Quote from: Bren;879745That would never work. Forgotten Realms came out in 1987. That was years after any edition of D&D I've enjoyed playing. So we'd just end up arguing about whether or not hit points in the Forgotten Realms are sufficiently associative. Then Justin Alexander would pop in to direct us to his blog posts that explain what associative means and why hit points really and truly are associative. Then the thread would explode into cluster bomb and napalm posts. Better not to risk it.

Besides Uruguay is pretty low on my vacation destination list and unlikely to be a work stop. And Pundit has a waiting list. With auditions. I'd probably end up walking out of that audition too.

Well, I won't claim there aren't reasons not to play in the Forgotten Realms. I do think the actual arguments over it (and not over hit points) are not nearly as extreme as the arguments we've seen in this thread, and are generally more interesting.

Quote from: Omega;879749Put some limiters in and even 5e could work.

Personally I think B with a little of X D&D would work best as you dont have quite the power access you do in AD&D or OD&D.

Either limit it to just B and accept that level 3 for PCs is the max. Or allow X and cut off at level 4 or 5 depending on how much eventual oomph you want PCs to have. Or even regular  BX with a serious curb on access to spells and items and things level out nicely for a fantasy Europe setting.

Agreed - and I note that it depends a lot on the level of grittiness and realism desired. Setting a game in medieval Europe doesn't mean that a game is focused on gritty realism. For example, a game set in the modern world can vary from CSI to Sherlock to James Bond to superheroes.

For example, I've played a fair bit of Ars Magica - which is set in Europe, and magi there can easily be as powerful as a 10th level spellcaster or higher. The main thing that keeps them under control is the rules to not interfere with mundane politics.

So there's room for more powerful characters. It just means that the historical world is likely to become more of a backdrop for the actual conflicts.

Quote from: Bren;879154Self-deceit combined with fraud is common in the annals of the spiritualists. Doyle and the fairy photos being just one example.

Only if you were claiming the photographs themselves never existed, because that's what you're claiming with Dee.

QuoteWe only have to accept it if we are unwilling to consider explanations or if, for other reasons, we are already predisposed, like Dee, to believe in angels and such.

Because Dee said so. We must obviously believe him. Joseph Smith too, I guess.

Again, what you're doing here is disputing the existence of Mormonism itself.   Joseph Smith may well have been a fraud (there's certainly far more evidence he was than that John Dee was) but mormonism was still a thing that actually happened.

QuoteObviously a magical genius like Dee being defrauded and deluding himself doesn't fit your paradigm of how you fit into the world. Which is the reason why, according to you, you must believe it to be true. Which is why you say "Dee talked with angels." Rather than "Dee said he talked with angels" or "Dee claimed to have talked with angels." Which is what I said in the first place.

No, what I'm saying is that Dee had a real experience, that actually really happened, which he described as a conversation with angels.  You are trying to suggest that Dee never had such a thing happen at all.  
If you aren't doing that, then what are we arguing here except that you are hell-bent on demanding that any conversation about the event be predicated on everyone loudly proclaiming "there's no such thing as angels" which is COMPLETELY IRRELEVANT TO THE SUBJECT AT HAND.

QuoteOh look, somebody else has considered fraud mixed with self-deception as a possible cause that fits the available facts, quelle surprise.

People have considered that for ages now. This paper is nothing new.  You'll note that the author isn't doubting that the people involved actually went through the rituals in question and that the accounts in Dee's diaries are real and not just invented.

As to the actual thing the paper is addressing: this overview really doesn't add much to the academic debate. Everyone agrees Kelly was scoundrel, both his known history before Dee and his ignominious fate after parting ways with Dee makes that abundantly clear..  But there's no way to conclusively be certain that Kelly was engaging in a fraud on Dee.

He might have been; I think it's a lot more improbable, when you pore over the entirety of the diaries (like I have).  It would require Dee to be much more naive than everything about him indicates.  It would also require Kelly to be an not just an astoundingly skilled and manipulative con-man on a level that should put him down as one of the top ten greatest performances of all time, but also to have a level of mental acuity and intelligence that nothing else before or after his time with Dee seems to back up.

If I were to look at this from the view of an academic, I would say by far the more likely theory is that while we can infer from the text that (especially in their early interactions) Kelly was somewhat trying to impress Dee in order to win his favor (not to a level of fraud though), the two of them were shared and convinced participants in the angelic conversations and both engaged in them, neither actually believing them to be false as an event (though, as the paper itself notes, of the two Kelly was the one far more skeptical of the claims these Angels were making, not in the sense of disbelieving what was going on, but in the sense of thinking they might be evil or deceitful spirits rather than the angels they claimed to be).

You know what no academic thinks? That either of them didn't actually believe magic was real. Even the people who think Kelly was engaging in an act of fraudulent magic.

The only person who wants to assume the entire medieval/renaissance world was just fucking with us for posterity is you.

Quote from: Matt;879156Gotta love the Pundit. He scrolls through a few Wiki articles and deems himself an authority not to be questioned.

I've studied this subject academically and personally for about 20 years now. Ironically, I've never been that much into Enochian magick in practice, myself.  It's both too complex and too unpredictable, or predictable, depending on how you're looking at it (it's predictable in terms of something pretty well always happening when you do it, but unpredictable in terms of just what that 'something' will actually turn out to be).

I'm more of an Abra-melin guy myself.

Quote from: yosemitemike;879284of his conversations with Edward Kelley who was a con man.

Kelly was a con man, as his later alchemy scam on the continent proves. But the really interesting question academics have is just how much he was also a sincere occultist. Some people think a great deal, some think very little, I think it was somewhere in between.

The main thing is, for the entire seven year period of work he did with Dee to have been one long totally intentional enormous con, he'd have to have been both simultaneously the most talented and the dumbest con man in history.  The most talented because the enormity of the work put into this con and the level of intellectual acumen it would have required is (to anyone who's actually looked at the enochian material and the details of the process of how it was received) absolutely mindboggling. And the dumbest because for any conman that clever and talented to have wasted his time scamming someone at Dee's level, not just for long enough to make a few quick bucks or get some prestige and then move on but for seven fucking years at a totally meager payoff, it's just a ludicrous waste of time and effort.

And again, if we look at Kelly's 'criminal record' both before and after his time with Dee, we do not see that Genius-level conman.  Instead, we see a guy who was pretty damned incompetent and got caught out very fast.

The more credible theory to me is that Kelly hung around with Dee all that time because, even though he may have initially joined up with him with a plan to get some quick cash or a letter of recommendation or maybe just steal some (very valuable) books from what was then one of the biggest libraries in Europe, he found to his surprise that when the two of them were working together something genuine was happening.  Something that partly seemed to scare the shit out of him too (if you don't assume that was again that super-genius level of con-man mad bluffing skillz that he very suddenly got and very suddenly lost later in life), but that he had probably been looking for and wanted to see through, because, again, he believed like almost everyone else did that magic was real.  And after all, if he could become a REAL magician and not just a fraud, the power and money and prestige that would grant him would be all the more, so that was worth hanging out with Dee for the better part of a decade, in spite of all the insane shit that was going down.

Quote from: rawma;879743Oh, sure, the game starts out alright with everyone promising it'll be OK, and not like last time! and so on. But then somebody says "paradigm" or "reality" or "I wonder if this ring of many wishes would actually have far-reaching socio-economic ramifications" or uses a crossbow from the wrong century, and the whole thing falls apart. Better just to start off in the Forgotten Realms in the first place, I tell you.

Bren would just require everyone at the table to publicly declare that there's no such thing as spells before playing. Maybe for Wizard PCs, every time they cast.  Because apparently that's really really important to him, even if it's totally irrelevant to the actual game experience.

Quote from: RPGPundit;880156Only if you were claiming the photographs themselves never existed, because that's what you're claiming with Dee.

No. You are being obtuse. I'm saying that the photographs were fake, and fake photographs are not proof that fairies exist.

QuoteAgain, what you're doing here is disputing the existence of Mormonism itself.   Joseph Smith may well have been a fraud (there's certainly far more evidence he was than that John Dee was) but mormonism was still a thing that actually happened.

You are being willfully obtuse. I am suggesting that the claims that Joseph Smith made about the source and content of the tablets may be false.

QuoteNo, what I'm saying is that Dee had a real experience, that actually really happened, which he described as a conversation with angels.  You are trying to suggest that Dee never had such a thing happen at all.

You are either incredibly stupid or you are intentionally reading what I wrote in bad faith. I am not suggesting that Dee didn't write a diary. I am suggesting that there are other explanations for his claim that he spoke with angels besides the actual existence of supernatural entities of any sort. I'm suggesting that Dee's diary may have no more to do with angels than Doyle's photos have to do with fairies.

QuoteIf you aren't doing that, then what are we arguing here

I can't tell what you think you are arguing for. You ignore what I do write and make up your own strawmen to argue with. Try reading my posts very slowly and carefully. Maybe diagram the sentences or something. Then maybe you will finally understand what I wrote and you can actually craft a reply to the words I wrote instead of the words you pulled out of your ass.

QuoteBut there's no way to conclusively be certain that Kelly was engaging in a fraud on Dee.

Which is why I have not said, "Dee's claim that he spoke to angels was really a fraud."

There is also no way to be certain that it wasn't a fraud perpetrated by one or both men. Or that it wasn't self delusion on the part of one or both men. And yet, you keep insisting that we should take Dee's claim that he spoke to angels at face value by saying, "Dee spoke to angels."

Dee said he spoke to angels. Doyle said the fairy photos were proof of the existence of fairies. Joseph Smith said all sorts of things. The fact that those three men said something does not prove that they were right about what they said they saw or that what they said they saw has any existence outside of their imagination.

QuoteIt would require Dee to be much more naive than everything about him indicates.

Many smart people are incredibly naïve about certain things while being very skeptical of other things. Stage magicians aren't smarter than scientists, but are a lot better at uncovering fake spiritualists than are physicians or scientists.

But Dee being wrong about what he said he saw doesn't require that Dee had to be naïve. He may have really wanted to believe that he was talking to angels. Because he already believed in angels and magic and shit before he talked to the angels. Just like Doyle really wanted to believe in spiritualism and fairies.

QuoteIf I were to look at this from the view of an academic, I would say by far the more likely theory is that while we can infer from the text that (especially in their early interactions) Kelly was somewhat trying to impress Dee in order to win his favor (not to a level of fraud though), the two of them were shared and convinced participants in the angelic conversations and both engaged in them, neither actually believing them to be false as an event (though, as the paper itself notes, of the two Kelly was the one far more skeptical of the claims these Angels were making, not in the sense of disbelieving what was going on, but in the sense of thinking they might be evil or deceitful spirits rather than the angels they claimed to be).

You know what your academic theory does not address? Whether the angels that Dee said he spoke with have any independent existence.

QuoteThe only person who wants to assume the entire medieval/renaissance world was just fucking with us for posterity is you.

Maybe if you repeat this lie often enough you can get someone to believe it.

Please point to even one statement where I have said that no one in the medieval or renaissance world believed in magic. Just one statement. If you can't do that, then please stop lying about what I have said.

"I'm sorry, but when you say I'm being obtuse, exactly what does that mean?"

As long as they admit that UFO abductions and Bigfoot are real Im ok with that. :cool:

Quote from: Bren;877829I don't always write in that style. But I have no problem with using a more precise grammatical form. Nor would I have a problem with correcting language to be more precise.

But it (usually) should be readable.  I'd probably just refer to "Drake's visit to the Queen" and give the details in a footnote.  Unless there were some serious reason to doubt Drake visited the queen.

Now, Schmolo the Peasant Boy's visit to the Queen for tiffin and a game of Hide the Winkle, I'd be more skeptical about.

Quote from: James Gillen;879265"We were riding on the banks of the Thames, somewhere near the City, when the powders began to take hold."

Okay, totally disregarding anything about the conversation itself, this is beautiful.

Quote from: Omega;879749Put some limiters in and even 5e could work.

Personally I think B with a little of X D&D would work best as you dont have quite the power access you do in AD&D or OD&D.

Either limit it to just B and accept that level 3 for PCs is the max. Or allow X and cut off at level 4 or 5 depending on how much eventual oomph you want PCs to have. Or even regular  BX with a serious curb on access to spells and items and things level out nicely for a fantasy Europe setting.

The easy way to limit power in OD&D is limit gold.  Gold = XP, and monster XP is chump change.

I ran OD&D in medieval England for about three years, and used historical prices and currency.  I boosted XP considerably, but if I'd set the rate differently the PCs would have leveled up about every 15 sessions or so.

An unexpected aftereffect was that money was SO scarce that the PCs took to looting dead kobolds and goblins for their crappy knives and spears and occasional scrap of mail to sell to the local smith.  Getting three or four pence for a goblin's knife was a big deal; it meant they could eat that day.

Nowadays I'd make them travel to a big city, York or London or Greenwich, to sell the mail.  Because I'm a bastard.

Also, I don't play in literal fantasy Europe because I use Howard's Hyborian age so that I can have Ancient Egyptians, Minoans, Babylonians, di Medicis, Plantagenets, Capets, plate armor, chariots, Sphinxes, cathedrals, Spanish Main pirates, Moors, Heorot...

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;880485Also, I don't play in literal fantasy Europe because I use Howard's Hyborian age so that I can have Ancient Egyptians, Minoans, Babylonians, di Medicis, Plantagenets, Capets, plate armor, chariots, Sphinxes, cathedrals, Spanish Main pirates, Moors, Heorot...

And Tsathoggua. Cant be Hyborian without those space gods.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;880485Also, I don't play in literal fantasy Europe because I use Howard's Hyborian age so that I can have Ancient Egyptians, Minoans, Babylonians, di Medicis, Plantagenets, Capets, plate armor, chariots, Sphinxes, cathedrals, Spanish Main pirates, Moors, Heorot...

Unfortunately that didn't work so well for Gary Gygax.

JG