Breakthrough: Hermetic Teacher

[Berengar]

@Jonathan.Link

I mean if the rules apply, then it's fine. If the rules don't apply, then you can't play fast and loose with them. My problem with the characterization of playing fast and loose with the rules, which you have to admit is a reference to RAW, and not a reference to how it is applied in this particular instance. If you don't wish to discuss RAW, don't bring it up, and certainly don't say that someone else is playing fast and loose with the rules, when in actuality they aren't doing anything of the sort.

To sum things up:

In the discussion thread Apprentices: In my hands... about Apprentices, and in particular about patent problems in this book with grafting some new rules, how to generate apprentices in play, onto already existing rules from some 25 or so books, the book's author wrote the following (as already quoted before):

@Matt Ryan

First, I didn’t think I needed to say, “use the rules you find useful to your saga and ignore those that you don’t,” because everyone I know already does that. I do it. I figured I’d just give the reader the intelligence due him and get on with it.

Secondly I decided not to provide a list of what Virtues and Flaws could or could not be taught by an apprentice’s master. The more I thought about it, and the more Virtues and Flaws I put on the list, I kept thinking, “why not.” And I couldn’t come up with a good enough reason (to me) for such a list. Any list that tells players what they can’t do kills stories. And we are dealing with magic. I mean, I don’t know how magic works in Mythic Europe, I just know that it does. Personally, I don’t think it follows biological rules, or modern science, or even medieval ideas of science. I think it is magic, essentially undefinable, and able to do all kinds of things.

I get a lot more mileage out of this than saying, “you can’t teach the Gentle Gift.”

That said, if you think it is dumb that a magus can teach the Gentle Gift, or Mythic Blood, or anything else, don’t let it work in your Mythic Europe. I once thought Mythic Blood should probably not be an allowable taught Virtue, but then thought (again), why not? Maybe the master who has Mythic Blood discovers that the apprentice has it also, and that his “instruction” will unlock it and allow him to use it. The apprentice wouldn’t be the first character with a surprise past that is suddenly awesome. Again, a prohibited list didn’t seem helpful, but silence lets players imagine run wild.

So the author explains how and why he decided to keep the specific issue of which Virtues a parens can teach to his apprentice open. He did not write rules about it to not hamper player imagination, plain and simple. He did not do so to enable 'canon experts' on the forum to use the rules omission to determine, just what is possible in the ArM5 game world.
I knew then already that such experts would not just vanish because of the author's statement, so pushed on, and got the following whipping of 'canon experts' from Timothy Ferguson - as also already quoted:

@Timothy Ferguson

The function of canon is for authors to create a seamless setting, and that setting's function is to act as the basic point from which negotiations of play contract in your group begin. As such, canon has no role at your table. A person who aregues from canon, as presented in your original quote, is misunderstanding what the canon is for.

That something is in the book just means its in the basic state from which negotiation ensues, it doesn't make its presence in the setting better or righter, or give it any real weight compared to "I won't enjoy that. Let's talk some more."

You can't have it any clearer and louder, how using Matt Ryan's omission to argue, that all Hermetic Virtues can be taught from parens to apprentice by canon, is playing fast and loose with Apprentices. That omission is explicitly meant to provide an open "basic state from which negotiation ensues", nothing more - and requires that negotiation to take place for each campaign.

@Jonathan.Link

Bringing this back around to the OP, I wouldn't even attempt to integrate Gentle Gift into Hermetic Theory and make it a part of all magi, I think that takes a lot away from the setting.

About that we agree.

Cheers