How do I reflect these two magical styles

[Doyce]

Hi all,

I've been working on a conversion for Heroquest -- a primitive Jungle setting -- and I'm trying to get a handle on how to reflect the two dominant kinds of magic in the setting.  I was hoping the HQ-IQs in the group would be able to offer me some insight.  One style is pretty simple to convert, while the other one is giving me headaches.

For the record, I'm not making any attempt to transfer the magic style from the SYSTEM that the setting was originally written for -- I'm taking the pure description of the two disciplines, uncolored by system, and trying to reflect them in HQ, without system-taint.

Here are the two descriptions:

Shamans cast spells by meditating upon the spirits of nature and of their tribal ancestors, depending on the race and tribe. The medicine bundles used by shaman are made by them and reflect personal or tribal values.

Shaman communicate with the spirits and are well versed in tribal law and tradition. Their primary responsibilities are the tribe and social order of their people, and as such they are generally dour and severely conservative. They speak out boldly for what is 'right' and are the tribes source of moral and religious authority. They are priests, maintaining the laws handed down from the ancestors. They are wise men, learning from the spirits of nature and the land. They are healers, able to drive out evil spirits and heal the body. They are counselors, advising the young and old, chief and child. They are psychiatrists, guiding the healthy through the normal trials of adolescence and life, as well as guiding the mentally ill through their sickness. They are the intermediary between the spirit world and the physical world, and as such have interests both practical and metaphysical.

... and so forth.  Pretty much reads like classic HQ Animists, right?  That's what I think, anyway, and as far as I'm concerned, all that's left for me to do for these guys is write up the Traditions and Practices for the various peoples of the Jungle.  Boom.

Now, here's my problem child:

Witch doctors communicate with the spirits and advise the chief, though they are subservient to him in nearly all things. This role they share with shaman. Witch-doctors are far less concerned with maintaining the social fabric of their tribe then they are about individual pursuits and goals.

Witch Doctor spells are obtained through the acquisition or creation of spell fetishes. Within these fetishes lie spirits.

... well, right here, you're thinking "Dude, they're just animists too."  Well...

These spirits instruct the witch doctor on how to harness the magic that comes from within the witch-doctor himself. Like the shaman, witch doctors communicate with spirits. However, he turns inward for his magic but he turns outward to the spiritual world to learn how to use it.

So... two reasons I'm thinking "not just an Animist with Scholar Occupation."

1) I like the idea of there being multiple (well, two) different magical disciplines in the setting.
2) The description of how the Witch-doctor uses the spirits... more as magical advisors for innate Magic... that sounds different than animism.

So, there's things I could do...

1) Run Witch Doctors like Theism: each Affinity is instead an advising spirit bound into a fetish -- the spirit does nothing but advise and augment -- Feats under that affinity (either improvised or normal, via concentration) are simply the Spells that the Witch-doctor has learned to cast by communing with this Spirit.  If you want more Affinities, you have to broaden yourself out into multiple 'groupings' (formerly: deities) of spirits.
2) Run Witch Doctors like Wizardry: the only difference being that Grimoires are represented in this setting as the Witch-doctor's Fetishes.  No other significant changes (including needing Talismans for the spells).
3)  Something else I haven't thought of.

Thoughts?  I crave input from wiser heads than my own.

[Minx]

Both 1. and 2. sound good to me. It depends if a Witch-Doctors Spirit has a very tight focus in the spells it teaches, or if a given spirit can teach very diverse spells, only loosly connected by the spirits character.

If the first is the case, Theism sounds good, as an Affinity is quite focused, most of the time. If its the latter, then Sorcery sounds better, as Grimoires tend, IMO, to be a looser connection of spells, which aren´t that tight in their focus.

But actually, system-wise they work pretty much the same, with the only difference that in Theism, Affinities can´t augment Feats, because they are connected, while in Sorcery, Grimoires can augment individual spells, cause each spell has it´s own focus. So, depending on how you want the witch-doctors to work, choose one or the other...

And tell us how it went in a Actual Play. :)

M

[soru]

Actually, outside Glorantha and the 3-worlds split, I'd do it a different way entirely:

shamans are theism, they can do powerful magic in a limited number of fields defined by social relationships and responsibility. Spirits are just the 'special effect' justifying this, not anything represented in the game mechanics.

witch doctors are sorcery, then can potentially do any magic that they end up learning. Each 'grimoire' is one source of knowledge, a particular ancestor spirit, mortal teacher, or whatever (but presumably not a book, unless they are literate).

soru

[WiredNavi]

In my new Ill Winds campaign (another jungle/tribal one), for which I'm using HQ, I have a magical tradition (Channeling) which sounds somewhat like Witch Doctors.  Chanellers take advantage of the fact that all of the People are descended from the spirits by learning to emulate the spirits of various natural aspects - fire, earth, rain, wind, trees, moonlight, healing...

Each type of spirit the character learns to emulate gives them an Affinity (as per theism) with 4 or 5 feats - I generally assign 2 or 3 feats as a narrator and let the player create the others, or buy more with Hero Points.  They also must buy a personality trait which is associated with that affinity which represents their increasing understanding and attachment to that affinity.  For instance, a NPC Water/Ice Channeler I've created has the 'Cool And Collected' personality trait, and a PC Nature/Plants Channeler has 'Intense Love of Life'.

I'm not sure if this would work exactly for Witch Doctors, because it seems you're going for more of a curses-and-blessins approach, but some of the ideas might help.

[Mike Holmes]

How do I miss these things?

I have to say, I understand your goals, but...the witchdoctors are animists. It just sounds like a particular sort of practice that focuses on "inner" stuff.

Again, the urge to use more of the system is understandable. But the animism rules are really pretty neat, and will bring life to what you're doing, well. Better, I think, than shoehorning witch doctors into theism. For example, it sounds like witchdoctors have relationships with their spirits? How many are they limited to? That is, how many abilities do they seem to get overall? Can they get more?

The more you make theism fit this, the more it's going to look like animism in the end, anyhow.

I don't think it's a terrible thing for such a small setting to have only one magic style. I'm not sure what's outside the area, but it seems to me that one way to expand would merely be to tack other settings on to the areas outside of the one you're currently enumerating. This could be where other magic types come from.

That is, instead of trying to have the smaller setting encompass everything, make the setting larger.

I'll help. :-)

Mike

[Ian Cooper]

The other option is that Witch Doctors use common magic. Talents are the Gloranthan magic that comes from inside and spirit guides could be a common religion if they are part of this world instead of native to another.

[Mike Holmes]

Yeah...kinda...

One would think that "mundane world" spirits would provide charms, however. At least that's how I think it's supposed to work in Glorantha (that said, there seems to be a sort of contradiction there in terms of what spirit is going into the charm, but...) That said, it's a pretty minor change to go with Ian's suggestion, and have Inner World spirits provide talents.


A question: would it be allowable to be both (this is a D&D setting, so can one multi-class in both)? I ask because the next consideration is concentration. If you can't be both a witch doctor with common magic, and a shaman with animist magic, then there's really very little reason not to concentrate your magic. If you can be both, then people who are may hold off on concentrating, not wanting to lose either their otherworld spirits (in the case of the concentrating witchdoctor), or their common magic talents (in the case of the concentrating shaman).

Anyhow, a non-concentrated witchdoctor would be relatively pathetic - no active abilities. While a non-concentrated shaman (practitioner), would have all sorts of options - the only thing concetration gets him is the ability to have spirit allies (and the halved cost, of course). Even still, I can't see either side not doing it, unless they have something to lose potentially.


On another note, are you intending to treat Shamans from the setting with the full animist treatment, or just part? That is, above I'm assuming that they start out as practitioners, and have to work up to the requirements of being an actual Shaman. Is that correct? Or do you intend to use just part of the rules? I would think that using the full rules would be the way to go, personally. Including the spiritist rules - I've found that those five tradition charms really can say a lot about the way the character is part of their culture.

In the setting, which is supposed to be more powerful? Or how are they seen against each other. Depending on how you answer some of the above questions, I think that the actual animist Shamans would be somewhat more potent than the witchdoctors. At least for single-shot conflicts (the whole "special release" thing). Does that match the setting material?

Mike

[Doyce]

A question: would it be allowable to be both?

Mechanically possible, fairly rare in practice. Concentration would probably be pretty common for Spirit-talkers, less so for witch-doctors.

Witch doctors tend to have a much more eclectic mix of abilities than spirit-talkers -- they're quite a bit more flexible as a result (which sounds a bit more like adepts than an initiate), but not as 'deep' as a spirit-talker, if that make sense in this context.  They also tend to be a bit flashier than spirit-talkers, at least in theory, which might say "wizardry adept" to me.

On another note, are you intending to treat Shamans from the setting with the full animist treatment, or just part?

Full treatment, with Shamans needing the three high scores to qualify, et cetera.

In the setting, which is supposed to be more powerful? Or how are they seen against each other. Depending on how you answer some of the above questions, I think that the actual animist Shamans would be somewhat more potent than the witchdoctors. At least for single-shot conflicts (the whole "special release" thing). Does that match the setting material?

Shamans certainly have a lot more pull inside most communities, as they're part of the community in a much more direct way that a witch-doctor (who, if he's lucky, might end up as a trusted advisor to the chief, but that's about it -- he's just not a spiritual leader, and much more focused on learning more 'stuff' than in such community things, usually).

Potency?  I think the spirit-talkers are a lot more potent in their areas of expertise (the types of tradition they're in), but those tend to be more limited in scope (until you get to the true Shamans binding even enemy spirits), while with a witch-doctor, you just don't know *what* they're going to do in a given conflict... every one is different and generally odd :)

So, spirit-talker would be focused and thus more powerful in their arena of conflict, while the witch-doctor is more versatile and unpredictable.

[Mike Holmes]

OK, you seem to be mixing contexts. There are several different possible things going on here. Your responses could be about your original system, they could be about Ian's newly proposed system with common magic for witch doctors, or they could be setting-based. Please try to make clear which is which when responding.

That all said, trying to piece together what you said, Ian's idea is sounding better and better to me. If witch doctors are "broad" with smaller abilities, then common magic is a perfect way to do this. Like Ian says, it's simply a local spirit teaching the witch doctor talent-type common magic abilities. That fits your description of what they do like a glove. The only question I had was whether or not the power levels seemed appropriate to the original setting (which I think do now).

Do you get what he's proposing?

Mike