Asher, Emvee, and Thurgun Inc.

Ok, so Jota and I were looking into the details of setting up the magical group and initiating. Basically, this involves picking restrictions we'll have to follow, then spending karma and rolling to see how long it takes to set up the group, then we can go through the initiation rituals. It's in our interest to choose a bunch of restrictions, because the roll to set up the group is fairly difficult, especially because we have three different traditions in it (mage, shaman, adept). Luckily there are a lot of restrictions we can take that is stuff we'd do anyway because we're friends, so hey, might as well take them. The list we came up with was: [list]* Attendance (We can have regular meetings, say on the solstices and equinoxes) * Exclusive membership (We're not likely to want to join a second group anyway) * Fraternity (We have to help each other out -- this is only a potential problem if we decide to admit NPCs) * Geasa (If we lose magic, we have to take geasa to get the magic back -- but I assume we'd do that anyway) * Obedience (We'd say, basically, that we each have an equal vote, and people must follow dictates that the group votes on -- presumably to handle new members we'd say specifically that you have to follow orders of people of higher grade, or of a majority vote of people of equal grade (including yourself)) * Material Link (We all have to put some hair/blood away in the group safehold -- which is a problem if it's breached, but then we got bigger problems) * Oath (Everyone must do the Oath ordeal as their first ordeal, which I think is reasonable) * Limited Membership (I'm not hot on this, but we could limit to males only) * Exclusive Ritual (I don't care about this for myself, but I believe this would restrict what Thurgun could do with Longfeather, or Emvee with any mage buddies of his)[/list:u:d2166b1938] Ok, so then we need to work out what the dues are. If Thurgun is up for it, we can just meet in his store's basement. In that case I don't know if we'd need to pay anything monthly unless we have a particular project. I dunno, the GM will have to weigh in here. Now, for founding the group, the base cost is 3 karma (I assume this is the xp karma, not the die-pool karma). We roll 3 dice (for having 3 members), with a TN of 12 +4 (for 2 extra traditions) -7 to 9 (for the restrictions) = 7-9. We can buy extra dice for 3 karma each -- Jota was suggesting we spend 4 karma each to buy 4 extra dice, which seems reasonable, so that'd be rolling 7 dice for TN 7-9. If we're allowed to reduce dice to reduce the TN, we could get that down to 2-4 dice at TN 4, which should be pretty straightforward. If that fails, we can spend a month preparing and get another -1 to the TN. (I believe it takes a month to get ready to do the test, but you don't have to spend that time studying or anything unless you want the TN bonus). Once we have the group, we can, and in fact have to, undergo the Oath ordeal and then initiate. It looks like (based on page 58) this will cost us 9 karma each. I don't think we all have to initiate for the same benefit, and that probably wouldn't make sense anyway since we're different traditions. Sound good? This takes some game-time to set up, so we may have to at least investigate the Seattle situation first, but then we can look into it. I don't know if we want to worry about any customs for this group -- as Jota pointed out, they will probably arise naturally in-play.

I agree that we probably don't want Exclusive Ritual, but I think Deed would be a good stricture: it means we all have to occasionally do tasks to benefit the group. Also, are there any Limited Membership limitations other than male that would be more appropriate, but would still include all three of us? In any case, if we took all of these (including Deed but not Exclusive Ritual), that'd give us nine strictures. If we didn't spend any extra karma points, that would make a roll of 3t7 (42.1%, according to http://www.msu.edu/~schepler/dice.html). For each extra karma point we all spent, we could either raise the number of dice (or reduce the TN by 1, with katre's new rule), although the more extra karma we spend, the less benefit we're getting from forming the group, since one of the main purposes of it is to reduce the cost of initiating. One thing the book doesn't mention is whether or not karma pool dice can have any effect here. Is there a GM's ruling on that? We're allowed to retry the test once a month; since I think there are some people in the group who have stuff they want to do during the next few weeks of game time (work on their skills, distill radicals, etc.), I'd be in favor of trying the test with no extra karma points once, and if we don't make it, deciding then what to do about the second attempt then.

As a point of order, my 'basement' is Puget Sound, since my shop/apartment is on a pier ;-) My Shamanic Lodge is actually upstairs from the Curiosity Shoppe (and there's a place up there for me to sleep/live, too). This all sounds pretty cool. I concur with most of what's been said so far--I think Deed is a good thing to add, and the Exclusive Ritual Magic might be a bit much, though I'm not entirely sure what it would entail (would it include, for example, the bit we did with Long Feather to figure out the extra components of the foci?) It seems like we might be able to come up with something for a Belief. Thurgun's basic mantra has been 'protect the weak', which might make a decent base for an ecumenical belief system; we could also embrace our diversity by making diversity a mantra--'no discrimination', for example. Or 'strength is found in our differences'. You all are certainly welcome to become Reincarnationists if you like, but Thurgun wouldn't expect it. He's more that willing to go on at length about it if you ask, though ;-) We might also be able to make our diversity an asset for a 'Limited Membership' stricture: maybe we always have to have an even number of shamans, magicians, and adepts? So we can't admit (for example) two more adepts until we have at least one more shaman and magician in the group? Or we could make it even more restrictive and make it so people had to join in groups of three (shaman, magician, adept). Or to take it a different direction, additionally require diversity that we have to have females, and make an adventure of recruiting one to join us. Also, we need a ruling: katre, can we apply the 'drop a die to reduce the TN' rule to the founding of the group?

OK, so it looks like we're going with 9 restrictions: * Attendance * Deed * Exclusive membership * Fraternity * Geasa * Obedience * Material Link * Oath * Limited Membership Couple things about this list are still open: -Attendance dates. Solstices/equinoxes are still an option, but I think members birthdays might be cool. We could also say 'within a week/month of whenever someone wants to Initiate', too. Birthdays might get unweildy if we added a lot of people, but thi s will probably not actually become a problem, and we can just rotate through 'em if so. Obedience: Democratic? One vote per initiate grade? Higher grades always hold authority over lower grades? Material Link: Where do we keep the box? I'm thinking two options: either just in my lodge or buried at the bottom of the Sound. Any preferences? Limited Membership: We must admit members evenly from three traditions (shaman, adept, mage). I suggest we make this only a requirement of admittance, so we can lose members and not suddenly be in violation. In other words, if we have 3 shamen, 2 adepts, and 2 mages, and then we lose one of the mages, we must first admit a new mage before we can admit a new adept, but we don't have to kick out a shaman in the meantime.

To: Leslie DuMont (dumontl@mageng.reiflertech.edu) Subject: advanced scholarship Do you know anyone who performs any part-time tutoring work in advanced topics? Some associates and I are preparing to undertake a study in the field of centering and are looking for a good instructor. I don't know if there's anyone at the Tech who's familiar with that area, but it seemed likely you would probably know someone. Also, do you know what options there are for groups interested in working together on the same material?

To: Emvee (127652@anon.com) Subject: Re: advanced scholarship