I actually quite liked the flambeaus, even if I am an ardent fan of their old incantation The house that I hate with a passion is the teenage tytalian jerks. I fail to see why they have not been wiped out (2 or 3 times, just to be sure) already. Defining the Enigma also made the criamons unappealing to me, since the old approach is no longer valid, even as a minority subgroup in the house, but hey.
The new bjornaers are quite cool for what I read on the boards (unfortunately MC is the only 5th edition book I lack, so I have only been able to read it cursorily). Their focus seems to be about improving their heartbeast (even if some stuff about mythic heartbeast does not appeal to me) more than general shapeshifting. I like it, but can see how it being a "minor hedge tradition" within the house might annoy ex-pre 5th edition bjornaers.
I had the opinion that if I've got this cool power to change into my "heartshape" changing into other shapes was just sort of lame in that it made the heartshape less important.
I was not alone in this opinion, I saw it echoed by my players and on message boards (RPG .net and the precursor to the atlas boards) from people who had come up with it independently.
This change was a great idea. It made the house lots and lots more cool. You improve your heartbeast, you don't make it redundant.
If you'd like your characters to shapeshift into other things they still can, they're just out of the mainstream. What particular roleplaying scenes have been torpedoed by this change? Did the Bjornaer boast to one another about how many different shapes they could take? Were grimores shape-changing spells passed down from groups of bjornaer to other groups rather than from individual to individual?
Suddenly not all of the NPC Bjornaer are muto corpus/animal folks. That's the difference between new and old Bjornaer that you're bemoaning the passing of? (forgive me for my rantishness, it's 6:30 am and I'm a bit less genteel than I might be latter in the day)
I've just read HoH 4th Edition on both the Bjornear and Flambeau.
There is no real depth the to Bjornaer, they're depicted as a house of 1 trick ponies. The shapeshift... They ONLY shapeshift. That seems to be the be all and end all of their existance. ZZZzzzz. A whole whose dedicated to what could be easily summised in 5th Edition as a Focus catagory.
The New Bjornear have depth to them, a coherent magic to them which allows growth in a lot of thematically appropriate ways and ways where the heartbeast and the magic can be entwined. Such as thematically linking Magpies (Birds of Portent) and Dream magic or Weather magi having inner mysteries that allows them to become clouds.
They COULD still take a narrow Mu/Co(An) approach too, nothing at all is stopping that, but instead of JUST being that, the magic of the Bjornear is a LOT more thematically interesting now.
The Flambeau however in 4th Ed...To call them a frat-party gone wrong would be overstating them. They were very 2 dimensional. However I LOVE the new house. It's very much like (the slightly anachronistic) dueling schools of the 14th Century. I loved the idea that it's a ragtag collection of magi who are all very much to some degree like Medieval Knights, be that from Chaucers Sarcastic Knight to the Charlemagnic ideal.
It's also a very interesting thing that they are protrayed as very much a Djinni in a bottle. The martial house has no big enemies, there is no unifying adversary and the house is reduced to a shadow of itself with contests of vainglory. This is a battalion of ready made stories from internal conflicts and tests in the contests to direct issues resolving around getting an out of condition and declining house into combat shape should some big enemy to the order actually emerge.
House flambeau were defined in the ArM3 Iberia tribunal book much more than in the ArM4 HoH supplement They were still quite 2 dimensional, but they were cool none the less. The paradigmatic flamboyant crazed fire mages smelling of scorch and with inflated egos. Classy
I also prefer the new vision on the house (also because it does not destroy the previous version of the house straight, but they are also members of the mainstream), but I agree with the "classical Markoko rant" (TM) about the death of the founder being MUCH cooler in the previous version. The current version admits that as a possibility, but the writing does not bring forward even a tenth of the power of evocation of the Iberia supplement.
I too prefer the expanded 5th edition interpretation of the House.
BUT, if you like the old one, stick with it.
If you want to somehow stay with canon AND use the old one, have there be factions in the House:
Traditionalists who subscribe to the Hearbeast being sacred, and a possibly younger cosmopolitan faction that - perhaps through exposure to the wider world of magic via the Order of Hermes, now sees the heartbeast as cool, sure, but why NOT change shapes if you can do so?
This might give you more fodder for House Bjornaer focused sagas that want a bit more inter-House friction.
Over all, make the game what you want it to be.
As far as 5th edition core canon, the ship seems to have sailed.
As I said.
I have my opinion. Feel free to have your own.
The changed Bjornaers are of no consequence in the current campaign I am GM ing.
I use the revised Houses. Back then when I started that I was playing.
But how are the Bjornaer now less druidic ?
Thats the one I am really wondering about.
Bite thy tongue!!!!!!!!!
Did you not expect a reaction out of me?
The original Flambeau as described in HoH-Iberia was the very best this game has ever had to offer. Peter Hentges work was pure genius!
Although I think that the actual game mechanics are pretty weak, and don't really live up to this. In particular, the Heartbeast Ability is practically useless.
I liked the fact that in earlier editions, you could get more shapes to your heart beast as it was expression of your changing soul and adaptable nature. You didn't have to focus on animal or corpus type magics though it was thematically appropriate. It was a house very strongly attuned with nature and the animals.
I did not like the change of the house to not only single heartbeast but the whole taking other forms is heavily frowned upon by the house and shapeshifter and skinchangers were killed if found or kicked out of the house (if the opening the arts didn't destroy that power). The binding Bjornaer shifting to the their ancestors but making most of the house christian too seems off.
I admit, I like some aspects of the revised house, but they also destroyed many of the parts I liked the most too.
I totally ignore some aspects of Criamon House because I don't believe that the enigma should be fully explained or that it is a lie. I am sorry but a whole house whose power and house focused is based on a lie? Bring me the sword of Shanarra and let's put an end to this house once and for all.
I didn't feel like the old "animal master & shapeshifter" concept was bad for the Bjornaer, but I do like the new mystic Heart-beast-focused direction too. It just that it has some... problems.
I really dislike the Cult of Ancestors idea; our ancestors were animals? Really? I mentally change it to "Our true spirit is a spirit of nature", with the Inner Mysteries of the House working to reveal the Bjornaer's "true nature" as a being of wild nature=Magic.
The problem is that this whole Heartbeast mysticism thingie doesn't fit well with Hermetic magic. The Heartbeast-focused mystic House doesn't make sense as an Hermetic literate tradition. Getting a high Heartbeast doesn't improve your spells, and doesn't work well with your Arts. So you've got lots of flavor and mysticism pulling you to increase your Heartbeast and delve into Inner Mysteries, yet other flavor text and the lure of power pushing you towards the totally-alien literate scholarly direction. (Yes, this is somewhat similar to Criamon, but there Enigmatic Wisdom is more effective in the inner mysteries.)
I do like much of that chapter of HoHMC. With some small tweaking, I think it could make a great House. But I feel some tweaking is required.
Most of the world is Christian or at least of a divine faith, certainly in 5th Ed. God is a fact, his power flys in the face of magi. The fact most of the house are nominally christian seems adquately in keeping with the rest of Mysthic Europe. This of course does not prevent players taking the Pagan flaw.
The word HEARTBEAST however summons up a deep animist connection in my mind and having more then one would make it heartbeasts. Unless we are saying that all the Bjornear are mecurial, then the single animal and its nature and demeanor also better sums the manifestation of the soul of any given magus.
Yet this facet of their attitude seems well supported by their history and it dates back to the third edition shamans book. Is it just odd on the surface or does it seem wrong even in light of the history?
First I'd like to apologise as I wasn't clear. When I said other shapeshifters I meant Bjornaer shapeshifter.
Now, it seems odd when compared to how they were presented before. It might have been a smoother transition if Bjornaer shapeshifters were not hunted and killed as if they were the spawn of some demon, and at least grudgingly accepted, perhaps with some social stigma attached to them. But killed outright?
On the other hand, I can see how the majority of players might just disregard the change if that had been the case.
Anyway, unlike some of the people who have posted, I don't hate the 5e Bjornaer or prefer the old version, I think they are still interesting and quite playable, with only small modifications to better suit my troupe's style. I was curious as to the reason behind the paradigm change, and I got my answer, so thanks!
Criamon are my favorite change. However I do think that pre-fourth edition Criamon were apart from a moderate amount of preposterously stupid stuff largely an empty vessel for folks fill with their own best conceptions of what mystic meant and were therefore cool in some peoples games despite their awfulness in the printed material. (Pre fifth edition, every Criamon I saw was a Malkavian with less pointy teeth, more meaningless tatoos, and shallow pseudo koans - and they were regrettably true to the source material)
The fifth edition Tytalus were the only disappointment for me.
Interesting. The ArM5 House Tytalus is the only revision I really like.
I can dig the Criomon revision, but I think it was a mistake to make them so "conformist"
Well, different people obviously have different tastes. And you can't please everyone. This means some - even most - of the Houses are more popular than ever with some players. And there will always be some Houeses that just don't speak to you. If you've been with this game since 2nd ed, all the changes made in published works plus the way you've changed yourself is bout to mean oppinions change.
Personally I like Bjornaer better now than before. Not that I didn't like them before, but they are less of one-trick-ponies now. I liked Criamon before, perhaps because I could be strange and incoherent in my own way. They seem a little too well defined for me now - I'm unlikely to play them in this iteration. I'm kind of neutral on Tytalus as I was before. Never played one but find them ok. I like the less psychopathic Flambeau and the less sinister Tremere.
I think the major advantage of all of the groups is that because we've went from 1 covenant splat-book to 3, we've got a LOT more depth of options and history in them.
Even Guernicus (my least favourite of the houses generally) has a book which makes them a lot more interesting with the rituals of Fenicil.
I will say that finding ways to play true shapeshifter mentality characters is a lot harder. There are very few houses outside ex Misc that a shapeshifter, skinchanger or MuCo specialist fits into.
I like the new Tytalus. In a way, it has the house stronger and more cohesive than the hosue of rabble rousers of prior editions. Them and Guernicus are the two houses that I like the most in the revision.
The house that I hate with a passion is the teenage tytalian jerks. I fail to see why they have not been wiped out (2 or 3 times, just to be sure) already. Defining the Enigma also made the criamons unappealing to me, since the old approach is no longer valid, even as a minority subgroup in the house, but hey.