Things I am seeing in my PbP...

[DIREWOLF75]

What annoys me about Pagan is that the other players. The ones that should be reacting to the negative connotations of being Pagan, rarely ever do.

If the other players are running characters that are essentially "colleagues" to the pagan, why should they?
The flaw is an impersonal prejudice, those who know the character might like him or hate him or just dont care, but the "pagan" part isnt likely to matter much.
When the character is somewhere he´s not part of the "locals" or getting in trouble with the church, thats when its a problem.

Another thing that annoys me are Pagan characters without the Pagan Flaw. Unless you specifically take that Flaw, you should not be a Pagan. It dilutes and waters down the impact of that Flaw.

If a character isnt actively pagan, then possibly it doesnt even merit the flaw at all as it is not so likely to cause problems.
Your interpretation of the flaw sounds more like something that should be called Heretic. Which is a very different (and far more dangerous) matter.

For example, “Reckless” and “Carefree” were both Virtues in previous editions. They are now Flaws, though the wording hasn’t changed by even a single letter.

Reckless is totally NOT a virtue regardless how you look at it! Carefree is arguable but i lean towards having it as a virtue.

And Mentor, specifically, used to be a Virtue. The wording hasn't changed, just the category. How is it that, with the exact same wording, it changed from a Virtue to Flaw?

Because it was found that it commonly caused more interference for the character than it was beneficial?
I prefer allowing Mentor as one of my "multiple choice" ones, which can be taken either as flaw or virtue.

They are Flaws only because they mandate that you play the character in a specific way, not because they hamper or disadvantage you.

Reckless most certainly "hamper or disadvantage". Same with Mentor.

I disagree. Not every magus has a mentor. Every magus has a Parens, who may or may not care about his filius (or he may not even still be alive). IMO, only characters with “Mentor” have a mentor.

So if a characters personality involves having 10 major personality and another 10 story flaws, thats fine by you?
Its quite possible to come up with a character that would need such due to your above restriction that a character cant have X at all unless they have the flaw that says so.
Thats just too much rule fundamentalism for me.

Again, I disagree. It really gets under my skin when players act out flaws their characters do not have.

So? If they act out a flaw more than once, then give the flaw to the character.

Ad again, my opinion is that, if your character doesn’t have that Flaw, then he shouldn’t act that way.

Not having the flaw means the character isnt "bad enough" to merit the flaw. Being a chocolate "addict" doesnt mean you MUST have the "Greedy" flaw.

If a character acts out personality traits for which he does not have a flaw, it devalues the impact of that flaw upon the characters that do have it.

No, because the flaws should actually be severe enough to sometimes have an impact on the game while without the flaw, its just a minor sideshow without real significance to the story or people in it.

Through Conflict there is Growth.

Until someone goes chop-chop with an axe... :mrgreen:

And actually, generally you get more "growth" through cooperation than through conflict.

[Birbin_again]

Personality flaws are cheap hidrances the character can buy to avoid playing one-eyed, crippled magi.

Carefree is too cheap flaw it should be skipped entirely.

If a character is pagan without having the flaw he can change his religion for advantages or to avoid disadvantages after a short hesitation. The flawed pagan cannot do this. When missionaries come to a pagan village only characters with pagan flaw will confront them. The Christian knights will kill these the rest will be baptized.

Personality traits might be lighter forms of personality flaws. The characters may have such traits and not the seriousness of a flaw. The traits are easier to overcome with a roll. The character can overcome minor flaws only by spending a confidence point and major flaws cannot be avoided.

[DIREWOLF75]

When missionaries come to a pagan village only characters with pagan flaw will confront them. The Christian knights will kill these the rest will be baptized.

Heh... Thats even beyond an extreme version of the worst of the "exploration of the new world".
13th century? Not likely.

[The_Fixer]

Sigh...

What he means is, a normal, pagan character can back down, pretend to be christian or convert. This doesn't mean that every christian is out to kill you, but a character with the flaw won't pretend of convert, even faced with death. Worse, he is (IIRC) vocal about his faith.
Think of the stories with these christians martyrs who faced death or abjuration, were crucified, thrown to the wolves... They had, at the time, the "pagan" flaw.

[Birbin_again]

@DIREWOLF75

When missionaries come to a pagan village only characters with pagan flaw will confront them. The Christian knights will kill these the rest will be baptized.

Heh... Thats even beyond an extreme version of the worst of the "exploration of the new world".
13th century? Not likely.

Ever heard the baltic crusades? The Teutonic knights rather killed all the pagans than trying to convert them.
This is the standard way of the baptization when the missionaries are supported by the military.

[Timothy_Ferguson]

@Birbin again

@DIREWOLF75

When missionaries come to a pagan village only characters with pagan flaw will confront them. The Christian knights will kill these the rest will be baptized.

Heh... Thats even beyond an extreme version of the worst of the "exploration of the new world".
13th century? Not likely.

Ever heard the baltic crusades? The Teutonic knights rather killed all the pagans than trying to convert them.
This is the standard way of the baptization when the missionaries are supported by the military.

No, that's so oversimplified that it's false. Let me hit you up with a reference: department.monm.edu/history/urba ... rusade.htm (Won an award for best article in the Journal of Baltic Studies in 1998!)

Basically THe Teutonic Knights didn't just genocidally slaughter everyone: the converted each tribe, then turned it against its pagan neighbours, as they pushed out from their bases, then taxed the Dickens out of the survivours. I'm not saying there were no genocidsal incidents, because clearly there were quite a few, or that the knights were nice people afterward, because they weren't, but your idea that the Baltic Crusdaes were just a pure genocial rather than an invasion's simply wrong.

[Jabir]

A character without a personality flaw gets to enact the associated personality trait at the discretion of the player. You can be just as greedy, overconfident, lecherous, or pagan as you like. And you can back off when you don't like the likely consequences.

A character with the flaw can't back off just at the player's whim. If his greed is going to get him into trouble he still acts greedy. That's what makes it a flaw. Otherwise its just a free source of virtue points. This character is seriously greedy beyond a common sense level.

This is why I don't advocate increasing the numbers of flaws. They should be serious defects in the character. Get too many of them and the character is just a goofball.

[Marko_Markoko]

You can take Greedy as Minor or Major, and you can always resist it by rolling against the trait or spending a Confidence point. That is part of core RAW (I will double check when I get home).
And all personality Flaws can be changed. It may take a story, but all characters are capable of cathartic development.

[Jabir]

@Marko Markoko

You can take Greedy as Minor or Major, and you can always resist it by rolling against the trait or spending a Confidence point. That is part of core RAW (I will double check when I get home).
And all personality Flaws can be changed. It may take a story, but all characters are capable of cathartic development.

Oh, I agree. A personality flaw, even a Major one, isn't intended as a character killer. Just like there's no "I win the game" virtue.

But the player of the flawed character has to make that roll or spend that point, and likely will have to do the same more than once in an story arc since whatever circumstance is causing him to feel greedy is unlikely to just disappear. In general I see flaws as taking control out of the player's hands, at least from time to time, in a way that simple roleplaying of personality traits doesn't.

Change should certainly be possible too, just requiring effort. This usually becomes a problem with flaws like Enemies, since you're eventually going to get rid of that enemy if you play the character long enough. Which is completely logical but can leave players who instead took flaws that don't easily go away like Hunchback feeling cheated. It's up to the storyguide to make things feel right and earned by everyone.

[ExarKun]

To answer the first post.

The principal thing i see and i regret so much (because there are many things i like like the availability of the SG to discuss characters, motives and rules...) that i want to share with the community: it's the irl SG's habit to limit the diversity and rules. The latest thing he limited to my great displeasure was the Hedge magic book: he says : only 1 technique and form, for 4 virtue points.

And he has NEVER tried this book' content...

Argh, farewell my elementalist summoner and controller, and my gruagach...

I dislike people wo limits thing even without trying them and correcting them.

But i can't do anything against it... he is not listening my arguments

Exar.

[DIREWOLF75]

@Birbin again

@DIREWOLF75

When missionaries come to a pagan village only characters with pagan flaw will confront them. The Christian knights will kill these the rest will be baptized.

Heh... Thats even beyond an extreme version of the worst of the "exploration of the new world".
13th century? Not likely.

Ever heard the baltic crusades? The Teutonic knights rather killed all the pagans than trying to convert them.
This is the standard way of the baptization when the missionaries are supported by the military.

Yes i have heard of them, but 1, as Timothy has kindly provided your conviction about their "appearance" seems more than a little flawed and 2, they´re still not the norm and 3, Lithuania for example didnt actually seriously start to become christian until 1387 and it retained a KNOWN portion of pagans at least as late as the 17th century.

Yes, oh my and oh dear pagans and christians were living mixed up... Usually divided tribally, but far from always.
This was more common in northern Europe as religion there was much less often exclusive, but less common is not absence. Christianisation didnt happen overnight, and even when a country was considered "christian" it was usually far far from anything monolithic and more importantly, christians and nonchristians still got along fine MUCH of the time. As AM is set in 13th century this means that the majority has converted, but that there is still a quite sizable portion that has not.

You might want to look through this:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christiani ... nturies.29
In the polytheistic Germanic tradition it was even possible to worship Jesus next to the native gods like Wodan and Thor. Before a battle, a pagan military leader might pray to Jesus for victory, instead of Odin, if he expected more help from the Christian God.
That sums up some places quite well.

Mieszko's action proved highly successful; by the 13th century, Roman Catholicism had become the dominant religion in Poland.
And this some other. "dominant" isnt the same as "only".

In the Middle Ages, the Kingdom of Hungary (which was larger than modern day Hungary) was Christianized between 970 and 14th century.

13th century runic inscriptions from the bustling merchant town of Bergen in Norway show little Christian influence, and one of them appeals to a Valkyrie.

@The Fixer

Think of the stories with these christians martyrs who faced death or abjuration, were crucified, thrown to the wolves... They had, at the time, the "pagan" flaw.

Ah yes, how many actual, "nonpolitically" motivated examples of such can you provide i wonder?
There were indeed many stories. Most of them had rather disappointing amounts of truth to them however.

It IS a serious flaw if you do anything to get into trouble with the church oh yes. And it can be a big problem if you make trouble "away from home" or somewhere that has an unusually fundamentalist stance.
But religious genocide wasnt much of a (domestically) European "sport" in the 13th century.
It became much more serious when christianity split, and thats when "paganism" mostly disappeared, when it was more demanded to pick sides, but which christian side. But thats later than the game is set, so until then the relatively few pagans are often somewhat tolerated unless they cause trouble or get "uppity"(or more realistically and cynically, in any way seriously threatened the profits of someone).

[Ovarwa]

Hi,

@ExarKun

To answer the first post.

The principal thing i see and i regret so much (because there are many things i like like the availability of the SG to discuss characters, motives and rules...) that i want to share with the community: it's the irl SG's habit to limit the diversity and rules. The latest thing he limited to my great displeasure was the Hedge magic book: he says : only 1 technique and form, for 4 virtue points.

And he has NEVER tried this book' content...

Argh, farewell my elementalist summoner and controller, and my gruagach...

I dislike people wo limits thing even without trying them and correcting them.

But i can't do anything against it... he is not listening my arguments

Exar.

I noticed that in the PbP as well... with me as GM! AM5 has a wealth of rules, but I don't think all of them necessarily belong in the same saga. For me, using all of theses rules at once is like insisting that every single crayon in the big Crayola box must all be used in every saga....

Anyway,

Ken

[Timothy_Ferguson]

@DIREWOLF75

@Birbin again

@DIREWOLF75

When missionaries come to a pagan village only characters with pagan flaw will confront them. The Christian knights will kill these the rest will be baptized.

Heh... Thats even beyond an extreme version of the worst of the "exploration of the new world".
13th century? Not likely.

Ever heard the baltic crusades? The Teutonic knights rather killed all the pagans than trying to convert them.
This is the standard way of the baptization when the missionaries are supported by the military.

Yes i have heard of them, but 1, as Timothy has kindly provided your conviction about their "appearance" seems more than a little flawed and 2, they´re still not the norm and 3, Lithuania for example didnt actually seriously start to become christian until 1387 and it retained a KNOWN portion of pagans at least as late as the 17th century.

Interesting fact: the potential leaders oif the Livonian Rebellion went to Lithuania and said "We'll rebel if you accept us as nobles under your Crown". and the pagan king of Lithuania said "Peasants you are, and peasants you shall remain!" and then cut their heads off, thereby mucking up the Livonian Rebellion amd making life a whole lot easier for the crusaders.

[DIREWOLF75]

"-Promotion DENIED!"... :mrgreen: