In a shameless attempt to try to get my postings above 50 (is that when I quit seeing novice? ), I was curious if we have many non-European heritage/cultural players. Or perhaps you've played with folks in a troupe? Or perhaps you have substantial life experiences from elsewhere?
To be specific, folks might be from Africa, Asia, indigenous cultures within countries, and other places but Westerners might also have migrated, or experienced (45 pts. worth of) childhoods or have spent significant time in places far different from Mythic Europe.
And, of course, consequently with said knowledge and-or experience how many people have made serious efforts to play in Mythic Mayalands or Indonesian kingdoms or other places far, far away? Granted in many places the written record wouldn't compare to the oral histories of many lands in the 12th century CE/AD, but surely it'd be fun to have Mythic Timbuktu, Mythic Tenochtitlan and Mythic Cathay as well as -potentially - players from various wider-ranging heritages and ethnicities.
Outside of mainstream culture I am familiar with what indigenous peoples in the USA call - Indian country. So, I have many experiences with nations within a nation and different cultural perspectives. I am mestizo (multiracial) Guatemalan-American and our heritage is not only European but Mayan as well. So, I'm sure wondering about what it'd be like to play in Mythic Central America and think of the foundation that could be the Order of Olmec. 8)
Well the Mayans did have all those mysterious architectural wonders and funky astrological knowledge, so why not. Maybe one could intoduce the concept that the Mayans received their insights from visitations by Hermetic magi (Hermetic Astrology) but never fully grasped the Roman Atrological methodologies or terminology so instead, syncretized it into their religious milieu and language.
Who says chariots of the gods had to be space aliens, why not Magi and an air ship some kind?
Well, we are missing the corresponding 'airfields' in europe for that particular line, but then again, europe is heavily populated, so maybe they used to but now we have built motorways over the top of them.
Yeeeaah, we could do that, Boxer! But I could also say far-travelling Olmec (or Asian, etc.) magi who travelled and planted seeds that lead to powe in the Mercurian order, thus laying a foundation for a future Hermetic Order...
It might be fun to blur the line between hedge magicians and full-blown priestly mage-types. "What you don't insist on 'Join or Die?' Well, if you were back in MY motherland!"
I'v always thought that places outside of Europe would make really interesting settings. Now, I'm not very fond of the extra-european lands presented in ArM (Prester John etc.), but instead focus on what the real-world contemporaries would be like.
IMS, I'm planning a rather substantial story arc based on the magi discovering an Atlantean outpost somewhere in southern Europe, northern Africa or the holy lands (yes, 5 points to the poster in the back who guessed my favourite computer adventure game, heh!). I'm not sure how yet, but I'm thinking the outposts would be linked for mystical travel, and that at least one is in South America, with a lot of stereotype, bloodthirsty and magically proficient priest-kings. Thinking about making Orichalcum a x6 material as well, but I digress.
Anyways, I think globe-trotting Ars Magica is an interesting idea that should be explored, but I'd mainly use the different areas as backdrops for adventures, not as settings for characters.
I'm very much European - as is my troupe - but I've always been tempted to bring my saga around the Horn of Africa. I've lived and worked in Ethiopia, for the Red Cross, and I'm utterly in love with the country - and it seems a self-evident setting for Ars. Not only because of the legends of Prester John, because of it being exotic flavour but actually because of its interesting Ancient and Medieval closeness to the Mediterrean World rather than its distance.
Mythic Cathay is totally in period too. Marco Polo makes it to Cina sometime in the 12th I do believe. IMS, one character traveled as far east as he could for many months on end, trying to find where the sun rises. He eventually comes accross Nippon, and is satisfied he has found the origin of the sun. It just so happens that he's a history professor with a ton of knowledge about China and Japan of the period, and even though he was the player, I kinda let him run the game and played his companion. It was fun.
Another character went west in search of Hybrazil, but I have very little knowledge of the area in the era, so I had Caribs burn down his ship and chase him home (LoH).
As dramatic as all that sounds, these were really kind of minor. I try to stick with mythic europe.
Just to point out, leap of homecoming in now Arcane Connection Range not, always return to lab as it use to me (which is somewhat unbalanced as the trick of creating a device to cast it then picking up a pebble each night before LoH home to pop back in the morning). That spell has some balance issues but I digress...
What's to stop a magus from going to one of the big European markets and checking a number of goods to see where they are AC's to then LoH using them when he finds some place that looks interests?
Whaaat? And were there not many other ancient non-Central American cultures that had history of blood sport and/or sacrifice or other? I was under the impression that many past and present cultures have been extremely bloody as well. Perhaps taking in all continents? (though my memory slips in trying to come up with an ancient indigenous north American example.)
I've thought about a story arc based in 1620 North Carolina ( On Stranger Tides anyone?) I would be members of the order fleeing to the New World in hopes of finding new sources of Vis and less Church.
Nah. In Europe we only round people up in camps, gas them and incinerate them all in an orderly industrialised manner - it's nothing of the sort amounting to sacrifice...
And if in keeping with the period Medieval Europeans didn't sacrifice to their god - though they did burn people on the stake to cleanse them of sin or simply just kill them and let god sort his own - but it's nothing of the sort amounting to sacrifice...
Well, I'm Australian. My mother's family are part Dane, part Chinese, part English and my father's side was basically Irish, but so unIrish they had forgotten it (I was told we were Scots-American until I did some geneological research and found out that the Scot departed to Australia from Ireland and the American girl he was supposed ot have picked up on the way out was actually the daughter of his employer in Australia, and they were and Irish family too. And their kids married Irish for three generations once they got here.
I have done a bit of work on Mythic Cathay, and think it worked well, and my physical descriptions of Arcadia have usually just been of the Australian bush, because if you describe it the way that European writers described it, its an alien and menacing place that is beautiufl in parts, but is an active and malicious agent of your moral and mental destruction in others.
I have done some work on the idea that the Diedne fled to America and were part of the Order of the Blue Hummingbird of the Left.
I have run some basic games based on the voyages of Hannon around Africa, and based on the works of Ibn Battuta. Oh, and Marco Polo. Every one reads Polo eventually. 8)
I have done some Caribean settings for piracy, and some Stargate/Galactic Milleaux stuff.
Never Australia though...Hypernestoria, though, certainly. You can reach it down the Axis Magica, or by being swallowed by the great serpent that lies about the euator. (Pardon spelling, one of the keys on my keyboard has died.)
), I was curious if we have many non-European heritage/cultural players. Or perhaps you've played with folks in a troupe? Or perhaps you have substantial life experiences from elsewhere?
