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Traditions of Shamanism in Your Campaigns?

Started by SHARK, June 19, 2023, 08:42:24 AM

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GeekyBugle

#15
June 22, 2023, 04:13:08 PM
Quote from: jhkim on June 22, 2023, 01:17:31 PM
Quote from: VisionStorm on June 21, 2023, 11:15:59 PM
Quote from: GeekyBugle on June 21, 2023, 09:35:08 PM
Quote from: jhkim on June 21, 2023, 12:43:28 PM
RuneQuest3 has decent shamanic rules as far as published RPGs. However, I'm not a fan of almost all published RPG magic systems as far as evoking any sort of mystic or magical flavor.

I have preliminary notes on the magic for my old Vinland game, but since I only ended up with one magic-using PC, I never developed a variety of paths. I just developed options for the one PC.

https://darkshire.net/jhkim/rpg/vinland/magic/

I'd be curious if anything is available for D&D-like systems. There was the rune caster in the AD&D2 "Vikings" supplement, which wasn't shamanic per se, but had some flavor of historical Norse magic. I will see if I can dig that up.

AFAIK all D&D (and probably every other system) Shaman is just the Magic User with a very thin coat of paint, including the Druids and other casters.

Mythras has fairly distinct Magical Traditions, with Animism (basically Shamanism) being significantly different from standard spellcasting. But it's BRP and kinda dense text, so I never really went deep into it and never played. Though, Animist abilities deal with interacting with the Spirit World through the Trance and Binding skills. Trance allows animists to see into the spirit world and sense the presence of spirits, etc. While Binding allows them to force spirits to do stuff or bind to them to fetishes, etc.

They go really in-depth into defining different types of spirits, their characteristics and what you can do with them and such. With rules for spirit combat and how to call upon them, negotiate with them, etc. and even how to design spirits. It's probably the most distinct take on shamanism I've seen in a TTRPG.

Cool. I don't know Mythras, but my understanding is that it's RuneQuest 6th ed -- so probably derives its shamanism rules from RuneQuest 3. Yeah, there's a lot about spirits. I never used the RQ3 shamanism rules directly, but I think it was inspirational for using RQ for my alternate-historical games.

There's a chapter on the Spirit World in the MRQ-SRD. I haven't looked in detail how it compares to RQ3.

http://b5quest.pbworks.com/f/MRQ-SRD.pdf

There's no Samanism rules in the 2 pages the Spirit World takes on that SRD.
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KrisSnow

#16
June 23, 2023, 12:05:51 AM
"GURPS: Wild West" made an attempt at it by having various ritual rules meant to emulate some American Indian cultures. Eg. performing a physically painful sun-dance and getting a vision quest that helps you make a blessed shield.

There's an RPG called "Shard" that if I recall, had an elaborate shamanic system representing walking through a dream world and having abilities limited by how many verbs you used per trip. Eg. defending got harder if you'd observed something. Whole thing has an India theme; don't know how well that shaman system corresponds to real-world culture.

Besides that, cyberpunk RPGs tend to do something similar, in the sense that the PC enters a trance state and visits a mysterious other world where he might do battle with intangible foes and steal information or treasure.

jhkim

#17
June 23, 2023, 01:38:30 AM
Quote from: GeekyBugle on June 22, 2023, 04:13:08 PM
Quote from: jhkim on June 22, 2023, 01:17:31 PM
I don't know Mythras, but my understanding is that it's RuneQuest 6th ed -- so probably derives its shamanism rules from RuneQuest 3. Yeah, there's a lot about spirits. I never used the RQ3 shamanism rules directly, but I think it was inspirational for using RQ for my alternate-historical games.

There's a chapter on the Spirit World in the MRQ-SRD. I haven't looked in detail how it compares to RQ3.

http://b5quest.pbworks.com/f/MRQ-SRD.pdf

There's no Samanism rules in the 2 pages the Spirit World takes on that SRD.

Hmf. Yeah, they've cut a ton of material. I started to type stuff in, but there's a lot of good stuff so I just made some pics of the chapter.

https://drive.google.com/drive/u/1/folders/1h4IuInW86YWiD90OFzy74825FcoR6vlO

I'll see if I can add some more.

For something available in-print, there's GURPS Voodoo, which has a decent version of a spirit warrior. It's centered on a modern-day Earth campaign setting, though. (It's a great setting, but it wouldn't be easy to adapt to a D&D-like game.)
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