To my understanding, the elementary purpose of The Divine Realm in ArM5 is, to give medieval religious life and debate some base work, and the player characters some reason to respect it.
If, even with all the suspension of disbelief they can muster for a RPG, your players are not able to take medieval religious life seriously, you can pity them and think of the lot of work in ArM5 being lost on them. But you cannot force them to play with it.
In such case, you can fall back to the device of a modern morals Dominion, like that Xavi has made up on the spot above. Is it cheap? I should think so. But it is your campaign, so you decide.
Just don't get criticism of an era mixed up with criticism of a RPG. Before lambasting the middle ages, get your facts right. And before modifying a RPG, understand it.
Depends how you mean by progressive, from a historical perspective, but I'm not wanting to get into that debate.
The thing is that the seven deadly sins (and seven heavenly virtues) are expressly Catholic. Orthodoxy has no mortal sins, I fact it has no legalistic classification of sin. So judging all incidents of dominion based on the Catholic Standard doesn't exactly demonstrate that all dominion religions are equal...
Tying it to the ten commandments would certainly clarify, but it would eliminate the idea of the Cult of Invectus Sol being part of the Dominion...
What do people think about tying dominion to sincere faith, recognizing that such faith in the middle ages is likely to be Christian etc. but without the other legalistic and confusing requirements?
Isn't it much more interesting if the bishop can be both the genuine regional nexus of divine power and a conniving politician who has schemed and perhaps murdered his way to his episcopal throne.
I wasn't referring so much to the idea of individual faith so much as that the religion has to be sincerely believed in. The Pantheons of Rome would have fallen from divine to magical auras as people's faith was undermined by the politicization of the temples, which has not (yet) happened with Christianity, Islam, Judaism, and perhaps some of the outlying pagan religions where the belief is still quite real...
I'm sure that the pope, the bishops, the papal curia, the crusaders, the Holy Roman Emperor, the Byzantium Emperor, the counts of Tusculum and others will be surprised and perhaps pleased to hear that the "temples" of Christianity have not yet been unduly politicised by 1220.
Well it didn't really start undermining the faith of the masses until Fredrick II was excommunicated for the second time in 1228 for launching an unauthorized crusade while technically excommunicated for having fallen sick on the previous crusade, and being the first crusader ince the first to capture Jeruselum, albeit through negotiation rather than military force.
The Bible itself has numerous passages in both the old and new testaments that concern characters, including Jesus, who express doubt in both religious institutions and God. So, lack of faith "by the masses" seems like it is has been an issue for Christianity considerably earlier than the 13th century.
Indeed, around the 1160s and 1170s widespread scepticism in the HRE, Northern France, Occitania and Northern Italy spawned the desire for the Church to return to the vita apostolica, then heresy and the Cathar religion, then a thorough reform of the Catholic Church (culminating in the Lateran council 1215) and the foundation of many religious orders (among them Dominicans, Franciscans, Augustinian hermits). It also brought about a crusade in a Christian country, and the introduction of the inquisitorial process.
Handwaving all that away in favor of a more fantasy style Ars based on 'common morals' Dominion and faithful peasants is indeed a pity.
Cheers
EDIT: For a contemporary literary glimpse at the peasants around 1220 (standard ArM5 time) look for the songs of Neidhart von Reuental (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neidhart_von_Reuental) in a translation suitable for you. No faithful fantasy peasants to be found there.
Presumably doubt occurs in layers- you might doubt an individual, then an institution, then doubt the religion in general. These are not unrelated- you doubt the Pope, when he stays in office for a long time, or there are several suspect popes in a row, then you start to doubt the church. If the church stays corrupt for a very long time you might start doubting the validity of a deity which allows the institution working in his name to be so corrupt. I would think that if auras are linked to faith then it would be at the last stage that divine auras would weaken...
please note I know I am way off script here, I simply feel a need for the divine aura to be tied to something other than the absolute rightness of Judeo-Christian (and Islamic) belief and the family of smaller branches. The divine supplement makes a statement about "The Dominion manifests wherever faithful gather to Worship the creator and sustainer of all things, regardless of creed, doctrine, or scripture" ... "So long as adoration is given only to God"
On the other hand, many magic auras are locations of previous non-monotheistic worship. As a modern day pagan I find the idea of Christianity as inherently superior somewhat offensive (and yes I know it is within a fictional context, that is why I say somewhat), and at the same time see the whole "wonderment" aspect of divine and magical auras overlapping. The idea that a divine aura which has ceased to be used can be transformed into a magical aura as it falls away appeal to my sense of balance between the realms. So in the ancient world pagan pantheons may have tapped into a different form of the divine, but as worship faded the auras still appealed to the sense of wonder and gave rise to magical auras as their divine auras faded away.
In fact there is some degree of support to this last idea in ROP Magic, which indicates 1 level of magic aura for each century of use, with a max level of 5. So a magic aura could be growing under each dominion aura due to the wonder and amazement being "shed" by the divine...
This is not the first time I see such a sentiment, and I fail to understand it, maybe because, to me, all religion is "make believe".
I mean, since D&D, players, christians or atheists, have gamed in worlds where there were multiple deities without it proving too much of an hassle. I may be wrong, but I believe that more players are monotheists of some sort than the reverse (I mean, even here, where we've got the highest level of atheists in europe, believers of some sort in God are still the majority). There are still scores of such universes out there.
Hell, I can play in a world with Gods, or a God, make believe and have fun, despite my feelings about such a matter OOG.
Why can't people likewise make believe with a monotheistic one?
Maybe this is just me, but I'm being tired of the "I don't like the dominion being supreme, make pagan equal" attitude. This is one of the peculiarities of Ars, one of the things that make Mythic Europe different from "insert generic fantasy setting here". Why make it more bland?
The auras are:
Infernal: Sin, and only sin.
Magic: Epic stuff. Perfect things. Distilled emotion. An epic forest or epic building makes one. They don't actually need human wonderment to make an aura. Just something that would cause it.
Divine: Monotheism of a quasi-specific flavour. Human sacrifice is a-okay under this. This is not Christianity. A religion that worships Azathoth and believes all is but his dream would arguably be Divine.
Faerie: Getting talked about. When kids talk about a haunted house it makes one of these. These ones spring directly and clearly from humans. They can come from wonderment, IFF humans see it.
Most ancient pantheons where Fae. Fae care about generic worship. Magic gods, if they care at all, care about the worshipers doing stuff. Naming them, protecting their vis sources, protecting their auras, and possibly enacting magic rituals that empower them.
I would tend to think of a dominion aura falling away would leave a Fae aura. If people stop believing in God, they will still probably keep the folk myths about the devil and angels and saints. And then you get Fae versions of all of them.
Well of course the Dominion is supreme! It has more worshipers and power sources than the pagan gods. Also you could very easily make a Divine "pagan" religion.
That's what annoys me about the AM5 approach to the Divine too. It doesn't actually bear much resemblance to the complexity of the actual medieval world. Most other aspects of Mythic Europe have been developed with remarkable sophistication and historical understanding. This makes it all the more jarring to see religion stuck in a "Ye Days of Olde when Knights were Bold" storybook approach.
You misunderstand me completely. 'Common morals' Dominion - as used in this thread - is a quickly drawn caricature of ArM5 Dominion, to accommodate some 'lazy' players.
Dominion is an ArM5 game concept, not a representation of religion in the middle ages. To make medieval religion part of your campaign, you can rely on RoP:D and TC to a certain degree, better drop ToP A Cardinal Decision, and then do your own research.
Dominion is also not a storyguide tool to bludgeon Christian, Muslim, Jewish values into their players' characters. Indeed, most ArM5 characters take little part in medieval religious life, and this is fine.
Dominion needs to be simple and encompassing enough to fulfill its one in-game purpose: to make powerful player characters respect medieval religion, and the societies based on it.
Cheers
EDIT: It should be unnecessary, but looking at the number of pages in this thread I rather spell it out once: a role player should come up with the values and beliefs of his characters, and not just look at the game system to find there 'what is good'.
I do seem to misunderstand you. We also seem to have very different understandings of the AM5 divine too. When I read RoP:D and RoP:I I see very much a "common morals Dominion". There are lists of deadly sins, with mechanical effects, descriptions of angels and the ways in which they guide humanity, and mechanical bonuses for churchmen based on their being in a state of grace.
What I don't see is the diversity that actually existed in medieval life. I want Crusaders of competing religions who can all reasonably believe their faith is right and the other faiths wrong. I want sectarian disputes that don't easily reveal one side to be right. I want popes and antipopes and supporters on both sides who reasonably believe their faction to right. I want archbishops and friars condemning each other to Hell over issues both moral and material. I want different understandings of morality that aren't easily resolved by looking at aura effects or demonic taint.
In other words, I want Mythic Europe to look like Medieval Europe. I don't see that from the published material. I thought your earlier post was saying the same thing.
I'd add that while I'm far more into the "Mythic" that the historical, I also share this view: allowing the Divine to better support schism and conflict does good to the story, in my opinion. I much prefer having both the pope and the antipope wield great Divine powers and be supported by a cadre of angels and holy men; or having both Crusaders and their pious muslim counter-Crusaders wield great Divine magic, too.
Which is why I increasingly thing that a single Divine aura just doesn't work well for the setting. I note that in Rival Magic, the Muspelli use a Magical aura that is tempered to only work for them. Other Magical traditions do not enjoy any benefit from the aura. I don't think this really makes much sense for the Muspelli; I do think it may make good sense for Divine traditions.
I'm not a fan of the list of sins/virtues. However, I will say that yes, while a scientific analysis of if a certain act generates an infernal aura will tell you if its sinful or not. However the Church does not look to auras. It doesn't decide to burn Heretics based on which aura they have generated. Dominion/Infernal Lore are arcane abilities for a reason. Maybe there is some scientific minded magi or philosopher who is experimenting to figure out what the purest simplest form of a Divine religion is. But the Church is not it.
There is a reason why most Church people don't have true Faith.