Hi,
The division between Faerie and Magic has always been odd, but AM5 at least tries to make it mean something, since designing this away is kind of like designing away Perdo, except less worthwhile but also less sacred of a cow.
It's certainly better than when the 90s infected everything and some troupes decided "it's very natural and oh so twee, so it's Faerie, whereas Magic is all about rigid rules and nasty structure."
Anyway,
Ken
I have this feeling that the 5ed faerie realm is ingenious, and simply far to clever for most players. I am still not sure how to make my own faerie stories in line with canon, but I can imagine them being great fun if told correctly.
I find it ingenious. In a way that I find ingenious when a lawyer finds a way to avoid legislation to have Microsoft or Google pay less taxes. I just find it lacking in any interest and purely mechanistic. it lacks in medieval or wonder flavor. the 4 realms are a legacy feature of Ars Magica, not something that really provides anything to the setting. it is a good system, but it is built on a false need for division that just messes stuff up. YMMV.
Yeah, exactly. I think that lawyer can also make for a good story, worth telling.
Hi,
I have two preferred versions of 'realm'.
Everything is aligned to what it is. A holy place for religion X is aligned to religion X. A place of healing is aligned to healing. A place of murder is aligned to murder. Numeric penalties and bonuses are calculated per person and per action, so a repeat murderer gets bonuses to everything in a place of murder and everyone gets bonuses to murder. Yes, there are a lot more judgment calls to be made.
Realms do not exist in and of themselves but are a matter of perspective. A spirit is not intrinsically of a realm, not even a demon or angel. Given a single spirit of wrath, it is possible to alternatively encounter it as a demon embodying a deadly sin, an angel wreaking the righteous anger of God, a disinterested magical being that is simply part of the fabric of reality, or a faerie that will cause you to be involved in an event featuring wrath. Most people interact with the supernatural in a transactional way, which is Faerie, even when it seems to be Divine. It isn't so much that Faeries seek to interact with people, but that most people seek to interact with the supernatural in simple ways they can understand. Leave milk by the door, go to church on Sunday...
Anyway,
Ken
I profoundly and intensely dislike the conception of faeries as projections of, or drawing upon, the human psyche. In my opinion, using a modern psycho-sociological literary theory rather than the traditional conception of faeries and Faerie was a mistake on par with true reason in 3rd edition. Even greater, in a sense, because whereas true reason at least reflected a general (though by no means universal) sensibility of the post-enlightenment world, this is based on the work of one individual, just a thesis that someone came up with, and lacks any currency in the public consciousness. Not that currency in the public consciousness is really a good reason to include something in a medieval world. If a modern work of literary criticism is to be consulted, then far preferable to this would be Tolkien's "On Fairy Stories".
This version of faerie contradicts not only the historical conception, but the previous editions of Ars Magica, as well as the rest of this edition, which is generally superbly researched and thorougly consistent in presenting a plausible, intriguing, and sympathetic facsimile of the medieval paradigm. I've read a lot of fairy tales as well as medieval literature: Perrault's, Grimm's, Andersen's, all 12 volumes of Lang, everything Arthurian from Gildas to Mallory, Roland, Beowulf, the Nibelungenleid, the Eddas, the Mabinogian, and numerous others that I won't be so tedious as to list, but I have never come across any indication that anyone in history viewed faeries in anything like that way, prior to J.M. Barrie. Generally, people before the modern era didn't try to define them, but simply accepted that they were. If they did think about their nature, then they thought about them similarly to the way they thought about the Grigori or the Djinn. For the game, a much more consistent, pleasing, and interesting definition of them would be along the lines that they were a class of angelic spirits who didn't maintain their station, but didn't quite earn eternal damnation; or that they were the disembodied spirits of a pre-Adamic or ante-deluvian race; or that they were always nature spirits of the earth, but were corrupted to varying degrees by the Fall along with the rest of nature. Any of these, and perhaps others which I haven't thought of, would much better fit a medieval world which accepts the creation, the flood, angels and demons, heaven and hell, and all the rest as literally, demonstrably true.
Faerie, in the tales and literature, is eternal (or at least everlasting), strange, other, beyond comprehension, and most definitively not dependent upon the dreams, thoughts, and feelings of men. Faeries are sometimes interested in humans and human affairs capricously, sometimes benevolently, sometimes maliciously, sometimes incidentally. At other times, they are supremely unconcerned with humanity to the point of seeming cruelty. There are good faeries, bad faeries, indifferent faeries; white, black, and green faeries. Within the Faerie realm, they live their lives, wage their wars, hold their courts, sing their songs, dance their dances, and generally get on with being faeries regardless of what humans do, think, dream, or feel. When humans wander into it, they are liable to meet any kind of adventure, as well as discovering the depths of their own souls, as they are coming up against something greater than themselves--something that will bring out either the best or the worst in them. But this version of Faerie, as someone else has mentioned, saps all the magic, mystery, and frankly all the interest out of it. Faeries without their own objective existence or independent purpose are dull. Faeries as psychic vampires are repellent.
Anyway, if there were to be a 6th, or even a 5.5 edition, that's the change I would like to see.
If I may?
I believe that, of all books, 5th Faerie should be a "SG Only" book.
Because it provides a great framework to create and think about faerie stories, and present to players something that feels like what you describe, and more. Like 2 sides of a coin.
To put it in another way, I don't like 5th faeries as a player (my first thought was "burn them all") or a reader of fantasy, but I love them as a SG.
I think that a lot of things would benefit from being ST only, such as the story seeds spread through the tribunal books.
I do, however, like the faeries as they are. I just don't think that IC knowledge of the faerie meta makes too much sense.
We play troupe style. There is no such thing as an «SG Only» 
Another view that has been promoted here in the past is that the Magic and Faerie Realms should be merged. I embrace the faeries as human stories take because it finally explained the difference betwen Magic and Faerie, a difference that I do not see when I read folklore. Why would pagan gods, titans, jotnar, and trolls be one or the other?
I can respect the view that magic and faerie be merged. If you want to revert the definition of faerie without merging it with magic, a new solution must be found to keep them distinct. What do you have in mind here @MSduPre ?
I also respect the 5ed faerie, and I think you read too much into it. Human vitality is a catalyst for faeries, not fuel that is consumed. I do not think the story role view of faeries should change how faeries are depicted, and thus it needs not contradict real faerie tales. The story role views provide a rationalisation which helps making stories. You can make new stories in this paradigm, but you can also make stories that are true to folklore or historic storytelling.
Take for instance the section on «faeries designed to die». The entire concept is a well-known one from stories, including faerie tales, of all time. The concept makes no sense in the real world, but faerie tales are full of antagonists who just fight till death seemingly without inner motivation. Suddenly the stories that SGs have time to prepare quickly to fill a session have a rationale. I think that's great.
@The_Fixer I feel you 
As a player character i have a genuine hatred toward all the faeries bc they are love to play their games with people who suffer or die during their faerie nonsense!
But from META perspective faerie is a brilliant concept (as much as I can understand it)! I took an oath not to read that book (RoP:F*).
As a player I felt that faeries in our stories have enormous story potential and I want to keep the mystery around them for myself and the experience of exploration connected to their naure and motivation. That is why I do not want to read the book.
From time to time I am like an advisor for our SG and we discuss some META w/ the SG. He lets me know a couple of things connected to fearies but basicly keeps an eye on that my knowledge from IN game perspective would be not extended by those META discussions about plots and arcs. So I think I have some basic understanding about the potential nature of faeries and it is an excellent tool in the hand of an SG/GM/DM.
I was actually going to write that I think that those who question the existence of separate Magic and Faerie Realms have a valid point, but didn't want to extend my post any further. I've always personally questioned the existence of a Magic Realm, and of the conception of magic as something somehow outside of or other than nature. Nature, I mean, in the sense that classical philosophers and renaissance magi would have used it, meaning creation, the world, or the cosmos, not in the way we would use it now of "out in the woods". The Magic Realm has always been the weakest (game and story-wise), the vaguest and most ill-defined of the realms, and the one least based in real-world medieval lore. In-game, magi can't agree on what it is, whether those who claim to have gone there actually did, or whether it even actually exists. The only really concrete, plausible idea about it is that it might be Plato's world of Forms. But then again, in an earlier edition of Faeries, one of the competing ideas of what Faerie is, is that it is the realm of Platonic Ideals, so that's a point in favor of them being the same.
A better theory of magic is that it is part of nature itself: the occult power latent in creation, and the magician draws it out through his words and other magical procedures.
“Magic is nothing but the whole course of nature. For whilst we consider the Heavens, the Stars, the Elements, how they are moved, and how they are changed, by this means we find out the hidden secrecies of living creatures, of plants, of metals, and of their generation and destruction; so that this whole science seems merely to depend upon the view of nature. This Art, I say, is full of much vertue, of many secret mysteries; it openeth unto us the properties and qualities of hidden things, and the knowledge of that which is secret; and it teacheth us by the agreement and the disagreement of things, either so to sunder them, or to join them together by the mutual and fit applying of one thing to another, as thereby we do strange works, such as the vulgar sort call miracles, and such as men can neither well conceive, nor sufficiently admire. Wherefore, as many of you as come to behold magic, must be persuaded that the works of magic are nothing else but the works of nature, whose dutiful handmaid magic is.”
-- Giambattista della Porta, Magia Naturalis, 1558
This doesn't necessarily need to negate the Platonic conception, but could complement it: the occult power present in nature is greater or lesser depending on its conformity to the Ideal. This idea is already present in the game in raw vis sources and magical beasts.
An in-world theory of magic could be that because God created the universe with His Words and through His Word, and Man was created in His image, words have inherent power. This also fits into the Greek ideas of Logos and Nous. Adam and Eve, if they were to govern the world and all that is in it, would have needed greater power than humans currently have, but lost it at the Fall. Magic, first taught to men by the Grigori, was a method to try and slowly regain some of that power.
On the subject of faeries as story devices, they can be and are story devices for us, as storytellers, without being story devices in-world. There's meta, and then there's meta-meta, so to speak. After all, all of the characters and creatures in Mythic Europe are story devices to us. But it seems to me that making them story devices in-world makes them much weaker and less interesting story devices both in-world and out. Sort of like how boring it is to listen to someone else tell you about his dream.
Faeries who seem to exist just to die, can be put down to the inscrutability of faerie purposes. It could be just part of the Game, and rigid adherence to its rules. It could be that, being immortal, they don't really die but just return to Arcadia and undergo metempsychosis. Perhaps they want to die because they are bored with their current form, and want to try something new. Immortality, after all, could get rather tedious.
There is a valid sense of their drawing vitality from humanity, without going the full way into their being projections of our psyches. There is a strong tradition of them not being able to reproduce on their own, but being able to interbreed with humans. It could be inferred from this that there is therefore something of a lack of change, newness, and vitality, and this is what draws them toward us, as we are almost nothing but those things. This can be done, however, without denying them objective existence. The experience they get from receiving love from us, or provoking anger in us, or just the entertainment value of playing games with us, is simply intellectual and emotional stimulation from interpersonal interaction. After all, we depend on each other, on human interaction, in the exact same way, without being subjective constructs of each other's minds.
Back on the topic of separate Faerie and Magic Realms, as you mentioned, the existence of separate classes of creatures for the two has always been a very weak point. There's no trace of such a distinction in any folklore or literature, that I'm aware of. As to the pagan gods, I don't think that equating them with faeries works very well. For some of them, like the Tuatha de Danaan, it fits. Others are clearly diabolic, such as Molech and the Baals, one of whom they've already included as an Infernal False God. Most of them are probably the Powers, Principalities, Thrones, Dominions, etc. Or rather, they are men's dim and distorted view of them.
We tend to think, in our mythological anthologies, of the pagan pantheons as fixed and definitive, but in practice they were not. The conceptions and cults of the gods changed over time, with progress, conquest, migration, and assimilation. We all know, I think, that when two pagan cultures came into contact, writers and thinkers would draw equivalences between their gods and the other culture's. So Romans would equate Thor with Jupiter and Lugh with Mercury. Or the god of a tribe or city would be joined to a pantheon when that tribe or city became part of a larger culture. The point being that the perception of gods was mutable, and therefore more the ideas of humans than the true nature of immortal beings, and from that fact the argument can be made that none of the ideas was exactly right. So, in-game, we could say that the real "gods" were actually Powers and Principalities, etc. Some of them fallen, some of them not. Athena, for instance, would be a representation of the tutelary spirit of the city of Athens. Some Christian and, I think, Jewish writers have postulated that for each city, tribe, and nation there is both a Divine and an Infernal Power, who wage war, and whose dominion is somehow linked to the holiness or sinfulness of that community of humans, either as cause or effect, or perhaps both. Of course, the Divine Powers would not have sought nor accepted worship. But the fact that misguided humans offered it does not mean that they received it.
So in the end, I suppose I would probably fall in with those who want to eliminate the distinction between Magic and Faerie. Four realms of power is a nice, square number, fitting into the conceptions of four elements, etc. This may be too radical a change, but I think it would be more interesting to separate Death, Undeath, and Necromancy from the Infernal, and have that be the fourth realm of power. This distinction exists in both Hebrew and Greco-Roman tradition. Gehenna/Tartarus are a different thing from Sheol/Hades. One is a place of flames, torment, and punishment, the other is a dark, cold, and empty semi-existence. Odysseus and Aeneus visited Hades, not Tartarus. Most ghosts in stories are more lost than malevolent. I know that bears an uncomfortable resemblance to the cosmology of certain editions of a certain other game, but even the erm...Magi Litoris are bound to get something right, occasionally, by accident. Even a broken clock is right twice a day.
I like having a separate Faerie power, a power distinct from the pure-evil Infernal that cannot be bargained with or allied with, yet also from the overly-goodly and mundane-related Divine. I grant that this role could be taken-up by Magical NPCs/Creatures, but having them of another-Realm and hence being foreign and weird serves the game well IMO.
I've also come to fashion my own take on Faerie, inspired by 5e but also Exalted and such. For me, they are spirits from beyond Creation, and hence in truth they are Nothing. They are that which has not been created. Empty spirits that lack not only power, but even any essence or personal identity. But they can accept gifts of Vitality from humans, incorporating them into themselves and thus gaining Might, Virtues, Glamour, and Power.
In this conception, the deep Faerie Realm is actually Nothingness, a barren empty void filled only with wondering empty powerless spirits. But within this void (or equivalently, in Faerie Aura 10 regios), those faeries that have grown to great Might (the Faerie Gods) have each established their own realm, each one different, each brimming with supernatural owe and wonder expressing their own unique Glamour and acquired nature.
The end result is that Faeries are spirits that Don the Corporeal Veil and are all about seeking Vitality and acting according to their Glamour - something quite foreign and different for magi, which creates a nice contrast. Yet they are not automatically something the PCs can't ally or bargain with. But, unlike the official RoP:F book, the faeries are alive and proactive. They are not wind-up toys that do nothing when humans aren't around, or historical re-enactment hobbyists trying to trick humans to play their favorite part.
It works for me. For now.
I am starting to realise that if we want to make Mythic Europe really true to Medieval Folklore, the first thing we need to do is to scrap Hermetic magic and focus on hedge magic. Hermetic Magic, after all, is a product of a 1980s desire for more flexible high-fantasy magic. Only later, the authors became more learned in history and folklore, but then it was too late to change the core ruleset.
Maybe a different magic theory could be designed with inspiration from the hedge magic rules, and the Order of Hermes survive, but it could just as well be time to leave Ars Magica and make Hedge Magica First Edition, without the shackles of editions past.
It is possible that I deliberately ignore some key point in RoP:F, but I cannot see the points you criticise. Faeries are not the product of the stories of art, but the stories of folklore. Thus the faeries are not born from an artist's conception, but they evolve like the folklore. It is the nature of folklore that we cannot tell wherefrom it came. Faerie tales have no source. It is just possible that the faerie reality and the faerie tales live in a symbiotic relationship where they both depend on the other, but neither is the true and original source. The faeries may have an independent existence, but still depend on the faerie tales to thrive. It works for me.
Scrapping the faerie realm altogether would cause knock-on challenges. At least Merinita would take rewriting. If such a change is called for, I think it is a lot better to start more or less from scratch.
I think there are at least two RPGs in Ars Magica. One is Mythic Europe, the other is Ars Fantasia.
I wouldn't advocate eliminating the Faerie realm: it's the Magic realm that I meant. Though I'm not really advocating eliminating that, just tossing ideas around.
The type of story from which they're derived is really irrelevant: the issue is whether their existence is objective and independent, or subjective and dependent. What I object to is the premise: "Faeries are creatures drawn in some way from the imagination of the human race." (Arm5 pg 187) and everything that follows from it. Making Faeries' existence subjective and dependent is along the same lines as saying that magic only works on people who believe in it, or that God only exists as long as people worship Him. Some people like that sort of thing, and there's probably a place for it, in a different game (maybe Exalted? I've never played it), but it's incongruous with the rest of Mythic Europe, where not only are God, magic, etc., real, but they go so far as to say that Ptolomaic astronomy, Hippocratic humoral theory, and the Aristotelian powers of the soul are the in-world truth. Of course, yes, I can just do what I've been doing since 1979 or so with D&D, and change or not use the parts I don't like. This is just what I'd like to see changed in any future edition--or rather, changed back to how it was before 5th. The Faeries book that came out between 3rd and 4th had a good take on them. The older one, which was late 2nd or early 3rd, was ok in some respects, but rather snarky and sneering in places.
That's true about Hedge Magic, along with most of the other alternative Arts from other books like The Mysteries and Ancient Magic: those would be the way to go for a truly historical, low fantasy game (where we're assuming that they actually work). And adding in healing magic, like the charms, exorcisms, taboos, and things that medieval physicians actually used. But as you say, that would be a different game altogether: Ars Magica without Hermetic Magic isn't Ars Magica. I do actually have some ideas about different games set in Mythic Europe, but that probably belongs in another thread.
If you just eliminate the Magic Realm, you eliminate Hermetic Magic, which ... well, I don't think that was what you meant.
No, it isn't. When magic only works on those who believe in it (sounds like 3ed Reason) there is an individual subjectivity and dependency. Faeries of 5ed do not depend on individual subjectivity, but on collective imaginations. That is very different.
This also means that the story dependency of faeries occurs on a meta-level which cannot be observed in either the stories or the faerie reality, and thus cannot contradict historical folklore. It is post-rationalisation and not a contradiction.
That you don't like it is fine. I still do not understand how you consolidate the setting without a Magic Realm. Hermetic Magic could be Faerie, but you would still have to rewrite Merinita.
It's in the longer post, above: magic would be inherent in nature; latent and occult. See the quote by della Porta.
It's "along the same lines", not the exact same thing. Same class of ideas. If I had to give it a name, it would be something like "Modern Materialistic Rationalising". Ghosts and poltergeists are manifestations of repressed fear or anger in the house's inhabitants. If you see God in an NDE, it's because neurons were firing in your brain as you died. There are many other examples--again, in the same category or species, not each precisely identical to the other. It's a modern idea, reverse-imposed on a medieval world. In all other things, the premise is "This is the world as medievals saw it," as I said, to the point that the sun orbits the earth and bleeding is good medicine. And this modern idea breaks that. Medievals did NOT see faeries as projections of their imaginations, or manifestations of story. They saw them as real, objective, independent, immortal beings.
OK. So you keep magic auras? And vis inherent in nature? I agree that magic regione could go without massively altering the game. It could work. What does it take to find a sufficiently magical animal to bind a familiar?
Along the same lines, maybe, but it ends up on different planets.
When Maggie the Maga encounters the Faerie Queen in the forest, it is totally irrelevant if she believes in her, or if she has at all heard the stories. The Faerie Queen is there because people have told her story for generations, but at any given point in time, her existence is objectively independent of any contemporary stories and beliefs. Over time she may fade when people forget to tell her story, but that is totally irrelevant to the there and then, because the faeries are autonomous beings. Fueled by stories yet, but not micro-managed by them.
Sure, this is my interpretation of RAW, but it is an interpretation which works for me. I totally agree with you that if you push the faerie is the story mantra too far, it looses its appeal.
Yes, that's the idea. There could still be magic regiones, but they're simply places where the concentration is higher, not overlaps with another realm, as they are with Faerie. If we keep the association of magic with Platonic Ideals, then finding a potential familiar, or a source of vis, means finding the animal closest to the Ideal. So if you need stag antler for virility magic, your best source of vis is going to come from the King of the Forest. Or best of all would be the red antlers of the White Stag, but there you risk running afoul of the Faeries. For a familiar, you want to find the most perfect specimen of that type: the toadiest toad or the cattiest cat, etc. Things would stay largely the same, in practical terms: the only thing really gone would be the idea of The Magic Realm as a separate place, like Arcadia.
Or you would get the most vis from a gemstone by finding the largest, most flawless, highest clarity gem of that sort. Or from wood by finding the hugest, most ancient tree in the center of the forest.