Debate of Spirits

[Wizzar 613]

Hi - I have been a shaman in the orc community for years now and I think it does need to be completely rewritten and rethought. With over 50 spirits, categorized into immortals, ancestral, and elemental, shamanism is overloaded with nuisance and flavor, and shamanism tries to do it all, and in doing so, ends up providing a bunch of useless spells and effects that most people do not want to touch. The magic needs to be simplified.

 

Yes - buried within shamanism are some useful spells (not many) but to access them a shamanism has to call upon very specific spirits that they likely have no RP connection to. For example, Neizdark and Ogrol have somewhat useful spells, but if I am a shaman who does not have any RP reason to worship these spirits OR it just defies the aesthetic of the shaman, it feels awkward that every combat I'm calling upon these spirits. Otherwise, the current spell lists are overloaded with nonsense and spells that most people won't bother touching. Shamanism also tries to be too much. The main forms of shamanism include Farseers, Witch Doctors, Lutaman, and Animists. Again, this speaks towards the fact that Shamanism tries to be too much and shamans have grown too attached with this repeated model. 

I'd argue that this bloat in shamanism has not only impacted the magic, but has impacted orcish culture negatively as well. Shamans should be someone rare in orcish society and should be spiritual leaders. Nowadays, it seems the goal for most orcs is to pick up shamanism one way or another, and everyone has a strong, if not absolute belief on how spiritualism works and on which spirits they should follow. Players follow immortals, elemental, and ancestral spirits, dividing the belief system so thin that nobody follows the same deities anymore in orcish society, or at least its difficult to find like-minded orcs. Animism, for example, was designed as a ritualistic magic, except finding a group of animists all dedicated to a single cause is rare and I've yet to see a group of animists use the magic to its full potential. 

Shamanism needs to not just be rewritten, it needs to be reimagined. We do not need to change the lore of the spirits, but change the mechanics and purpose of shamanism as a magic. The different categories of spirits can exist without shamans having to have access to absolutely everything in some free from, non-specific way. In fact, free from spiritual worship is likely better RP'd without any magical components. I've seen great spirit encounters from non-shamans smoking cactus by a fire. Once we start trying to add magic to cover everything, it ends up either doing a very poor job at that, or hindering what could have been if the magic didn't exist at all.