Obviously anyone asking here, and anyone other than you providing an answer here, disagrees, and it raises the question of why you participate at all in this forum or on the board, if you believe it has no value, unless you simply delight in being an annoyance to others.
An ad hominen attack? Really?
How about we debate like gentle people?
Earlier I suggested that a reader of the Harry Potter series who decides Harry is black, or Asian in their imagination, has every right to do so. They are the ultimate authority of their fantasies, even if initiated by another. You dispute that? If I am wrongly advising that young person, explain why please. I want to know. If I am not wrongly advising that person, explain how my advice is consistent with JKR being the ultimate authority of the Harry Potter universe, as you originally claimed.
That is how gentle people discuss issues.
He who lives by the sword, dies by the sword.
That works for the kid. If you have multiple people and how something is perceived matters, you have to agree. If agreement can't be reached, someone with veto power, the SG, says how the world works and is perceived.
In regards to the original question, the character can protest as much as he wants his parma works because that's how he sees the world. When the ball of abysmal flame with 3 penetration kills him because the SG says so, well, we have a problem. Your analogy only works on an individual level.
I think anyone who's played RPGs knows the rules are a starting point. I think we know we can make house rules. We also know the rules have generally been play tested and exist as they do for a reason, so diverging from the official rules needs careful thought. Any house rule should be discussed with the troupe.
AM is a fictional world, so we can hand wave away stuff, however, it's best for the world to work on a logical level. It's challenging to see how Tribunals would work if Aegis destroys Parma. Every single wizard is getting on each others nerves (the Gift) and most wizards have no protection. How that doesn't become a train wreck beggars logic.
The OP asked for an official ruling regarding Parma in Aegis, I assume, as he feels the SGs interpretation seems peculiar, and in the ensuing discussion the troupe may have about the house rule, having an official answer helps.
Well looks like the thread developed in an interresting way. ^^
First of all, thanks all for the answers and contributions. I really do think that people particpating and exchanging is what is keep a game and his community alive, and Im glad to be back to play this game that I loved so much 20 years ago.
I will give a bit of context. We don't have only one SG. Ars Magica was designed to be played in a lot of ways and we decided to go towards the troop one. We have 2 players that are rather new to Ars Magica and myself I'm a returning player from the 2nd edition. We are playing in a spring covenant, and the first narrative ark after our arrival was narrated by myself and involved a story with the bridge of Arta. We're playing in the Theban tribunal in 1000.
We now are going to the tribunal of 1004 as our Covenant has to be registered officially, and we went to another already established Covenant as the archai of our phyle offered us to travel with them to the tribunal location. The player that has decided to be the SG for this ark, mentioned when we were residing for the first night over there that we couldn't put on the parman magica in the evening. This sparked the discussion about how Aegis and Parma works and I came here in the behalf of our group.
The reasoning for some of us was that the Parma Magica is what allowed magi to interact with each others as the gift is heavily impacting relationship, and it wasn't sounding right to not have magi at big tribunal not having Parma as they wouldn't be able to agree on anything and would always be fighting each others. In addition a lot of magi are paranoid, I don't see them going into another covenant without any protection. I know that token can be given to circumvent that, but it is not given to anybody.
We all exposed the way we see things and I came here for clarification as for the SG he was thinking that Parma even as an ability was reflecting a ReVim spells and therefore is like using a magical ability.
As we are all SG at one point, we want to have a consistent rules settings and usually we all discuss the rules together. In this case we decided to ask others as we felt it was something really important.
If someone in his Saga wants to have the rule done differently he's free to do so, everyone can house rules, change setting, answers to some questions that the Books left unanswered in their own sagas, and that the magic of this game. The rules in the books are guidelines, official ones, but still guidelines so everyone is free.
(For example we ruled the interaction with the Virtue Life Boost and the spell the gift of Vigor to have the fatigue level being applied after the exchange is done, while some people were advancing the argument that it fuel the spell as the number of fatigue level has to be commited before the dice roll.)
However as the rules are still official you can change them but not make them official to others.
At the end of the day, since we have several SG we need this consistency between us on the rules so the players are not left in an uncertainty depending on which SG is telling the story. If we only had a SG, he will do what he wants regarding the setting, but if there's drastic changes he should tell them in advance, so we can adapt our characters to the coherency of the setting or if we completely disagree on everything not playing at all.
I don't mind actually that you discuss about your difference in pov in this thread, I do think it is healthy for the Game and the community.
Thanks everyone. Enjoy your day and enjoy Ars Magica !
My point was not an actual ad hominem, but pointing out, if snarkily, the inherent flaw in your position, namely that by participating in these forums you are intrinsically accepting the counterpoint of your own argument, in that to fail to accept it is to fail to accept the social contract which exists and allows the forums to have purpose.
I'm a bit late to the thread, but I believe you have the correct interpretation of Parma and Aegis interaction (and the social importance of PM to the Order) right there in your text I quoted. This at least reflects how I interpret it and we've had no friction over Aegis/Parma interaction in our current saga so far.
from a logical point of view, the order could not exist if parma were defeated by the aegis. It would mean that any magus visiting another covenant would, without the benefit of their parma, be unable to trust the other magi of the covenant unless they had a token to allow them to 'cast' inside the aegis, as they would be subject to the effects of the Gift. the order would quickly become a network of relatively isolated covenants with a few alliances rather than a vast order united around such concepts as protecting the secret of parma magica. Indeed it would be easier to trust hedge wizards- whose encampments you could enter freely without losing your parma, than other wizards of the order where you would have to carefully arrange meetings on neutral ground to avoid the effects of the Gift. In these conditions it would be inevitable that magi would share the secret of Parma Magica with their hedge wizard allies rather than keep the secret for the Order, most of whom they wouldn't trust.
1 Like