Wishlist: Ars Magica 6

Yes, this looks like you just forget what you have written when it suits you, and throw a tantrum.

The Baltic wasn't Russia then, and isn't now. Again you conveniently forget what you have said before.

The problem here is that this is all well and good under pagan theology (Heck the Aztecs claimed the world changed 4 times already), but part and parcel of all the Abrahamic faiths is the idea that the divine is unchanging, with the possible exceptions of the contract made with Abraham and the death of Jesus in 30AD (and resurrection but that is close enough to be virtually simultaneous).
Counting from 30 AD to even the official Christianization of Rome is roughly 300 years of "evil" pagan ceremonies that would, under current AM rules raise a demonic aura. If you count until the last openly Hellenic pagans were slaughtered in Greece that gives you roughly 800 years, and Christianity wasn't even introduced in Russia until 988. 950 years of building infernal auras is a lot to overcome.
Now if the infernal cannot grow where Christianity (or at least a divine based religion) has not arrived, that is a major point which should have been mentioned. If Pagan religions also participate in the divine auras, then that should have been raised. The question of what happens when a version of divine theology disagrees on the issue of what is evil with another and the current rules for the infernal should also be addressed. If I have a Cult of Eros which worships eros as the prime mover and creator of the universe , what happens to a succubus in their church? Does a religiously sponsored orgy raise a divine aura or an infernal one? I realize the game tries not to delve to far into questions of sex, but the general concept that one religions evil may be another's virtue needs to be addressed.

Finally, I was no trying to say that the game's creators are anti-Semitic, I am saying the middle age were anti-Semitic, as well as anti-pagan, anti-gay, anti-polyamory, and a number of other forms of hatred we no longer consider appropriate today, and defending one of these as the "medieval paradigm" while brushing the others aside is decietfull, because your own decisions as to which ones to embrace and which to discard is a form of discrimination in and of itself.

One Shot- I have a temper, yes, you are a jackass. I am going to try and ignore everything you post because I honestly do not like feeling like I need to perform a vivisection of the people I am debating, Johnatho_Link: enjoying the popcorn?

First, that's a steaming pile. Who is brushing any particular thing you mentioned, or any of a 100 things you didn't mention aside? I don't think that the authors really are. And if troupes want to brush stuff aside, fine, it's a game and they can brush aside whatever they don't want, in the interests of fun. I don't see that it's such a huge hurdle to create a setting that satisfy your demands. Your penchant for shoehorning rule systems together to create wonderous items that add +8 to lab totals should serve you well in the endeavor of making a system more to your liking.

I'm loving the popcorn. I'll point out that you always seem to take issue with anyone who disagrees with you and somehow every point that they've ever raised becomes a personal attack on you. Was I personal here? You betcha, but then you and I have a history. We wouldn't have had that history if you could take an ounce of criticism. And you wouldn't be flaming everyone in sight here on this thread if you could take an ounce of criticism.

While also medieval Christians saw God as unchanging, it was not at all clear whether his relationship to mankind was settled once and for all, or was still changing in time.

For an interesting exegete of the Bible from around 1200, with many followers in the 1st half of the 13th century, look at this: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joachim_of_Fiore (in details debatable, but at least easily accessible) and go on from there.

I can take personal criticism, what I cannot stand is people misrepresenting my position. Call me arrogant- I am. Call me a raving out of control megalomaniac, I'll consider the possibility. Call me a 12 year old Somalian girl and I will be highly amused. Do not claim that when I say I want a system where people could exist as and believe in a pagan theology without having to be clearly deluded that what I am really saying is anything other than what I actually said.

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I'm going to try to shift this discussion back to the thing actually being talked about.

My biggest question for you, silveroak, is why you care so much that some religions are false or true in-game. Mythic Europe, though with elements based on real-world beliefs and locations, is an entirely fictional setting in every single facet. This applies equally to the religions it portrays; they are all fictional religious belief systems loosely based upon real religious belief systems, with fictional gods based upon what you may or may not consider real gods depending on your religious beliefs. Whether or not they share names or abilities with the gods you believe in IRL, and no matter how closely you base your character's actions and thoughts on real religious practice, the fact is that the fictional character on the page is worshiping a fictional god and practicing a fictional religion in a fictional world. You shouldn't feel like you're getting "repeatedly punched in the face" (your words) over the fact that your character is blatantly in the wrong for following their pagan beliefs any more than a Christian should feel like they're being repeatedly punched in the face for playing D&D in the Greyhawk setting with an established and confirmed non-Christian pantheon.

Unless you're, like, disgusted by the idea of things sharing names. Because it's clear as day that, even if their historical research and description of things was absolutely 100% perfect (it isn't, and achieving such an ideal is probably impossible), Mythic Christianity wouldn't be Christianity, Mythic Judaism wouldn't be Judaism, Mythic Norse paganism wouldn't be Norse paganism, so on... Because they're just game constructs.

As I said, this would be great as a supplement. I think I'd have a lot of fun turning the belief clock back and sideways and playing a saga where one of the major varieties of paganism was the One True Faith instead. But even if that isn't done, it's not like it's discriminatory against real-world players; the in-game religions will always be fictional even if they exactly match the real religions they're based on. Even if you die in the game, you don't die in real life. :unamused:

So, when I ask you to prove your point that Russia is pagan, you give me a website where the furthest west the Christians get is Livonia (which is modern Estonia)? That doesn't come even close to proving Russia's pagan, Silveroak.

The later attacks on Orthodox Russians by Catholics don't count either, I'd suggest.

I agree there are pagans about in the Baltic States. My point is that your argument made a point of paganism being the common religion in Russia, and it wasn't, and hadn't been for centuries.

Sorry, did you just appropriate the Aztecs for your theology? There's no single "pagan theology".

The Church Fathers thought the Silencing of the Oracles was a real thing: the world had changed. They thought the Flood a real thing: the world had changed. They were perfectly happy to contemplate the possibility of cosmological change. Jews even moreso, because for them they aren't just mining the deposit of faith, they have continuing revelation.

To wind back to Catholics: the Divine is unchanging, but his plan is unfolding, and this causes apparent change. This is pretty basic catechistic stuff, Silveroak. Without it you can't explain even simple stuff like dietary law.

Eat only plants.
OK, now you can eat animals (Noah).
But not the dirty ones (Moses)
But actually, yes, the dirty ones (Paul)
But enjoy it while it lasts because you'll give meat up eventually (John of Patmos in Revelation - disputed).

The biggest cosmological break I can think of, for example, is Eusebius, who is the first one to explain how the world can be falling into sin and awaiting the Messiah, and yet suddenly have a Constantine in it. (The previous view was wrong and the Empire is not going to exterminate the Church, it is destined to prepare the world for the coming of the Celestial Kingdom). That was a huge deal to the Christians who were still expecting imminent extermination. The rules had changed.
A similar thing happens in Orthodoxy wen Constantinople falls. The rules of the world are obviously different.

You also are missing a heap of the Millenarial things, but basically this happened a lot and the theology ran to catch up.

Not all pagans were evil. The good ones went to a comfy part of Hell (Limbo) and were released by Jesus during the Harrowing. Virgil, for example, who is the source of Virgilian magic, was considered a rockin' dude by the period Catholics, and it seemed unlikely God would torture him eternally for the sin of not being born before Jesus came. Ergo: God didn't.

I'd suspect they had strong faerie auras, myself, but a lot of the early Church fathers saw, say, Aristotle as a righteous unbeliever who would be treated well by God. The Harrowing was God's way of being fair to unbelievers from before the incarnation.

It's not a lot to overcome, by the way. it can be removed with a single act of grace by God on behalf of a saint. That's no harder than throwing all of the serpents out of Ireland. The Crown of Hungary is a living Divine being. Casting out devils is, according to Christian sources, quite easy. There are lots of people who are not working for God who do it. He'll deny them at the Last Judgement.

The Infernal can grow in areas where heinous things happen before the arrival of the dominion. The child sacrifices in Carthage, for example, seem to have demonic associations. (BS&S)

Pagans can have Dominion auras. The fire worshippers of the East have it, for example. (CatC).

It has been: God does whatever is best for the story you want to tell, because this is a game, not a simulation. God is your NPC. (The Divine).

If you have a cult of Eros and have Eros as the prime mover, great for you: do whatever else you like. You're the one who has created he Eros cult; you say what it does to your world.

It's not that the game ignores questions of sex. It's just that sex, of itself, is not particularly interesting from a game perspective. Consequences are interesting.

Ah, so I'm not anti-Semetic, just "deceitful" and "discriminatory". Good to know.

Your baseline for how Jews were treated is oversimplified, and we've dealt with it much more deeply in the source material. We have noted how Jew farming worked, and discussed it at length.
The game is designed so that marginalised groups tend to flock to covenants, because they are less repressive than the surrounding civilizations, we have explicitly stated this with regard to women (particularly in LoM), pagans and gay people. I'm not sure we've dealt with poly*.

More babes for the party! Wait...

Is it to late to comment on how this premise by itself is BS. And doesn't show a very clear understanding of the setting or the rules. The rules say following any "benevolent" monotheistic religion generates a dominion aura and the faithful of all such creeds can generate miracles. By my understanding this is pretty far from what Christians would have believed in 1220. Witnessing a devote Muslim having his prayers answered to fend off a christian attacker or wandering into a level 8-10 Zoroastrian regio might very well shake a Christian's theology to the core.

It's probably also important to point out that the modern idea of pagan=polythesitic isn't historically accurate as I understand it. And many "Pagans" were (and are today) actually monotheistic theologically. So cannonically Mandeans, Neoplatonist, Zoroastrians and those weird tribesman out on the Purple Isles are all dominion religions and as empirically true in Mythic Europe as The Church is.

In fact I would say any "in-game character" with high levels of Dominion lore would probably have to be a bit delusional to ascribe wholeheartedly to any major religion of the time. Theologically they would probably be what we would consider Universalists. Though if they also had high levels of Magic Lore they might be Neoplatonist. Mythic version of Gregory of Nyssa anyone.

Keep in mind that characters seeking counsel even from the angels themselves will receive advice in accordance with the Divine subreligion they follow. Having high Dominion Lore might tell you a lot about angels and Divine auras, and it might even tell you that it's part of God's plan that some of your religion's enemies be supported as well, but at most the only overarching effect I imagine that causing is the Muslim-esque belief that everybody else has incomplete and imperfect versions of the Divine message while yours is the most accurate. I think universalism would be an individual case for high-Dominion-lore people, not a normally-occurring result of having high Dominion Lore.

Good post though, maine.

The early Christians in Judea were culturally Jewish and so they practiced polygamy. It was only when the pagan Romans told them it was sinful that they stopped. Paul, the Roman citizen, was very big on making them more like pagans from his part of the Empire. Hence, wearing whatever clothes you wanted and eating lobster if you liked, but sex was virtually always immoral for his people. There's quite a lot of debate as to what his earlier doctrinal background was.

Sure the "We are the one pure religion everybody else is a little bit off" would be a common rationalization of the world the rules create. But I think that still qualifies as being a bit delusional in my book. The reality as stated by RAW is in fact that no religion is "Right" and therefor none can accurately claim to be entirely true. And there are clues to that reality evident in the setting and those with knowledge of those clues would have to choose how to deal with them. What do they do Embrace, Deny, Ignore or Missinterperet?

Being guided by angels in accordance with one's own religion is also a phenomenon that would confuse things not illuminate them. Because if that is what happens then it stands to reason that characters with a very good understanding of angelic behavior (i.e. high Dominion Lore) would have knowledge of it happening.

If a Mythic christian talks to the Archangel Gabriel is it the same being that a Mythic Muslim would expect?

What would that being say if asked if Jesus was the Messiah or just a prophet or if Mohamed was a prophet?

Do the angels just refuse to answer questions like that or do they give different answers to different people?

These are all YSMV questions but however they are answered in your game they still reflect and inform on the reality you create.

"Yes"

(Sorry, couldn't resist. As they say, truth is a three-edged sword. :laughing: )

I can't find the quote right now, but I recall reading that the latter is true in the base setting. Angels giving people spiritual advice do so based on their religious beliefs, and thus the same question, asked of the same angel at different times by summoners from two different religions, will likely receive a different answer each time. Of course, that's still better than asking a senior churchman or rabbi, because angels by their nature will never have an ulterior motive or themselves be deceived, and so will always give you the answer that would be correct by the faith system you follow (even if the churchmen would neglect to tell you about it because it's bad for the lining in their pockets). But they tell you based on your faith.

And the angels might still be Vorlons!

So what happens if a christitian and muslim are in the presence of the same angel at the same time?

I don't think that is correct. An angel, like God himself, will give answers that are in accordance to the Divine Plan. The Divine Plan is however (by definition) incomprehensible to mortals, and perhaps even to angels. Hence why aspects of the Divine Plan appear contradictory or otherwise hard to understand.

Characters, in-play, are not meant to be able to fully understand the Divine Plan (even if they sometimes think that they might be able to). The players are likewise not really meant to understand the Divine Plan, in the same way that the players are not really meant to be able to understand how to cast a Creo Herbam spell.

The angel answers in whatever way forwards God's plan and both men promptly assume the angel is actually a demon in disguise for not directly decrying the other side, I would think. People weren't exactly open to alternative thought back then.

@Richard: God can provide Aid to both sides who are in direct conflict with one another. The Divine Plan isn't truly contradictory, but that doesn't mean that it can't appear to push two people in contradictory directions.