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Games Discussion Ars Magica
41

For this sort of game, the Pendragon Grand Campaign (or whatever you kids are calling it now) is excellent and perfect, because it gives you the sequence of events.

I have run something like this using the pendragon Magic rules, which are a lot less robust than the Ars rules, and Pendragon's rules on nobility are different (basically part of the Enchantment of Britain is that your peasants are prosperous, which makes them happy and they never start beating up priests, which is kind of the opposite to what happens when real English peasants get some monmey behind them.)

Still, Pendragon's great for this, in the sense that it has a ridiculously detailled campaign arc.

42

I agree with this in part - I see faeries as a flavour of magic but I really like Timothy's story take on faeries in ArM5.

The whole 4 Realms mechanic just sucks sometimes when trying to write for ArM5 - it almost did my head in with the Jinn chapter in tCatC and although the sleight of hand I used to make the Jinn culturally cohesive over 3 Realms works OK, it's still an illusory trick that distracts from the inherent mechanics.

Lachie

43

...and one which has almost done my head in as I've been trying to think up a few faerie Jinn :smiley:

44

One thing that does bother me about that (well, aside from the whole way the divine realm is handled)
there is the idea presented that the Old Gods are all part of Faerie, Magic, or the Infernal, that completely ignores the fact that a lot of deities (Say Bride or Brigid) were transformed into saints during the rise of christianity. In fact there are some old gods who could in theory be found in all 4 realms...

45

No, we kept the Tithe to Hell and Church Faeries. A faerie god pretending to be a saint is a Church Faerie, if God's on their side.

Also, Brigid's a bad choice: there's a Life of her that says she was a priestess of the Pagan Goddess Brigid who became a nun, then a saint after meeting Saint Patrick. The names though similar are similar for much the same reasons that there was a Pope called Mercury once. (John II. This is why they started taking papal names.)

46

There is a lot more similarity to the Goddess than the name, at least in how she is celebrated. A clearer example of course is Saint Nicholas (whom the Catholic church no longer considers to be a saint due to his obviously pagan origins). I think it should be allowed that some of the ancient deities became saints, though how may be a subject of some controversy...

47

That would come as news to my Greek Orthodox friends.

48

Greek Orthadox is not Catholic, in fact the separation was made fairly firm after the crusaders sacked Constantinople in the 4th crusade.
Saint Nicholas was made a saint before there was any formal review process, and was demoted from sainthood in 1969 http://www.souledout.org/christmas/santanicholas/santanicholas.html

49

That's your source?

To my knowledge, Roman Catholic church did not remove him as a saint as they did many others in 1969. They did make his commemoration optional.

50

For saints with a pagan origin: http://piereligion.org/pagansaints.html

51

Your source is not great, because it basically uses name matching, and as I've already pointed out by noting the Pope named Mercury, there are an awful lot of early Christians who were named after pagan gods and goddesses. If they become saints, then, yes, their names move across, but then you need to prove that they have something to do with each other in terms of actual continuation of belief. Also, some of it is just, well, clearly wrong. To grab two easy examples:

St Martin in the Fields isn't named after Mars. I'd note that its sister church is called "St Giles in the Fields", so the idea that it's named after a field god is off. It was built under Henry VIII, so any idea that it's a Roman survival is a bit tricky to prove, and the guy it's named after, Saint Martin of Tours, is one of the few who has a contemporary hagriographer (that is, his biography was written while he was alive, by someone who, in this case, knew him personally.) That Martin, a first-generation convert in a military family, was named for the war god of his father is not at all strange: it was a really popular name in Roman military families. The idea that he is Mars in a Christian form is weakened by the fact that the reason he's a saint was that he was a conscientious objector to military service who forsook it for contemplation. Also, he was famous for destroying a pagan temple.

St Lawrence isn't named after the Lares. The first strike against it is the transliteration only makes sense in English and requires depluralisation and a vowel change, because Saint Lawrence Beyond the Wall is in Rome, where it is called "San Lorenzo" so the idea that he's a lar is harder to sell. The second is that the Lares were not field gods, they were locational gods, including household gods, so being defined as "outside the wall" is precisely the opposite of what they do, control a defined space. The third is that we know that the site was not a temple in Roman times (it was a place of execution outside the walls of Rome). The current San Lorenzo was built in the 13th century, on the site of an earlier church, which was in turn probably built on the site of an oratory, so the idea of continuing practice is a bit weak. The fourth is that it seems not to argue continuing practice that the he's the Patron Saint of Librarianship and Cookery (were I Catholic, Lawrence would be my patron, if I weren't trying to squeeze a miracle out of someone else to get the up to sainthood).

Also: Saint Nicholas is still a Catholic saint. I'm not sure how he can have pagan antecedents when the stories about him seem medieval in origin, unless you accept some sort of conspiracy theory regarding pagan survivals. Yes, he name has "Nike" in it. This no more makes him the goddess Nike than my name having God in it makes me God (The -thy in Timothy is "theos", which is "God"). In Nick's case, the other problem is that nike is an adjective so it turns up everywhere (in his case his name means "victory of the people") I'm not sure how you see a continuation of practice between a goddess of athletics and war and a guy who is basically a charity god.

52

Yes, I agree. Continuation of names does not in and of itself mean continuation of belief, or even evolution of belief. It may sometimes tell you something about the beliefs of previous generations.

Another good example is "Wednesday". Despite the fact that we use the name to refer to a day, nobody in their right mind takes this to mean that modern mainstream Anglo-Saxon culture worships Wodin. Nor do we consider that Italians, who call the same day "Mercoledì", are worshipers of Mercury.

53

The claim in this case is that the ancient deities could become saint as easily as Magic, Faerie, or Infernal, not that they are worshiped today. We could obviously go round and round in terms of various saints (and yes, that particular website was weak, it was chosen more for volume than strength of argument), and there would be some on each side unconvinced. However I think that a few points are fairly straightforward:

  1. There was a time in the history of the early church when sainthood was a less formal process
  2. There is, whether by coincidence or because of continuation of worship, continuance of names
  3. Where there is continuance of names those who had been comfortable with the old name would be comfortable with the new, and likely to transfer traditions.

So there is, at minimum an appearance of transference from godhood to sainthood for a number of figures/entities, and the question is whether the game background should reflect that.

54

Christian sites continuing a far more ancient devotion make excellent Ars Magica stories and even campaigns - if well researched. You find the basic rules supporting such campaigns on ArM5 p.183, and extensions in the RoP-books.
These stories get a lot of appeal from the surprise factor, but must not offend the intelligence of the players. In particular, saints who are venerated at such a site can be chosen in different ways, and for different purposes. They can represent the forceful christianization of a site (e. g. the saint destroying a temple or vanquisihing a basilisc, dragon or faerie), the continuing of a site's beneficial function or social role (e. g. a spring from a fertility cult now sacred to the Virgin), or in a complex way even the god or goddess a site was sacred to before (see e. g. the controversy on St. Brigit in en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brigit_of_Kildare and the related Talk).
The ArM5 Realms are in-game constructs providing the functions needed for this type of campaign. I do not see any reason to muddy them up, even if an entire campaign is devoted to St. Brigit of Kildare being a Christian double of Brigidh/Brigantia.

Cheers

55

Well, I was considering a location where a pagan deity had gone all 4 ways, with a church devoted to the saintly aspect, a fairy realm continuing the legendary aspect, a magic version that is more reclusive and fundamental and an infernal version dedicated to all that wonderful conflict and drama that was so integral to the ancient myths...

56

With Brigid there is the whole flame at Kildare connection isn't there? An Eternal flame usually tended by pagan priestesses dedicated to hearth goddesses like Brigid instead tended over by christian nuns dedicated to Saint Brigid. That's alot more then name matching.

57

I'm not entirely sure that the nuns tending the flame of Kildare thought they were worshipping a Celtic hearth goddess, but sure, there's a link there you could use for gaming. Mu reply to Silveroak was badly formed in that I was objecting to the idea that in the real world, there was a lot of sanctification of pagan gods. In the real world there wasn't. I do agree that in Mythic Europe you could do a bit more, provided you had the usual discussion with your players about religion and their beliefs and all of that. It would never get into a supplement because "Catholics are really pagans" is a whole big historical thing in some countries, on a "Jews kill Christian babies" and "Muslims are paedophiles" level of sensitivity.

58

I think we can peaceably and respectfully disagree about the degree (and perhaps definition) of sanctification of pagan deities, As a pagan I certainly don't see it as making Catholics somehow pagan- most people I know see it as a marketing scheme, to make people comfortable with the new religion by incorporating old names and rituals. I'm sure the ancient Christians had every intention of properly sacking and destroying those temples once they were firmly established, they just never got around to it and well, then they were Christian saints, not pagan deities...
the only people I see claiming Catholics are pagan are people who don't realize that the claim itself would largely invalidate their own religion's claim to legitimacy, but I digress there. I think the easiest path in terms of published material would be to leave it a question whether some deities were sanctified or if these deities were false gods who pre-emptively copied the real saints in order to sow doubt...
which is what the early Christians claimed about the cult of Mithras...

59

I think I might just split off Ars Magica from Mythic Europe and create a new fantasy setting for a sixth edition. I actually suspect that would broaden the appeal of the game. I'd also make some mechanical changes, making story flaws similar to Hooks & Books adventure paths the characters move through and having a broad arc for each saga mapped in advance by the players before they started, so they know what the story was about, just not how it would develop or if they would make it to the end they anticipated :slight_smile:

I think Mythic Europe may hold Ars back in terms of mainstream rpg appeal. Various new fantasy settings can only widen it. Mine would be based loosely on the Earthsea books of Ursula le Guin I think, or a fantasy Alpine kingdom. :slight_smile:

Fortunately no one is going to listen to me :slight_smile:

cj x

60

You're right about Mithras in the real world, but in Mythic Europe, demons aren't capable of long term planning, so they couldn't have done this. Minor technical point which I stumbled over writing some stuff a while ago.

Saying that some Catholics aren't reworked pagans is kind of like saying some Jews don't kill children, though. You'd be amazed how annoyed some Catholics get at the idea that they released "Brigid 2.0".