There is room for more than one mystery in a cult. One of them should, in most cases, be the precise virtues and ordeals and their order. There should be surprises, both unexpected benefits and unexpected ordeals.
But yes, I agree that many things need to be discussed, particularly the goals and attitudes, as well as the sensitive topics to avoid.
The thing I hate about gentle gift is it steps on companions' toes. If magi can effortlessly deal with the mundane, where's the fun?
Magi are the heavy lifter, companions are the fixers, and grogs are the bumbling fools. That way every player has an active role to take.
That's also why Criamons are safe with a Gentle Gift, they're pushing for an alternate reality that few mundane can follow.
Hardly effortlessly. Few magi have good social skills - they are too busy improving their magical powers.
So even if a given magus can interact with mundanes without scaring them off just by showing his face, companions will very often be better at interacting with the mundanes.
Few grogs have good social skills, they are too busy improving their martial abilities, but yet they can make a decent deal with the innkeeper or ask a simple question from a villager, without upsetting everyone in the vicinity.
These are very stereotypical- the fact is a socially adept grog is very possible, and useful to have around. One of the major benefits of companions is that they are not bound by the Code of Hermes, and can fit roles not only as things like venditors but as merchants or a "tame" Lord who runs the covenant lands and is allowed to make allies and swear allegiances as necessary.
The RAW has no weight of authority. The only wrong way to play any RPG is by the RAW. If I were SG I would allow it. If you were SG and I the player then I would abide by your ruling. The SG is the final arbiter of all rules. They decide when they apply, when they are to be disregarded, and when they are to be changes.
What game is it you are afraid to name?
And in the troupe style of Ars Magica, everyone is SG so we have a good handful of final arbiters. Splendid.
Yet another reason I have grown weary of this game.
Look, there should be at least an Alpha SG. And in the immediate moment, whomever is SG at that moment is the one in charge.
I think he means the one that rhymes with Truncheons and Flagons. In that game, and the many, many games that copy it or derive from it, people carefully sift through all the character options to figure out how to make the power build they want.
Ars Magica can be about that, but it feels more enriching if people's characters reflect a place in medieval society. Magi are obviously free of many restrictions, but still face the restrictions of what their master and house could teach them, and what covenants they join and organisations (whether fraternities or mystery cults) can lead them to. Teaching Gentle Gift - I fall on the side of the fence that would say that makes for less stories compared to having Gentle Gift be something that requires a lot of in-game sacrifice or pilgrimage.
DnD, with the most accusatory finger pointed st 3.5 from my experience.
For pretty much exactly the reason @darkwing listed.
We have done that in many games which do not derive from DnD, and we have played (A)D&D without doing it at all. I have seen many debates on how to do it in ArM. It really has nothing to do with the system at all.
I was being obtuse on purpose. Dungeons & Dragons is the source and origin of all RPGs, and I think some respect is due. I would also point out that it is only the modern versions of that game that are like that. The old versions were not. Further, it is the same Johnathan Tweet, who co-created Ars Magica, that remade D&D into the modern version with Feats and all that.
Just have some respect. That is all I ask.
I was being obtuse on purpose, hoping the OP would reconsider and be more tactful. But somehow, this is much worse.
Really? I remember we had these discussions in '94/'95. How to make the most powerful build was a common exercise in every game system I saw, even the ones which explicitly encourages storytelling, including ArM and VtM. Of course, a lot of people frowned upon AD&D for it's power build attitude, but I also saw several devoted AD&D players frown upon that same attitude. All of these systems are embraced by communities with very different attitudes.
I'll agree though, that min-maxing did not make much sense in pre-A D&D, but there are some stages between that and modern, I'd say.
Agreed. Munchkin gaming depends heavily on the group, not the game.
My current Ars group are not hard core min-maxers, so I took gentle gift and didn't optimise my character as much as I would with more of a power gaming group and even with that, I think I have the highest casting total in the group.
A previous group, we were playing D&D 3ed, and 3.5 which was pretty much a big fix and balancing exercise, nearly every nerf 3.5 did, we were exploiting as it was a min-max group.
I was playing AD&D in '79, and there really wasn't much of an opportunity to min-max back then beyond hoping for good die rolls when assigning your character's stats. After that, it was just a case of picking not monk to play, knowing that the clerics and wizards would be gods at the end--assuming they survived that long. Unearthed Arcana started the trend, but it really wasn't until 2nd edition (1987) that you could truly tailor your character. (That, and Lee's right about it being all about the group; though, in general, the more combat-centric a game is, the more min-maxing tends to be rewarded.)
In any case, D&D deserves exactly as much respect as any other game. Sure, it was the first published RPG, but it was--and still is--far from perfect, and the notion of what is and is not a great game is quite subjective.
And you couldn't tailor your character much in AD&D 2e either - not with the core rules anyway.
It was only with all the books with optional extra rules that you could do that - and if you added all those extra rules you were practically playing a different game.
Oh really? All along I thought that it was possible to tailor your character there. I wish they may have an update that will allow us to do so. That will really really be amazing.
2nd edition core? Not much more costumisable than 1st. With add-ons... Some flexibility was achieved.