Just been trying to think where are "natural" rooms.
Would a forest Glade count?
It is "walled" by the forest, and had a different roof to the forest canopy.
If the Glade was manufactured by charcoal burners?
Just been trying to think where are "natural" rooms.
Would a forest Glade count?
It is "walled" by the forest, and had a different roof to the forest canopy.
If the Glade was manufactured by charcoal burners?
I would say that it depends on the size of the glade in question. A clearing large enough to fit a Covenant is rather boundary, but a small glade with dense vegetation around it and a vlear upper bound made by a canopy could be a room+1 or room+2...
I would disagree that the size makes the difference, as size is accounted for separately. I think the point about dense vegetation and a canopy is far more meaningful - a room indicates an enclosed space while a boundary indicates (unsurprisingly) a bounded space.
Would it be wrong to consider a glade a part of a forest and use that target instead of room?
"Part" is for part of an Individual, not part of one of the higher-magnitude Targets like Group or Room or Boundary.
Conceivably, yes, but just like targetting the forest would affect only the forest and not directly anybody in the forest, targetting the part would not affect the people in the glade.
Room as a target is not the room itself, but everybody in the room.
And to OP, yes, I think a glade works as well as a room as a courtyard, which «often» counts by RAW. Presumably, sometimes the vegetation and walls have too many or too large gaps to form the required enclosure. I would just go with the feel of the place. If the narrative creates a feeling of enclosure, it is a room. If it feels open, it is not.
There is a case to let size matter. In general, it does not, but the RAW example is the nave of the cathedral, which has a roof. A glade does not, and if it is too large, the canopy will not suffice to create the feeling of enclosure. If there is a roof, size is accounted for by size magnitudes.
Now imagining a magus who carries out research enabling everything within the lunar sphere to count as one (large) room.
Please do, and make sure to count the size magnitudes.
...
How many did you get?
Considering we can count things like some pens, courtyards, and parts of caves as a Room, then there should be some glades that qualify as well. Cambers of caves are a "natural" room.
As long as it is a singular enclosed space, with that encloser clearly defined (as Loke said, sometimes things like gaps make it not) then it should be fine.
It depends what you're affecting, but mostly, it would be wrong. Part target would apply to the ground of the glade gor Terram, for example, but not because you're affecting part of the forest. If you want the trees bounding the glade, please refer to group. If you want to affect the people in the glade, please refer to boundary.
An unnatural glade (one where trees are so close to each other they can thought of as walls), might qualify as rooms but most glades are boundaries.
The default targets have one thing in a common: they are strongly bound. You know precisely what a room is, because it has walls, a floor, and a ceiling, and a upper limit on size. Maybe some mystery cult has a target with less precise bounding, like the Zoroastrian "community", but every else is very precise. How big is a glade? Does it include just the grass area, or does it include the trees touching it? How tall is it? (Don't even start on me with "circle") Insufficient bounding, no-go. Even the boundary for your covenant should have an actual identifiable boundary. We mostly hand wave it, especially for covenants under ground, behind a waterfall, or something equally quirky, but technically it should be formally bound by an identifiable boundary - a fence, a river, small berm raised by terram, whatever.
T:Room is not all that precisely defined. A courtyard (which has no ceiling) will usually count.
Is someone standing in the doorframe into a room included in T:Room? Unclear.
The edge of a forest will typically suffice as a boundary for T:Boundary. If an outer edge, why not an inner edge (around a glade)?
I think I would look at this sentence:
A courtyard would often count, a valley would not.
If a valley would not count, should a glade count?
Zero, if the Technique is Intellego
Otherwise, it depends on the Form. For Corpus, it's +16 magnitudes. For several other Forms, slightly fewer. Not for apprentices, but certainly not out of reach for an archmage.
Note that a valley is quite different from a gorge!
I think, as e.g. aelred has argued, the answer to the original question ultimately depends on how well-delimited the glade is.
If you have a thick wood of tightly packed, tall trees that suddenly give way to open ground, to me it would feel very much like a courtyard surrounded by a (widely spaced) fence or columnade. If surrounded by said trees on all sides, a glade would count as a Room.
On the other hand, if you have an area where trees almost imperceptibly become shorter and sparser, until at the center there's a circle a hundred paces wide where nothing taller than shrub grows, the glade would not be sufficiently well-demarcated; and it would not count as a Room.
Of course, there will be edge cases, just as there are for what falls within R:Voice or D:Mom. That's when you roll Per+Magic Theory to get a sense of what your chances are to make it work (and how to maximize them), and Int+Finesse to actually make it work
I agree, which is why I quoted more than just the valley part and left it as a question.
However, do be careful. Not all courtyards qualify. So just getting to the point that it's like a courtyard doesn't really get it there. You've got to get to a courtyard that qualifies rather than just being like any random courtyard.
It always comes down to is the area clearly defined as an "enclosed space". It doesn't have to be sealed, but the entrances have to be limited to clearly defined points (doors and windows in a normal room). It doesn't need a roof since open air courtyards can be a room, but then the "walls" must be solid rather than columns.
For a glade that would mean that the surrounding woods would have to be dense enough that only a few well defined paths could enter it baring force. If the overhead foliage is not dense enough so that it is open to the sky, then the "walls" most likely need to be dense enough that it requires cutting rather than just force to make your way through.
I have run into many glades like that IRL. However all of them were "man made" to some extent, mostly at places like Boyscout campgrounds. A couple on my grandfather's cattle ranch, which gave the cattle a cool shaded place to rest during the hottest part of the day. And a few were in parks.
I don´t think anybody doubted that boundary applies to a glade or to any (other) room for that matter. The question is always if you can do it without a ritual.
If the Glade is open to sunshine, then undergrowth can proliferate beside the trees, so with a little trimming from a Gardener or grazing animal you could get a semi solid/continuous "wall" of vegetation around the Glade. An animal track in and out, and voila a room?
A sheep fold might be simpler.
I do not think this was ever made explicit.
I would assume that columns or trees (or menhirs) do qualify as enclosing the space (and in particular e.g. the Stonehenge ring does count as a Room) as long as they are close enough to be perceived as forming a continuous delimitation - as a very rough rule of thumb, if the distance between them is less than their height. So in my view this could well be the "wall" of a Room, despite the fact that you can easily "walk through" it:
I think this is important, because there are a large number of buildings in the middle ages - from ancient greek and roman temples, to cathedrals and monasteries, that have areas with ritual/legal/mystical significance that are very clearly "delimited" by rows of columns.