Quote from: RPGPunditOk, for sure, and I wasn't asking you to provide advanced metaphysics. But let me ask you this: What the hell does Quintus even actually believe? What does Quintus do that's actually Christian, that's different from Pagan Romans, that he wanted to "Pass on" to Marcus? What did he want Marcus to do that Marcus doesn't do now?

That's the part that was missing; you weren't supposed to give him all kinds of sophisticated teachings, it was the question of what exactly does "Quintusianity" stand for? Because from where I'm standing in the campaign, it looks as though it seems to be just a question of a declaration of faith with absolutely no difference in behaviour, and a faith that doesn't have to be backed up with any conviction either. I mean your whole deal is that you were telling Marcus to be a Christian, but go sacrifice lambs to Venus and black rabbits to Apollo or whatever, to make sure he gets to go into the Senate. So then what does it mean to be a Christian at all, in your version of the faith?

Considering that your treatment of Christianity included:

a) A guy that ate hallucinogenic mushrooms while writing the Apocalypse,
b) St. Peter and St. Paul summoning Lovecraftian horrors,
c) hippie communities,
d) etc...

...asking for a "serious" definition now is a bit strange, isn't it?

Part of what Quintus told the kid (from Day 1!) was that Rome isn't ready for open Christianity yet, but that this shouldn't stop one from promoting change from within--even if it meant to pay lip service to fake gods as a cover story. Tell me, what was Quintus' big personal benefit when he tried to replace the police chief with a Christian, that outweighed the risks of being busted forever? Even better, what motivated me to convert the character to Christianity in Roman times: masochism, powergaming, or a desire to have fun with the character?

I'll repeat my own words in this thread: I enjoy the game for the most part and I'm not planning to leave the campaign, but this particular outcome disappointed me on a certain level (even if I accepted it, as I did). You know very well than when I strongly disagree with something I make it clear--loudly and in person, rather than through forum posts.

Quote from: pspahnDid you (Jong) let the GM know what you were trying to accomplish?

If you're asking if I told the GM my exact plans before starting that particular session, though, then the answer is no. I did that in character, because I didn't think it would be such a big deal.

Quote from: RPGPunditAgain, I ask Jong point blank: what exactly did you hope Marcus would do or be that is different from what he does or is now? If Marcus had said to you "ok, dad, I'm a Christian", what would have been the next step? What would have been different?

First, and as I wrote above, change from within. Marcus is not a PC, though, so it would be up to you to decide how. As Quintus told him in the last session, there's a limit to what a pater familias can order his son to do, even if it pains him that the boy hasn't converted.

Second? Quintus wanted to leave the family name in able hands for a long while, watching from a distance and helping a bit if needed. Right now, though, we're heading towards Ridley Scott territory, and Cassandra herself used the Hammer of the Obvious to tell Quintus to protect his son.

Quote from: JongWKConsidering that your treatment of Christianity included:

a) A guy that ate hallucinogenic mushrooms while writing the Apocalypse,

Really happened. John wrote the book of Revelation in exile on the isle of Patmos, which was crawling with magic mushrooms.

Quoteb) St. Peter and St. Paul summoning Lovecraftian horrors,

This was of course an ad-lib, but Paul and Peter really did have a magical duel with Simon Magus that resulted in Simon Magus' death; and since I generally see Magus as much more likeable figure than either Pete or Paul, I call them like I see them.

Quotec) hippie communities,

Again, really happened. The early christians in the 1st century were counter-culture groups that preached absolute pacifism and didn't believe in personal possessions, they shared all their wealth; and they were also mostly convinced that the end of the world was imminent. So yeah, they were really freaky hippies, a religious cult.

Quote...asking for a "serious" definition now is a bit strange, isn't it?

I've shown different sects of christianity that people have run into having different sets of christian values. Thus far, you've run into:

Apocalyptic crypto-jews, which Quintus rejected.
Pauline believers in the risen son of god; which Quintus rejected.
Thomasine gnostics, which Quintus rejected
loopy Johanine anti-gnostics, which Quintus rejected
Valentinian kabbalists obsessed with the true word, which Quintus rejected

Each of these sects are VERY different from one another. But they all generally agreed one two principles, even though they disagree with everything else: they agree there's ONE deity, and that it is forbidden to worship other deities.  There are a lot of other things that almost all of these sects believe in very strongly, like virtually all of them being pacifists, but those two points are absolutes. Christianity was fundamentally incompatible with the Roman state religion.

So essentially, Quintus has never run into a Christian sect he actually liked, nor made any real efforts to try to start his own Christian sect, because when it comes down to it he knows that doing so will almost certainly mean he'll end up being Martyred, and he values being a Patrician too much.

QuotePart of what Quintus told the kid (from Day 1!) was that Rome isn't ready for open Christianity yet, but that this shouldn't stop one from promoting change from within--even if it meant to pay lip service to fake gods as a cover story.

Something that ONLY Quintus believes. No other christian in the history of the campaign has shared that belief. It is so fundamentally counter to what all the early christian churches held to be true that sects that had nothing else in common ALL believed in that. Its the reasons why all those Christians died; in most of the 2nd century all you had to do to NOT get killed for being a Christian was say "Hey, dude, I'm not a christian", and go kill a fieldmouse in the temple of Apollo or what have you. And yet, over and over again, the Christians refused to that one simple thing. They utterly and absolutely rejected the idea of "Lip Service"; and Christians who failed in their courage and gave in to save their lives were reviled by their fellow Christians for commiting a mortal sin.

QuoteTell me, what was Quintus' big personal benefit when he tried to replace the police chief with a Christian, that outweighed the risks of being busted forever?

Huh?

QuoteI'll repeat my own words in this thread: I enjoy the game for the most part and I'm not planning to leave the campaign, but this particular outcome disappointed me on a certain level (even if I accepted it, as I did). You know very well than when I strongly disagree with something I make it clear--loudly and in person, rather than through forum posts.

And as usual, you are suggesting that it is somehow me trying to Railroad, and not your own plans being half-assed, that is the problem.

QuoteFirst, and as I wrote above, change from within. Marcus is not a PC, though, so it would be up to you to decide how. As Quintus told him in the last session, there's a limit to what a pater familias can order his son to do, even if it pains him that the boy hasn't converted.

Ok, again, what did you want him to change? What behaviours does your character, Quintus, hold to be true as a Christian that are different from Rome's values today? Because I haven't seen him hold ANY.

I mean he's certainly not a Pauline-style moralist, he doesn't seem to think that Rome is horrifically decadent and that roman values are corrupt.
He isn't a pacifist, obviously.
He clearly doesn't believe in the authority of priests, bishops or disciples (except possibly himself), he doesn't seem to think that any kind of regular sacramental practice is important, you've pretty well made it clear he doesn't believe in gnosis, the resurrection, or the power of the Lost Word.
I'm not even sure if he believes Jesus was divine. He seems closer to thinking that Jesus was some kind of a "teacher", but then doesn't seem to practice any "teaching" Jesus gave him.
We've never even seen him pray, or meditate.

Given all of that, that AT BEST, Quintus is the equivalent of a "christmas Catholic" (ie. someone who goes to church once a year on christmas and doesn't really seem to be religious the rest of the time), is it any surprise that Marcus didn't become a goddamned Father of the Church?

Not to mention that, as you said, you gave him the choice. I, as GM, looked at Marcus' personality. His historical personality, as one of the most brilliant figures in all of Roman history, his strong classical education, his training from Greek Philosophers and Stoics, and his own powerful sense of the rational and practical, and decided that Marcus would certainly learn from you that Christians have been given a really bad rap, but that he personally could not come to believe in a God that only his dad believes in and that even his own dad seems kind of lukewarm on actually bucking up and supporting. So Marcus, as always, was honest with Quintus and said: I really can't say I'm convinced. I'm not saying you're wrong, dad, but for my own experience I must say I'm uncertain, and thus cannot declare myself a christian.

I'm still left asking: what the fuck are you pissed off about, and what the fuck did you actually want happening?
If you wanted Marcus to work to try to argue against the persecution of Christians; well, he's already told you in the game that he wants to do that.  So if that was your real goal, then you should be pleased.

As for "leaving the family name in able hands", I don't see how you could have done better than this. Through the complexities of the Roman adoption scheme, your son is now also the son of the Emperor, and will become the next emperor. Your name, wealth, and lands will all become part of the Imperial heritage... though I'm still trying to figure out how you were planning to get out of that little pickle of the fact that as of now Marcus is your sole heir, and will inherit everything you own when you next fake your death.

So the only thing you haven't gotten yet is for Marcus to actually declare himself a "Quintusian Christian".  What makes that so fucking important, especially since being a Quintusian Christian apparently consists in not acting in ANY FUCKING WAY differently from a typical Roman Patrician anyway?

RPGPundit

Edited to add: Obviously, you chose to be a christian (though again, all of what I'm saying above leads me to feel that Quintus is not really a christian as much as he's a lone nut that got really fucked up in the head by meeting jesus) for the fun of taking your character in that direction.  Good for you.
Now you got to ask yourself why you feel like the fact that Marcus isn't declaring himself a Christian somehow "ruins" your fun?!  I could see how it might upset Quintus a lot: I really don't see how or why it would upset Jong WK a lot.

See now this is why you should never roleplay with experts.

QuoteSomething that ONLY Quintus believes. No other christian in the history of the campaign has shared that belief. It is so fundamentally counter to what all the early christian churches held to be true that sects that had nothing else in common ALL believed in that. Its the reasons why all those Christians died; in most of the 2nd century all you had to do to NOT get killed for being a Christian was say "Hey, dude, I'm not a christian", and go kill a fieldmouse in the temple of Apollo or what have you. And yet, over and over again, the Christians refused to that one simple thing. They utterly and absolutely rejected the idea of "Lip Service"; and Christians who failed in their courage and gave in to save their lives were reviled by their fellow Christians for commiting a mortal sin.

This is where I side with Pundit. That´s also pretty much equal to what the interested public knows, or you can even learn from watching Quo Vadis.

Quote from: SettembriniThis is where I side with Pundit. That´s also pretty much equal to what the interested public knows, or you can even learn from watching Quo Vadis.

Well, its not like I (the "expert") simply expected my players to understand that. I've SHOWN that to my players since the first persecutions in Nero's time onward. I explicitly stated it several times.

In no way was I basing anything on stuff I just "assumed" they knew, they saw it going on in the very campaign.

And Jimbob? Fuck you. Please explain to me just how the fuck I'm being an "expert" here by demanding that Jong show some fucking internal consistency in his character IN THE GAME ; or by asking him not to be too fucking surprised that he's not really considered a christian when he hasn't, IN THE GAME, been able to get along with a single christian sect and clearly believes something that IN THE GAME has been shown to be contrary to the beliefs of every other christian he's ever met IN THE GAME.

Its got fuck all to do with what I know as a historian and Jong doesn't; its all about what I've shown them in the game and Jong has chosen to ignore.

RPGPundit

Quote from: Kyle AaronSee now this is why you should never roleplay with experts.

Yes, because Roleplaying with "experts" leads to a campaign that lasts two years of weekly play (and over 150 game years, through FIFTEEN emperors) and has been a resounding runaway success. Who the fuck would want that, eh?  :rolleyes:

Good luck with your little imitation of HBO, you cunt.

RPGPundit

That was gentle teasing, not serious. Years on the internet speaking to Americans has destroyed your sense of irony, RPGPundit.

But my comments about talking to your group were quite serious, and quite relevant. This talk about "what is a Christian?" and so on is one which should have happened before the first game session - not a dozen sessions in.

Quote from: SettembriniThat´s also pretty much equal to what the interested public knows, or you can even learn from watching Quo Vadis.

"They're singing!"

Oh, and I thought up CRS before I ever heard of the telly series. Also, my aim is not historical accuracy, but to make an interesting and fun game. So far, it seems to look promising, that people will enjoy it. And that after all is the point of roleplaying - to entertain us. It might be more fun with more historical accuracy, I don't know. But judging from this thread, rpg campaigns with historical accuracy are not immune to players or GMs being unhappy.

You guys should keep talking so each understands what the other's aiming for.

Quote from: Kyle AaronThat was gentle teasing, not serious. Years on the internet speaking to Americans has destroyed your sense of irony, RPGPundit.

No, having Jong choose to engage in passive-aggresive shit online instead of having written to me in private or talked to me in person has worn down my tolerance to shreds; and then having you make an anti-intellectual statement that implied that my campaign sucked was just the cherry on top.

QuoteBut my comments about talking to your group were quite serious, and quite relevant. This talk about "what is a Christian?" and so on is one which should have happened before the first game session - not a dozen sessions in.

It might benefit you, just once in a while, to not open your mouth if you don't know anything at all about what you're talking about; when the goddamned campaign started there were no such things as christians. Jesus wouldn't be born for another 20 years or so.

Also, if you failed to get it in my comments above, there was no clear answer to "what is a christian", because no single christian theology existed, ever, before the Council of Constantinople (which is still more than 150 years away in the campaign).   There are about 500 different ways to answer "what is a christian" in the campaign right now, just like there was at this time in history; but Jong just happened to pick one way that he didn't even try to make fit into it; instead he's trying to make both the entire Christian religion and the entire Roman Empire fit into his idea of what a christian could be, for his character's comfort.
And note: That's perfectly OK too.  As in, its perfectly ok for him to try to do that! I mean shit, there's all kinds of people in history and the present who have done or do that all the fucking time. People who say they're liberals but act conservative; or people who say they're Catholic but believe in abortion and gay rights, or who say they're Baptists but are into New Age stuff, or whatever.
Its perfectly reasonable, especially given who Quintus is. As Sunboy put it in the very last game, "Quintus is the master of the double-talk".

The only thing that's unreasonable is for either Quintus or Jong to really expect the rest of the Christian Faith or the Roman World to go along with their desires "just because".

RPGPundit

Again, I point to the very first thing I said in response to Jong:

My most recent experience was that I tried to talk to the GM. Usually that works.

At some point in the campaign, Christianity popped up as something Jong's character wanted to do. At that point, it should have gone something like this.

Player: "I want my guy to be Christian."
GM: "What kind? There are over 500 to choose from, like... and... and...."
Player: "I want this other kind."
GM: "Basically that is not being Christian, as far as any of those listed are concerned. One man is not a religion, he's just a lunatic."
Player: "Well then I will..."
(etc)

It's what I've said consistently: "talk to your group." The GM's part of the group, obviously. People not talking to each-other leads to running off with their own crazy ideas and assumptions connected neither with reality nor with anything in the campaign.

And don't accuse me of being anti-intellectual. Any serious consideration for more than two seconds of my posting history would show that is not so; also, it makes you sound too much like a Mirror Ron. I was being ironic. So relax, and save your abuse of me for when it matters.

Quote from: Kyle AaronAgain, I point to the very first thing I said in response to Jong:

My most recent experience was that I tried to talk to the GM. Usually that works.

At some point in the campaign, Christianity popped up as something Jong's character wanted to do. At that point, it should have gone something like this.

Player: "I want my guy to be Christian."
GM: "What kind? There are over 500 to choose from, like... and... and...."
Player: "I want this other kind."
GM: "Basically that is not being Christian, as far as any of those listed are concerned. One man is not a religion, he's just a lunatic."
Player: "Well then I will..."
(etc)

Well, it didn't happen that way, and in my campaigns it rarely does. Its pretty unusual for someone to tell me they want their existing character to become "x".  Usually, if anything, the character becomes X over a gradual period on an organic basis.

That was the case with Jong. His character was a Roman patrician who ran into Jesus. Jesus fucked up his head in a big way. His character spent years trying to basically forget about Jesus. And then somewhere along the way he started calling himself a Christian, mostly in reaction to having seen and heard about Christians out there and realizing that the stuff they were SAYING jesus was or taught was nothing at all like his own memory of Jesus.
Eventually, Jong even wrote his own gospel, though he did it pseudoanonymously (attributing it to Joseph of Arimathea; though it was "pseudo" anonymous because Jong had actually BEEN Jo of Arimathea).

There was no moment when Jong magically went from Not Being Christian to Being Christian, much less one where he formulated a concrete idea of what being christian meant to him and asked me to double check it out-of-character.
There WAS, however, lots of actual ROLEPLAYING going on, where Jong went along developing his ideas, and having lots of encounters with Christians, and in each and every instance he didn't end up buying what each christian sect he ran into were selling.

QuoteIt's what I've said consistently: "talk to your group." The GM's part of the group, obviously. People not talking to each-other leads to running off with their own crazy ideas and assumptions connected neither with reality nor with anything in the campaign.

Talking to your group is fine; it just strikes me that, based on the example above, the way you seem to think of doing it would mean some pretty unnatural un-organic style for game play.

QuoteAnd don't accuse me of being anti-intellectual. Any serious consideration for more than two seconds of my posting history would show that is not so; also, it makes you sound too much like a Mirror Ron. I was being ironic. So relax, and save your abuse of me for when it matters.

Yeah, ok, fair enough. The point is that the most important thing in whether a game will be good or not is whether the GM running it is a good GM. But in the case of a historical campaign a Good GM with shitloads of knowledge of his historical period will be way better than a good GM without that (of course, either will be better than a bad GM with or without shitloads of historical knowledge).

RPGPundit

It seems clear to me that there was a lack of communication going on in this campaign. Now since Jong has not mentioned any problems with any of your other campaigns, this may mean that your depth of knowledge for this "historical" campaign has intefered with the way how you guys normally communicate.

Did Jong ever express any problems with the way how things were turning out with his character? Did you notice any unease on Jong's part? Because to me communication and observation are but two skills that make a "good" GM.

Regards,
David R

Quote from: Kyle AaronThis talk about "what is a Christian?" and so on is one which should have happened before the first game session - not a dozen sessions in.

That seems sort of wasteful to me ... these are great questions, filled with drama and conflict (as Pundit and Jong are making clear).  Seems to me, Marcus should have been asking these questions to Quintus.

Looks to me like it would be easy to turn "Dude, I think you've got a really wierd idea about what Christianity was, and therefore I need to correct you" into "Dude, I think you've got a really wierd idea about what Christianity was, and that's awesome for the game!"  It's all just a matter of perspective.

'course, it's easy for me to be glib about the difficulties from thousands of miles away.  Still, I don't see that this whole out-of-character argument about what coulda-shoulda-woulda happened is going to leave anybody satisfied.  Even if it becomes absolutely clear (by popular internet acclaim, the one true and objective judge of truth!) that one side is right and one side is wrong about how Mythic Rome would have worked ... the real issue seems to be the way they miscommunicated, and that's still going to rankle.

Of course it's usually better to have such discussions in-character rather than out-of-character if you can, that makes things more fun. But they're already discussing it out-of-character, here in this thread (and I hope elsewhere).

In-character is usually better than out-of-character. But out-of-character before the intragroup dramas start is better than out-of-character after they start.

I was not suggesting how to make the roleplaying experience brilliant. I was suggesting how to make it not lead to intragroup dramas, like this one. For that, OOC talk of any kind is superior to no talk at all.

And in-character's not always better than out-of-character. The former can be quite slow and roundabout. Sometimes you just want to get to the fucking point. "Mate, what kind of Christian are you?"

And RPGPundit, I would say that when Jong's character was writing the Gospel According To Me was about the right time to ask, "what kind of Christian are you? Or is it all just disinformation?" I mean, why else write a Gospel but to put across your view of The Man?