remember of right now): is it possible for a houngan to worship Petro and Rada Loas at the same time? Or does summoning Petro Loas completely exclude summoning Rada Loas?
Are Petro and Rada like two sides of one coin, that cannot be both seen at the same time (i.e., it's just not possible to simultaneously follow both Rada and Petro school)? Or are they more like yin-yang or good-bad stuff, that CAN permeate each other? What's your view on this?
Wouldn't it be like, if you'd summoned/worshipped both Rada and Petro gods, they'd both piss off and start fighting each other off, eventually standing before you and forcing you to choose - "us or them!" ?


Sorry for such a long post. I somehow lack the ability to summarize my thoughts into an acceptable and compact form. Also, please forgive me if all of this is too unclear to you, I made my best to explain it in the simplest way possible.

You can't play Petro, cause like you said, it's an evil path that leads to destruction. You could play it for a while, but not long term. Think of Petro as the dark side of the force. You still summon the same Loas, but they represent very different things. Petro is all about revenge, so you would use your powers to hurt people. A Petro voodoun can't summon Rada Loas cause he doesn't see it. He's consumed by hate, and has no use for anything but Petro Loas. His summoning is tainted by his hatred.

In the end, my player chose to play as Damballah Houngan, making my problem obsolete. Thanks anyway.

Still confused though:

Let them follow a Petro Loa, just don't give them Potency. It's no different than a Shaman following Adversary, Seductress, or any other "evil" totems.