There was certainly liturgical drama going on in the Latin world at this time. For example, the roughly contemporary Carmina Burana included two passion plays. There's nothing particularly absurd about portraying a character who specializes in such things.
Oh dear!
First a few things nobody ever denied:
- You have dozens of ways to play anachronisms in ArM5.
- You have scores of ways to play white ravens - unlikely figures which are remotely possible - in ArM5.
But one should sort this out with one's troupe, not on the forum.
That out of the way, we had
answered by
The only argument of T Riffix Rex in favor of this is so far, that wikipedia Byzantine Economy states, that a working system of coinage supported trade and merchants in Byzantium. Merchants in 13th century Latin Europe relied on coins as well: they had to because markets wouldn't allow barter. This doesn't contradict
A traveling player does not interact with merchants, but with the most simple people - and in the 13th century these would not have spending money for amusement. Neither in Latin Europe, nor in what remains of the Byzantine Empire split - to make matters worse - between the Latin Empire, Epirus and Nicaea, each with their own coinages.
We all agree, that in 13th century there were religious plays performed all over Latin Europe, and we have many such plays to show: see this. Such plays were performed for parishes, or groups of some - and later by trade guilds or lay brotherhoods. They were made economically feasible by tithes, by contributions and participations of the parishioners, guild members or members of the brotherhoods.
It is very interesting, though, that especially from 13th century Greece no texts of such dramas appear to be conveyed to us. One can try to explain this by the political and economic condition of fragmented Greece in most of the 13th century.
The professional theatre man for 13th century religious plays in ArM5 is a white raven specializing in a pastime of amateurs and hoping for recognition of his superiority in it. The famous figures of medieval religious theatre like Hrotsvitha did not live by their dramatic talents.
Author-courtiers like the trouvères, troubadours, Minnesänger and such could live off their talent also if they had some dramatic interest like le Bossu d'Arras - but it better were broad enough and not only restricted to acting.
Cheers
I don't see how that affects the price of butter, but Ok.
I'm guessing then by RAW Troupe Upbringing should be removed then via errata?
Echoing the thought from an earlier poster, Profession: Act seems a practical solution. Public performance is it's own thing, not really like any of the core rules abilities - which is thin on public address despite multiple social skills.
Public speaking and performance before sound amplification requires firm annunciation and lends itself to a hammy, bombastic, furniture chewing style - think William Shatner but LOUDER so the Dummies in the Back Can HEAR You! - that you'd have to go out of your way to find anymore. Look at older movies for a taste of this. The reason most of these actors come off so stiff to modern viewers is that they came from old stage style acting.* There's nothing quite describing that in the abilities.
There's precedent in Mythic Europe for acting. It's mentioned a few places. The Jerbiton may even encourage it. I seem to remember reading that they do, but I'm not going to search the entire unindexed line for the mention.
How does it work economically? How do minstrels, acrobats, and jongleurs survive? They are fed and housed for a short time by various locals, perform simple plays with minimal props, and go through feasts and famines depending on patronage and hosting by nobles, towns, and possibly churchmen. There are not very many actors, and they keep moving to fresh pastures, and tailor their work to the audience.
The film The Dresser has a fairly good portrayal of the old English bombastic stage acting style: For the medieval version, much more primitive, stiff, usually to a religious theme.
I was considering having my mage patronize the primitive plays of the period as a personal pursuit, with a magical undermessage, but he's gotten busy trying to establish an inn network (itself an anachronism), investigating murders, and portaging mage's bones around.
I just noticed that, and I'm quite glad to enlighten you. The Order have deep classic roots, and I assume you are aware that ancient Greeks were pretty good at Maths. Geometry was the real deal, but there were also other areas pretty well covered. I don't see any problem doing Numerology without hindu-arabic digits, using Greek numerals alone. But anyway Fibonacci published the book were he popularized the hindu-arabic digits in 1202, and I assume every numerologic Mistery Cult had spent two decades (at least: the fact that Fibonacci published that book by 1202 probably just means that the concepts were already around, and I can see some Mystery Cults, not specially known for transparency or knowledge sharing, knowing all about 0's and hindu-arabic digits for some time at that moment) quite busy updating to the new notation until 1220, the canonical start of Ars Magica sagas. So no worries, Numerology is safe.
Especially so, because the Gematria at the base of the TMRE p.91f Numerologist's Book requires letters and numerals to be interchangeable.
Rotes - as arithmetic formulas - might perhaps sometime in the future benefit from the Liber Abaci. But scholars, merchants and engineers did perform computations for about 2000 years without it.
Cheers
Note that one of the Semita Errabunda characters bases his "Enchanting Poetry" (like Enchanting Music, but with Poetry) ability on the Language skill, so there's precedent for using Language as the main skill for poetry. I don't think that's ideal though (see below).
A&A, and, to a lesser extent, C&G just multiplied Craft and Profession skills needlessly, in my opinion. In that direction lies madness, and stuff like Craft: Sex Toys (painful ones) -- note that I did not make that up! When determining the "primary" skill of a job, I generally try to see if there's anything even remotely approximating it under the "standard" Ars Magica skills. For a professional warrior (whether a knight, a mercenary, or a brigand) I use his primary weapon skill, not Profession: Man at Arms (this is consistent with what you find in Lords of Men, incidentally). For a fisherman, I use Hunt, not Profession: Fisherman. For a merchant or a usurer, I use Bargain; for a minstrel, Music; for a juggler or cutpurse, Legerdemain; for an ostler or shepherd, Animal Training; for a seaman, Area Lore; for an innkeeper, Carouse.
Now, for an Actor, I would definitely use Guile, which covers playing a part convincingly, including use of disguise (see the Personae/Disguise sections under HoH:S). For a storyteller, I would probably use Charm; Language is another option, but it gets a bit messy with multiple languages and the fact that virtually every character has a high language skill.
Only if there's nothing even remotely related the task at hand do I go for an appropriate Craft/Profession skill, and in that case I try to keep it correspondingly broad (so, Smith rather than Swordsmith). This primary skill tells you how good the character is a doing his stuff, determining its quality, artistic value etc. For earning your keep, i.e. labour points as per C&G, I take the minimum between the primary skill and Bargain x 2. If the character is coordinating a team (e.g. a master smith leading his apprentices and journeymen, a captain leading his crew his ship, etc.) I take the minimum of that, and Leadership x 2 -- being boss is hard work, but your income bracket is typically at least one level higher, so you earn much more money for the same labour points.
Exactly.
I expect to see a supplement with "craft: redundancy" and "profession: xp sink in needless crap so you can suck"
Hmm, rather than being so negative (and note that the Ars Magica 5th edition line is complete), why don't you just do what we did? If you feel that may "profession: X" and "craft: Y" abilities are redundant, why don't you just assign to your thespian/storyteller magus decent guile and charm and base his acting and storytelling on those?
Incidentally, the proliferation of "Occupation: X", "Lore: Y", "Profession: W", "Craft: Z" is a common problem in many, many rpgs, from famous ones like Exalted to somewhat obscure ones like Harnmaster, that use predefined skill lists. Designers, often freelance designers for some supplement, typically think something along these lines: "Hmm, a fisherman definitely knows his fishing fields (Area Lore), his local port (another Area Lore), how to bargain for his fish (Bargain), how to catch fish (Hunt?), how to sail a boat (hmmm ... ?), how to move heavy loads and move on unstable footing (Athletics), how to cast nets (single weapon?), how to lead a fishing crew (Leadership), how to predict weather at sea (Survival), etc. etc.
BUT!
The fisherman's no no marathon runner, so how can I give him a reasonable Athletics score? And he certainly can't swing a mace or a sword, so how can I give him a reasonable single weapon score? And he certainly can't lead a group of soldiers in battle, so he can't quite have a highish Leadership, etc.
SO!
I'll just give him a Profession:Fisherman ability to encompass each and every one of those abilities, but only as far as fishing is concerned!
But wait. Not all fishermen fish at sea. Nor do all folks who know how to behave at sea know also how to fish. Handling oneself at sea is then a Profession: Sailor ability ... and soon enough, you end up with your Fisherman having various degrees of Profession: Fisherman, Profession: Seaman, Profession: Pilot, Profession: Fishmonger, Profession: Net repairer, etc.
There are essentially only two solutions to the problem.
- use standard skills, accept abstraction, and slap on circumstantial modifiers/difficulties for unusual circumstances E.g. Sheperds use Animal Training. Your sheperd wants to train a Falcon? Uhm. Ok, but he needs to roll a 21+. Yeah, the Falconer also uses Animal Training, and he only needs to roll a 6+. So what? Or
- go with freeform skills, like many modern games do (Unknown Armies, Risus etc.), and decide the difficulty of the action on a somewhat adhoc basis in all circumstances. Your sheperd skills (in Risus they are called cliches) are "Work with sheep, think like sheep 4", "Robustly rustic 3", "Giotto 2", "Lots and lots of cousins 1", and you want to seduce the baron's daughter? Well, you probably have no chance with "Work with sheep, think like sheep 4". You can roll "Robustly Rustic 3" at difficulty ... 10, to entice her with the novelty of having some fun with the low classes -- but don't expect much more out of it other than a one-night stand that she'll try to hide from everybody she knows. You can roll "Giotto 2" at difficulty ... also 10, and if it works she'll recognize the great artist in you, and it will be love. Or maybe you can look for some help from your cousins ... I don't know, any suggestions?
Rather being so negative? You've read the thread? These forums are where stories and games go to die.
Yah you can be like RoP:M and have a whole lot of lores to know about the Magic Realm, make it impossible mathematically, then hand out garbage spells that fix the problem you invented with bad mechanics.
You need 20 different abilities to do anything other than the cookie cutter. The cookie cutter just buys Artes Liberales and does 20 things with one skill and the 5 initiations that use it.
This thread initially was about making Storytelling and acting more available by PC characters. It turned into being told economics of west didn't have coins and basically the Troupe Upbringing Virtue doesn't exist. While I argue the Byzantine empire's being different, then they come back and use Byzantium to defend latins without a numeral system doing Numerology. They argue to argue. Do not deviate from the book, do not discuss possible solutions and never never point out a problem. RAW are perfect in every way.
Rex, If being allowed to play the game in a certain way is what is important, and if OneShot disagrees with the desired play style, and if they don't seem to be budging on the topic... there is nothing stopping you from picking up your ball and playing on another court. There is nothing stopping you from simply ignoring him rather than wrestling endlessly. You haven't been banned, you can do it right here on this forum, and simply block OneShot's messages if he's bothering you that much!
Why is it important to "win" this argument? Why is it important that the other party "loses"? Are these arguments a kind of fun?
...Actually, I've not spoken to OneShot even once all this time, how silly of me. OneShot, what's your opinion on this? Do you believe compromise is possible?
What is important is not being followed around on these forums and harassed.
@thebluespectre: I don't really know what you expect.
T Riffic Rex is most welcome to play Ars Magica with his friends the way they like it. Yep, this is utterly trivial.
On this forum, he should refrain from posting texts hard to understand or full of expletives. This is self-evident and I reckon, that he rediscovered it on his own in the meantime.
If he posts claims on this forum, these are checked and answered by those reading them, including callen and me. T Riffix Rex holds no privileges here. If we factually point out problems in or with his posts to him, this is not harassment. I feel, that we were indeed outstandingly patient with many of their shortcomings.
I wish him all the best with The Magi of the Old North, and hope he manages to settle down in an ArM5 community there.
Cheers
I'm not clear on the sides of this compromise. I'm told that Atlas staff say I'm wrecking the game. I ask for more detail and am told I could just drop it. That's my experience of this bundle of threads. The compromise seems to be that if TRex stops starting arguments I'll stop defending myself...which is fine, I guess, other than the fact that it's demotivating to come to the core of our little community and be told my, admittedly small, efforts are snuffing out the game.
So... your "compromise" seems to involve TRex not taking pot shots, and the rest of us just sitting down and hoping he doesn't take more pot shots.
Troupe Upbringing doesn't exist, yup, cheers. Later he will defend Numerology the anachronism citing Byzantium, however here on this thread there is no such thing as a traveling performer that makes money acting. According to them not in Western Europe and not in Byzantium.
All I wanted to do was discuss rules so a character wasn't investing vast sums of xp being redundant.
You didn't wish me best, you're sarcastic backhanded comments follow me around.
Most importantly, I would just block the harassment, but they're moderators. So. What to do?
If you can't take it, don't dish it. Don't dump on my players when they come here, start there.