It's the other way round Tuatha Dé (the tribe of the gods, later changed to Tuatha Dé Danann, the tribe of Danu) is the original term, and stories about these figures morphed over time into the sí, the more fairy-like figures of modern Irish folklore. The process of 'christianising' the old myths and relegating the sí to being tricksters and remnants started well before 1066 and was largely a product of the Irish literary tradition (Ireland was for much of the early middle ages a centre of scholarship and literature in both Latin and Irish was common). The Lebor Gábala Érenn is what really kicks off the relegation of the Tuatha Dé and it was an entirely Irish work written in Middle Irish. French/Norman influence in Ireland really doesn't start until the 12th century, much after that change in the mythological framing had already happened. Faerie is as alien a term to Irish mythology as it is to Egyptian, Sumerian, or Slavic, or any number of others.
It's not like the mythology of Europe is really 'younger' than that of the fertile crescent either. It all stems from a root in the religion of the proto-indo-europeans which depending on the chronology you go with means as far back as 7500 BCE.
I have never considered the line in terms of faerie gods vs magic 'gods' to be based on which culture the mythology comes from. I would say that pre-titanomachy you have magic 'gods' who would not be recognisable to us as the gods we are familiar with, because they are principles of reality rather than being shaped by belief. After the titanomachy faerie versions of those entities exist, based on legends about them. These are not necessarily perfect matches being based on belief not reality. Over time these faerie gods change and split and diverge as mythology does the same. Some magic 'gods' are worked back in sometimes but usually fade out because they don't care much for worship.
So in my interpretation there would be a faerie Ishtar, and a faerie Isis, but that doesn't mean that those are the 'real' versions. There could be a magical entity that spawned those myths originally. However, it being ancient and magical, not faerie, it would probably be unrecognisable to the people of 1220 as being that 'god'.
No joke - years ago my Dad had a cat and a dog at the same time and actually named the cat "Dog" and named the dog "Cat." I don't know what he'd have to say about hit points though....
Would that include the Cumin in hungary who converted to Christianity en masse in 1227? Or the cathars of France and Lombardy? What was the position of th eBulgar faith system on this? Are we talking exclusively 13th century Europeans or do we get to include the early middle ages? The problem with this argument structure is twofold- first it is not based on what people of the period thought but what individual authors believed they thought, which gets back to what I was saying before about the system having a baked in "right" religion despite claims that it does not, and secondly the discussion winds up being about whose understanding of history is right rather than what works for the game.
As for faeries, I find the idea presented in the game playable, but a bit modern- it really seems to be a bit post-quantum theory for medieval style game. I can't tell you how often I've been tempted to make a faerie cat named Schrodinger. Probably undead.
The bigger issue with me with the faerie realm is it felt like it punted the concept to protect the idea of a magic realm. There could easily have been a draconic realm, a Djinn realm, a Genius realm, a Vedic Realm, etc. I'm sure part of the reason it didn't happen was to prevent complexity, especially in the early editions (as opposed to the modern methodology where such things means more books that can be sold). The problem with most of the realms is trying to cram too many different things into one tent...
The Divine can't fight itself because it is supposed to be a monotheism and Mythic Christianity should be based on that. If it is not then that has to be stated in the game or explained at least. That the Divine realm is abstract and unreachable is nothing but a poor excuse to me.
The divine realm already is abstract and unreachable in 5e. Characters can't go to heaven, they can't speak with God in the literal sense. I just suggest that the parts of the rules where the divine does interact with the mundane world should be less tied to a single religion or group of religion.
There is no reason the divine has to represent a monotheistic god, including a christian one. Why can't the divine simply be a realm of the creative force and enlightenment? Then dominion religions are simply systems for tapping into that force, just like there are systems (and religions) which tap into the power of magic and the power of faerie. Mythic Christianity still works perfectly well in that context, in fact it would function identically with the main change that (true to the period and the present day too) the church is not definitively right.
To put it another way, I would be pretty certain that a Mythic Buddhist would be dominion aligned but Buddhism is very much not a monotheistic (or arguably, even a theistic) religion. I think widening the dominion makes for a setting that is both more inclusive of different religions. allows for more flavour in individual religions (more religion-unique mechanics), and which levels the playing field putting the divine less above the other realms and more on parity with them.
Obviously this is talking about if you were making a new game (which is the point of this thread, though we've meandered a bit), so this is not a suggestion of how things are presented or should be interpreted in 5e Ars.
There was a book by... Greg Egan, in which the observation effect could be suppressed on someone.
So every possibility existed at once. You had both turned right and left, were dead and alive...
And the aliens were like that, full time.
This gave wondrous powers and intelligence, like in the film with nicolas cage in which something similar occurs in the end. He just chose the results he wanted among every possibility. For example, to crack a code, you'd have, for a moment, every combination of him trying every code, and he'd select the one that had succeeded, and go forward from it.
I think god in ME could be something like that. Something not limited to a single possibility at once. Something more vast and faceted that we can conceive. Something that can both help christians and muslims, have a favored people and punish them relentlessly, love abraham and ask him to kill his son... You get the idea.
As for Ars Forks:
A certamen card game, definitely. This could even be done as an app or browser game.
A game in which you improve your lab, your covenant... You improve ressources, manage them... There are many variations on this:
A cooperative board game, in which players have to survive random events or research some spell in a limited time
A competitive game (reach goal X before other players while impeding them)
Even an idle browser game.
I keep hearing about "Modern Ars". Sigh... I hate this. We already have a lot of urban fantasy books and games, tis is boring as hell to me. Only 1 person here raised the good point: Ars Physics aren't Real Physics. So I'd like a "future game" based on Ars Physics. Kinda like steampunk, only based on Ars and Academe and minor magics.
Of, and FWIW, there was 1 gritty setting for which D&D worked very well, with caveats: The black company.
Usual characters were low-level, with rules for instant death. Taken and other wizards of great powers were more like your usual 20th level warrior with a truckload of HP, meaning you had to hack them for ages before taking them down. Just like in the books
Well put and that would be the kind of god I could see working better in Mythic Europe. A God whose plans and perceptions are so far beyond mortal conception as an omniscient being would be realistically would often appear to be acting in contradiction to itself, from a limited human perspective.
There was (or is) a thread on the post a day forum about a sort of magic-punk space setting for Ars that I was very interested in but seems to have unfortunately petered out For November - Ars Magica Solaris. It really got me thinking about how fun a spelljammer style game using the Ars system would be.
Imagine: Magi sailing out on magically powered vessels into the great rainbow-hued phlogiston, exploring the crystal spheres, encountering utterly bizarre things and alien civilisations and antagonising all of them like inverted mystical captain Kirks. All based on Mythic physics and medieval, rather than modern, ideas of what might lie beyond the sultry bonds of Earth. Sounds fun to me (but then I loved the zaniness of Spelljammer back in the day).
It would be interesting to see how Mythic Europe with its medieval rules of physics would actually become a more modern group. Would it be steampunk or something else. I totally don't think there would be nuclear weapons, that doesn't seem to fit the whole medieval aesthetic.
By the way the whole using skyships to explore other crystal spheres full of worlds would be AWESOME!
Like others here, a Certamen card game based on Ars that is translatable to actual Ars would be fantastic. It would make the act of Certamen more fun, if its done well.
I also like the idea of a board game - either a co-op covenant disaster-avoiding game, or a competitive game where everyone is trying to complete their secret opus spell to acquire archmagus title before everyone else.
As far as an idle browser game, I've actually had a lot of thoughts on that, it's been an idea in my mind ever since my roommate started referring to our ArM game as Peasant Breeding Simulator. but I need to learn more programming.
I would love to see labwork and learning cease to be downtime and become more integral (although I'd like the characters to leave their labs occassionally... for instance to visit other libraries to do research in).
But I don't think such an approach is beyond the mechanics of the game, nor the reward system. Although it might require labwork to be explicated and there is a lack of material there representing a gap that it would be great to fill.
It would be fantastic if studying vis was always an experimental activity with associated strange occurences and a range of rules to encompass it; or if there was some system by which book learning, spell invention, item creation could potentially generate Insight XP (more likely/more XP if greater experimentation were undertaken) so you would never know when one might come along!; and if Breakthrough points required more randomness, rather than pure accumulation... such as with original research.
Certamen the card game... that would be kinda cool too.
For new games, that are not Ars Magica, and are RPGs, set in Mythic Europe:
(Which, to me, implies the Order is real, but these games would not be Order-centric)
Life in the Mythic City/Town/Village: An RPG of companion-like characters, including hedge magicians, adventuring on a local scale.
Journeys: A set of linked scenarios in which companion-like characters explore the exotic far reaches of the world (probably for practical reasons, like trade). This could be Africa, the Middle or Far East, the Atlantic, or possibly into what magi would call a regio, although the characters would not.
I dont like the idea of the dominion/divine as an abstract concept, as that would essentially be to have the side with the Deists and then we are back at having the problem of having sided with one religion over another. Also Deism is a concept that is much later than the medieval era.
I also see no problem with the current magic/faerie dichotomy. Like Silveroak I always considered that it is not correct to simply say "pagan gods are faeries". I am scandinavian and have never liked the idea of a faerie norse pantheon. I have used the same interpretation as Silveroak in saying that: "Sure there is a faerie faeries Odin, but that faerie Odin is most likely not the original Odin but rather a faerie trying to live out the stories about Odin." This interpretation in my opinion does not pose any problems for Ars Magica in a game and in fact I would prefer if it remain that way. I find that it is the most respectful of the source material and also makes for the best games.
I promised to add in a comment for my wife.
She thinks the Ars 2220 sounds like an absolutely fantastic idea. (I do too).
I don't agree that it would be in line with the ideas of Deism. Deism rejects the idea of revelation and in many cases the need or usefulness of active worship and religious ritual. Deism proposes only natural theology, or natural reason, as a valid source of religious knowledge.
In contrast an abstract divine in Mythic Europe would have ritual and worship be patently and visibly effective in the form of divine power. The validity of revelation is much less certain which does line up somewhat with deistic though, but it would still be possible to commune with the divine - it would just be much harder to interpret and more open to human error than the literal messenger angels of 5e.
Further, while Deism as a defined movement only arises later the concepts of natural theology it takes to the extreme conclusion are founded in Greek philosophy, elaborated by Varro and became part of the Stoic school of though, and entered Christian thought through Augustine of Hippo. It was a significant part of the Neo-Platonist philosophy which influenced Augustine heavily. It was also an element of the rational school of Islamic philosophy with such high profile advocates as Averroes and Avicenna. However, the most influential writer on this topic was Thomas Aquinas - who is alive in the period of 5e (b. 1225). So I don't agree that the ideas are non-existent in the period.
Simpler still would be the idea of "the divine" representing faith, where all faith is treated equally. I'm fine with a communal definition of faith- the idea of religion as an individual relationship with a deity is actually fairly modern, but if it is the power of faith then it doesn't get to be monotheistic faiths only.
Otherwise, if the divine does emanate from The Divine, whether God, or whatever, then you are defining, within the game, what that actually is.
And the same way rationalism in a world with magic would conclude that magic is real, divinity in a world where the divine is manifest is not ineffable, but tangible.
I see where you're coming from, but an issue I see arising from that is the divine bleeding into the other realms. How do you handle someone who has genuine faith in Odin? Or in a more extreme example what if someone earnestly has faith that Lucifer is the saviour of mankind? Is this encompassed by the divine realm? If not, why, and where is the cutoff? It could work I think, but would require a complete and all-encompassing change to what the nature of religion in Mythic Europe is.
In regard to the previously discussed ideas I think it's important to point out there is a difference between the tangible power of the divine on earth as channelled through religions, and the actual true nature of the divine itself. The later part is what would be unknowable/transcendent. People see the former and draw natural conclusions from that, yes, but that doesn't mean they are right. Just like people can see faeries and magic beings exist, and naturally draw conclusion from that, but the actual true nature of faerie and magic is not something anyone in Mythic Europe can know or prove for certain - and those are realms which interact directly with people more often than the divine in many cases.
For those realms that true nature is left open ended and only suggestions are given in 5e, I think the divine would be more internally consistent given a similar treatment.
We've got a bit off track with all the divine stuff in this thread so I've made a new one for this topic:
I like the idea of a research-focused game. I like the idea of MagicShoe. I like the idea of a community content program, but i wonder if it would have the player-base to support enough writers (OTOH, it might help grow the Ars Magica playerbase).
And for the people wanting variant rules: I would love to see a PbtA Ars Magica. Except that PbtA is highly improvisational and about glossing over the details, whereas ArM is all about the detail, in magic and in setting.
I think PbtA Ars would be unworkable, and I say that as a big fan of both Ars and the Apocalypse engine, without losing a lot of the best parts of the magic system. But I think you could definitely have PbtA games in the setting of Mythic Europe where you don't play as hermetic Magi. Certainly, the less research-oriented and complex (hedge) magical traditions and normal people of Mythic Europe could be represented in a PbtA game, I think.
You could have a game about people travelling into the unknown, Marco Polo style, or possibly set slightly later in the age of exploration and play as people exploring the new world. The flexibility of PbtA would work really well there - you're venturing out into the unknown and encountering fantastical things (which unlike in Ars you don't have to spend ages statting out).
Or for something more tied to core Mythic Europe, a game where you play as redcaps. That way you keep the feel of the core setting but as magi are purely NPCs, not to be played as characters, you can fudge the details on hermetic magic a bit without it being unsatisfying. Redcaps must get up to some crazy adventures traipsing around Mythic Europe as they do.
