(away from books)
Mage/Shamans have their "dark" paths (Toxic- , Blood- )
Adepts have their own (.. cannibalism, etc..)
but does Technomancers have their own "Twisted" dark paths of Resonance?

Yes. Its called the Dissonance.

Its kind of like the difference between a clear signal and garbled noise.

The dissonance isn't evil, per se, but it represents all the annoying, frustrating, pain in the ass things of dealing with computers, plus more than a touch of maliciousness.
One of their paragons is basically the internet gods of blue screens of death. I'm pretty sure there's another one for unrecoverable data loss.

Actually the disonance are pretty much laid out and straight up evil, their membership roster (people like Pax) doesn't do anything to dispel that.

If the toxic paths of magic are "misunderstood", then so would the disonance paths as well. From what I recall reading about them, they're not "misunderstood", especially if IIRC one of them wants to wipe out the current Matrix entirely and rebuild it from the groundwork up.

Basically the same as the Toxics. So yes, neither is 'misunderstood', except if you understand them to be not evil.

I cant see how the toxic are misunderstood.


they are pretty much your basic dark side

I think there's something in the fluff about them in Unwired saying they're all insane, don't think there was anything about it being a requirement or a side effect though.

As I recall, when a Techno or Otaku first encountered the Resonance or "awaken" some react badly and basically go insane.

It's not about insanity, folks. Toxic paths and dissonance streams aren't Mental Disorder Negative Qualities.
They're a belief system, a way of thinking unaccepted by, and varying from that of cultural norms.
Of course, that can easily classified as a mental disorder. But it's not madness for the most part.

one of the dissonance paths might look like this

Shub-Internet /shuhb' in't*r-net/ /n./
[MUD: from H. P. Lovecraft's evil fictional deity Shub-Niggurath, the Black Goat with a Thousand Young] The harsh personification of the Internet, Beast of a Thousand Processes, Eater of Characters, Avatar of Line Noise, and Imp of Call Waiting; the hideous multi-tendriled entity formed of all the manifold connections of the net. A sect of MUDders worships Shub-Internet, sacrificing objects and praying for good connections. To no avail -- its purpose is malign and evil, and is the cause of all network slowdown. Often heard as in "Freela casts a tac nuke at Shub-Internet for slowing her down." (A forged response often follows along the lines of: "Shub-Internet gulps down the tac nuke and burps happily.") Also cursed by users of the Web, FTP and TELNET when the system slows down. The dread name of Shub-Internet is seldom spoken aloud, as it is said that repeating it three times will cause the being to wake, deep within its lair beneath the Pentagon.

I think that even among Toxics and Dissonants, there's some you could consider totally psycho. Some Toxics/Dissonants actually have some sort of logical process or mentality behind what they do.. others, in the words of that one movie, ''Just want to watch the world burn'' for no other reason than watching it burn.

You can't really get any closer to psycho than that, I believe, without making everything justifiable in some way to not be a mental disorder...

...Unless you're an insect shaman maybe.

Basically, they're insane in a way that defines their character without it being a Quality one can buy. More of a whole-character holistic insanity that can't be snipped off with enough therapy sessions or time in a brainwashing machine.

Beliefs can be (are? ) insane, though. I dunno why we have this discussion every time these topics come up. Toxics and Dissonants are negative. Done.

A technomancer in my game encountered a Dissonant sprite and asked "What's Dissonance?"

I said "4chan"

That pretty much summed it up.

^ You are my hero

@ Yerameyahu: For the sake of everyone's sanity, I can roll with that.

Heh, Fortinbras, that's exactly what I've always thought.

I bring it up because I'm of the opinion that stripping them of their skewed morality aspect, and turning their logic in apparrent madness, into just plain madness strips them of their scariest part.
A lot are just pyromaniacs, but are actually looking to better the world.

Ah, I see. I misunderstood, because I view them as evil *and* insane, never 'merely insane'. Although the difference can certainly be argued, as can the existence of a difference.

This is true of any society or strata of people. Hell, there are people considered run of the mil runners that are more crazy and destructive than any toxic or blood shaman, they just do not have access to the same power levels. That holds for politicians, military types, paper boys, hackers, or even your dentist.

If blood mages, toxics, dissonants and the like aren't evil, then they really aren't anything. At least from a storytelling standpoint. Take away the "I'm going to destroy the world" aspect and replace it with "I'm not bad, I'm just drawn that way." then they're just another weird thing in a weird world, without emotional resonance or symbolism. They just are.

If that's the case, they stop being toxics or dissonants, then they're just mages and technomancers. If they aren't evil, or more accurately, if they are antagonists, then what purpose do they serve? There are a thousand schools of magic and if toxics and blood magic are just two different schools of thought, then why mention them at all. Heck, Druids make better bad guys than just some mage who happens to use blood because at least Druids have a rich history, back story and agenda.

Assume you and your players have the traditional view of blood mages and your GM says "You get a call from your fixer saying a group of blood mages are kidnapping kids from the barrens." Now you've got this creepy, cult-like group of secretive ner-do-wells taking SINless children for any number of nafarious schemes, none of them good, all of them disturbing. Now you've got a game going!

Your way entails "You get a call from your fixer saying a group of blood mages are kidnapping kids from the barrens." Your group says "Oh, well blood mages aren't really bad guys, but I guess we should stop the kidnappers anyhow."
You could take away the "blood mage" part and replace it with anything. Clowns, hippies, robocops, whatever. If blood mages or any of the other Threats aren't evil, then it serves no purpose to identify them at all.

You can view specific morality any way you want, but when you do, you make an interesting game infinitely more boring.

Fortinbras, to say that Blood Mages and Toxic are evil/antagonistic because it makes them more interesting is to pigionhole the definition of antagonism in a game. Knight Errant, the UCAS government, and circus clowns could all equally be antagonistic in a game, as could a mage of another tradition, or a technomancer who is trying to destroy the world without going the dissonant path. The blood/toxic/dissonant traditions are outside of societal norms, which gets them branded evil, but that does not make every member evil.

So why have them at all?

Because they are a flavour that had not been around before. On the same token why have smugglers when they don't have a defined morality? Or megas, which are not evil but sure can be antagonistic? The books have provided options. If you choose to make them evil in your world, awesome, you have my full support because it works for you and you have fun with it. I prefer to present some of these type of people as pure and vile evil, while others are misguided souls who lost their way, and others are crusading for a good (or socially acceptible) agenda, but with an ends justify the means mentality. That, to me, is where things get interesting, because each has its own flavor, and no one can instantly go 'oh it's toxic that makes it bad' and be one hundred percent right (unless they hate toxics for some reason, and then have at 'er). Variety does not boring make, it staves that stale cookie cutter boring off.

If that's the case, they aren't blood mages. They're mages. They aren't dissonant technomancer, they're just technomancers.
Mega Corps are antagonist because, in a distopian universe, they are evil. It's they nature of what they do. They are legally bound, by their shareholders, to do evil things; i.e. plow over peoples homes to build mini-malls and automate entire workforces just to save a few pennies. Now I'm sure they can justify what they do, but to the average runner on the street, that's evil.
If your AAA corps don't do this, then they aren't Triple A Mega Corporations of the future. They're just corporations. Like the ones we work for. Dull and without any emotional resonance for they player.

Same with Lone Star. In the distopian world of Shadowrun, cops become corrupt. It's inevitable. Maybe they started out with good intentions, but that's just the world in which they live. Good cops get shot, either by that one CI they trusted or by the other boys in blue for not playing ball, or they get turned because staying clean doesn't pay the rent. Not in 2070, anyway. These cats also justify what they do, but that doesn't stop it from being evil.
Again, otherwise they aren't Lone Star, they're just cops. Like they one who pulled you over for speeding or showed up for a domestic complaint down the street.

Blood mages kill others to fuel their own power. If they don't, then they aren't really blood mages. They're just mages. Or shamans or druids or Zarathustra followers or any number of other words that hold no meaning and don't make me think of anything.
Take patty's game. As I understand it, they play a group of toxic shamans who go around rescuing little old ladies and handing money out to the poor while blowing up evil mega corps. How is that game changed at all if I remove the word 'toxic' from that sentence? It doesn't, making a toxic shaman an irrelevant differentiation.
For the same reason we don't say a middle child shaman or Asian shaman or prefers strawberry to chocolate shaman.

I don't want blood or toxic or dissonant to be irrelevant distinctions. I want them to mean something. They should have some sort of resonance behind them, otherwise there isn't a playable difference.

As I said before, Dissonance is 4chan. I'm sure they can justify it, but all in all, it's pretty evil.

Yeah, Toxics/Bloods/Dissonants are generally evil... but only part of the whole ''big evil creepy bad guy'' thing is their mentality. Many of the Twisted Paths of a Magician follow a similar thought process/insanity as say.. a Toxic Havoc or Toxic Reaper, and I feel safe to assume that there could also be ''Twisted'' Technomancers (Though I haven't read on them.. I haven't particularly explored all of Unwired yet).

The other part is the abilities themselves. Dissonants, Toxics, Insect Shamans.. all of them have ''unique'' magics (or ''Resonant'') abilities that instill fear into others. For hackers and Technomancers, a Dissonant sometimes represents the failure of code.. which may very well be the Hacker/Techno's whole ideology.. that's what they've built their lives around... slinging code... and in the presence of a Dissonance-cursed Techno, everything they've come to know about their virtual world can be shattered, disrupted, turned into nothing but static. For Mages, A Toxic uses magic that is perhaps the very antithesis to ''natural'' magic, which they use for their spells. An Insect Shaman frightens others because he summons spirits who's mentality and outlook on human life is truly alien to them.. without emotion.. driven solely by a desire to consume all other things and herd them like cattle.

Stripping away the ''evil'' of a Toxic/Blood/Dissonant doesn't necessarily strip away the abilities. That's why I always thought it would be an interesting concept to create a ''non-evil'' Dark magician of any path.. or similarly a Dissonant if that isn't impossible. As far as the storytelling perspective goes.. it offers new and sometimes morally wrenching decisions and actions. What if a group of runners suddenly discovered their Mage had gone Blood/Toxic? He's not necessarily bad.. he's not running around making sacrifices out of innocent people or propagating some sort of mutagenic plague. Whatever his reason, are the runners now in the same position as John Q Public who believes any Mage can blow up two city blocks with a Fireball spell and still be able to stand amongst the debris?

In my opinion, a Blood or Toxic should mean something, but it doesn't have to mean something bad.. that's just extremely limiting. In all honesty, the possibility is there.. It would just be nice for people to actually look at it the way it can be, from a roleplaying perspective and not a technical one, instead of the way it was intended to be. (Not pointing any fingers)

Toxics and Dissonants are drawn to conditions which are quite simply antithetical to nature or the matrix as people know it. And just like a nature shaman wants more clean nature, they want more toxic wastelands or more datastores flooded by necro-pedo-zoophile snuff clips. So yes, stripping away the evil of a Toxic/Dissonant completely strips away his abilities.

Does evil itself have any choice? The Necromancer who summons the dead to glean for information to solve the murder of a crown prince is inherently evil because of his abilities? Or does the Necromancer have to be evil to even summon the dead in the first place? Rarely is anything so black and white. To most fantasy worlds involving magic, raising the dead is a foul act that defies the laws of life.. and because of that it is looked upon as evil. To say that all Necromancers must therefore, by that societal logic, be evil.. is tantamount to saying that all Elves eat flowers, and while it may be true that a large percentage of elves are vegetarians, unless that percentage is 100%... well, you get the idea.

I would almost never, ever, define evil around an ability or skillset of any sort.. I would define it on how that ability or skillset is used. Hackers are perfectly capable of breaking into someones computer or what have you and totally screwing things up. Most ''real Hackers'' don't do that, and differentiate themselves from ''Crackers'', who purposefully crack into (something) with malicious intent. Hackers, on the other hand.. possessing likely the same ability and ''skillset'' of a Cracker, do not pursue this method. Theirs is generally a quest and thirst for knowledge and the testing of one's aptitude. So are both the Hacker and the Cracker evil?

So what's the difference between a toxic shaman and a regular shaman?
If it's "one gets cool power the other doesn't" then all shamans should be toxic shamans. If sociopath is no longer a requirement of being toxic, in fact if any qualification at all is no longer required in being toxic the one would have to be mad not to become a toxic mage to get those cooler powers. In which case, all shamans get those powers and they are simply "shamans."
In which case there are now no longer toxic shamans. Now there are just shamans.

So let's just get rid of the concept of toxic, blood or dissonance and just call them mages and technomancers. Whats the point of providing stats for irrelevant subcultures. They don't provide special stats for Quabbalist or Theurges or any thing else, and if blood mages and the like are really just boy scouts who are misunderstood, then why not just say "Treat blood mages like regular mages" then there it is. You've rid yourself of any moral relativity, you've rid yourself of excess rules and everybody is happy.

Except for Lovecraft fans. They have one less RPG to enjoy.

The difference between a normal shaman and a toxic shaman? Their magic. One is in harmony with the Gaiasphere, the other is not. Who says all Bloodies and Toxics are misunderstood? All thusfar presented and likely most created by GMs are inherently evil. Let's face it.. they make neat bad guys. I know back in my D&D days, facing a True Necromancer or some sort of Demon/Devil lord was always an epic fight.. regardless of whether we won or lost. They're neat bad guys.. that's what they were intended to be, were they not?

What I'm saying is that the mindset and the skillset do not have to always be synchronous.. you do not always have to be evil to use what society deems as evil powers. The vast majority of Necromancers are evil, but not all are. Why might a Necromancer be evil? Was he evil to begin with, and is just using Necromancy as a tool? Did he learn Necromancy to expand his knowledge and fall down a darker path? Is he some sort of Faustian archetype? There's reasons for this stuff... and in my opinion the reason is what should define the character's personal motives and usage of that power.. the reason is a big part in what determines good and evil. What are the reasons for a good Necromancer? Is he trying to find a way to cheat death and sustain life for eternity, for the good of humanity? Does he use it to know the secrets of the dead and use that knowledge for benign reasons? Any and all are valid.. both for the evil and the good Necromancer... so... why are Toxics and Bloods different now?

No one cares about the powers.. they care about the roleplaying, that's what it boils down to.

You seem to be under the assumption that I'm pretending that all Toxics or Bloods are misunderstood and are really good guys. Nah, not what I'm saying.. in fact I'm quite aware that most of them are batshit crazy, or the methods they perceive as good are actually far more detrimental than they believe to be. Because every Megacorp is dirty and ''evil''... so then must all the employees, including the wagemage who is just trying to provide as safe and secure life as possible for his family? What I'm saying is that something intended to be ''evil'' should not be instantly damned even in the face of good reason. It inhibits good roleplaying, in my opinion. I'm not saying that everyone should run around being Toxic or Dissonant, I'm saying the allowance of such an act in conjunction with a good reason and the heart for telling a good story should not be limited in such a way as to ''Black-and-White'' the whole ordeal. To assume that anything in Shadowrun is as appears and straight black-and-white seems extraordinarily dull and not the way the game was meant to be... You're playing Pong when you could be playing New Super Mario Bros. and it's still all up to choice.

..I happen to enjoy Pong quite a bit.

Pong is nice indeed. I'm just too much of a writer to enjoy writing two dimensional archetypes too often.
Sure, the maniac putting babies on spikes,, setting them alight and selling them as hot dogs to unsuspecting bypassers is fun, from time to time. As Nyost said, they make for easy, grateful enemies to skip all negotiation with and shoot on sight and just feel good in vanquishing evil.
Shadowrunners though I feel should be walking near a grey line in morality a lot of the time. They are professional criminals, breaking societal norms on a daily bases. I find it a nice process to have players explore how far on the 'wrong' end of that line their characters are willing to tread.

Toxics and Insect shamans, as well as Dissonant technos are what they are because of the way they think, the morals they uphold, the ideals which they aspire for, and often for the means they use to achieve these. These ways of thinking will inherently go against a lot of what players think is right, what I think is right. As a GM though, I don't think what I think about moral issues should come into play. I'm just providing players a canvas, and as wide a selection of paints I can offer them, for them to do what they want to play. My group tends to agree with me on liking to have to make decisions where there really isn't a clear cut right or wrong.
If I can present a character working from a fundamentally 'wrong' set of moral values, but aspiring to an ideal I can get the players to sympathise with, or even get them to sympathise with the character himself, to understand where he's coming from. If I get them to reconsider that shooting on sight policy to evaluating what's happening, and why first, before deciding what to do with the situation, I know I'm telling a story that's doing a good job. This goes for Toxics and Blood mages, but just as much for radical Eco Shamans, Terrorists, mobsters, gangers, corrupt cops, oppressive rulers, Humanitas members and corp managers who just look at the bottom line. Only group I tend to refrain from making more than a straw figure to be shot on sight is bunraku parlor owners. Not because I don't think there's nothing to sympathise with, but because I know that really is a comfort zone limit for a lot of people.
It's a dystopian world, I think the characters should weigh that, rather than sit atop the moral high ground, just because it's "good".

Saying that to make all these different archetypes into three dimensional characters one can sympatise with, to rob them of face-value good or evil, is to make all of them the same I find a strange opinion, and one that's completely new to me. Still, I'll be sure to have it sink in and weigh it. Thanks for the input.

My brief take: the game already has (as multiple people listed above) plenty of 'amoral' or 'morally grey' antagonist options, up to and including freaking vampires, etc. Insects, toxics, bloods, dissonance, etc. provide the additional, untapped resource of *unambiguously* negative antagonists.

Given that Shadowrun is a Cyberpunk setting, which owes rather heavily to Film Noir, you are occasionally get archetypes which are Inverterate Bastards, Knights Templar at best or to quote Alfred Pennyworth from The Dark Knight: "Because some men aren't looking for anything logical, like money. They can't be bought, bullied, reasoned or negotiated with. Some men just want to watch the world burn."

Toxic Shamans, Blood Mages, and Dissonance Technomancers are usually bent and twisted in ways that will disturb most people. Some feed of thier own inner pain at what the world had become (see Toxic Shamans in particular) as their totem goes down the destructive route. Some are simply broken somewhere inside (which is infinitely more dangerous than the 'In it for the Kicks types). Some are simply Nihilistic to the point of madness.

Bottom line: These diseased individuals are the dark reflection of most of the Shadowrunners and are there to give them an occasionally non-negotiable (if the runners have anything resembling a soul), crack-brained, true threat that isn't going to go away, is bad for everyone over the long run, and if ignored, is only going to make the Crapsack world they live in far, far worse.

Occasionally, it's nice to have a enemy you can unambigously blow away without even the slightest hint of guilt in a world of Grey on Black Morality. makes for good story telling if done right

usually, this lot will go under this heading http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/CompleteMonster use sparingly

If the process of necromancy involved spreading genocide and the destruction around the world, yes it would be. And that is exactly what toxics do.
Sure, from the Toxic's perspective he might be just remaking the failed and fragile nature for the better. Just too bad that his vision of "better" involves stuff like massive genocide, planetwide destruction of the ecosystem, or summoning the Prince of Fucking Darkness and his annoying daughter.