Well, technically Custom Tradition is NOT an Optional Rule, nor is it specifically disallowed by the SRM FAQ. The FAQ does specify what pre-built Traditions are allowed, but it makes no real mention of the Tradition building rules. The build rules are pretty cut and dried, choose five spirit types and materialization/possession. If the FAQ was intended to also disallow the build rules, they should probably say so.

However, yes, my character more or less uses a re-skin of Voodoo, called Ex Machina, which has a focus of infusing machines with life as opposed Voodoo's tropes.





-k

I knew someone was going to make that argument. It says right in the text that you will need to work with your Gamemaster to flesh out and balance the tradition much as custom cybersuites do. Maybe we need an explicit prohibition for custom traditions and a more general one for anything that requires Gm input during character creation.

Otherwise some Joker will show up with:

Guidance
Guardian
Task
Man
Air

At least possession traditions are now banned.

Well, if you knew that, you must have felt the rule was arguable, no?



You mean like Voodoo? It has Water instead of Air, but still...




Yeah, for new players. I'd actually prefer all players, existing players having to retcon their characters to the current FAQ rules.

Back on topic, since Voodoo is one of the allowed traditions for Le Pacte, would a re-skinned Voodoo count?



-k

You re-skinned vodoo? Mmmm Gouda.

Well, I was doing the Custom Tradition thing, picking options to match the whole "investing life into machines" schtick.

After I was done I realized I'd more or less recreated Voodoo. So it's easier for me to explain it as a re-skinned Voodoo, as mechanically they're the same.

I mean, look at all the Voodoo spirits. Other than Water, they all are very appropriate to a tech-oriented magician.

Honestly, I don't know what the author was thinking when he wrote the Chaos Magic tradition. THAT was supposed to be the 'tech' tradition, but it gets a bunch of elemental spirits.

I also freely admit to being a powergaming cheese weasel. And a pain in the ass on rules interpretations. It's probably the reason I was the "rules guy" for another living campaign a few years ago - they figured, hey, who better to put in charge of the rules, than a guy who's really good at cheesing the rules and knows where all the loopholes are that need plugging.





-k

I really wish there was a nice balanced make-your-own-tradition option. Sadly, no, and for some things (example: if you want to be an Intuition Materialization mage) you wind up with a very small number of rather... odd traditions [Vajarayana Buddhism, Druidic, or Wicca].

Of course the tech-appropriate ones get most of the best spirit types (and no fire?). As for Chaos, it's really just a slight tweak of Hermeticism in terms of fluff and build. It really should have be replaced with another intuition one.

Really it'll be cool to make your own tradition, but you would see "Chuck Norrisism- The best spirit types and Intuition Based." Then again, I could see an argument that you tend to only focus on one spirit type you can summon so having 2 good ones doesn't matter that much. And since nearly every tradition has a top tier spirit type somewhere, does it really matter?

I'm a power gamer too. Hell I think if Lurker GMed my Origins character (a mind over matter Qabbala mystic), he might have dropped a cow on him even if I never really used my possession.

Edit- I'm been debating if you could make some sort of point based tradition system.

Orbital cow launches are down this quarter. Cost of getting bovines into orbit have gone up. Cheese doesn't bother much as long as their not pulling away from the tables fun (which to a lesser extent includes me) i've got the tools I need to deal with those people but the usual way has been to just suggest a character audit or take them aside for a moment. My emotional investment in running convention mods is somewhat low. There is lots and lots of ghouda out there and the biggest issue is a lot of it has downsides that the players arn't self enforcing which pulls my time to actually do so. I don't mind a rules lawyer i just ask they be self policing.

Now for what it's worth and this is entirely bulls call my opinion is if your not acting like a Vodoun tradition from a roleplay perspective you dont' count as one froma group perspective. Such is the cost of being unique.

I do agree with you that we should just force a do-over for possesion characters, i too will loose one (a psionic) but I think it'd be a good trade. Ditto on mind control spells allow people to do a one for one swap. Maybe once the con season has calmed down and Bull has more time he can come up with proceedures for doing so. I might bug him at the con to see if I can let players with mind control spells swap them on the spot.

That would be cool; I feel like pirated programs are one thing (because other people can still get the programs and all), but I don't feel it's fair one of my characters has spells a new player can never get.

Yea for my guy i'm just not going to use those spells. Since i went with the psionic theme that takes a fair number of tools out of his arsenal but I'm comfortable with that. I am going to miss alter memory it played well with my teams quick and quiet style. Se' la' vi

Might be easier to just say that Possession Traditions are now Materialization. Would minimize the impact on everything else while achieving the desired effect.




-k

Anchoring+Banned Spell = Transferable Banned Spell
(within SRM-specific limitations of transferring)

Yeah, I can understand that. I suppose I can just suck up the extra Karma cost.

As far as building traditions, one thing I remember, from when the original rules on what traditions are allowed - that verbiage isn't really much changed from when Dunner and company were running the campaign, and at that time there was a lot of "GM Approval" stuff allowed, like Custom Spells and such. Back then, of course, the playerbase was smaller and they could actually take the time to personally review and approve stuff like that on an individual basis. These days I can see Bull suffering some sort of meltdown if he attempted that.

So it might not be a bad idea to revisit the wording now, if the intent is "no custom traditions, but re-skinning existing traditions is okay".




-k

I too would support this kind of motion. I will talk to bull and see what he thinks. For my part I really like some of the possesion traditions (although some of them like the kaballah tradition don't seem like they should be possession traditions). The biggest problem is even if the GM understands them they take a lot more attention to administer.

I'm not sure that it's necessarily a bad idea, but that is a pretty hefty power boost for Charisma and Intuition magicians compared to just banning them - especially Intuition. It also lets mages get access to task spirits and I understand "task spirits > you" was one of the balance problems of Possession mages.

Well there area already powerful Charisma traditions (SHaman anyone?). Intuition is it's own bag of problems.

Shaman? I mean it gets spirits of Man which are sweetness and light, but so does Shinto and Black magic.

As for Intuition, making possession traditions into materialization means we might see a lot more Rastafarians around. Voodoo is still pretty crazy though.

The big thing that keeps task spirits under control is their inability to read electronic displays etc which cuts them out of a lot of things in the sixth world.

If new members are still being accepted, I would be honored to join this group.

Handle: Obrafour
Tradition: Buddhist

Yes, we are certainly accepting new members. Welcome.

I wonder if Braille displays are still around in the 2070s, for those folks with neurological blindness?





-k

Just be sure to be able to make the Arcana+Logic roll needed. Sadly, you can't default on it.

And wait to make the Arcana+Logic until you can do it during a 'run.
(since between game actions *normally* preclude the use of Edge and involve buying hits at 4:1. GM kindness excepted when it applies)

They might very well be, but why would a task spirit understand braile? That seems like a cheesy loophole to me at best.

Eh. Was just a thought, because it's a physical readout rather than a screen.

And you're right, a Task spirit might not be able to understand Braille. But an Ally spirit invested with Task spirit powers should be able to, if the summoner knows Braille.

Maybe I'm overthinking this, if it's possible to make a display that raises little dots to represent text, it should be possible to just have a display that causes actual letters to raise up. I remember seeing a wristwatch that had a field of square pegs instead of a standard readout. Pegs would raise up slightly in groups to form numbers.

Or maybe something like this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flip-disc_display. Uh. Hey! If you coated one side of each disc with FAB or other magically active material, you would have a display that could even be read on the astral! ...okay, I'm probably stretching a bit. Maybe.

Your fellow runners might look at you oddly if they see your commlink has a weird physical display and a physical keyboard, though.




-k

No loopholes.

Spirits aren't human. They don;t think like us.It's not a matter of whether they can see the text or not (though that's part of it), they simply don't understand it in the way we do. Consider spirits functionally illiterate.



So... A Cyberdeck?

Post in here after you make your Arcana test to join (as prior post, no defaulting). After (you probably) our next member, the diff of that test will be increased by +1



Someone mentioned making some of the possession traditions materialization traditions, I emailed Bull on Apr 22 2010 through here asking if I could do just that with a Voodoo mage, and never got a response, so I'm guessing it's not allowed.

Well, as I'm not sure what the threshold is, hopefully this makes it: 2 successes (2 logic + 2 arcana; rolled 6, 2, 1 6)

Hope to be joining you all shortly (literally, if any of you will be at Gencon!).

The TN should be two now, so you just made it. Congrats, you are member number 7.

I still need Caleb and eBay to confirm if they ever made the roll, I know it was their intentions to join when this group was first created.

Hi ebay never really got off the ground so he wont be joining sadly i was just to stuck on playing my cybertroll boomer

but looking over this set of post it never answered anyones questions about adepts joining. Not all adepts have to join a way they can also join tradtions because in several areas of the tradition it mentions adepts as part of that tradition like in the norse tradition mentions adept specifically in its description.

So as long as the adepts take the arcana skill and make the proper rolls there should be no reason fro them not to join.

It is once again time to fulfill the Attendance Stricture. The meeting will be August 15-19.
I look forward to working conversing with many of you.