All Myths are True in Ars Magica

Games Discussion Ars Magica
61

I'm talking about the theological paradigm of AM, as it relates to itself. That is, the implication that Judiasm, Christianity, and Islam are all ultametly correct doesn't work (ie, it's internally inconsistent), unless you have some form of "many paths to the Divine" idea, which in turn I pulled from Hinduism. Which doesn't show up too much in any of the three (there's a bit of it in...one of the letters of Paul, I think, remarking about how to get along with people whose theology isn't exactally the same as yours).

Regardless, my comment is that, as the youngest of the three, Islam is forced to deal with the existence of the previous two religions in its core scriptures, and as such ends up creating at least a baseline theological framework for partial inclusion.

However, more generally, I'm talking about a fictional game-world which explicitly takes a "what if..." and runs with it. In partiuclar, "what if the myths and legends of mideval Europe were substantively true?" As a consequence, that includes "what if the abrahamic religions were substantively correct?"

So, to answer your question: yes. For the purposes of Ars Magica (a fictional game world developed by Atlas Games), "Abrahamicism is the only truth". You have summed it up well. Add on "...as understood by mideval Europeans, with the inclusion of regional myth and folklore", and you've pretty much got the game world.

That's kind of the point.

If you don't want to play that? That's fine. It's not like the Game Police will come down and take your sourcebooks away from you. You want to change the RAW? Other posters have given you the simple rules solution (play around a bit with the Dominion numbers, or just declare the Divine to be a particulary powerful form of monotheistic farie-dom).

I've found that games that do this tend to loose flavor for their universality. That is, finding a core game mechanic that allows you to cover all cultural instances of religion and magic tend to come across as bland, IMO. Mage: the Ascension (2nd edition) probably the best example I've seen at this, although Witchcraft also get hit with this, IMO. (Note that I haven't been involved in the RPG scene since the mid 2000's, so my info is up to a decade out of date.)

Because, really - what it sounds like you were looking for is Mage, rather than AM. (Even Mage: Sorcerer's Crusade, which is set 300 years after AM is set.) Which is fine - I've got an entire shelf of Mage books. But the compromises that system makes in order to be universal means that the game mechanics tend to stick out in-game a bit more. (ie, it's obvious to most of my characters in-game that every other magic user is using the same metaphysical rules.)

At least in AM, there's an in-game reason for why everyone in the order talks about the game-mechanics as though they were phyiscs: it's written that way, with a tight coupling of game-world to game mecanic. That's a feature, rather than a bug.

And just off the top of my head: games that don't use Europe or Christianity as their base metaphysic (again, with the understanding that my gaming shelf is a decade out of date):

  1. D&D - a complete cludge of 1970's pop fantasy tropes (Lord of the Rings, Elric, Dying Earth, Farfd&Grey Mouser, high school mythology), but the underlying default religon is basically generic panthiesm with zorastrianism thrown in.
  2. GURPS and HERO - both of which are universal systems, and as such you can pick which sourcebook you're using to build your world with.
  3. Exalted - Greek with Chinese/Asian (and Cthulu) mythology and an anime vibe thrown on top.
  4. Old WoD - all of them but Vampire: the Masquerade. Mage = almost complete religous subjectivism, Werewolf = mix of various anamist religions, Wraith = exisistentilist greek underworld, and Changeling = metaphor for growing up. (They all had "the world is about to end", but that's hardly unique to monothiesm.) I have no idea about the new version.
  5. Star Trek, Trinity, Blue Planet - all sci fi, and definately not based on Christianity. (Counterexample: Fading Suns, with is pretty much "mideval European society in space")
  6. Legend of the 5 Rings, Sengoku - explicitly set in historical asian society, or else inspired by Asin myth.
  7. Big Eyes, Small Mouth - any of their games that are based off of Japanese anime are, well, based off of Japanese anime.
  8. Call of Cthulu - mystic athiesm, essentially (the horror of realizing humanitity's true insignificance to an uncaring universe).
62

I've tried it with China and IMO, no, it's harder than it looks. There are several key problems:

  • By having a mix of demons, mostly Celtic and mostly Classical Greek monsters, the authors initially managed to avoid annoying anyone in the playbase. Using real, live religions leads to the obvious and ineviotable question "If I kill Sun the Monkey King and boil his brain in a beaker, how much Terram vis do I get?" This isn't classy and in Ars the way around that was to make one Realm basically off-limits. You don't get to put the Archangel Gabriel's brain in a beaker. You can't do that with Chinese stories and stay true to them though, because Monkey and Co kill divine beings all the time.

  • Chinese magic is moral in nature: if you do bad things you stop being a wizard until you get your act back together in most schools. Black Mountain's an exception, for example. Players hate that. So, you'd be doing the superficial parts of Chinese magic, with all the meaning sucked out.

  • Similarly in Taoist magic, if your body is injured, magic doesn't work properly. It doesn;t matter what your Ignem score is, if you have a cold, your body has no way of channeling that mystical energy until you go to an alchemist who cures you. This isn't great for games with combat, but again if you just say "Sorry, you are going to do Taoist-like things, but not have the limitations based on the inner mewaning of things.

  • It's suprisingly difficult to work out material from countries where there are few English resources. For example, even Sicily, which is the core of the Holy Roman Empire in 1220. I want a copy of the Book of Roger by Idrisi in English...no can do. Arabic or French (which was the langusge of what they called Oriental Studies back in the day). I presume that's why the early authors were in Western Europe so much, and why their take on things is just "Constantinople? No idea, so, not important" I wrote one book pre-internet and comparing it to Transylvania is just magnitudes of difference, but that still required a level of rat-cunning librarianship and working at the only library in all of Australia that let me ship books across the country for free.

  • Nothing's stopping people from Africa applying to write. I'd note, though, that we don't even have as many British Isles authors as you might expect. I'm not entirely clear why we have more Australians than you'd expect, because we didn't train each other and I can't even work out who some of them are, but these sorts of odd distributions happen whenever a process is essentially random. I believe there are now French and Polish version of the game, so, I hope one day to see a version of Transylvania done by a Polish or Romanian author.

63

Don't forget Qin, and (much more obscurely) Tibet!

More importantly, in my opinion, are the RPGs by non-Western designers are starting to trickle into the English-language RPG scene's consciousness. I've had so much fun the few times I got to mess around with Junichi Inoue's Tenra Bansho as translated by Andy K.

Anywho, despite my Atheism, I've never felt particularly straight-jacketed by Ars Magica's metaphysical underpinnings because there's so much room for the prevailing wisdom to be debated, or incomplete, or just plain wrong (some of the rules and rulings in Arts and Academy and about the Divine Realm notwithstanding, but even then I think there are plenty of fruitful voids and inconsistencies). My current Saga seems right on the cusp of discovering a wider world: our covenant is based in outside of Alexandria, and we're tantalizing close to exploring both sub-saharan Africa and/or Indian Ocean trade; we've got a staunch Atheist, a Platonist, an Atomist, a Muslim (and Hermetic Sahir), some nominal Christians, and an adherent of syncretic Covenant-born beliefs numbered among our magi. Locally, Jinn are already throwing a lot of Hermetic assumptions about the Realms into disarray. None of us really know what the world's going to be like when we look over that next horizon, and that's exciting!

Not knowing which (if any) of our (or the rules) Euro-centric (or at least West-centric. Or Abrahamic-centric) assumptions are true opens fascinating opportunities when viewed in the light of the interconnectedness of the world of the 13th Century. Europe has a profound trade deficit with the Muslim world, which in turn is enriching China. Perhaps not in the lifetime of the magi of 1220, but certainly in the lifetimes of their apprentices, the admiral of the greatest fleet in Chinese history was probably a Muslim. The Mongolian conquests are possibly furrowing brows in the Novgorod, Theban, and Levant tribunals, but well-within a mage's lifetime the Pax Mongolica means the silk road becomes a cost effective alternative to the Indian Ocean trade routes. And, if your troupe wants to go there, mages have the power to explore and interact with all this stuff!

As for a greater crossover cosmology, I'd be inclined not to figure out how things work before hand and just describe what's encountered. "Yes, this place has something that seems indistinguishable from a Divine Aura (or what have you). No, there are no Christians, Muslims, Jews, or Zoroastrians about. It does not seem stronger near the temple. It seems to end precisely at the walls separating the center of the city from the rest." If folks want to spend years or decades researching to figure out what's happening (and/or learning the appropriate area lore or specific cultural philosophy/theology abilities to have the context to begin their research, that's awesome! And if not, play on!

64

I wonder whether the author distribution maps to the sales distribution?

True. Also as "ArM authors" is a very small sample, one or two outliers skews the whole distribution.

65

I'm not especially fond of the mutable reality paradigm ala "Mage". For those who find Western ideas of the Divine too overpowering in Ars Magica, I'd suggest two alternatives, a "Low Divine" and a "High Divine" one.

The "Low Divine" option, my own favorite, is simply to make the Divine and the Infernal less active forces in the world. Auras can work as per the rulebook, but for unexplained reasons. Magi and others will have varying theories and philosophies as to why this is the case, but nobody really knows and we don't get into underlying reality. Forget about all the miracle working relics in every parish church suggested by RoP:D and don't give nobles or priests magic resistance (just which one of these rival popes gets the MR, anyway?). This is not particularly true to medieval belief - particularly with regard to saints cults and miracle working relics and sites - but then neither is the official AM paradigm where all three major monotheistic religions are essentially equally true. Compromises have to be made somewhere and I'd rather my game focus on wizardry than theology.

The "High Divine" option is to expand the upon idea that the three major monotheisms all reflect a single underlying reality and to make Hermetic Magic part of this. Renaissance thought, with roots back to Late Antiquity, considered Hermes Trismegistus to have written about the same divine truth as revealed by Christianity, with some such as Giordano Bruno apparently believing it was a more original and true version of the Divine. You can go with this and allow other pagan and foreign religions to similarly reference the Divine. Magicians, communicating directly with the Divine, will probably understand the nature of reality better than priests or theologians. This is certainly not accepted Church dogma but is actually probably more in accordance with medieval belief than is the AM default of having Magic as a morally neutral realm separate from both the Divine and the Infernal.

66

However those are more based on Orientalist Exoticism (which is common in Hollywood portrayals of Asians which is reflected in the western media) than actual Asian cultures/mythology/etc which is another example of cultural imperialism from the west that I was talking about.

Well actually China and the Muslim world had their own Renaissance while Europe was still in the middle ages which was stolen by the west due to Mongol invasions. Of course when you said "Zheng He was probably a Muslim" there is no proof that he was though with the keyword "probably".

Another point being that the major problem I have with Euro/Western/Abrahamic-centricism is that the West currently dominates (and thereby oppresses) the world and just because so doesn't mean that they're right and everyone else is wrong which is one final nail in the coffin in terms of offensiveness.

67

Actually the notion is not as alien from medieval belief as it might be. In the 1300's Giovanni Boccaccio relates a tale about one Melchizedek, a jew at the court of Saladin (in the 1100s), that you can find summarized here.

68

Perhaps, that is true, although they also look rather like how medieval Asia is portrayed in Asian media (say, any of Kurosawa's Samuria films).

Anyway, your typical medieval fantasy RPG is really not particularly recognisable as authentic western medieval culture/myth/belief either. Even ArM (which, does make an effort) has its problems in that regard. In fact, it is difficult to see how you could have a fantasy RPG nominally set in any real historic culture that didn't stray into exoticism.

69

Well what I was actually referring to Exoticism in games like KotE (that is set in modern times) which is actually the worst offender (since for example "Kuie-Jinn" not only doesn't exist anywhere in Asian mythology/folklore/etc but it also doesn't make sense since it's a mish mash of Chinese and Japanese words thrown together which is actually one of the main problems how the west portrays Asia since they mish mash China and Japan together without knowing that their two different cultures). Of course if you read deeper into Chinese mythology you see how flexable it really is (since for example "Jiang Shi" means "Stiff Corpse" and "Yang Shi" means "Living Corpse" and such...basically a Asian supernatural book would be just a huge dictionary that you can mix together and make your supernatural character with it, that's how flexible it really is).

Well fantasy settings in Asia are called Wuxias BTW.

70

The parable of the ring from both Decamerone and Novellino must not be used as example of common medieval beliefs. Actually, in both collections it is very pointedly told to put Christian beliefs into perspective, while moving the story into a context - a jew at Saladin's court - outside of Christian censure.

Cheers

71

Indeed, and such a belief should not be considered to be at all common in the medieval Islamic world either. Saladin himself was not nearly as tolerant of differing religious beliefs as his subsequent legend implies. In general toleration ebbed and flowed throughout the period. Recognition of foreign religions as valid, much less equally valid, was nearly unheard of.

72

Actually, I never said it was a common belief -- it is not a common belief even today!

I just said that it was not that alien, so that the notion of the three religions being effectively three equally valid manifestations of the same Truth is sufficiently compatible with the medieval mindset that it can be found in medieval stories.

73

Have you considered Kuro from Cubicle 7? Although there are of course really good arguments to accept Japan as part of the West in your binary dynamic.

As to the argument that games are based for the most part on exoticisation, yes, they are, because few games are based on literary forms and minutely realistic protrayal is not a common literary form outside US literary novels, mostly because only American readers find the Great Introverted Novels coming out of the US interesting.

Noting that most Ars players are Americans, I'd point out to you that the essentially medieval French setting of the game is basically exotic. This may not be clear to you because you seem to have the West as a monolith in your thesis, but in much the same way that Journey to the West is a Chinese writer exoticising India, so Ars is basically Americans trying to have fun in a not-hugely realistic version of Europe.

My point is: the "West" is a problematic concept, particularly in art. It means that, in the analysis you are giving, David's an agent of the West, despite living in Japan, speaking Japanese and having a Japanese family, and I'm an agent of the West, despite being from a nation used basically as a torture garden by its colonial power, and my descent from racial groups they reviled. I'm not saying I'm not part of the West: my point is that to say a particular piece of art is orientalist is difficult, and that a too broad definition of the West consumes itself.

I'm not clear on how the mechanism you are suggesting works, because the Renaissance occurred in the various European nations over a period of several hundred years, and was triggered by a series of interacting factors. How could Italy have stolen China's Renaissance?

Your continued grouping of all parts of the West into a single ball of oppression shows a distinct lack of class consciousness, Also, your continuous placing of Islam in the West, as an Abrahamic religion, is just bizarre, given that in Said's work, Arabs are, in the very definition of the term at its most essential, the Easterners on which the Westerners were acting. I mean, the biggest Islamic country in the world by population is Indonesia. Surely they aren't Occidental for you?

74

To be more precise, you said

Which is something quite different.

And that is again not what the ring parables in Decamerone or Novellino say. I quote here Boccaccio's Melchisedech and the rich hebrew from the Novellino directly, with the underlines mine:
Decamerone: "E così vi dico, signor mio, delle tre leggi alli tre popoli date da Dio padre, delle quali la quistion proponeste: ciascun la sua eredità, la sua vera legge e i suoi comandamenti dirittamente si crede avere e fare, ma chi se l’abbia, come degli anelli, ancora ne pende la quistione."
Novellino: "Mandò per li figliuoli ad uno ad uno, et a catuno diede il suo in secreto, e catuno si credette avere il fine: e niuno ne sapea il vero, altri che ’l padre loro. E così è delle fedi, messere: le fedi sono tre: il Padre che·lle diede sa la migliore, e li figliuoli (ciò siamo noi), ciascuno la si crede avere buona."
So Boccaccio and the unknown author of the Novellino were both a lot more clever than you make them - as they have their protagonist turn Saladin's question into one of cultures and beliefs, whose validity need to be taken, as all three religions in question agree, by faith. Talking of

would have cost the jew his head.

Cheers

75

500 Internal Server Error led to double post.

76

How does Ars Magica exorcize Medieval Europe? I think your missing the point of what exorcizing actually means which I explained in my objections towards Kindred of the East which is what I was talking about.

I think I already explained how, it's actually because that the Middle East and Asia had libraries that were destroyed by invaders (they burned/destroyed their books) or stolen which were given to the West (Italy).

However, I think your ignoring the fact countries like Indonesia were colonized by Muslims hence they destroyed their original culture and replaced it with Islam. Again look up cultural imperialism.

77

That is all undoubtedly true (except perhaps the bit about not knowing that Japan and China are different cultures). However, as we are talking about Kindred of the East, a Vampire spin-off, you could say exactly the same thing about the mainstream Vampire game too --- it is a mishmash of various European, Biblical, Mesopotamian (and other) myths, dressed up with a pair of sunglasses and a leather jacket, in a way that makes little real sense, does not acknowledge differences between the originating cultures, and, by the way, Al Capone is a vampire! Historical and cultural fidelity is not a strong feature of Vampire. It is all about a veneer of exoticism whether it is Vampire in its "western" or "eastern" or "historic" settings. But it does have a go at utilising both western and eastern culture as source material for that exoticism.

ArM has similar problems, with exoticism, just dealing with Mythic Europe, especially when trying to tie-together supernatural concepts. For example, Greek gods and Norse gods are both really faeries preying on humanity somehow for vitality? There is no serious attempt here to make sense of Greek and Norse myth in its own context, to deal with it on its own terms, the names and snippets of myth are just used as exotic sounding labels for game-world concepts that have no real historic basis. ArM does generally try, but its value as ethnography is seriously (and unavoidably) compromised by attempting to fit concepts into pan-Mythic Europe game terms.

78

Although the OWoD Vampire doesn't have the same outright exoticization (well actually the clans outside of the 7 core camarilla ones are based on ethnic stereotypes) compared to KotE though. Well especially the OWoD game has it's basis more on Christianity than other myths though (since for one, it uses a Christian backstory like Caine not to mention the overall apocalypticism which was actually present in the OWoD which once again confirms the Christian centricism of the OWoD which Demon: The Fallen confirms since it's the only game that unifies the OWoD).

The bold part of course points out one of the main problems with the game that it illegitimizes the other Deities while making the Christian God the "One True God" therefore results Christian centricism which is actually a major problem in many western supernatural themed media not just Ars Magica but It's also found in the WoD as well, of course TV Shows like Supernatural (The Episode "Hammer of the Gods" especially) and such. It also shows that the Platonic categorization of "Vampire, Werewolves, Faeries, Demons, etc" (under a Christian basis of course) doesn't really exist when you run into conflicts like this. In the end, The Norse and Greek Gods are Gods (therefore Deities) not Faeries.

Of course I would wish that games payed attention to historical and cultural fidelity with a real historical basis to get things right.

79

Maybe my brain is dull at this time of the night but... what is the problem of an eurocentric game based loosely on the perception of medieval chistians on the truth of their reality (with all the "buts" you want to insert here) bbweing eurocentric and legitimizing God as the one true God? The weird thing is that Odin is not a demon! (and I am sure quite a few magi of the Order would say that he is). The game has chosen to have this approach on purpose. Plenty of games where this is not the case if you prefer other approaches.

I do not get it, really. Euricentric, Chistian paradigm, crusades, god and satan, fae in the woods and dragons in the mountains. Where is the problem?

80

It depends on a prettified version of French chivalric culture which never actually existed, and was developed by later English writers.

Name an Eastern library which was given to the Italians, please? History of libraries is one of my areas of interest and I'm having trouble placing a library which matches your description, particularly since you seem to be placing Arabs in the West. Also, that's not what started the Renaissance in Europe. It had a multitude of facotrs, which varied from region to region. If cultural transmission from the east via the Mongols was the mechanism, Russia and Hungary would have had their Renaissances first, and they were last to the party, bwecause accumulation of capital is important to Renaissance culture and you can't do that when you are being raided by Mongols.

Your argument might have some force if there were not large numbers of Buddhists and animists still active in Indonesia. Also, islam's not a culture. Also, Islam didn't colonise Java: it was adopted by the local king and his nobility. A colony requires a large group of outsiders taking territory: that doesn't happen when Islam reaches the Javanese court.

So, to be clear: you are suggesting Indonesia is not part of the East because it was colonised by Islam? Well, Egypt was colonised by Islam, so, in your argument, you seem to be suggesting that Egypt is part of the West. Now, Said, who came up with the terms you are using so very loosely, was absolutely clear that one of his claims to authority was his Egyptian upbringing. Your argument has started to eat is philosophical underpinnings.