Good "spirit world" material?

[Ry]

My next game's magic will closely revolve around there being a spirit world overlapping the real world. Can anyone point me to some good sources that cover unseen spirits and heroes' interaction with them? I'm hoping to do something less mechanized (i.e. players earn spirits trust, and gain their help, but don't have "push-button" access to spirits in the way Summoners do).

 

[Imret]

IMO, some of the best material of this type was offered up by Werewolf. 2nd Edition Werewolf is typically second-hand these days and pretty cheap; I'd definately recommend the Umbra guide, and I'm pretty sure they even had a guide to spirits.

If you're itching for it to be current D&D stuff, I'd say Mongoose's Quintessential Druid or Encyclopaedia Divine: Shamans, though the latter is more mechanics heavy than you might want.

 

[Michael Tree]

Green Ronin's Shaman's Handbook and Witch's Handbook (written by Steve Kenson) are also good sources about this sort of thing, though they focus a bit more on an otherworldly spirit world, rather than one that overlays the normal world.

 

[cmanos]

The WW Werewolf game is probably a good place to start. Axis Mundi is the Guide to Spirits, The Velvet Curtain is the Guide to the Spirit World.

From a more realictic standpoint, pick up a couple books on shamaism. While they won't tell you "this is the geography of the spirit world and this is how spirits interact with humans" (it's different for everyone), they are a very good resource.

The two I'd reccomend are Awakening Spirits by Tom Brown, and Shamanism as a Spiritual Practice for Daily Life by Tom Cowan.

 

[Fingol]

Read the book: Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell; by Susanna Clarke

Alernate England during napoleonic times; two wizards working to revive magic. I am three quarters through the book; most their magic seems to be based on fairy magic and there is stuff in there about 'Otherland' or Fairyland and the pathways between the two and how to use/ walk them.

Heavy on flavour; light on detail. Certainly got my imagination fired up for something similar. Three of us have been discussing including more of it in our game worlds. Letting magic come from different 'sources'.

Small places, trees, rocks, spirits, fairies, familiars, you name it. Forgotten Realms and the weave is a bit dull....

 

[Alzrius]

I'm not sure if it's exactly what you want, but perhaps the Spirit plan in the 3E Manual of the Planes might be of some help?

 

[Psychotic Jim]

My favorite RPG accessory dealing with spirits and shamanism was the 2E accessory/classbook called Shaman. It had 3 varieties of shaman- the tribal shaman, the hermetic/solitary shaman, and the spiritualist shaman, who exploits spirits in an urban setting. It had a system where the shaman made specific deals and pacts with various spirits, each which could grant specific spells. A wide variety of spells could be granted, even cleric and other priest spells, but each spell SLOT for the day was filled more or less permanently by a specific use of a spell. The book focused on spirits as creatures of belief.

 

[Liquidsabre]

Surprised no one has mentioned the Ghostwalk campaign book.

 

[Fate Lawson]

For inspirational reading might I suggest:

The Waterborn

and

The Blackgod

By J. Gregory Keyes

 

[WayneLigon]

Werewolf had some excellent ideas. In fact, just using that cosmology instead of the Great Wheel would be pretty cool.

GURPS Spirits and GURPS Voodoo are two excellent sources.