Where is the Order of Reason?

Simple question. Why doesn't the 5th ed. include the Realm of Reason, and the Order of Reason?

That was done away with in 4th edition, along with the Oder of Galefrey and Tempus vis :wink:

LOL, just a joke. The whole "Reason" thing was chucked out last century. It bbriefly appeared in 3rd edition, and has been eradicated and ignored ever since.

The reason for no Reason? It did not fit with the concept of the game at all, and many people thought it was simply a bad idea. I myself have never encountered it. I have many 3rd edition supplaments, but no 3rd ed game rules. I started with 4th edition. It does not appeal to me aesthetically, and therefor I agree with the decision to remove it oh so long ago (like, what, 12 years ago? More?)

That didn't occured to me, as I use an...another timeline...from...another universe... (you know, this "universe" where magi Tremere succeed at becoming vampires). And the Reason existed in the 4th edition, I remember well a story wherein a magus of the Order is asked to perform acts of magic in an university, and is troubled by the difficulty he has to cast his spells.

And following my opinion, the Reason has everything to do with Ars Magica, but this is a personnal point of view.

The whole Reason thing was put in to better fit in with White Wolf's World of Darkness storyline. When the game left White Wolf, the Order of Reason stayed behind...

In my mind it never really fit into Mythic Europe. So, for me, good riddance...

If you want it in your Saga, it's easy enough to stick back in.

Sit vis vobiscum,
ShopKeepJon

I know the timeline you speak of. I play in the one right next to it, where the Tremere heroically wiped out the vampyric infection and Flambeau was a Spaniard.

Which book was that? I do not recal any such scenario, but I could be wrong. Still, there was no Realm of Reason in 4th edition, not in the core rules anyway.

I wholeheartedly support retro players, so I say go for it! I personally disagree with you about Reason being very much a part of Ars Magica, as it only appears briefly in one middle edition of the game, two editions and two publishers ago! (If you count WotC that is). However, I am more than willing to debate with you and listen to your point of view. It may enlighten other readers who are unaware of the phenomenon of which we speak. :smiley:

Reason was borne into this world in 3rd edition during the time that Ars Magica was a fosterson of White Wolf. The Big Bad Wolf tried to make a genuine World of Darkness preamble out of the helpless kid, what with clans of vampires and the onslaught of technomancers. But reason was met with a timely euthanasia upon the games release from the Wolf (anyone smell the meddling of a euthantos or two?). Though, if only a necromancer would resurrect the imagery of 3rd...

If you've spotted a passage of troublesome casting at an university the explanation might be that universities are often related to the Dominion.

If you have interest in other aspects of what reason was in 3rd edition you might find interesting material in the recently published book Arts and Academe.

Because it was the most horrendeous and useless thing ever included in the game. And included only to merge the gameworld with another one of the same publisher.

Terrible idea and not much better concept.

Not to my knowledge no.

The order of reason never made it in to Ars Magica. As for the realm of reason here is the excerpt from the Ars magica FAQ:

Besides if I remember right, in that other game all the bad things that were done were linked.

Order of Reason causes the loss of magic as the fewer people who believe in magic weakens it, the loss of magic leads to the Tremere desperately searching for a method to replace longevity potions to extend their lives. Which leads to the whole vampire mistake.

The entire principle of vanishing magic isn't really fun for players who play a game where they are the magicians.

Sure, I'm glad trying to explain :slight_smile: (I say "try", because as english is not my mother language, discussing philosophy could be quite a challenge for me ^^)

My vision of the Ars Magica universe is a lot on philosophy, and particularly on rationalism (beware: rationalism is NOT only science. Rationalism is the way of understanding the world around us. Describing thunder as the wrath of a god is a form of rationalism, and describing the same thunder as the action of million of particle of water is another way of rationalising).

One great question of ancient greek philosophy is: are we as we are because the world affected us, or is the world as it is because we affected it, or is there interaction? Simplier: do we have hands in order to throw rocks, or rocks are they shaped in such way they could be throwed by our hands?

Another philosophical statement by a middle-age monk: "Changing his vision of the world can change the world around us."

With that in mind, my precise vision is: the world allows us to see it by any means we can imagine, and in return, we change the world by seeing it in these ways. Which lead to Auras: we have the capacity of Faith, and trough faith, we create Faith Auras which modify the parts of the world where the Auras stand. A Divine forest is totally different of a Magical or an Infernal one.

Science is one of the ways of seeing the world. As Magi alter the world (creating Auras) by using or studying magic, as believers alter the world by praying and building shrines, scientists alter the world by creating science laboratories and studying the world trough science, thus creating Auras according to their "believes".

Therefore, apparition of Science Auras, or Reason, is inevitable in my universe.

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Reis, you do very well and it's a pleasure reading your points. They're very interesting and it is an approach I've loved when playing Mage: The Ascension, but that I prefer to keep out of the context when playing Ars Magica - and instead explore other subjects and themes.

The debate of the degrees of belief defining reality is a longstanding tradition with the game, even if one not found as often when it comes to 5th; or at least is more about debating how Mythic Europe 'works' (its natural laws etc.) based on more or less Medieval sources. The question of a mutability of that reality through altering beliefs is less paramount - and was in fact quite connected to especially the 3rd edition, as was True Reason.

Erik already quoted an inligtening passage from the FAQ, so I'll toss in another bit on 'belief defines reality' from the same source:

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I was thinking always like you. However science in the 13th century was very weak and influenced by superstitions from many sources. So there is a little reason for Reason in this age.
A saga in the 14th century may be different a bit but not so much.

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It isn't a superstition ifthe demons actually exist, and the spells actually work, though. You can scientifically demonstrate magic with trivial difficulty in Mythic Europe. A reasonable person doesn't disbelief "superstition" in Mythic Europe: he becomes more "superstitious" because reason is a tool given by God to allow us to excercise our free will to come willingly to him. Reason makes you religious, arguably, in Mythic Europe.

Problem with that is that then EVERYTHING people believe IS true. Which means delusions become impossible. And how then do you handle when 2 or more larger groups of people believe something contradicting?

People believe as they do because thats how they see the world, not everything will be correct, the world around them is the base for beliefs, beliefs isnt the base for the world. That would make for a totally impossible world on a longterm basis.
The belief that the world would end 1000 AD was for example extremely widespread in christian lands. So does that mean that all lands with christians in majority just went BOOOM at 1000 AD? So what happened to those who didnt believe that then?

Because at times many thinks faeries are demons(especially from the rise of islam and forward, that would mean they actually become demons then...

No thank you, i prefer a playable world.

The world we play in is basically the real world but with the addition of magic, divine, faeries, the infernal and all the mythical stuff. But real world physics still apply, its just not very common that people actually know how and truly understands how it all works.

What they are getting at though is the quasi-quantum physics that the original authors had in mind when they set forth the concept of BDR and Mythic Paradigm. We have come a long way from that, mind you, but this is indeed a part of the legacy of Ars Magica. Remember, Tweet and Rein*Hagen were (and prolly still are) very liberal and existential in their philosophy.

Timothy:
I mean the science was influenced by superstitions in the real history. And the game is just a model of the medieval things plus a magic system based on fantasy games.

Reis Tahlen worded another point of view to the realm of the Reason so it is pointless to react with the usual arguments.
I see the Reason similar like him. The realms are simly different approach of the different kind of faiths.
Magic - mystical
Divine - religious
Infernal - sinful
Fairie - childlike
Reason - analytical

Reason is also a faith, a faith in scrunity and logic.
Faithful thinking sets back the mystical/magical things in its home. The analytical thinking is the opposite of the mystical paradigm so they can do the same. Supernatural thinking has a disadvantage when meeting with logical, analytical thinking in the latters home.

Reason would never make people religious. One cannot decide he will belive in God because beliefs are not logical things. I mean here the normal way of thinking without psychological methods.

DIREWOLF75:
The whole ArM paradigm is based in theory on the medieval paradigm. And paradigms are simply beliefs how the things work, what is important and what is deleterious. :laughing:

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Heh, HARDLY! Not when magic IS provable beyond any shadow of doubt. You´re mixing MODERN paradigm into the medieval one even worse by that kind of position.

:unamused:
Not when miracles DO happen.

No, much of it is based of one MODERN INTERPRETATION of "the medieval paradigm". Thats fine if thats whats aimed for, but the two are not the same. As i said in another thread, the thought that anyone seriously considered the world to be flat in medieval time is something that appeared in the 18th-19th century, noone but a few very esoterical philosophers argued the flat earth thesis, and they did so like the Chinese did, on a philosophical basis, not on the basis of "this is how the world is physically shaped" even if im sure some of them really also thought that(well maybe not, but who knows, there´s always a few loonies about).
Its like taking the phrase "all roads leads to Rome" and claim that people really believes it and that it IS real because they really DO use the phrase.

DIREWOLF75:
Reason is absolutely a modern paradigm of course. That's why I said earlier it doesn't matter so much in the 13th century.
I think however this interpretation is better than the rulebook definition was. This is enough to get a model and put it into a game.

Miracles happen but the people forget these soon. This is my personal experience. A very few may became faithful of course.

The interpretation is not only modern but also very simplified. As I see players use only a few elements of the available (and just for you: belived) medieval beliefs. At first it is simply because the lack of information. E.g. the earlier editions offered some beliefs but htey disappeared from the 5th edition.
And there were beliefs which were opposed to each other. Usually one has to choose one of them.

Marko Markoko:
It's hard to belive :slight_smile: to me you have choosed to be a beliver.
Religion and faith are different things. One can have any of them separately, may have both or neither of them.
The word reason has many meanings. I tried to refer here to it as a logical, analytical approach and not simply the process of thinking or the understanding of teachings.

It would be interesting to know you if you really made yourself a belief.

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I think one should not mix "reason", which is our capacity of reasoning, and the Reason, which is just the name which was given in previous edition of Ars Magica.

The Reason is all about science, analytic method, and thesis/hypothesis. Like I said, the main difference between realms is rationalising, or "How do I see the world around me?". Thus, each realm reasons, but this reasoning has nothing to do with the Reason (with capital "r").

About the medieval paradygm: nothing is carved into stone. We believed that middle-age men were barbarians, with no hygiene, illiterate and that this period of history was a mud-hole (Why do you think we called this "the Dark Ages"? It is because renaissance historians thought that no good came from this period. What was important was Antiquity, age of light and wondrous discovery, and nothing else). The more we do ressearch about middle-age, the more we discover that a LOT of improvement were made during this period, and the life of the commoner wasn't as awful as we imagined.

This to say that I don't rely on the Medieval Paradygm as described in the book; I would hate to prevent something because of this, and some months later see one of my player coming with ressearch proving this way of seeing Middle-Age is totally inaccurate, thus completely changin my game world.

I adopted this for the "Medieval Paradygm": all physical laws, all chemical operation, all biological activities exist. The fact is that people don't notice, or don't care. One will not elaborate the theory of inerty (or is it momentum? I don't know the english word) because he sees a rock continuing its course after being pushed. It is more likely he'll say "Yeah, it rolls, great, now coming back to my duties...". There ARE people who will say: "Mmmh, this is strange, with my strenght I could only push this rock so far, but it continued his way.", but depending of his/her believes, he could probably shrug and say it's God's will, or whatever else. The minority who will try to find the exact explanation, and discover this physical law, are the people who form the Order of Reason.

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I'm sorry you consider my arguments pointless. I'd respond by saying that you don't just get to have the term "Reason" mean whatever you like it to mean and still be having a convwersation about Reason with another person. Conversation requires that signifiers not be arbitrary.

I admit to not seeing the difference between religious and mystical: the Chrisitan Church is a mystery cult after all. Also, "sinful" doesn't make any sense on its own: it's a reactive definiton.

If you scrutinize the evidence in Mythic Europe, then magic exists.

So, your Reasonable Man sees a magus cast a fireball and he does...what? If he examines it analytically, by having the magus cast it over and over again in controlled conditions, he just -keeps- seeing the fireball. Or does the fact that he has faith in an observational, analytical method somehow make him -unable- to see the fireball and -unable- to actually gather scientific evidence?

I don't undersatnd the point you are trying to make here. The Catholic Church through the game period and even today does not accept the premise that faith in God is anything other than a rational proposition based on the testimony of reliable witnesses. That is, it doesn't accept your idea that someone faith and reason are opposites. Surely that this is true is therefore part of the Mythic Paradigm: god is demonstrable.

This is not correct: that you state something in a forceful way does not make it true. 8)

Well, most of the great fathers of the church disagreed with you, here.

I'm sorry but I don't understand what you mean here.