So what does that mean? Had House Diedne converted to Christianity before the Schism war?
House Diedne did not exist in the real world, but in Mythic Europe they had probably not converted - adding to the friction between them and the other houses.
Living apart from regular society, paganism would likely be more common among magi than among mundanes. But even if more common, it would still be uncommon. In 1220 the majority of the Order of Hermes are at least nominally christian, and I think the same would have been true two centuries earlier.
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I agree with this. In actual history, there would be virtually no actual pagans left in Western Europe by the 10th or 11th century. The last holdout in the West (excepting Scandinavia), the Sachsens (the ones still in Germany, not the English ones) was stamped out by Charlemagne. Of course, individuals would have persisted for a while, but by a couple of centuries later, they would be gone. Those surviving pagan rituals among the people would have been "baptized" and transformed into saints' feasts and celebrations, many of which survived into the 20th century. The idea of significant groups of Celtic and Germanic pagans is a fiction for the game. Not that I necessarily think that's a bad thing--it's fun and interesting, and it is Mythic Europe, after all, and not historical Europe.
I actually find the number of complete non-Christians: pagans, skeptics, atheists, and otherwise (except for Jews and Muslims) in the Order to be implausible. Certainly, it's a magical hermetic order, and so there would be more than in society at large. But they all would have been raised in a pervasively Christian society, with the possible exception of those few born and raised in covenants. The prevalence of skeptical magi is more an imposition of the modern, post-enlightenment assumptions and preferences of gamers and writers than a plausible depiction of a medieval society. Most players don't want to play a Christian character, and even have anti-Christian sentiments. This attitude was more evident in the earlier editions, reaching its peak in 3rd. They've since backed off of it quite a bit, but that quality of the Order remains as a relic of it.
If there were such an Order, I would imagine there to be a far greater number of unorthodox and heretical thinkers, but who still have a basic Judeo-Christian paradigm, than what is depicted in the game as it is.
Apologies if there are errors in this: I'm doing it on my phone at the doctor's office, and my big thumbs are notoriously inept with these tiny buttons.
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While it is true that there were very little actual pagans left in Europe during the time that Ars Magica is set, Mystic Europe could be a very different case. There is actual magic, evidence that higher powers exist, and supernatural elements that are found all over.
How that would come out in a game is of course very much based on the stories that a group wants to play. I would expect things like atheist and skeptics to be low, since it is hard to not believe to some degree in things that a Hermetic Magi could very easily find some degree of "proof" for (Divine Auras, Divine Realm beings, miracles, etc). However there would also likely be far more actual pagans, even if they are almost all small groups centered around a local entity. Having an actual (Magic, Faerie) entity which can answer prayers and bestow blessings would almost ensure it.
There would also most likely be a larger percentage of the population that were nominally Christian but who practiced some degree of pagan ritual.
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Agreed. And it makes it more diverse and interesting. After all, there are faeries in the woods and dragons in the mountains, so why not a few pagans?
Paganism may or may not have been stamped out but what is very clear is that any surviving pagans would have been very good at hiding. Arguably one could still find roots o paganism in ancient literature and art even without living practitioners, but at that point we start getting into questions of memes versus belief structures as well. Certainly the ancient myths were known, especially amongst the educated, so for an individual to decide they believed them is certainly plausible, but for any organized group to remain it would have to be extremely limited in size.
Yes. I was just thinking that I should have said that virtually no pagans existed openly by that time. There probably were mystery cults meeting in the woods and crypts and back rooms for a long time after. Perhaps they never ceased to exist altogether. Which makes great gaming, even better than if they were in the open, in my opinion. That's mostly speculation, but I think it's reasonable. The Cathars, Bogomils, Waldensians, Hussites, etc. show us that the hegemony of Catholocism wasn't as absolute as we tend to think of it as having been.
Incidentally, that prisca theologia with its links to Hermes Trismegistus et al., I think fits perfectly with that theory by--can't remember his name, the Seeker who said that the Order is the current expression of a perpetual institution going back into the most ancient of times.
I've been wondering, too, if the Green Stone of the 'Knights of the...' is Hermes's Emerald Tablet.
I somehow missed this before. It's what I think they probably were at the schism, and before. In my particular interpretation for my games, the frequent and emphatic references to their paganism is a combination of misunderstanding and prejudice. It was in actuality more of a Roman vs barbarian thing than a Christian vs pagan one. After all, the two traditions which became Hermetic magic were druidic and Mercurian, not druidic and Christian. It could just as easily have been said about the Latin-tradition magi that they were Graeco-Roman pagans, by an outsider or one who was hostile to them.
I base that on the facts of Gaul and Britain having been Christianized in the 3rd and 4th centuries, Ireland in the 5th, and Caledonia in the 6th and 7th. Merlin would have been a druid, but he was pretty clearly Christian as well. So my version of Diedne, and of Order-era druidism in general, is that it was really more of an "Order of Merlin" based in dark age British, Gallic, and Irish culture and Celtic Christianity than true, original, pre-Christian druidism.
My view of them post-Schism is that they have probably become even less pagan, as the centuries have passed and they have lived as secret Diedne among others. At least the main contingent of them. There's probably a dark and vengeful sub-group that has bitterly and purposefully reverted to paganism, and most likely embraced its darker aspects in their quest for power and revenge.
I think the actual problem is, like Loke said previously, the original game writers weren't as learned in history as the subsequent ones have become, and they wrote Diedne as a pagan druid and Birna as a Germanic pagan, thinking that Celtic and Germanic paganism were still more prevalent than they actually were in the 8th century. That's not a criticism: I wouldn't have been really any better in 1987, probably worse.
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I would want to keep on with the ArM5 mechanics (except maybe combat). But lore wise, I would rather roll everything back to ArM4. Almost everything. I am sure there are exceptions and good ideas worth preserving. But I really liked my old lore. I want a vampire legacy in my House Tremere, and I want my House Flambeau to be Spanish. As for Tytalus, to me the ArM5 version seems much more evil and villainous. I prefer the previous version of "possibly bad guys" as opposed to the current "obviously bad guys" version. I want less Diedne. I prefer that whole bit to be ambiguous and mysterious. Maybe they ate babies, maybe they didn't. Each individual SG should decide that for their table and not be pinned to any one thing. It has been to indefinite for too long.
I also do not favor having divided up the Houses into categories. I can understand maybe the demographics of a house favor a category, but all three categories should be present in each house. By category, I mean the division of True Lineage, Mystery, and Society.
The game also needs to make a choice between Myth and History. Fantasy or Science Fiction. But that is a much more complex topic that touches many game systems.
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I would like for the setting to move forward with the Twilight of Gods and the Criamon destroying the moon as the default setting I think that would be neat.
Totally agree that the 5.th Ed Combat AND Wound System is the best by far.
It is fast, although you have an active Defense, it is easy (always the same mechanic) and pretty elegant, by building an Attack Advantage (Atk - Def), which really gives the feeling of rolling/ fighting against each other - saving time by leaving out dammage rolls - but making sure a good Atk roll will lead to a bigger dammage.
That is simply elegant, fast and smooth. This is totally underrated IMO. Love it.
To me the combat system works pretty good for Dungeon Crawls.
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Hello everyone! I may hqve said something like this before, but something I,ve sen in some games, to great effect, for character creation is a kind of āmultiple steps āstage of life choices, each stage giving skills, virtueā¦
For example:
- infancy: choose between peasant family,merchant, covenfolks, nobles, wild child, magi..
-childhood: similar choices
Apprenticeship: difficult, adverse (tormrnting master!), standard,academical, trained with the turb, cherished pupil..
so youd be the daughter of a wealthy merchant, that was stolen by the fae, rescued by an hermetic maga, and later spend all her time with the turb
Likewise, to riff on someoneās idea, further up, you might choose1+ lesser tradition/type of magic that still survives in a house, such as:
- Pyromancer: take mMF (creating Fire), aff with , you yield the dangerous , and powerful, power of Fire. As such, you probably belongs to House Flambeau
- columbae: explain the tradition, what they do, rhat they probably are ex misc
Champion: you have dedicated you life to being the most able to survive, and win, a battle with a supernatural opponent. Skill. In parma, puissant parma, affinity with Penetration, probably Flambeau
-ambassador: you know how to talk to people and beings, including other magi. Take Gentle gift, a bunch of social skills.. probably jerbiton
-seeker of magical mysteries
-Soldier: you know how to work with, and against, other magi, as well as mundanes, non-hermetic assets. Cue a bunch of rego, some prof: soldier, and possible memberhio card to House Tremere - necromancer: Regi, corpus, maybe a focus, no house
-Wise one: could go to Criamon, bjornaer(secrets of the forsest, weird mysteries), or even Merinitae (they know the weird ways of the fae).
Something that could also be done at chargen is to choose 1+ power sources for your charecter, with xcorresponding attunement: magic, divine, infernal, faerieā¦
Sorry if Iām a little confusing. Iām doing what I can on a crappy virtual keyboard:-/
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Hi,
I think lifepath character creation systems often help players (and GMs) come up with interesting characters, or at least characters that fit the genre. Cyberpunk and Mekton rely on this to do some heavy lifting.
I prefer this as an option rather than a requirement, because sometimes a reasonable character concept doesn't quite fit.
In the case of AM5, sometimes the rules don't quite fit either, especially virtues that assume a character vaguely picked things up sometime in the past. Warrior lets you use xps for combat skills, but you get to use more if you started your training early. Right now we just don't worry about it. An affinity only applies one you have it.
But I think AM does not handle the distinction between childhood and adulthood learning and acquisition of traits very well, and would be served well by a subsystem that helped differentiate. Right now, a year is a year is a year, but children learn some things much faster than adults and other things much slower. Some traits can be trained but others are inborn. A world with the supernatural allows for more blurring, especially for acquiring traits later. But I still find it odd that Year 1 grants 15xps, as does year 21. Not unworkably odd, just a feeling.
Anyway,
Ken
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The last bit is very true, and career path systems certainly help you write backstories and if you turn out a colonel in a system like Twilight 2000, you know you have earned it.
The downside is that the career path system is less flexible. Custom career steps become harder to agree on, and thus they are rarely considered, limiting you to the authors' conceptions of a starting character. You end up with a character who fits the genre and the setting, sometimes fitting so well that it is boring.
Ars Magica has more flexibility. You are limited only by a certain demand for game start balance, and write the narrative to support it. Or you skip the narrative and just start playing. If you start with the narrative, you can pick and choose traits to match it, without constraints.
But yes, I agree, the career path system feels more meaningful than the warrior and educated virtues. And I am not that fond of the virtue/flaw system either. However, bolting a career system on top of the 1980s core mechanic is going to be a lot of effort for a dubious result. Once we look at this route, the question should not be what to change, but what to keep, and TBH there are only four things to keep: spontaneous magic, long term advancement rules (including lab work), the covenant as a character, and troupe style play. If we started with that premise, 6ed would be worth writing.
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Likewise, thereās, Imho, a problem with spontaneous magic. It seems we all use it as a selling point, whereas itācompletely unintuitive.
A beginner will look at their Creo10 and Auram5and probably think they can cast up to lvl 5-ish spells, which, mostly, is only true fot Formulaic spells. This generates disappointment when they discover they can only spontcast the most simple magics ( and that the die has littlt influence in this)
=> in following with ideas expressed by better minds elsewhere on these board, I wonder if we might nit benefit from a āsplit scoreāin the arts, based on theactusl xp: one, used for sponts, with a score calculated using the āslow chart(abilities) and the other, used for other magics, calculated with theāfast chart(arts), so, youād have Creo 1/10 and Auram2/15, and a Ct of 3 when sponting.
Under such a sysem, Diedne Magic could allow one to use their āfastā(full) scores when sponting.
At. The very least, this(or a similar system, where you can compute your spont casting ability from your scores). would be slightly motintuitive for newbies, I believe
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I hope that's a typo ...
But I agree that the die roll should be more important with spontaneous magic. A quick fix could be to add it after halving. Radical and a significant power boost, but not entirely unbalancing the game, I think.
What you suggest is just one out of umpteen moves which should be considered if one really wants to make a new edition from scratch.
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I agree with the above. I'm not saying there are a bunch of errors which need fixing in 5th, I'm saying a new edition is pointless if it's just a tweak of the old edition.
After I've done my caveat, a "But".. If we upscale sponting, it in effects downgrades the importance of formulaic magic. Why learn formulaics if you can spont a similar outcome? Upgrading sponts should mean formulaics are easier to learn, or master or something.
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I played with a guy a few years back who advocated scrapping formulaic magic in its present form completely. Instead, one could earn bonuses with certain spells after gaining experience with spontaneous applications.
While I do not really agree with him, I would not necessarily be sorry to see the formulaic magic go. Those seasons of lab preparations could be used in so many different ways that we have not thought about yet.
Anyway, adding the die after the roll, will roughly add Ā½-1 magnitude. To me, formulaic magic is still worthwhile, particularly for combat spells (cast every round) and high level spells. I do not think such change devalues formulaic magic in any significant way.
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Just an idea...
If you want to make spontaneous magic simpler, why not make it really simpler? Just state that you can cast a spontaneous of a level equal to your lower Art by spending Fatigue (roll a die just to check for botching or extraordinary success). Without Fatigue, you halve that but have no risk of botching. Extraordinary success is a die roll over 10, and provides an additional benefit at the storyguide's discretion.
So the magus with scores of 10 in Creo and 5 in Auram can cast a level 5 spell by spending 1 Fatigue level, with a chance of a botch or wild success. Or a level 3 spell with no risk.
This would actually have a side benefit that generalist magi, with their wider selection of Arts, would have access to areas of spontaneous magic that the specialists don't have, with all those 0 scores. It also gives an incentive to raise those 0 scores other than the need to train an apprentice.
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I think getting rid of formulaic magic would be an error, frankly. While I've enjoyed magi with a spontaneous bent, I've also largely enjoyed magi who design their own special spells. Getting rid of the research loses some of the fun of lab seasons, tbh.
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