"Gott mit uns".

Here's a nice piece of dialogue from the movie Stalingrad (spoken by a Wehrmacht chaplain):
"'Gott mit uns' steht auf der Gürtelschnalle des deutschen Soldaten. Und deshalb ist der deutsche Soldat niemals allein. Im Gegensatz zum Bolschewik, auf dessen Gürtelschnalle kein Platz für Gott ist."
Translation:
"'God with us' is written on a German soldier's belt buckle. And that's why a German soldier is never alone. In contrast to the Bolshevik who has no room for God on his belt buckle."

The problem with the magician is that he's trying again as evidenced by the last paragraph of the story. It is implied that he disrupted the malevolent spirit that he had inadvertently summoned but that he has learned nothing from that and is trying again. It won't work the second time. We know that. He should know that. It is almost certain that he'll try a third time and a fourth. It is almost certain that he'll keep trying until he calls up something that he can't put back down, something that puts him down instead.
Someone once said that the definition of madness is performing the exact same actions over and over again yet expecting a different result. It is the irrational obsession, an obsession that has ruined his life, that puts him over the edge and into the realm of the twisted.

sounds like experimenting like a scientist to me somehow O.o

They call it "Mad Science" for a reason.

I'll let Jayne Cobb say it:

empty tummy ain't runny? *snickers*
but yes, about killing people that cobb person is more or less on to something there ^^

I think Alice put it best.

The way the twisted path's have been portrayed is deffinatly been downplayed but for more reasons than perceved liability. The easiest one for me to address is bloodmagic so ill use that. I looked into bloodmagic and the what makes it so bad is its a power seeking practice.

Now IMO a mage sacrifices a guard to cloak the team... thats not really that bad. But it becomes an issue of being a munchkin.

Grab NCP, Sacrifice NCP, Cast magic (kill enemy's), repeat.

Also as everyone else has pointed out its a SR morality issue, bloodmagic is taboo and thus the Dev's create a spectrum of morality for SR. In a sceranio I've read it was an option for a mage to learn bloodmagic, if a mage did the instructions where to remove the character from the game. The reason is that no PC should have that power and that with bloodmagic being taboo the other PC's would/should look at the PC bloodmage as evil. but bloodmagic is a "path", you dont just sacrifice someone and *BAM* your a bloodmage. Also bloodmagic twists the user hence twisted path's.

So is a Twisted Mage worst than a hired killer?

IMO yes, the hired killer has more room for morality and is 86ing people for money/greed/need. The twisted mage does what he does for power and works toward godhood. so in the end it's all about motivation and why.

Motivation:

Question: "Why did you nail the cat to the door?"

Mobster: "So I wouldn't have to burn his house down or break his bones to convince him I was serious."
Samurai: "Because I said I would. My word is my bond and I honor my debts."
Evil: "Because I wanted to know if the cat's screams sounded different than the kids' screams when I nailed their scalps to the wall."

Or Hollywood example: "Con Air" - the thugs, crooks and so on are unpleasant and downright vile. But they all differ from Steve Buscemi's character who drove through three states with a person's head as a hat.

You can rationalize or justify almost anything - even the "Evil" character has a reason for his actions. But the key difference is the personal gratification found in the act itself, in the means rather than the end.

Just my two simplified bits.

-Siege

Edit: Expounding on Martin Blank and Jayne Cobb's wisdom.

Edit 2: You can also toss in conscious choice - as in "I choose to do this" versus "I have no control over my desires, impulses or actions" - one is arguably more "evil" than the other, although your mileage may vary.

I think alot of people are confusing twisted mages with toxic ones here. If you look at the actual text on the motivations and philosophies for twisted mages, they don't sound that different from your typical shadowrunner--but then they tack on: "and this makes them completely incapable of both reason and morality."

A toxic mage does bad things for the sake of doing bad things, a twisted magician does bad things for a good purpose--or else they simply disagree about what qualifies as "bad".

Ok, I'll get right down to it: I see the official take on twisted magicians as prejudiced. Let me explain why:

IRL, my outlook would qualify as twisted, quite possibly toxic.

I have a *very* Darwinist perspective on morality, and I do not value human life the way other people do--a fact I try very hard to conceal because of the way people react to me when they find out. I view civilization--any civilization--as an inherently flawed concept that is more harmful than beneficial, I have a pretty low opinion of humanity (compared the arrogant, "better than sliced bread because we invented it" attitude that most people don't think to question), and spend my days waiting impatiently for society's collapse.

Does that make me a psycho? Maybe. I think it's normal people who are twisted and insane, but I recognize that it's all a matter of perspective, and ultimately there's no way of knowing who's right and who's wrong--another radically different belief I have. :look:

But I haven't reached these conclusions because I'm nuts or emotionally distraught, I reached them as the logical result of a long, rational study of society and human nature. People often try to dismiss ideas as crazy or irrational when they don't like their conclusions, rather than examining them objectively.

Do I go out and randomly kill people?

Well, you'll have to take my word for it, but no. As a matter of fact I go out of my way to avoid conflict even when someone is trying to pick a fight with me. I may not think hurting or killing someone is inherently wrong, but it's still not a decision to be taken lighty. Also, I don't want to get arrested. Like the "good" runners who are sometimes forced to kill, evil runners might be forced to not kill for various reasons.

Am I as likely to murder/rape/desecrate the corpse of someone's grandmother as I am to talk with them? No. Functionally, I'm a very normal guy, if a bit repressed since I'm constantly watching out for other people's prejudice.

I may not have the same strict moral inhibitions as other people, but I am a responsible enough person that I don't need a leash to keep me in line. My point is that theres a double-standard here for twisted magicians, and that having a twisted outlook doesn't automatically make you a mad dog.

Of course, now that I've admitted all this about myself, Rapier's probably going to react with even more prejudice towards me than he did to Twisted Magicians, because I'm real instead of imaginary, and therefore much more threatening.

I guess he'll either see my point or go into bigotry-induced apoplexy--either way there's not much more to discuss on the topic.

I simply contend that the attitudes described as making a magician twisted do not inherently make them crazy, and that the depiction of twisted mages shows a moral bias not present in the rest of Shadowrun. If you want to say that the conditions for being twisted are to have these views *and* be crazy, that's fine--but Street Magic specifically says that they are crazy because of their views--which just doesn't wash.

Given that the sidebar on page 136 says the descriptions are written from the average person's perspective, it is enough to assume that the average person in the sixth world is uninformed and intolerant of twisted magicians.

As a final thought, CanRay mentioned street punks who revel in destruction. I should point out that the punk movement was born of the idea that we were all going to die in nuclear war in just a few years anyway. People were really convinced it was going to happen, and that it was imminent. So not only was our society evil for allowing this to happen (and thus deserving of being trashed) but we were all walking corpses anyway, so the consequences of our actions (the basis for most moral judgments) had very little meaning anymore.

In that context, do punks still seem crazy and out of control? Or did we make a hard, but rational choice in the face of an irrational situation? That choice being to embrace our inevitable destruction, and cram as much enjoyment as possible into the time we had left.

That's what I mean when I say a twisted philosophy isn't necessarily crazy--it's not even necessarily wrong.

Hm. Evil is not a subset of crazy, nor is crazy a subset of evil; they are overlapping sets.

"Street Magic" is about as clear on those distictions, as society at large... and in my view, that's NOT a full, nuanced, comprehensive approach which both has useful overall rules of thumb and room to account for unusual circumstances and outliers on the probability curve. I was once juror, in a case which raised the difference between how legislators used certain terms, and how psychiatry used certain terms, and it was tough for most jurors to sort that out.

Modern psychiatry wants to consider the sociopath insane. If, however, you measure insanity by whether the person tends to get in their own way, and do things which work out unsuccessfully, then some sociopaths are not, by that measure, insane.

On another hand, although I don't see Rad as anywhere near top of the list of threats to my life and well-being, I really do see civilization as essential to my life (since I lack the skills to survive long as a lone hunter-gatherer, and am not aware of other options), and our agendas are theoretically in major conflict. Rad, if you had real world powers along the lines of Magic 6 or higher, I *would* be worrying. In the meantime, live and let live.

I'll say this, though: reason and observation and science can tell you how things *are*, and having the courage to face things as you see them, rather than what you would prefer to see, is a great gift. But those, alone, do not determine how you want things to be. Any agenda, for all civilization, against all civilization, or for some and against other, involves, somewhere along the line, an assumption or stipulation of "X is desirable". It's darn common for people to consider their own survival, and the survival of those connected to them (one way or another), as a Good Thing. But that's not an observation; it's a stipulation.

Sorry to cut most of the post. About the comentary, i'm not from the inquisition so i'm not going to try to burn you in a pile of wood . About the feeling that people that surrounds you is a moron that deserves being shoot is something everybody experiences during his life, during every month o maybe everyday. The thing is, as you say, you are a normal guy without training, without guns (or at least you don't have tendency to use them) and without magic.

The thing is, as Riley 37 said, the difference from you and a twisted magician (i think you're right that i was packing them with toxics, sorry about that) is that he has at hand one of the big powers of the 6th world: magic. I don't know you, but if i had magic, i would crush some faces and surely i would steal a bank (take the chance while you are the only awakened ).

Just some reference. From my point of view and athough i don't like to mention star wars examples, Anakin in the last movie is in some way walking the path of a twisted one. He starts with the visions of his wife dying during the birth of his sons, he starts to seek a way to avoid that, and after a lot of things, he end up half man half spending machine, twisted and powerfull.

Finally, i want to say about personal experiences of players who try to do that kind of character (a gothic friend of mine can't stand doing normal players) always end up demanding attention because how much special his character is (explaining actions with high-boring descriptions, talking in every conversation,...) and usually ends up compromising the group because of his actions. Don't take me wrong on that sentence, what i really want to point is that this kind of character can affect gameplaying and may fed up other player's (runners can choose his working team to avoid that, players under a GM usually not).

But as i always say, play the way you like, but please, have in mind GM and other players.