modern person in ars magica?

how would a MODERN person(if s/he got into medeaval times somehow)react to REAL magic &(if s/he had the gift)would s/he get excepted into a house?
would science work well with magic?(think modern science, not medeaval science mind you)
If they do work together well, what spells could be created?

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Depends on each person. Not everyone is the same

Could he? Of course! Would he? Depends on who he meets, but yeah, probably, apprentices are always cool

Nope. Mythic Europe doesn't work under the same scientific rules as our world

Depends on both on the individuals, doesn't it?

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Hermetic Magic is all based on medieval science, not modern. It would take building a whole new magic traditions to use it, at least where it differs from medieval science.

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Modern Science would work great with Hermetic Magic. Also depending on the physics it might also work even more hilariously. (Do you want to use the medieval ideas about physics or the modern ones?) Now mind you it wouldn't be on the level of chemistry messing with Hermetic Magic, but it would be applying the scientific method and mathematical techniques to the medieval world or doing, for want of a better term, "thinking with portals". Mathematical and scientific techniques would mean the character is better placed to figure out what works and what is bollocks. "Thinking with portals" means the character is the kind of person who will open with orbital bombardment, or protects themselves with vacuum shields. (Which depends on the physics you run on.)

The modern mind set also helps in other ways. Magi setting up laboratories? Blasphemy! A simple analysis of comparative advantage shows magi should never do that, train mundanes. Of course, research should be done in teams! And by the way, we should run on academic peer review journals to learn about stuff. Not these secretive oaths of calf and cow. And most of all the future will be brighter, progress should never stop and research is the future.

Of course, you could go another way: A person gets dropped into Mythic Medieval Europe from Mythic Modern Europe. They have a whole array of breakthroughs that no one else in Mythic Europe has. They are masters of experimental philosophy, and possibly some form of uber-magic. And that is on TOP of the modern mind set given above.

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yeah - just a few concepts (such as Algebra, double-entry bookkeeping, the scientific method) could potentially revolutionize a scholastic organization like the Order. Ideas don't travel: ideas of ideas do. So even if your modern person can only remember the basics of something (like calculus - "Um, it's like taking an infinite number of really thin rectangles to figure out the area under a curve"), someone else can probably figure it out and apply it.

That being said - Mythic Europe, by design, is almost exactly like normal 1220 Europe. So such an individual would run into the in-game reasons for why both universes are running in parallel, even though the Mythic version has uber-powerful magi running around it. (Divine/Magic/Farie/Infernal).

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that's pretty much what I was thinking of.

Accepted? It depends.
Remember that not all Gifted become apprentices. What if that person is a 30y-old cook or a 50y-old policeman?

Well, there's no reason to believe modern science applies to Mythic Europe. For all we know the Sun could be a light twice the size of the Moon and the celestial vault could be solid. Think Discworld here.

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This is a great character concept, but I wouldn't ignore the social and magical penalties of operating in Mythic Europe with a distinctly modern mindset.

If you told most magi the story of your origin they would nod knowingly and say, "Ah yes, those tricky fae. You were in fact kidnapped as a baby and raised in a faerie regio under different natural laws. The conceit of the faeiries story was a "futuristic" world without magic and they harvested vitality every day that you, as a gifted person, acted in accord with their fiction." If you told a priest or peasant of your origin they would shake their head and ascribe the delusion to demonic activity. Flaws such as "Faerie Upbringing," "Delusion (time traveler)," "Judged Unfairly," and "Outsider" would all be appropriate.

On the magical side, your commitment to the scientific method and rationalism might penalize the ability to learn magic. A skeptical scientist would probably have the "Study Requirement/ Study Bonus" flaw-virtue combo since they believe only what they can directly observe and verify. The unwillingness to accept a counter-intuitive magical truth simply because it is written in a tractatus could manifest itself with the "Poor Student" flaw. Recourse to recondite mathematical formulas and ideas like quantum dynamics, probability, and neuroscience would make your own magical insights "Incomprehensible" to other magi. A reputation as a "Hedge Wizard" is likely and "Weird Magic" might attend your spells.

(Now I'm inspired to flesh out some lost-in-time characters!)

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of course you could also give said characters some hyper-science items (hyper-science for meadival times of course)for flavor or as items to use as well!

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Not really. The thing about the scientific method and rationalism is they are processes to learn about the world. They work even if the world is magic. You might have trouble with something like Faerie, because it conforms to beliefs, but magic is ripe for applying the scientific method. Nor do scientists only believe truths they can verify themselves. Most scientists believe in relativity, and encryption despite not verifying it for themselves. And scientists are great at accepting counter intuitive truths. Like relativity or quantum physics.

You would need to decide if these are along the lines of real world hyper science (a gun) or medieval hyper science (a super reagent, say a philosopher's stone). Both could be pretty damn cool though.

I was thinking in terms of a wrist watch or a zippo lighter for real world hyper-science.

Nope the scientific method is a heuristic for understanding a rational scientific world, not a mystical one. A standard tool of scientific truth-finding is an experiment which can be repeated to verify the initial result. A physicist may believe something without testing it experimentally, but the possibility to experimentally verify (most) results exists and the most strongly accepted ideas in physics are those that have been repeatedly verified. But this won’t work in mythic europe because (1) certain locations operate under different natural laws, and even time elapses at different rates (regios.) Furthermore, (2) the interaction of auras and airy spirits means a magical experiment successful in one location can fail in another location. While it might be possible, though not much fun, to treat auras like temperature, meddling demons and spirits are never so predictable. Finally, and most seriously, magic depends upon the depth of understanding of the practitioner. Two mages can work from the same lab text, and perform the same seasonal activity, but one will wind up with an Enchanted Carpet and the other with nothing but rags solely because one of the mages is older, deeper, and has read more about Auram.

That’s a cool idea. The gifted character could be initiated int ex-Misc by a Pralican and largely develop their own idiosyncratic magical path. Either Craft Magic[Gears and Pulleys] or Mechanica of Heron (from Ancient Magic) would be fitting supernatural traditions for a MacGyver type mage who whips ups various modern looking gadgets with magical effects. The Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court style magus could have a sigil of “perfectly reasonable explanations” so that all their magical effects occur in ways that can be explained by modern science. So, pillum of fire is accompanied by a smell of gasoline, wound that weeps causes the target to trip and bruise their knee, Frosty Breath of the Spoken Lie causes a vein on the subjects neck to bulge prominently when speaking untruths, etc.

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they could also make magical devices based upon modern items (again think wrist watch or zippo lighter.)

You get the same thing in the real world. A certain action creates one result in one environment, and a second effect in another. Lighting a match without air produces no flame, with air produces flame. This is not a problem. Nor is different rates of time flow for obvious reasons.

If demons and meddling spirits routinely screwed up experiments then the Order of Hermes wouldn't be able to function. Things are reliable enough that you can expect repeatable results if the spirits occasionally prank you. Science is fully capable of accounting for probabilities, this is not an issue. In fact, its the exact same thing as we faced with plant blights. Mendel was able to work out pea genetics even though a disease might infect them or similar.
And once again science is fully capable of accounting for people having different capabilities. Your skill in the arts can be quantified and measured. This is no different that what would happen if Steven Hawking tried to perform an experiment out of an organic chemistry lab manual. He would find it quite impossible owing to his disability.

The magic in ars magica is by and large rational. That's why you can write big books on the rules of it. If it was not rational you couldn't do that. Magic is repeatable. Every time you get a wizard with the right lab total and the write lab text you get the same result minus the sigil change.

what spells w/could be made based upon todays scientific laws?(from a modern person viewpoint, not nessarrally a meadival person viewpoint)

what if they brought with them dnd books?

They'd probably get burned at the stake for devil-worshipping. :wink:

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only if they could comprehend the books in the first place & it would depend on the person as well, silly

Have you seen the Player's Handbook? It has a demon on it's cover!
Burn!

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My take on Magic in Ars Magica is that it's more art then science. I mean it's in the name. The texts are not really big books of rules instead they are discussions of the things artist study to improve. Things like craft, technique, form and theory. Two artist's can copy each other's work paint two similar paintings make two similar sculptures each influenced by their own styles.