A Rant on Canonical Stats for Books on Abilities

Games Discussion Ars Magica
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Basically, the stats given to books on Abilities by Ars 5th edition very often defy logic.

The biggest problem is how often books are declared to be a "summa" in an Ability when they absolutely are not.

Look, I am perfectly willing to grant the Euclid's Elements meets the game-rules definition of a summa -- "an organized account of a topic, taking it from the basics up to a certain level" -- if the topic is geometry. But geometry is not an Ability in ArM, and the Elements is not a summa on the Artes Liberales. When the Ability is Artes Liberales, the Elements are clearly a collection of tractatus -- "an in-depth treatment of one aspect of the subject", as geometry is just one aspect of the Artes Liberales. (And yes, I know the Elements also covers number theory, which is arithmetic.)

This problem repeats over and over again with historical works on subjects in the Artes Liberales and Philosophiae, because those Abilities are much broader than any famous historical work. Thus work after work that would be perfectly fine to call a "summa" on a narrower subject are declared a summa on the whole Ability. But while that's where it's most obvious, it isn't actually limited to just those obvious cases.

I mean, it is, I guess, possible that the lost epic poem Titanomachia was in fact a proper summa on both Magic Lore and Faerie Lore (as claimed in Dies Irae), but I expect that it, in fact, was not an organized account of the basics of how faerie and magic creatures/things/powers actually work in Mythic Europe, but a story about a specific group of Magic beings and a specific group of faerie beings. Similarly, the fictional book Pagan Norse Beliefs (TtA) might a summa on Faerie Lore, but it seems incredibly unlikely given the title, instead likely giving in-depth detail on one specific group of faerie beings.

(The same unlikelihood would seem to apply to a book called Further Notes on Magical Notation being a summa on Magic Theory, though, you know, maybe I'm just not getting Janus of Bonisagus's humor.)

The second big issue I have with canonical stats on Ability books is the entire topic of Divine Lore. That we have any books at all labeled as books on Divine Lore, because it is not an Ability of its own, nor an area or organization. And if we assume that they're all actually Dominion Lore, we have the problem that Dominion Lore is an Arcane Ability.

Arcane Abilities are quite restricted in who can learn them -- magi, and people with the rather limited Virtues Arcane Lore, Blood of the Nephilim, Custos, Failed Apprentice, Folk Magic, Master Bard, Redcap, Senior Bard, Student of (Realm), or Wise One. It is blatantly inconsistent with this to have books on the Arcane Ability of Dominion Lore sitting in every monastery, madrassa, and yeshiva in all of Mythic Europe.

Look, I realize the game's Ability list is optimized around the core intended way to play the game, and that the book rules are optimized around providing stat lines for fictional books on the fictional Hermetic Arts. There was always going to be trouble fitting actual historical books into those boxes. But a huge percentage of the officially-published statlines for books on Abilities are grossly inconsistent with how ArM defines books and Abilities.

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On the subject of Dominion Lore, one possibility is that these books can only be used to learn that skill by people who are able to learn it, that you have to "read between the lines" as it were and extract occult knowledge from what was probably written and intended as a book of Theology or Church Lore.

On the other hand, if Wise One is sufficient to learn e.g. Magic Lore and Faerie Lore, I do think it might be the official intent that a lot of religious scholars have Student of the Divine and a score in Dominion Lore.

That is not a take on the setting which I prefer, mind you, because it's part of the "Dominion creep" that certain supplements create which make it seem like the Dominion is just as active and agentic in the world as the other supernatural Realms, which is far too heavy-handed. Because the Dominion's power is supreme whenever it does exert itself, genuine miracles and divine manifestations should be rare and mostly subtle or it warps the game and makes for a frustrating play experience.

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There are limits on who can learn Arcane Abilities at character generation.
During play, anyone can learn them just fine in all the usual ways. Same as Academic Abilities, and Martial Abilities.

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Yes? This is implicit to my point about the setting logic problem involved in treating, say, the Sentences (which is statted as a L4Q9 summa on Divine Lore in both A&A and RoP:tD) a book on Dominion Lore? In that case, if you want your scholarly Companion to start play knowing Dominion Lore, you need to take an additional Virtue indicating special access to particularly esoteric knowledge, over and above the Virtue that indicates the scholar had the opportunity to learn Academic Abilities. If you want the Companion to learn it in play, he just needs a season free to read the widely-available Authority on Theology.

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Or I can create my Companion using "Extremely Complex Character Generation" and not worry so much about virtues, but only about if they actually could have learnt that particular ability.

Using the standard character creation rules, I wouldn't know and wouldn't need to know what books he had access to. So it would be irrelevant if someone could learn Dominion Lore from The Sentences or from the Bible or not.

The normal character creation rules are quite abstracted, and not meant to model every single aspect of the world in detail.
So what if you need a special virtue to learn a particular ability?
Is that an actual problem? Or is it just one of many cases where the rules do not handle a minor detail perfectly?

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The problem is not with character creation, but setting logic. Which is why I specifically called it a "setting logic problem".

The purpose of the separation of Academic and Arcane abilities, and requiring separate access by Virtue for each category, is to make a statement about the setting. The Abilities classified as Arcane are in fact arcane (a word that means "obscure" or "esoteric"). They are not readily available to the people who have ready access to Academic Abilities.

The explicitly-by-RAW stated Authority on an Academic Ability also being a summa on an Arcane Ability would directly contradict that statement about the setting.

The method of character generation used in any specific case does not resolve that contradiction in the slightest.

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There is no contradiction.

That academics could have learned an Arcane Ability from a book they have read does not necessarily mean they have learned or even tried to learn that ability.
Some of them have learned that Ability - which would be shown by them having one of the relevant virtues.

During character creation, virtues like Arcane Lore indicate that the character did study some Arcane Abilities at some earlier point of their life. Those who didn't even though they could have, just wouldn't have that virtue.

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Just to add to the rant, for which I totally sympathize:

Michael Psellos’s “On the Operations of Demons” is described in RoP:I as the definitive summa on Infernal Lore.

Reader, that book is 30 pages long. And it’s written as a dialog between various people, so it’s far longer than necessary for the facts it contains. You can read that book in an afternoon. What it might teach a character in Mythic Europe about demons could be a bulleted list.

And yet, a magum spends 3 months studying this book. Now, we can think of a lot of ways that time might be spent. Thinking about the book. Experiments based on its contents. Whatever. But the simple fact is, it’s hard to explain how any character would usefully spend 3 months on such a text.

And this is just one more example of real world books that don’t align with their game stats.

Personally, I’ve simply decided books in Mythic Europe may share the titles of real world books, but they are not those books. They are Mythic Europe versions of those books which are accurately described by the game stats assigned to them, and which real world scholars would not recognize.

That’s my solution. YSMV

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I would also submit that Faerie Lore is probably just as common if not more so than Dominion Lore for many characters, especially those living in the hinterlands of Mythic Europe where Faeries are still up to their nonsense all the time.

I think it would be reasonable to circumstantially remove that asterisk and say "You can still roll" and deal with the chance of having learned the WRONG thing based on what book your monastery, madrassa, or yeshiva had on them, and which sections you were paying attention during the reading or telling of them, or which faerie stories your grandma passed down, and how accurate they were when her grandmother told them to her.

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Remember that even after Character Generation, in order to learn from a book, you need:

  1. Artes Liberales at least at one rank
  2. Know the script for the language the book is written in
  3. Know the language the book is written in at least as 4 ranks

That means your character, unless he started with access to Academic Abilities, or has someone that can teach him, it unlikely to ever be able to read a book, and learn from it. Sure, you could be taught, or pick things up as you adventure, and then practice, but it's gonna be a slow and laborious path to that knowledge.

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I'd point out two things.

First, some very basic stuff that's technically part of Faerie or Dominion lore, or Artes Liberales, is likely to be known by everyone regardless of access to those Abilities. For example, everyone in Christian Europe knows about Jesus or Mass, even lowly peasants without access to Dominion Lore. Similarly, even without Artes Liberales, most folks can add 2 and 3. It then makes sense that, in some areas, some very basic facts about faeries are known to everyone - or at least to most folks, even without Faerie Lore. I've seen many situations where the SG says something like: "stress Int roll of 3+ to remember you should never verbally thank a brownie - anyone with Faerie Lore 1+ knows automatically."

Second, some facts may well be covered by multiple Abilities. In particular, lots of stuff about local Faeries can fall not just within Faerie Lore, but within Area Lore as well - so you could roll that instead!

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