Shamanic Trance: an example (1)

a Shamaness

There is a small paragraph in the WotS rulebook about how to role-play a spirit contact: it encourages improvisation and story-telling during these phases of the game, leaving relatively much freedom to the players’ imagination in the way they describe their experience. In order to illustrate this, I will present a couple of examples of how I imagine what can be a shamanic journey in the play, inspired from a real gaming session. It will also clarify some mechanics.

Of course, this represents my understanding of the sources I consulted and every group can freely conceive another spirit world according to its own sensibility and long as it is consistent with the shamanistic beliefs.

In this first post on the subject, we’ll start with a simple case of a shaman trying contact one single spirit at once.

A major shaman tries to coax a hostile creek nature spirit (ichchi) preventing the party to reach its goal. Shaman’s features: POW18, Knowledge (Spirit World) 69%, Allegiance Animism 74%, Perform (Sing) 38%, Persuade 46%, Soul Escape 54%.

Griffins

Griffins, from a Scythian piece of gold jewellery

The Griffin as described in the BRP and proposed in WotS corresponds to the descriptions of imaginative medieval European travelers coming back from Central Asia and Middle East. However, the griffins depicted in the steppe artwork like the Scythian’s, but also by ancient Greeks and Persians (which is not so surprising) are slightly different: they are smaller and with the full body of a lion. I suppose that the huge griffin with the forelegs of an eagle is referring to the medieval heraldic symbol and became therefore the RPG-canon. I propose here alternate statistics for this “steppe griffin”, up to the Game Master to use this one or the “standard” BRP-griffin, or both.