QUOTE (Cain @ Apr 4 2009, 10:40 PM)
No, it is not. You cannot create much of the flavor of a tradition using the fluff as written. Instead, you have to go and research it yourself. Sure, this isn't necessarily a bad thing; but it is bad for time-strapped players and GM's, who want to become interested in a tradition before introducing it into their game.
Keep in mind that the time-strapped player or GM is going to spend time reading, whether it's in the sourcebook or on Wikipedia. But a book that adds 30,000 words for detailing traditions is going to be harder on the cash-strapped player or GM. Which isn't to say I wouldn't have loved to write twice as much (or more) about each tradition, but it's not seen as a big enough value-add for the customer.
QUOTE (Cain @ Apr 4 2009, 10:40 PM)
Picture this: if you wanted to add a Voodoo NPC mage to your game, you'd need to spend some time researching real-world Voudoun, to get his details right. You'd also have to extrapolate how the rules of Shadowrun magic would have affected the belief. Or, you can just read Magic in the Shadows. The SR4 fluff just isn't enough to convey a sense of the tradition.
Picture this: if you wanted to add a Hindu brahmin NPC mage to your game, you'd pick up
Magic in the Shadows and find absolutely nothing that helps you. No flavor text, no fluff. No mechanics. Do you shoe-horn the brahmin mage into 3rd edition Hermeticism? Shamanism? Voudoun? Do you make up the mechanics? Now you've got to do a bunch of research and figure out how it fits into the game. Or you can read
Street Magic and you know how it functions, mechanically, plus you have a solid bit of information about the Hindu magical tradition: the differences between the path of brahmin and the saddhu, the types of rituals common to their magic, the appearance of their spirits (ashuras), how they relate to mentor spirits, etc.
Besides, I just re-read the Voudoun information in
Magic in the Shadows, and more than half of the word count is devoted to explaining mechanics, sometimes literally repeating mechanics information already found in other sections of the magic rules.