Don't tell me you need a rules system to allow you "latitude of interpretation"! That's inborn to you!
And there is no "idea that the church is always right" in Mythic Europe, that you somehow have to swallow. The Divine Realm provides some defense for Christian medieval society, though, to aid the storyguide in presenting a consistent and stable background.
Cheers
Look, like I said before, the Romans had an annual religious celebration, the Saturnalia, which was a city wide orgy.
Under current rules this would have resulted in the buildup to a level 10 infernal aura.
You would expect that the Romans would have noticed that the cities participating in these rituals had demons running around torturing people for their own amusement.
Furthermore, since an infernal aura only diminishes under a stronger aura, Rome would still be a level 10 infernal aura, along with huge swaths of it's previous empire.
I would like rules where these sort of issues looking back do not occur, because under Roman religion orgies are not a sin, and therefore do not create infernal auras. Is that really too much to ask?
There is no official doctrine that the church is always right, but the idea is pervasive and ubiquitous within the existing rulebooks, in how just about every rule is written. I accept that you do not see it, I ask that you take another look with that thought in mind.
There are currently no realm rules in ArM5 and Mythic Europe you can just apply to Classical Rome. You would have to start by giving the Divine and Infernal Realms a history, aligned to the history of the people of Mythic Europe.
There might be some attempts at histories of ArM5 game concepts in Subrosa #16, though: https://forum.atlas-games.com/t/treachery-too-powerful/290/1 .
Cheers
As I read the rules it doesn't say anything about those rules having started at a specific date, and presuming the entire laws of the universe didn't decide to stand on their head, they presumably would have applied the same in ancient Rome as they do in 1220 Russia where paganism still predominates, is the official religion, and a part of the setting.
I mean it would be one thing if there were something in the ROP:I about the nature of the infernal changing in accordance with regional prevailing religion, but as written the Muslims and pagans alike are dealing with Catholic demons. We won't even mention the poor Jew who are apparently wrong about their religious beliefs by nature of the fact they are a minority.
Then again, the standard medieval line on Jews is that they were half demons who could turn into rats and went around poisoning wells, so I guess you are being nice there, or perhaps you overlooked that.
Silver oak you seem to be very determined to find fault with the current Arm5 system. You have just had the line editor, David Chart state that he is a Pagan, and he still chose to write the game as he did. You complain the game isn't inclusive enough - but really, it seems what you're asking for is the game to be written for you and your game, and won't be happy until you get what you want.
So far as I can recall, you are the first person on this board to complain about this. The guys on TGDMB - who criticize Ars Magica for many things, aren't complaining about the lack of inclusiveness of pagan religions. On RPG.Net where the site veers incredibly left and SJW - people don't complain about Ars Magica the way you do.
I think you're alone here in this demand that the game be more inclusive for Pagan belief systems. As has been repeatedly said, no one is stopping you from picking and choosing what rules from Ars Magica to use. No one is stopping you from creating your own version of fantasty medieval europe. What you want in the game simply isn't commercially viable.
Well, the Russia of 1220 is in general Christianized. Just study a little, starting perhaps from here: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christiani ... van_Rus%27 .
More interesting are people which were actually still pagans around 1220, like several people in the Baltic. How is their relationship with the Infernal? I can imagine several explanations - but cannot give you an official one.
The average Catholic priest will point out, that the souls of pagan people go to hell anyway, and do hence not provide an incentive for demons to help them with it. But there is tmk no statement in the ArM5 rules about the final destinations of specific souls, no matter what their faith.
These - undiversified - demons are indeed a problem in RoP:TI.
Why is that?
Cheers
There are two things I want. The first is to have rules or rules options written into the books where people don't have to be lunatics to not ee that Christianity I the obvious one true religion in this world.
The second is for people to stop making bigoted personal attacks like the following:
I say what I mean and you do not need to assume I mmean something else to have a straw man to beat up as an effigy of me.
FYI, this is kind of exactly my point here- the rules as presented are universal but do not work universally. If the entire universe worked differently 1000 years ago that is kind of a really big deal and should probably at least be mentioned. If not then the current rules should have been able to work 1000 years ago. When did the universe get an upgrade and reboot, and more significantly, how?
Anyone fix some popcorn?
You're one to talk about personal attacks, silveroak 
At most, I think what silveroak is saying should be (part of?) a supplement filled with optional rules. If you try to cater to everyone in the core rulebook, all you'll accomplish is those same people complaining about the book being way too big. (Along with everybody complaining that the bigness makes it too expensive )
Though at the end, I hardly even consider this a point worth discussing. Mythic Europe is no less fictional than any other setting, and the religions it portrays are at best homages, loosely based upon the real deal. Can you not handle namesharing? Mythic Christianity is not Christianity, Mythic Judaism is not Judaism, Mythic Norse paganism is not Norse paganism. You are playing fictional characters in a fictional world with fictional religious beliefs that draw influence from actual, real religious beliefs. Throwing a hissy fit over your own pagan religion being verifiably untrue in Mythic Europe is just as silly as a Christian or atheist throwing a fit over their religious beliefs being verifiably untrue in the Greyhawk D&D setting.
FWIW, none of these really rise to the level of personal attacks. Or the definition of personal attacks is so skewed that... oh wait, nevermind.
By your statement ArM5 players then are lunatics? Talk about a bigot, shall we?
Otherwise I did answer that already:
Cheers
The realm rules are for medieval Mythic Europe. We had that already.
Using Mythic Europe with its realms for a game in ancient Rome doesn't make any more sense than playing an Arthurian saga with Traveller.
Cheers
The people (including myself) who I played with in person before moving not long ago: 1 Agnostic, 2 Atheists, 1 Catholic, 1 Jew, and 2 Wiccans. Two of those are also women. I don't think we ever had a problem with the way things were written, understanding things as a description of Mythic Europe. We did adapt as we saw fit, like when we headed toward India everyone was fine with the SG placing the realms as he thought reasonable. I'm not against having suggestions for ways to adjust the setting in a supplement; I even posted about adjusting the setting not long ago. It wouldn't be that hard to adjust the setting in lots of ways, though as that would not be Mythic Europe I think the supplement idea suggested is a good one. But the point is the group I was with wasn't turned off.
They did notice. The various cults and magical traditions worked hard to combat these dark forces and prevent them from destabilising Rome. For the most part, for many years, they succeeded and Rome prospered under their protection. Over time though...
At first many of these magical cultists balked at the idea of allowing the Empire to cast aside its traditional practices and their devotions to their gods, but the evidence was clear; the Dominion was the strongest defense against the darkness. Little by little, the Empire was allowed to turn to Christianity, to embrace it. It was the cultists who helped it spread when they used their networks of roads to support efforts to build chapels and churches in place of shrines and temples.
At least... That's one possible in-game explanation.
It really isn't too much to ask, no. I don't think that's the way I would take the game, but it's a worthwhile discussion. I come at it, as I'm sure I've said many times before here and elsewhere, from the perspective of an atheist who views all religions with the same eyebrow arching bewilderment but preserve a special contempt for those who claim a moral authority over their practitioners and the wider societies in which they operate. You can make your own mind up which ones they might be.
So with that in mind... I'm absolutely on board with the Dominion being "right" as an in-game construct. I have no more affection for the religions that fall under the banner of the Dominion than I do for any that I might find in a D&D or Pathfinder rulebook. So why stick to that fairly single-minded Dominion line? Because it fits the game. It fits the game that the dominating religions are ways of reflecting a Divine power that was in our history, in the years in which the game is currently set, so adhered to.
But couldn't that be true of pagan religions? I guess it could. And in your saga, I suspect you might take that line. But I like the idea of the pagan practices and religions being on a path to somewhere; it's what we did when we didn't really know the truth (again, staunch atheist so this is all in-game stuff). And then the truth is found and the old ways start to die out a little, become a little more distant, perhaps being maintained by those who know what power they still have.
I'm not the line editor so this may be an incorrect assessment, but I think that the in-game Church thinks the Church is always right, but if you look across at the other religions of the Dominion you'll see that the Church isn't quite right. Or rather, they're all as right as each other. And that involves being as wrong as each other at times too.
That a pseudo-historical game proposes to use a fantasized interpretation of the predominant religious thinking of the period as the basis for its own cosmology should be no surprise. I don't see it as something to walk away from either from a setting or a game design perspective. I would not want to see such a strong vision watered down by taking the D&D approach of insisting that all the different gods are all a little bit equal and they all give you different but entirely balanced benefits.
It's a sensible thing to look at. There are, to this day, people protesting at the advancement of women within the Anglican Church, there are newspapers photoshopping female world leaders out of pictures to ensure that men and women are kept separate, and there are the most dreadful things done in the name of a prophet who should he actually exist and be watching would surely be retching at the very thought of what he's inspired. So why insist that the Dominion is the Dominion is the Dominion? Because none of that makes any difference.
Is Ars Magica and it's take on the Dominion some kind of cunning ploy to convert people to the adulation of a given version of a popular god? If it is, it's been working away at me for the last 24 and I'm not sure it's there yet.
Allow me to chime in.
In the rules as written the cosmology of the world has changed drastically at least twice, because pagan authors said that it had.
The first great change was the Titanomchy, where the magical realm ceded its power to the Faerie realm, and the elemental forces were tamed by the Gods.
The second was the Silencing of the Oracles, which is, as the name suggests, when the gods of the Greeks and Romans stopped interacting with humans on a daily basis, and ceased telling them the future. This was noted in Plutarch and others.
Some early Christian fathers suggested that the silencing was due to the chronologically-nigh Incarnation of Jesus. In 3rd edition, that was explicitly true: the incarnation created a tide of Dominion in the world, which was receeding, because 3rd was bleak and angsty. This has not been carried into 5th.
In 3rd a whole new Realm emerged (Reason). This has not been carried into 5th.
House Criamon also claims their Founder moved the World Tree so that magic works differently in the world now. That the Cave of Twisting Shadows is the navel of the world is obvious to anyone who looks.
Further back, there's an obvious attempt by certain magical creatures to change the way the world works. The Muspeli are the obvious ones, but the three dragons and three orders of magicians...that's possibly a similar thing.
No, they aren't: we have a mix of sources.
As one of the authors I remember having this argument. For example, devil children aren't possible in Catholic theology - they simply can't exist. I wrote the inccubus and succubss, and you'll see they are the Catholic version: they ferry the seed of evil men to evil women, but are themselves sterile. Devil children can exist in Jewish theology, which is why they were included in the book.
I objected to this at the time because some of the Hebrew authors who believed in Devil Children thought that was what caused people from other countries to look so different. For example, as a person with some Chinese ancestors, according to that particular group of ancient authors, my lack of height and skin tone are demonic trains that ultimately come from the Lillim. I think the other authors handled their inclusion, minus these racist elements, quite well...but if you look you can see the seam in the book where the Catholic view (no demonic children, all a deception) and Jewish view (of course demonic children...) are sitting next to each other and not quite jelling seamlessly.
Similarly the smallest class of demons, created by human sin, are Jewish in origin. The power to make demons cannot reside in humans in Catholic thought in period.
All of the major religions are wrong. The Catholics are wrong (Jesus is not the only path to salvation). The Muslims are wrong (Muhammad is not the final word from the Godhead). The Jews are wrong (Tey are not the only chosen people of God). The Zoroastrians (who have Dominion despite being non-Ambrhamic) are wrong (air burial doesn't matter). The Mithrans are wrong (ditto on them having Dominion). The Hyskos had Dominion (but, no God is not the Sun).
That's actually not the standard medieval line on Jews. As to the poisoning wells...you've not read Antagonists, right?
Either call us anti-Semitic or don't, Silveroak. I'm happy to defend my work on that score.
I personally think we go light on the Church. In 1220, Ambrose and his "Hwy, be cool guys!" view is considered a heretical one. I can understand not wanting people to be forced to play Photianism, though.
Also, Silveroak, the Saturnalia is not described in any one source, but there's no period source that calls it a city wide orgy that I'm aware of. Do you have one?
Similarly you seem to be claiming Russia was pagan in 1220. It wasn't; if you mean the Kievian Rus. Is that what you mean? Again, source?
Well to beginwith there were the Northern Crusades to convert the north Baltic pagans to Christianity by force:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_Crusades from 1198 to 1290, which suggests at least a heavy openly pagan presence up until 1290...
let me say as well, I did not start out to "throw a fit" but some COMPLETE ASSHOLES feel the need to take what I have said and claim it says omething completely different.
For example, One shot claims I said
When what I said was that people in the game would have to be completely delusional under these rules not to realize that Christianity was the one true faith in the game world.
Frankly, I had no real problem with Ars Magic 5h edition- for those who did not notice the topic of this thread was a wishlist for 6th edition, and that was what I posted, the same as those who want different rules for covenant management or want a specific different date for start of play- I was wanting religion and options for differing perspectives to be more like 3rd edition than 5th in the 6th edition.
The COMPLETE and UTTER BULLHIT I have had to suffer for raising this issue has made me reconsider this point a few times, not because my perspective on the way religion is treated in the game has changed, but because it appears from what I have read here that the authors, contributors, and staff don't appear to have one decent excuse for a human being numbering amongst them.
Now, if you want to convince me that you are even capable of being a decent human being never mind being considered possibly correct, start by responding to what I actually say and not what you make up and claim that I said. One Shot can completely fuck off and die for all I care at this point. Like I have said repeatedly the only opinion you are succeeding in changing here with these tactics is my opinion of you.