Grog Talk

Why is this contrary , Brave -03 is not the same as Coward +03?
They do not believe in God as the supreme being , so have a negative trait.
Appear Pious is not the same as Pious.

Okay, to me that sounds like they should be lumped in with the Christians...even though they don't consider themselves Christian, they go to church and do what they're supposed to so people don't know that they don't believe in God. (Hmmm...borderline Dark Secret?)

When I think "Atheist" in Ars Magica, I'm thinking those who don't worship (or at least pay lip service) to the Divine in one of its forms (Christian, Jew, Moslem, and I think Zoroastrian is considered Divine too). Something like pagan or druid. E.g. in my last tabletop campaign, my character was definitely pagan (worshiped the Old Gods in the Novgorod tribunal) and another was Druid.

That would be Jesus, Matthew 12:30 (and Luke 11:23): "He that is not with me, is against me: and he that gathereth not with me, scattereth." This is when Jesus was being accused by the Pharisees of casting out devils by Beelzebub the prince of devils, and Jesus defended himself; this is also the section where we got the quote "A house divided against itself shall not stand." (Yes, Lincoln was quoting Jesus).

Works for me. Will change 'em. :slight_smile:

I fail to see how you cannot see the difference.

Me: Believe in God +3
You: Believe in God -3
Quite the contraty, isn't it?

Me: Bad Christian +3 (I could have called it "appear pious -3", your formulation being better)
You: Appear Pious +3

In my exemple, "his characters can very well believe in god but not attend mass very much"
in yours, they don't believe in god but attend every mass.

Is it clearer like this?

You're right about lumping them with the christians.
After that... It'd be a borderline dark secret, sure, but also a severe Delusion.

I think there are an awful lot of exemples, both in period and today, of people who did the bare minimum of church service while living their lives without thinking too much about God (even though, when thinking about it, they'd say "sure, he exists"), sometimes even doing non-christian or anti-christian things, to accomodate such characters without going all anachronistic.

In fact, this is IMO close to what a lot of non-pagan PC must be like: Christian "by default". Pagan magi may consider God to be just one god amongst many, consider him to be inferior to, say, Odin, maybe even hate him and the dominion, but no one would deny its existence. Would you, for exemple, say that China doesn't exist? Or Wall Street?

Well, Pagan is quite different from atheist :wink: An atheist doesn't believe in any god or gods.

Wow.
Count me officially impressed.

Guess i see the name of the trait being primary and the number from +03 to -03 being the degree of that trait.
So for me Believe in God , means just what it says , +03 being the strongest and -03 being the weakest (apart from taking a Flaw).
Appear Pious , to me , does not mean attend every mass , you might as well just take Pious.
You just know the right things to say and do , as needed , the +03 being the degree to which you "spoof" piety.

I see.
I may be wrong, but, IIRC, well, you are, and negative traits mean you go against that.

For exemple, the GM asks for a Brave check to avoid fleeing some monster. People with Brave -3 would get a penalty (Dice roll -3). People with, say, Coward +3 would get the same penalty (they tend to be cowards). OTOH, People with Coward -3 would get a bonus (they tend not to be cowards), the same that people with Brave +3.
So, Pious -3 means you are not pious, quite the contrary.

Would Abdul speak Yiddish or Hebrew? Regardless, might want to be sure all the Jews speak the same, one or the other.

I'm thinking that, since Yiddish is a Germanic language, that it wouldn't be that wide-spread through Europe yet. But I'm not sure.

And..."English 1 (torture)"? That could get...interesting. Depending on who he's talking to :laughing:

Also, Aging Rolls are Stress Die (no botch). If an aught comes up on the die, that's a zero, not a ten. So I think your Aging Rolls for 1201 and 1203 should be "No apparent aging" instead of "1 Aging Point in any Characteristic."

Use Confidence Points on Aging Rolls.

Looking at the Aging Table (p. 170), the only time I would want to use a Confidence Point on an Aging Roll was if I had rolled a 13. And that's even assuming that I was comfortable burning Confidence on anything other than a "Can I do this thing now?" as opposed to a long-term use (i.e. I seriously doubt that I would use it for Aging or Experimentation in the lab). And that assuming that I don't forget about Confidence entirely (which I tend to do...Ars is the only system I've ever played that has anything like this, and the sg in the last saga I played in didn't really use it).

I chose Yiddish because i assumed that was the one spoken more. Again, it is an assumption. I can change it either way.

Huh... you're right about the Aging Rolls, missed that. Going back and editting. NOTE: Also noticed I still needed an "Aging Point" for my final roll instead of just aging one year, so now its 3 Aging Points, apparent age 46.

My first thought when I saw this was, "Ohoo! Does Celestria have some competition?"

Then I skimmed the character sheet and thought, "No...no she does not." :laughing:

:astonished: I resemble that remark!

Something tells me the rp could get very interesting around here :smiley:

Here tastes are likely less... discriminating. Maids have an opportunity to be closer to upper class employers, so I would expect her to be interested in those men and/or attractive men. Then again, she can always manhandle (Reserves of strength) the guy into the hayloft and have her way with him. :slight_smile: Perhaps I should've gone for, "I'm ready to make the beast with two backs, don't make me come over there."

Regina is tired, tired of running around Europe, living in decent conditions, but nothing ever as grand as she'd been promised. Her first hint that she's getting the good life is going to ensure that she does whatever she can to make sure she never loses it.

So, when I was researching the Jews in Salamanca I saw references to Ladino. However, it appears to share a lot of commonality with Castilian mingled with Hebrew words. A merging of Castilian and Hebrew, if you will. That being said, I couldn't find anything authoritative on when Ladino actually appeared in common use. There's a lot of talk about Ladino around the time when the Jews were expelled from Spain in 1492, and how it spread. If someone knows more, I'm interested in being as authentic as possible. Another point is that Jews generally tried to assimilate as much with the culture that they were in as much as possible, with the exception of their religous practices of course. Much effort was placed in learning the local language and while using their ancestra languages at home, whether that is Hebrew or Ladino at the time of the saga, I can't really answer authoritatively.

Regarding Yiddish, it developed with the eastern European Jews, by and large, so changing it to something more appropriate is a good idea. What is appropriate is discussed below.

From the website: http://mobile.myjewishlearning.com/culture/2/Languages/Other_Jewish_Languages/Ladino/Today.shtml
Ladino is a hybrid language of Castilian and Hebrew. I could change everyone's Hebrew to Ladino and add Hebrew as appropriate to selected characters who would logically know both (primariy this is would be Ra'am and the Rabbi).
Though, carrying it out throughout the saga, there's ample historical reason to expect all the local Jews would have Ladino scores, as well. The local Ladino dialect would be different from the Jews who are coming with Ra'am from Salamanca.
Another option is to average the Hebrew and Castilian scores, since Ladino is a hybrid language. An average would indicate the degree of assimilation to the Spanish/Castilian/Iberian culture of the Jew in question. I would generally prefer this approach, since this is a matter of flavor, and it saves me some points. Hebrew as a selected language won't really impact much except in the instances of needing to read a book in Hebrew. Generally speaking the characters I want to read Hebrew are literate in Hebrew already through sufficiently advanced Artes Liberales scores. I can't think of a compelling reason I'd have a character literate in Ladino, except if there was a point in Artes Liberales in excess of languages know, or the Ladino score exceeded another language score. Whatever the troupe is interested in doing, though, I'll accept.

Same idea here :laughing:

With all due respect, are you sure you really want to do this?
Because, well, not only is it totally out of period, but it's a pretty severe Delusion, too: in Mythic Europe, people can see the works of God, Angels, Demons, Faeries... They may be pagan (although these are few) and think about god and/or satan as foreign deities, but Atheism is even more out of place there than in the real medieval Europe, were it was... rare.
This is not to say that people were good christians and all went to church, mind you :wink:

Even if Atheist, being outspoken about it is easily dangerous (See also: Heresies).
By 5th standards, this wouldn't even be a General Flaw, but rather a story one, like Pagan (a Major Flaw!!!), which is the closest "real" flaw: The description of Social Handicap listing atheism is a legacy (It was there in 2° Ed, maybe even in 1st) that dates back to when Ars was much less grounded in Medieval Europe. The Reason Aura (an "atheist aura" if you want) was dropped precisely because of that irrealism.

I wasn't aware of the controversy surrounding the Flaw. Hmm, I'll look to see if I can find one more appropriate to her character. Thanks for the advice.

Edit: So how about Social Handicap (crass and vulgar, no filter)? Surely someone who can't stop swearing, cursing or talking about sex is someone with a social handicap...

Oh, absolutely.
Vulgarity is rarely welcome, and, especially in religious communities, cursing might very well incurr social penalties.

About Julien:

Yes, his preception is -4, so I went back to look at him and sure enough, for some reason, none of the "-" signs came over and I manually editted those in.

Here's the premise for the character. He's gettomg to be a veteran. He's not stupid, but he just misses stuff. All. The. Time. Or he thinks he sees something and understands it, but he misses something so big that he ends up causing a huge misunderstanding. And the weakness talking back to Magi is not talking back so much as trying to bring himself to their level, thinking he understands their motivations and actions and then opening his mouth. His motivation is to act and if he acts incorrectly he asks for forgiveness. But it never turns out well for him, because he just doesn't understand. It's a complex character, and I'm not sure it can be pulled off, but that's my inspiration for him. He'll never realize any significant advancement, and was sent with Ra'am as a means of getting rid of him (Prospero asked turb captain for recommendations, turb captain saw opportunity to get rid of rabble and took it, Prospero agreed without knowing everything about Julien, so that turb captain may end up having some explaining to do, but that's well outside the scope of the adventure.).
Ra'am doesn't really know that much about his background, except that he was selected by Prospero. Prospero never had any problem with him when he used him, but the other Magi never used him much. Prospero's been in his lab a lot lately working on stuff he needs to be named an Archmagus.

So, he thinks he already knows what people would tell him to do and therefore ends up acting rashly?

Oh, great. My mother would say you're playing me.

If there's a wrong choice to make at a most inopportune time, he's going to make it.