Only two elements make me so in ArM: anti-Diedne/exotic paranoia and the trumping quality of the Dominion. First, a gamer reason: I terribly fancy free-form magical systems, and terribly loathe spell-list ones. In ArM, this means spont magic vs. formulaic. Diedne stuff seems like the perfect angle by which one can bolster a spont specialization, but one exploring that angle runs into this wall of vicious Roman cultural paranoia, and boy, their precious Mercurian magic is booorrriiing and lame. Second, a RL reason: any fiction that makes monotheist doctrine seeming literal truth makes me annoyed and defensive (oh, and by the way, I'm no neo-pagan, I'm a apatheist secular transhumanist with a very negative opinion of Abrahamic religions).
I think wiping out House Deidnce is the main reason that +80% of the people who hate Tremere hate them.
There are plenty of non-Christians who play the game and are pro-pagan. House Tremere wiped out "their" House. If there was some House that wiped out House Jerbiton because they were too closely aligned with the Church, I'm sure many Christians would not want to play characters from that House.
This Tremere/Diedne discussion almost always devolves into the Christians talking about human sacrifice by the pagans and the pagans talking about all the atrocities that have been committed in the name of the Church over the years (the order is sometimes reversed). This is the main reason so many game settings invent religions, because people feel strongly when you are talking about "their" religion. (I'm Buddhist, so I'm above such petty bickering.) I think this discussion is a complete waste of time. Nobody is going to convince someone over a message board that his religion is wrong, misguided, or evil.
In older versions of Ars Magica, being pagan was much more popular and was a realistic character option. Many magi in cannon were not actively involved in Christian religion and if religion was mentioned, being pagan was portrayed as virtuous. The Church was magically much less powerful. There has been conjecture that prior line editors were pro-pagan and anti-Church and let their personal preferences color the entire game.
Fifth edition changed all of that. There is no doubt in this version that the Divine is the most powerful realm--look at the Realm Interaction Chart and compare it to old ones. In the Fifth edition, only someone who is irrational would likely follow a pagan diety. The Divine is omni-present and demonstrably the most powerful force in the world. I think that the pendulum has swung too far in the other direction, but I'm not the line editor.
In my games, the Divine is just as powerful, at the extremes, but there is much more variation. The crusades against the Cathars and pogroms against the Jews drive down the Divine aura level or replace it with an Infernal aura. Rather than candy-coating the Divine as some of the source books have done, if a Christian religious leader does something that violates the New Testament in my opinion, he suffers for it. Local priests that are not literate or engage in shananigans can't perform confession or give communion and the local Divine aura dips or disappears. That's how I've decided to handle it.
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For that matter, there are gamers (such as myself) who think that middle age religion (and its fundamentalist modern reinvention) was a scourge on mankind, and are mightly annoyed to see the Divine trump everything else. So ?
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You do know that historically it was the Roman pagans that did in the druids, right? Druidic practicises were made illegal by the Romans under Empreror Claudius in 54 AD. The Romans had destroyed the druids before the Empire became Christian. Pliny claims it is over before his time, and he died in 79 AD. His writing is very similar to that of the British who did in the thugee in India. Not only were the Romans religiously intolerant: they killed off the druids you are so interested in.
The Romans plainly did practice religious intolerance against Christians: one of the big issues in the early church councils was how to deal with tradatores, those who had sacrificed to the Emporer to save their lives during purges. And later they do it again: Christians really and truly did get fed to lions. THen of course was the Great Persecution under Diocletian: all people must worship the Emperor or die. All Christian places of worship to be destroyed. All holy books to be destroyed. All priests to be killed.
Jews were simply not allowed to live in Rome. At all. They were thrown out on pain of death in the time of Claudius.
Or did you mean the vikings? They used to put witches to death by putting them in barrells studded with nails and rolling them down hills. The parliament of the Isle of Man still meets on their hill, used precisely for this purpose.
500 000 people were put to death, just by the Romans, just in the Colloseum.
Te Spnaish Inquisition, horrible though it was, only killed about 3 000 people. It did torture many, many more, but no more than 150 000 in total. They only had a handful of inquisitions: the Romans had an arena in every major city.
In the previous edition it was that Diedne was a woman, and that you couldn't be Archdruid if you were female. There's a battlefield between the druids and Diednistis in the Greater Alps.
The who? The groups in Ancient Magic are non-canonical. 8)
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You make a lot of good arguments. I would also add that Diedne fans (either because they are pro-pagan, or like their kind of magic, or both) feel slighted that "their" House in canon is still held as an object of persecution, while Roman/Christian bigots are allowed to run unopposed. Reintroducing some kind of tolerated neo-Diedne House to the Order, or seeing the collective judgement of the Order shift in canon so that Diedne heritage is accepted again, would do much to change the bitterness, as it would making the Divine less obviously in the right, as you talk about.
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So use an alternate setting? I mean, it is a game about the middle ages. What do you expect?
This conversation has indeed become unproductive. Mister Post is correct. I am going to bow out before I inadvertantly offend someone. And if I already have (pertaining to non fictional matters), I apologize.
~Peace
[quote="DIREWOLF75
Tytalus and FlambeauĂ´s got one kind of treatment for playing with the infernal, Diedne gets a lot worse treatment for MAYBE doing the same?
Cut the pagans a break? Thats ridiculous, when what youĂ´re seemingly advocating is the absolute opposite.
[/quote]
Dude, I wrote the Criamons, and they are building their god in their basement using human sacrifice...I'm all for cutting the pagans a break and allowing them to not just be Victorian Englishmen who think these Celts are fascinating chaps.
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Okay, one last comment...
The Tremere are not Christian either. They hold no more regard for any divine religion thhan they do for paganism. The Tremere are the closest thing to a "atheist secular transhumanist" as you can get in the game setting.
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I'm sorry I still don't understand your explanation. In the vanilla setting
- there are surviving druids in house Ex Miscellanea.
- there are surviving druid-like characters in house Bjornaer (Myanmar sect from Merinita).
- there are druidish guys in Hedge Magic.
The point though is that noone actually uses a purely vanilla setting. "Anyone exploring that angel runs into viscious cultural paranoia?" Um, no...not at all, even in the vanilla setting House Bonisagus has guys doing this.
Also, if you're a transhumanist and the monotheism makes you annoyed, why not just accept that the Catholic saints are bascially gods and they are polytheists? They don't agree on a doctrinal level because they venerate, but do not worship, saints, but from your philosophical perspective that is a semantic distinction lacking difference. Viola! Polytheism!
That depends alot on wether you look around at history or not.
Because in some cultures, those two were sometimes the same thing.
From what i recall, that was never proven.
Clearcut case of persecution for political gains by the Tremere.
More than a third probably. The weakest oh most certainly, but also by far the most useful.
What unity? 
When you leave the mythic part of history behind, please do try again?
Above you manage to say ONE thing correctly, using fear as a weapon. The rest are distortions of reality or simply untrue.
IIRC, you got the "very very pro slavery" correctly this time.
Because the Tremere failed.
So what? If you cant play a RPG without leaving your real life religion out of it, you have a problem.
Those are truths with big modifications to them.
Modern concept of human rights? Nope, some who pushed for it were christian yes, but it was not the formative background.
Put an end to slavery??? Christianity was used to justify slavery in case you missed that part.
Scientific achievement? Oh yes, but wether those are more worth than all the achivements that were prevented, or all the knowledge which was destroyed to enforce christian dogma, well i very much doubt christianity comes out on top there.
I don't think any of us are trying to do this, though. Wanderer's a transhumanist. I'm effectively ignostic. I don't see how either of us could possilby be trying to do this.
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Thank you.
I would refer you to the Gruagachan in Hedge Magic as a candidate for your House. They are very much the noble pagans and have very flexible magic. I would conjecture that it would be more likely to see them incorporated in House Ex Misc, but there is no reason why they couldn't form their own House. There is no advantage that I can think of to have your Own House Gruagachan versus being a portion of the Ex Misc., and it's your saga, so do what you will.
As for limiting the Divine, making them play by their own rules, really does the trick in my opinion. As has been previously noted, there are lots of examples of the followers of the medieval church doing things that are atrocious. Drop the aura or give trangressors Divine curses when they do stuff like that. If a character who is ostensibly Christian does things over the line, have a demon take interest in him and provide him favors.
Whatever you need to tell yourself, Timothy. From my perspective it appears both sides are pointing to all the nasty things the other side's religion has done or has allegedly done. This is the religious equivalent of an ad hominem attack and does not advance the debate at all as to why so many people don't like the Tremere.
Totally doubt that.
Thats not the issue. Tremere politicked, started a war and then pansied out and had to be rescued by the rest of the order, and in all of this the Diedne gets shafted again and again...
Having the house wiped out when other cases of diabolism wasnt remotely as forcefully author-fiat:ed, thats just annoying.
Who cares about the religion, killing off the house completely "just because", thats the issue.
Ignostic? Is that a fiery agnostic or something? 
These are very good ideas, and as a matter of fact, I enormously appreciate the Gruagach as they are done in HMRE and the provision of Cailleach Magic. As a matter of fact, I have envisaged my own revision of the setting, where breakthroughs from various exotic sources, most definitely including the G., both substantially expand Hermetic Magic, and make the Order mouch more friendly to exotics and pagan magics (while putting the Tremere and Jerbiton in the doghouse).
Really? So, you're saying that cities were never dedicated to Odin and all of their inhabitants killed? I'll need to check...I may have them mixed up with the saxons.
Butchery isn't a myth if you accept the Scottish ecclesiastical histories. I'm not sure why you wouldn't.
As to marriage by rape, I have a direct reference to it in my Penguin edition of "Seven Viking Romances".
And they didn't take slaves...despite the slave markets in Ireland being run by the Vikings? I'm sure slavery was permitted in Norse law. I think you're just wrong there.
Yes, failed to -get what- exactly. Please answer wqith something a bit more specific than "power".
I just want people arguing this line to go a bit further than
Steal socks
???
Profit!
for the Tremere war plan.
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To me, the dislike of the tremere is very simple:
They are lying scheming politicians focused on taking over the order through rules and political party type effects. They specialize in the sanitized dueling of certamen to use it to force their position/ They force their apprentices to toe the line in that they control the apprentice's vote in tribunal. Dissent isn't allowed or you are tossed out of the house. Sure ther are favors but you have to pay them back with interest.
This is house whose founder tried to take over the order and almost succeeded. This is the house that was the moving force behind the schism war because they couldn't get the diedne magical secrets (the human sacrifice and other aspects were never proven and very likely could have been tremere proproganda).
This is why I dislike the tremere.
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See, now Wanderer has never played the person in the way you just have.
Then your perspective's wrong, John.
Neither of Wanderer or I is actively religious. So there's no way he can be making an ad homenim attack on me by pointing out the horrible things Christians have done. I agree they have done horrible things at times. Your perspective's simply not correct.
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It's the belief that the question "Is there a God?" is so poorly formed as to be unanswerable, since it lacks any suitable frame of reference for the definition of either God, or evidence tending to prove the existence of whatever you define as God.
It therefore differs from atheism, which is a belief that there is no God, in that it does not accept that the statement "There is no God." contains a noun that has any effective definition, and differs from agnosticism, which is open to evidence of God, because it does not accept that a meaningful definition of "evidence" exists.