The Roman Tribunal rewrite

The Roman tribunal- the sourcebook from 3rd edition no longer fits the saga, and clearly there are no plans for an official sourcebook, so here we begin the rewrite- or more accurately we begin the process of organizing the rewrite.
Things which inherently need to be in the sourcebook:

  1. Harco covenant, in Piedmont
    2)The conflict between the Pope and Fredrick II, which actually begins in 1221, but whose roots have been growing by the fact the crusades have been expecting his arrival in Egypt since 1217)
  2. Venice's merchant empire and its enemies
  3. Rome- how does the order deal with the largest most powerful Dominion aura in Europe? Is there a covenant of holy mages here? Possibly inside the Vatican?
  4. ancient sites- Roman temples should be huge sources of magic auras, where they haven't been converted into Christian places of worship.
  5. the infernal- no it shouldn't be as thick as in the old book, but within Europe this is the headquarters of the opposition to the infernal, and they have (canonically) been able to corrupt a crusade, so obviously the sloth demons are elsewhere...or working their powers on those who should be stopping the other infernal plots.

any other points anyone feels were missed?

There are also threads discussing theme and structure.

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Did you mean Vienna or Venice for 3?

I think there is more to it than handing out chapters.

There is also a tried and tested structure for regional sourcebooks in ArM5

  1. There is an introduction (best written last)
  2. Mundane history (uncontroversial therefore easy - might be left out)
  3. Magical history (complicated, can only be written by someone who is good at canon)
  4. Political structure of the tribunal, tribunal specials (like dead magi voting: Rhine)
  5. to 12. (or so) Regions (Rome, Venice, Naples, Sicily, Genoa, Tuscany, Milano,...)
    13.-16. the 4 Realms
  6. Campaign ideas
    Appendices:
  • Languages
    -Names
  • Timeline

And then there is need for hooks of course.

It seems to me that doing regions is difficult without having chapters 3+4 first. Those of you who have already done this - how did you do it?

Don't forget covenants; they need to go somewhere in the book. Whether it be in one of the History chapters or Political Structure Chapter. Several will require a face lift, since one of the draws is ditching the 'demons everywhere' line of thought. We can only have so many infernalists in play.

I happily write about Harco and tie it to HoH:TL

Is there plan to write it straight to wiki, or will it have another container?

You've missed that Venice, in canon is basically the closest the order has to a United Nations. A Cold War city, filled with embassies from places where people hate each other, jockeying for the favour of the Quaesitores, the Redcaps, and House Tremere (who have a big presence precisely because they don't want these people trying to come to Transylvania.)

Actually, think of london in the 1980s, espionage-wise, but with a multipolar world.

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To answer the questions earlier about "Who is going to hand out assignments?" and "Who is going to edit this?"

Basically we are. I'm not sure the end product will be a "book" in the sense of a single pdf, or a "book" in the sense of a series of connected documents running from a table of contents on, say, project Redcap, out to people's blogs, theis thread, and other online venues. There's going to be disagreements, and we have no dispute resolution mechanism, so what will eventually happen is that the project will have internal options and variations. This isn't a terrible thing, so long as we know it is going to happen in advance and none of us get too upset when our version of, say, Frederick II, isn't the Definitive Edition, but just one of the editions which turns up.

I know people are looking for something like a Tribunal book: but remember, we are all volunteers here. We aren't going to get paid, get tax concessions, get boasting rights for being authors, or any of that. people are going to write for the joy of the work or not at all, and so that means we can't bang people on the head in the conventional way. That means the product is not going to look like a book, unless we get some top-level negotiating going on.

I'd also like to know what sort of "container" people are happy with, to use a term from someone earlier in the thread. Wiki? Blog? Webpage?

Pralix asked what order we wrote in...it varies. For some books I see a cool bit of mytho-geography and want it (Oleron) and for others I know there is going to be a Ceoris and go looking for a place to put it (there really is a town called Dragon's Nest next to where I put Ceoris). You can do it either way. The canonical covenants in Italy look to me like they were just kind of floated in from people's real-life games. There's nothing aboutm ost of them which ties them to their precise geography or history (Literatus aside).

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I mentioned wiki for typo fixing. :blush: :wink:

Another good point is the Talk/Discussion tab on every page which allows consensus to be reached before changes are applied. And History for simple version control.

But I think the most important thing is to make it easy for authors. Wikis are not an easy place to write 1000 words and edit them.

I think we should choose a [strike]Praeco[/strike] project editor whose authority we acknowledge and accept as final. In my personal experience, projects without a clear leading figure just don't work.

Two quick things:

  1. There is mention of Venice in the book (Hermetic Projects?) with the shipwright magus. That could be a good tie-in.
  2. ezzelino helped me out a lot a while ago with the languages around what is now Italy. That is part of my big languages around Mythic Europe project, which has made slow but significant headway since then. I'd be happy to provide that information to whomever it would help most.

Unfortunately, I'm not sure I could contribute much more than that. I know little of the Italian peninsula at that time and can barely make progress on another article with another baby on the way.

I can't speak for the others, but I would appreciate the assistance with the languages Callen.

Thank you very much.


On another note, does anyone take issue with me taking a more literal inspiration from 'Tribunals of Hermes: Rome' in my sections?
Don't worry, less demons and more detailed research will be taken.

I agree. Otherwwise this will be a doomed (Doomed I say!!!!) project.

Any Volunteers?

I'll get things started by throwing my hat in the ring.

That means giving in, surrendering, correct?
Or am I mixing up idioms?

I think he's offering himself up as a candidate for project leader...

idioms.thefreedictionary.com/thr ... n+the+ring

You are assuming his hat is made of towelling, I believe.

Ah, I must have been thinking of throwing in the towel.
Oh well, he wants a contest for it, I'm put in my bid as well. that way, I know I'll read it all.

It would be helpful if the rest of us knew either of you as more than usernames on the forum. I only figured out which of you was Jerome Darmont the other day... 8)

That being said: I really think the project leader model is the wrong one for what we are trying to do, so, no, I'm not putting my hand up for it. I'm not saying I won't write for the project...I am saying that I'll see how it goes and do something else if something else is more interesting and fun than this is.