| From: | n.kobschaetzki@**********.com (Niels_KobschÀtzki) |
|---|---|
| Subject: | Heritage Tradition Discussion |
| Date: | Tue, 14 Nov 2006 21:57:22 +0100 |
With this I just wanted to move the "Heritage Tradition Discussion"
out of the "Practice SR4 Characters"-Topic because the two
discussions which are in there are imho so meshed up that it's nearly
impossible to respond (incl. the quoting in it...).
In this message I want to throw in my two cents. I think that the
basic idea is quite good. Thus basing a tradition of the heritage of
the character. But in my opinion that's already done with the whole
lot of possible ways of magic described in Street Magic. Usually a
cultural background gives you the tradition you are in. A magician
from Germany e.g. would be either hermetic (because it's science-
based magic) or some kind of a witch or some kind of belief-based
magic. Usually the tradition describes the way you believe how magic
works.
If you take it down to the nationality or however you want to
describe it, I can't see how it will describe the way your character
understands magic. In addition there's the thing of following a
heritage.
I will give some examples here and because of my studies (japanese
sciences and learning Korean as well) I learned a lot of people to
know who follow one or two heritages (if they are halves), maybe a
third (once I learned to know a girl who has a Chinese father, a
Vietnamese mother and she grew up in Austria) but never more.
First I want to take myself. I was born in Germany, grew up there and
bla. As far as I know the father's side of my family moved in the
time of WW1 to Germany, before it lived in Poland and from the family
history (which could be researched back ca. 250 years because we had
a bishop in our family) the family lived also some time in Russia.
I don't know nothing about Poland (except my two visits there for
some hours - all relatives live in Germany today) or Russia. I don't
speak those languages, I have nearly no idea about the living there.
I have now a friend whose mother is Korean, the father is Japanese.
When she was a child, she moved to the U.S. and after high-school she
moved to Germany to study there. As far as I can tell she adopts some
stuff of her Korean heritage, some stuff of her Japanese heritage and
also some kind of the "American way of life" but she isn't the
"typical" Japanese or Korean anymore.
Same for Korean-Germans or Japanese-Germans I learned to know. Most
live their lifes as typical Germans and maybe have a hobby or two
which connects them to the other half. Nothing more - and most of you
have to say that growing up as second or third generation immigrant
to the U.S. while being fully bilingual is
a) not that often
b) rather amazing
c) the chances to be a magician as well would be nearly impossible ;)
Now Christopher (I think that's the name of the one who wanted to
create the heritage-thingy) wants to say that someone can follow 5+
heritages. And if you could trace back our heritages as far as
genetic reengineering could, we could trace our heritage back to Africa…
How someone follows several heritages at once? How could he identify
with them? From which did he learned about all his heritages? Part of
the following of the heritage is to be accepted by the people of his
own heritage except you are some crazyhead otherwise you would give
up. Please describe me what's the difference between the heritages of
a German/French/Czech/Welsh-heritage tradition whatever you call it
(it's not a mage, a witch or whatever)? Nowadays I can't see that big
difference in it - ok, there are some traditions but usually you only
live in the traditions where you lived and where you grew up.
The other thing is that magic in RPGs is usually based on some kind
of "already existing" magic, means magic or religious traditions
people believe/d in. The reason is that those are the ways people are
describing the way how magic functions for themselve. Being a German
I couldn't describe how magic would work for me - usually I would
think…hmm…there is black magic from satanists and witches, then there
are the wonders priests could maybe pray for, what else? eh...ah
there were Germanic tribes and that's it. I think a Czech, French
whatever in middle/western/northern Europe would do the same (in
Great Britain there would be druids as well). Romans are too far
away, in Greek there could be maybe some people who believe in Greek
gods but I doubt that.
The reason RPGs are using these is because that's the way the
different cultures (and what's the heritage tradition in difference
then magic based on special cultures) are seeing how magic functions.
It's already there - just grab it and it should work.
If you want to create some kind of new magic it would become kinda
hard I think. What would be new ways how people could think how magic
functions? There could be reality hackers (taken from Mage: The
Awakening) who are programming the reality. Maybe chaos mages based
on the chaos theory. Maybe some magicians who belief cyberware could
enhance their magical powers (but that would be rather munchy…) or
something like this.
You have to be really creative for it because a lot of people already
thought about these points. The heritage-thing doesn't work in my
opinion because it's already there - with every magical tradition.
Read books about it and see how the people implemented it in the
various games. Get yourself a copy of Street Magic and you will see
that most of the stuff is already covered (some in a bad style like
those Shinto-thing but I commented already on that).
Hope you see my point and that you will bring some good arguments to
reinforce your arguments for the tradition. I'm always open to new
things but until now I'm not convinced (and it seems like most) that
the "Heritage Tradition" would work at all and I have to say that I
do not have any knowledge how it works. Please give me a detailed
description about it and maybe a character portfolio with complete
background and how he believes his magic works - will be some work
but if you can work out a *good* one, you'll be able to convince the
people here.
Have a nice day
Niels
