2.4 - OOC

Tangent: This is a specious argument. If you bumped into a co-worker, causing them to spill coffee onto themselves, do you apologize, or do you say, "Oh, well, it was my intent to walk past you without incident, so your reaction is of no concern to me." ? Apologies have nothing to do with your intent, they are about the recipient's reaction.

Tangent, the 2nd. Isnt there a Hebrew word for the recipient of negatively-valued actions? The one who gets acted upon by a schmuck?

Not saying you're at all wrong. However, my experience with academics is that once they've reached a conclusion and they think it's based on facts, they don't apologize. And they often don't get what all the fuss is about. And, as to reaction, the only description of reaction by Cygna was gobsmacked. Which conveys shockbut not the type. I hadn't seen a description of Cygna's reaction as offended. Shocked, yes, offended, no. And we can split the hair that she is offended, but I didn't get that from Peregrine.

Schmuck is Yiddish. And while I don't at all disagree with your assessment of Ra'am as one, again. Ra'am sees as what he said as nothing wrong. Think of it as his filter being turned off because he was concentrating on other things. Flitting from tangent to tangent and just rambling. Confronting academics is usually not succesful, but illustrating how their actions (which Azura did) could be misconstrued can have success.

Yep, we're all good. PCs aren't supposed to be perfect. I've just spent a bit of time reading some self-help books on apologies lately, so I've been thinking about the subject a lot.

And that was a legitimate inquiry about a word I can't remember.

Oh, and Yiddish != Hebrew? I thought it was a slang term for the language.

Yiddish is of Eastern-European origin, a combination of languages(German, Polish, Czech, probably many more) with some mixed Hebrew in there, too. Schmuck is actually a German word for jewelry. Didn't start developing until the late 15th or early 16th century, IIRC.

Exactly. I picked the word "gobsmacked" very carefully (and not just because she's British and that's one of my favorite British words). She's shocked and surprised that Ra'am was so openly discussing something she finds so...distasteful, but she's not offended.

Boy, we sure do get chatty on a state-side holiday, don't we?

No kidding.

We need to figure out what to do about Amos's build points -- ignoring his personal magic item, there's a pile of vis and library items that he brought with him, but now the player is on indefinite hiatus.

I'm fine with the vis being completely inaccessible. It is consistent with his backstory.
I don't have opinions about the spells.
I would not object if we kept the summa, of course. Truthfully, I'm probably the least inconvenienced if the Creo summa disappears, so if I said take it, it might appear selfish. Doesn't Herman ex Tremere have some story involvement somewhere?

Herman wrote the Corpus summa.

Yes, I get that. I was thinking there was a reason they were here. I've seen references to him, but I don't understand them, entirely.

I guess, what more are you asking? Want to yank them all temporarily? They never made it to the library?

I guess it doesn't really matter now, but I'm wondering about power balance, and the way that I've been giving each player a certain number of build points to bring with him.

In some ways, we're a bit vis poor, based on the resources listed on the wiki. Roughly 6 pawns per active magus (Heims, Cygna, Azura, Viscaria, Ra'am) per year.
We are knowledge rich by comparison, but only for our use, since all the books are covered by Cow and Calf. And our stores are absolutely devastatingly low. We can't even cast an Aegis, until we sort out where some of the Vim is. Our power level is more closely governed by how much Vis we have, since it is the major currency of the game.

Not all. Just the ones paid for with character-build-points, (and your Prospero book may count as Lineage Heirloom, which can be copied from, but is supposed to be passed on to your apprentices). That leaves 30 books NOT under Cow and Calf. Remove the Vain ones (and maybe you shouldn't, those Lockhart books may be worth something), and you've still got 24 books, including several high level summa, and L8Q11 Parma book, and a really impressive copy of Quran. Hardly a pittance.

More to the point, what you don't have are many viable trading partners within the Tribunal. The only ones with local contacts are Jaime (a political extremist) and Viscaria (whose covenant of apprenticeship is Reconquista). Mind you, that was intentional on my part.

On the other hand, you're not the only new magi coming in to Iberia. And being part of a minority political movement, you'll probably get favorable trading terms from the two other Roman covenants.

Well, Saturday and Sunday involved a trip to Columbus, OH and back (wife's birthday, shopping expidition). Today, I had planned to put up a shed in the backyard, but the rain from a system/and or Lee blew that out of the water. Next weekend, if the weather is decent, I probably won't post until the evenings while I get the shed up.

I'm actually lurking a lot more the past two weeks than previous (keeping up with what's being posted - it was mainly two customer site visits to our location and some new site installs that were killing me at work) but I still can't guarantee regular postings, at least until the end of the 3rd quarter (end of September) and reassess work then.

So... umm... leave them there? If they're unbalancing anything, then yes, take them out...

I'm actually lurking a lot more the past two weeks than previous (keeping up with what's being posted - it was mainly two customer site visits to our location and some new site installs that were killing me at work) but I still can't guarantee regular postings, at least until the end of the 3rd quarter (end of September) and reassess work then.

So... umm... leave them there? If they're unbalancing anything, then yes, take them out...

I don't think they're unbalancing, so I'd be against them being removed, personally.
We are low powered from a vis point of view. 31 total pawns for 6 magi if you pick back up for semi-regular story interaction. And your books are governed by Cow and Calf, so we can't trade them for anything... In any event, book trading is an almost a one time thing, and the prospects around here (Iberian Tribunal) are probably pretty slim.

Which is maybe why some think of them as jerks :laughing:
Saying to someone "your beloved mother is gonna die horribly from her cancer in a few months" may be perfectly true, but it's also something pretty rude and insensitive to say.

As for Amos build points, we can keep them from the moment, they aren't much on a bother, since, hopefully, chico'll be able to come back.
If he ain't, and it poses problem, it's easy to have them disappear, either definitely, or temporarily (with a story allowing their recovery, total or partial).

I seriously get that, however, just as you're playing Heims as someone who lost love and is therefore chivalrous to all women don't forget that Cygna can take care of herself well enough on her own. Yes, Hiems is chivalrous, but we are playing Magi in Mythic Europe, and basically they treat each other as equals. Heims' actions could be misconstrued, too. My attempt to develop Ra'am is to show how he's focused on learning and information, not power per se. He could literally bore anyone to sleep with his deep knowledge on Magic Theory, if someone lets him. :wink: Can he be a jerk? Sure, but he doesn't necessarily realize it until after he's been a jerk. This is actually fairly typical behavior. How many times IRL have you behaved in a way you later regretted?
Thank goodness Arya had Azura intervene, because this was headed for certamen, and I was having concerns based on the First Council Meeting thread... Heims was confrontational, and rightfully so. However, it appeared he was confronting him on Ra'am's facts. Telling someone to apologize is rarely successful. Getting someone to understand why they need to apologize is much more successful. And Ra'am was about to, but then everyone ran off. He was deeply embarrassed by the implication of what he was saying and stuffed his head in his book and started praying, and then everyone ran off. Except Azura, with her inappropriate comments... :wink:

The Equipment Data window lies.
No, actually, it shows you the net addition to the die roll. It presumes you're wearing the armor with the best soak, if you have two different kinds. For example, Étienne has full metal reinforced armor listed on his equipment sheet. The Init column for the long sword shows 0. If I delete it, it shows +2. If you want to see the actual inputs, do a print Preview through the ArsMagica5.prt template.