The Gaming Den

Depends. On their own, they probably should not, due to having been written in the magic down time after all . .
But if they are straight up copies of even older stuff from when magic was still there? Yeah, chances are good there are actual spells in there.
Wether or not they can be used by anybody modern is a completely different question though. Mainly because of the need to translate. First from probably theran into egyptian and then into whatever language the reader is used to.
And then we get into the whole can of worms how magic actually works.
Theoretically, no spell written down should ever work for any other magician, because technically everybody makes up their very own tradition of magic. Magic works HOW YOU THINK IT SHOULD WORK. And not how anybody else thinks it should work. You could argue that if you believe somebody had it right, it should work for you, but that is a very long shot of an argument to make.
This, of course, is not a good thing for world building, because you simply can not have magical tomes and the such around . . and if you think magic, books and scrolls are basically some of the first things anybody you ask will think about. And the crunch works better that way as well.
And they sometimes try to reconcile fluff and crunch. Usually not very successfull, but there you have it . .

Stahlseele wrote:Theoretically, no spell written down should ever work for any other magician, because technically everybody makes up their very own tradition of magic. Magic works HOW YOU THINK IT SHOULD WORK.

Take a look at how many people today think they are working actual magic, following ancient tomes and lore. The culture and tradition have a very real impact on what you would think how magic is supposed to work. As such, spells from a book of a tradition you follow would work as you would expect it to work, exactly as advertised.

So, Frank, remember how Shadowrun 5 was the betrayal of everything you knew and loved? Well now it has:

Time Manipulation

MULTIPLY FOOD
HEALTH SPELL (ESSENCE)
Type: P Range: T
Duration: Permanent Drain: F – 2
Multiply Food allows the spellcaster to effectively
make copies of any food that she or he is
touching. This food is not created from mana, but
rather, the space around the food is altered to magically
speed up and duplicate the natural processes
which produced it. For each hit on the spellcasting
test, whatever food is touched by the caster is
multiplied by ten. That is, one soyburger becomes
ten soyburgers, two loafs of bread becomes twenty,
and so on. Food that has been duplicated in this
manner cannot be duplicated again.

Resurrection

BLOOD NECROMANCER
15 KARMA
Minimum Requirements: Blood Magic,
Spellcasting 6 (with Health specialization)
When a creature dies, it takes a short period of
time for their essence to fade as their individual
organs and cells begin to fail and die. Characters
with this quality can use these minuscule traces
of life to revive and stabilize characters who have
filled their overflow damage within a number of
minutes equal to their (Essence – 1, rounded up).
For every minute that the character was dead before
being revived, they lose one point of Essence.
If the loss would reduce the character’s Essence
to zero, that character cannot be revived. Metahumans
who have returned from the dead and the
mage who revived them must immediately make
a Composure (4) test to avoid acquiring long-term
mental, physical, or spiritual ailments. Critters with
the Sapience power make a Composure (2) test,
while critters without the Sapience power only
make a Composure (1) test to resist permanent
adverse effects. If a metahuman or critter fails to
beat the Composure threshold, they must take a
number of negative qualities equal to (threshold – hits) from the table listed below. These negative
qualities can be purposefully chosen, or they
can be rolled for randomly at the discretion of the
gamemaster.

Tradition-specific rules
Sorry, not gonna copypast. There's like a 50 page chapter with special rules for traditions, casting/summoning limitations, mini-buffs, initiation restrictions, etc. Featuring: "Romani", a tradition that resists Drain with Willpower+Willpower in exchange for having to bathe once a day and being unable to cast health spells. "Draconic", a tradition exclusively for drakes that lets you summon any spirit. But you have to be a drake so fuck that. And "Planar Entity" mentor spirit which literally has "Determined by spirit type and gamemaster approval." as its effect and restriction. That is literally a placeholder for "make your own mentor spirit no there are no guidelines" that's printed in an actual book.

Da fuq's this from?

Forbidden Arcana, another SR5 magicrun book.

Ah, but of course it is . .
So, if i am a cannibal or ghoul or shapeshifter or drake or dragon or something that eats somebody for fun and food and i touch somebody, can i then have 10 somebodies?

and if i thought that was bad... awakened vehicles. radio spirits...

Bull's stats from another new book "The Complete Trog". Where Bull generously gave himself three pages of text (about a page more than every other notable goblinoid).

And also "Human Lifespan" is now a quality, so you literally have to pay character resources if you want to play a human who goblinized later in life.

If you had started a game when the big blue book first came out in 1989, your Ork character would now be in his mid 40s and would not have died of old age.

It's literally impossible for character lifespan to be anything other than flavor text in Shadowrun. You can't even run into serious timeskip events, because the entire game's time frame is stuck to real time.

-Username17

Well, Trolls would be struggeling with old age by now though.
30 as a mean life expectancy? We are likely all above that by now.

FrankTrollman wrote:If you had started a game when the big blue book first came out in 1989, your Ork character would now be in his mid 40s and would not have died of old age.

It's literally impossible for character lifespan to be anything other than flavor text in Shadowrun. You can't even run into serious timeskip events, because the entire game's time frame is stuck to real time.

-Username17

The irony is that Bull wrote the quality (which costs 10 karma out of 25-50 you have) to explain why Bull hasn't died of old age yet... And didn't put it on his character sheet.

It is a nobrainer no taking it thing, so eh . .
Aside from if you want to roleplay the grumpy OLD Ork or Troll maybe.

Shadowrun first, second and third editions gave a typical life span between 35 and 40 years for ork, and about 50 years for trolls. Shadowrun fourth edition moved the post to 35-45 years for orks and 55 years for trolls.

Goblinization started in April 2021, so the eldest born-orks and born-trolls would have been 28 years by first edition (2049), 32 by second edition (2053), 39 by third edition (2060), 49 by fourth edition (2070) and 54 by fifth edition (2075).

Personally, I don't much like big penis self insert characters. I'm not going to say they don't have a place, because obviously people buy and read Elminster books. Whatever.

But Bull is not now and has not ever been any kind of Shadowrun guru. He's fairly bad at the fluff and very bad at the rules. Hearing about Bull's self insert character is like hearing about the character of some rando at a gaming convention.

FrankTrollman wrote:Personally, I don't much like big penis self insert characters. I'm not going to say they don't have a place, because obviously people buy and read Elminster books. Whatever.

But Bull is not now and has not ever been any kind of Shadowrun guru. He's fairly bad at the fluff and very bad at the rules. Hearing about Bull's self insert character is like hearing about the character of some rando at a gaming convention.

In SR5 Bull took over as the Jackpoint moderator because FastJack not-died. By which I mean he's in his secret FastJack lair fighting off an AI-merged-with-a-dragon-ghost virus that infected all nanotech and hijacks peoples. Those hijacked peoples have built a rocket and took over the EVO colony on Mars, which more or less ended the AI-merged-with-a-dragon-ghost virus plotline.

So Bull is currently omnipresent in fluff and the only thing I remember about his character is that he's very banhammer happy.

Wat?
Trolls live longer than Orks?
Huh, had it the wrong way around all those years it seems @.@

Quick question for those better versed in the old school SRs of yore:
Has there been a difference between born trogs and goblinized trogs?
Because 4e said

SR4e CRB, page 65 wrote:Many first and second generation
orks and trolls—especially those who goblinized—died young,

while Bull says that Goblinized trogs have human lifespans.

Which of them is the retcon?

Longes wrote:So Bull is currently omnipresent in fluff and the only thing I remember about his character is that he's very banhammer happy.

Have they done the obvious and made meta-jokes with banning caricatures of Frank or other former employees yet?

Also, out of curiosity, why do orcs and trolls have shorter lifespans than other races?

The Candle that burns brightest also melts down fastest. < = as legit as any other reason.

Trill wrote:Quick question for those better versed in the old school SRs of yore:
Has there been a difference between born trogs and goblinized trogs?
Because 4e said

SR4e CRB, page 65 wrote:Many first and second generation
orks and trolls—especially those who goblinized—died young,

while Bull says that Goblinized trogs have human lifespans.

Which of them is the retcon?

Both are retcons. The original blue book was deliberately vague on life spans, saying that metabolic studies indicated that Elves and Dwarfs might have long lifespans while Orks and Trolls might have shorter ones. Some of it was a thematic adherence to cyberpunk futurism and some of it was the cold hard fact that metahumans were a quite recent phenomenon and none of them would be old by human standards regardless.

Later books went hogwild with the idea, most of them failing to grapple with the mathematical reality that the 2050s were just thirty years after the 2020s and old age was just not a thing that applied to them.

The thing Bull is referencing is the novel called Never Trust An Elf. It does this weird tyrade about how the first goblinized Orks have normal human lifespans but the new generations of Orks age and die quickly. That book was pretty bad and the dates do not add up right. Also taking the novels as canon is super dangerous and you should not do it.

saithorthepyro wrote:

Longes wrote:So Bull is currently omnipresent in fluff and the only thing I remember about his character is that he's very banhammer happy.

Have they done the obvious and made meta-jokes with banning caricatures of Frank or other former employees yet?

Also, out of curiosity, why do orcs and trolls have shorter lifespans than other races?

I doubt I'd recognize digs at Frank even if I saw them.

Orcs and trolls have shorter lifespans because they are American Black People. The thing Shadowrun didn't really handle well is the idea that black people in the US do not represent black people in general. So books like Complete Trog treat orks and trolls as the oppressed minorities across the globe who behave similarly and face similar problems.

Also there's a "Black Forest Native" quality that costs 22 karma and represents being a Black Forest native ork/troll. This either gives you Home Ground (Black Forest) plus bonus to casting a few druid spells, or +2 to outdoors survival skills. In a game that spends 90% of the time in Seattle.

Or?
Not all of that for that ammount of karma?

Longes wrote:

Bull's stats from another new book "The Complete Trog". Where Bull generously gave himself three pages of text (about a page more than every other notable goblinoid).

The dude is such a poor loser.

My understanding of the shorter life expectancy for goblins was always that they're stepped on by society, not that they age faster. They're hired to pick up heavy things and stand between people with money and people with guns. They're shunned by landlords and more likely to wind up SINless shadowrunners.

Not sure how much of that is actually written in the books and how much is my own mind caulk, but they're not the sort of lifestyles that lend themselves to dying peacefully in a bed.

Do black people that goblinize have darker green skin