Banestorm

[Peter Knutsen]

Originally Posted by Jovus

It's worth pointing out, before we get too far into claiming what historical truth is, that memetics isn't a science. It's an idea by analogy, which makes it attractive, but it doesn't have and has never claimed the proper ontological grounding to make claims about truth.

I regard it as a highly useful tool, especially because my Ärth setting deals so much with memetic conflicts. Missonaries trying to spread Christianity and Islam, and using centuries of experience (many centuries for the Christians) at how to go about it (the Vikings, supermanly though they were, weren't the first barbarian warrior people to be converted), and more or less coherent groups of counter-missionaries trying to thwart their efforts.

But yes, it isn't a science. I think of it as a useful "mental model". Complete with the sneezing and coughing (or lack thereoff).

It may also be less relevant for campaign worlds such as Yrth or Mythic Europe, where things are more settled down. I specifically choose the late 10th centruy because that is when Denmark was a hotspot, in the theopoligical sense, and it's a turning point where heroic counter-missionaries (or missionaries) can achieve real tangible progress.

[Anders]

There's a story in... a book on Asa-religion (sorry, mind's blank) about how a pagan priest walked up to a Christian priest and loudly told everyone within earshot how Thor had challenged Christ to a wrestling match and the feeble god of the southerners hadn't even turned up!

The Christian priest simply replied that Thor existed only because Christ allowed him to. I don't know where the conversation went after that, but I can't really imagine it going anywhere good...

Edit: The feeling I get is "my dad can beat up your dad" played for keeps.

[vicky_molokh]

I think removing any generic term only to replace it with many specific ones forces people to re-examine the details of related phenomena. Likewise, coming up with a generic term sometimes causes new ideas, but is prone to fuzzy up the definitions and lines between subsets.

Is anyone aware of an official update to Banestorm's timeline that takes it past 2005? I'm sure the intention was not to lock in any changes as official, after the book was released, but I always liked the old JTAS updates that would trickle out about the Third Imperium that inserted new and interesting facts into the universe as it stood.

[Jovus]

Originally Posted by Peter Knutsen

I regard it as a highly useful tool, especially because my Ärth setting deals so much with memetic conflicts.

Agreed, especially for world-building. I'm just leery of claims that it is a truthful model of what actually happens in the real world, which is what you seemed to be saying a little further up. However, I might easily have misunderstood you, either through careless reading or the natural ambiguity of the medium.

As to the English concept of love, the word itself is purely Germanic, coming mostly unchanged from Saxon (and Frisian et. al.) roots (though apparently the same Indo-European root shows up in Latin, 'lubet', 'libet', as well as related forms 'lubedo' and 'libedo', by which it becomes obvious that the concept space includes possible sexuality). The meaning in the English roots appears to fit broadly over "to hold dear, to cherish" as well as "to show kindness to" and "to take pleasure in", painting a rather rosy picture of homely love between man and wife or between man and brother, if you're inclined that way. (It also leaves a lot of room for other flavors, of course.)

After the Normans come in and muck everything up, we get the ideas of courtly love, most typified by Tristan and Isolde, the sort of infinite moment of longing exemplified (funnily enough) by Wagner and espoused as the vital force by Schopenhauer.

And, frankly, that war between the two concepts is still ongoing, which is one of the reasons I can't enjoy romantic comedies or the like. We see it in Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet (which is one of the very few places I can stand it, because Shakespeare's a good writer and doesn't try to cast it as a good thing).

I'm perhaps a little biased; it took me a good fifteen seconds to find a way to label the courtly-love concept as something other than a pollution or contamination.

Anyhow, yes, this would be in Yrth, considering it was brought over by the Normans and refined as an art by the troubadours. It's in the Arthurian legends as we know them now, for example.

Also, I agree that removing the word 'love' from the vocabulary has some interesting effects. For aid in this, though, you needn't even look to other languages. English itself has other verbs that are more specific, or at least cover different grounds: to cherish, to enjoy, to adore, to desire, to worship, to fancy, to like, to approve, to favor, to care (for) to be charmed (with).

Curiously, I can't think verb that covers the love of shield-brothers, friends, or neighbors. I wonder if this is an oversight on my part or if they don't exist beyond constructions.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

I don't think Ars Magica is that rough. Once you've seen the Inquisitor's apprentices walk everywhere with a HMG on a red wagon, that's when you no longer have the urge to treat the clergy dismissively.

Been there, done that (in WH40K(.

I personally would like to take issue with the "evertone knows that in the historical Middle Ages everyone was very religious": I tend to regard that as history as written by the very religious and no more likely to be accurate than any other self-serving work.

I have nothing to base my own beliefs on but my own observations but those tell me that even in a supposedly fanatic area such as the US deep south in the 1960s mnay people were only superficialy religious. They may have been more active about keeping up their false front than they would be today but they invested little real time and effort in their religious beliefs.

So maybe that's one of those things you need to be on the same page wias with your players. Not that there weren't fanatics and religion could get you killed even more easily than it can today in most of the world.

But if you told me that _everyone_ was truly fanatic and if your character wasn't too you aren't doing it right.....well, I probably wouldn't fit in to your game very well and it's certainly not how I would do things myself.

[ericthered]

I agree about being on the same page.

As for the how "religious" the people were, I'd say that its easier to attack the believers of a different faith than to live your own. Despite the fact that most the people probably weren't living it, If you stood up and flaunted your differences you'd get a response pretty quick, similar to if someone today flaunted racist beliefs.

Another interesting point is that historically religions are far harder on their own deviants than on members of other faiths, even when they had to power to do whatever. This is because middle ages religion was used as a vehicle for political power, and "heretic" didn't just mean "guy with wacky religious views", it meant "seditious traitor to the political order".

[Witchking]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

I personally would like to take issue with the "evertone knows that in the historical Middle Ages everyone was very religious": I tend to regard that as history as written by the very religious and no more likely to be accurate than any other self-serving work.

In a age where the Church (in Western Europe) was almost the only institution teaching literacy. By extension a great many books and records are either monastic, religious, or if neither were reproduced by monks at some later point. As a historian one must always consider the potential biases of the source.

Indeed we would not have many of the Greek Classics if they had not been imported from the Middle East...

[CoyoteGestalt]

Originally Posted by Fez

Is anyone aware of an official update to Banestorm's timeline that takes it past 2005? I'm sure the intention was not to lock in any changes as official, after the book was released, but I always liked the old JTAS updates that would trickle out about the Third Imperium that inserted new and interesting facts into the universe as it stood.

Local politics in Tredroy were updated in City Stats, as I recall. Other than that, while we've had new Banestorm material in Abydos and in several Pyramids, I don't think anything else has advanced the timeline.

[Anders]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

Been there, done that (in WH40K(.

I personally would like to take issue with the "evertone knows that in the historical Middle Ages everyone was very religious": I tend to regard that as history as written by the very religious and no more likely to be accurate than any other self-serving work.

...

But if you told me that _everyone_ was truly fanatic and if your character wasn't too you aren't doing it right.....well, I probably wouldn't fit in to your game very well and it's certainly not how I would do things myself.

I think the average peasant knew far, far less about Christianity than the average person in, say, the deep South. And I think the average person knew far more about paganism and how to perform pagan rituals - maybe with a Christian patina, maybe not - than we can see in the documents.