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New Hobby Releases In Stores & PDF Spotlight: 27th November 2017
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<blockquote data-quote="Yaarel" data-source="post: 7730014" data-attributes="member: 58172"><p>I am enjoying the recent products that demand a historically accurate game. (Including <strong>UbiquiCity</strong> with a plausible near future.)</p><p></p><p><strong>Elizabethan Adventures</strong> is a gritty low magic game set in London of the Renaissance Era, contemporary with Shakespeare, along with the wide wide world around it. It is an interesting read. Even if you use 5e, the rules system for EA seems a gold mine for noncombat challenges, ideas, and mechanics.</p><p></p><p>For example, EA points out that adventurers are often ‘bastards’ literally. In some regions, bastardy is common and acceptable, but in other regions, such as London aristocracy, the status of a bastard is deadly serious. They lack the right to inherit, have little to lose, must survive by their wits, and often have something to prove to their families and themselves. Whence they are known for daringness, adventurism, and ill repute. The emphasis on exactly how one is surviving economically − who if anyone is minding home, the store, or the farm? which responsibilities are being shirked? which family members support the adventures and which are disappointed? − helps the players buy into the wider setting of their characters.</p><p></p><p>In this kind of setting magic exists but is low impact.</p><p></p><p>I would like to add, ‘fairy’ spirits are part of the Elizabethan worldview, and are described in remarkable detail by Shakespeare. Yet these kinds of phenomena are more like a ghost story − about a particular haunted locale − and otherwise have little impact on the everyday events of human society.</p><p></p><p>Elizabethan Adventures presents ‘witchcraft’ as satanic, but makes it distinct from ‘Heathenism’. But in light of the reallife Scottish witch trials that come later, the records show the situation is more complicated than that. The practitioners more clearly resemble shamans interacting with nature spirits, including dramatic dream encounters, personal transformation, gifts of healing, and so on. These traditions view such spirits as neither entirely good, nor entirely evil, being more like their human neighbors. Even church documents by clergy, sometimes had a more sympathetic view. One view was the elf queen was a feminine manifestation of the satan, but other elves were nonevil. An other view was, the devils are rebel angels in a civil war while elves are angels that declared neutrality. Elsewhere in remote Norway, of all places, a Jewish midrash was borrowed to explain the origin of elves and trolls as the ‘children of Lilith’, the ‘first wife’ of primordeal Adam, who was never exiled from the immortal garden. Shakespeare himself presents the view that these nature spirits are childlike, not yet mature enough to fully understand the difference between good and evil, or to fully understand the consequences of their actions. In all cases, the popular cultures are unanimous that these nature spirits are a mix of good and evil, and like humans, are capable of either. Christian theology is an important part of the Elizabethan setting, and the status of indigenous nature spirits is a puzzling enigma that defies traditional good-versus-evil paradigms.</p><p></p><p>It is probably instructive to consider one among several Jewish views that such nature spirits are a kind of ‘shedim’, a Hebrew word occurring in the Bible. This word, singular ‘shed’, is used to describe various kinds of nature spirits, including English ‘elf’, Latin ‘genius’, Greek ‘daimon’, Arabic ‘djinn’, and so on. All of these creatures were viewed as capable of good or bad, by their respective cultures. Certain rabbinic traditions viewed the armies of angels as coming into existence as the result of human behaviors, and shedim as coming into existence by bad human actions. Altho shedim are born in sin sotospeak, humans who return to the ways of God and especially who study the ways of God, transform the nature spirits into angelic spirits doing good, even bringing worldy blessings to humans, as long as humans continue the ways of God. In any case, various Renaissance (and Classical and Medieval) theologies could and did view indigenous nature spirits within a more positive framework.</p><p></p><p>Elizabethan Adventures focuses on the humans of the Renaissance Age, and does so in a vivid and thought-provoking way.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Yaarel, post: 7730014, member: 58172"] I am enjoying the recent products that demand a historically accurate game. (Including [B]UbiquiCity[/B] with a plausible near future.) [B]Elizabethan Adventures[/B] is a gritty low magic game set in London of the Renaissance Era, contemporary with Shakespeare, along with the wide wide world around it. It is an interesting read. Even if you use 5e, the rules system for EA seems a gold mine for noncombat challenges, ideas, and mechanics. For example, EA points out that adventurers are often ‘bastards’ literally. In some regions, bastardy is common and acceptable, but in other regions, such as London aristocracy, the status of a bastard is deadly serious. They lack the right to inherit, have little to lose, must survive by their wits, and often have something to prove to their families and themselves. Whence they are known for daringness, adventurism, and ill repute. The emphasis on exactly how one is surviving economically − who if anyone is minding home, the store, or the farm? which responsibilities are being shirked? which family members support the adventures and which are disappointed? − helps the players buy into the wider setting of their characters. In this kind of setting magic exists but is low impact. I would like to add, ‘fairy’ spirits are part of the Elizabethan worldview, and are described in remarkable detail by Shakespeare. Yet these kinds of phenomena are more like a ghost story − about a particular haunted locale − and otherwise have little impact on the everyday events of human society. Elizabethan Adventures presents ‘witchcraft’ as satanic, but makes it distinct from ‘Heathenism’. But in light of the reallife Scottish witch trials that come later, the records show the situation is more complicated than that. The practitioners more clearly resemble shamans interacting with nature spirits, including dramatic dream encounters, personal transformation, gifts of healing, and so on. These traditions view such spirits as neither entirely good, nor entirely evil, being more like their human neighbors. Even church documents by clergy, sometimes had a more sympathetic view. One view was the elf queen was a feminine manifestation of the satan, but other elves were nonevil. An other view was, the devils are rebel angels in a civil war while elves are angels that declared neutrality. Elsewhere in remote Norway, of all places, a Jewish midrash was borrowed to explain the origin of elves and trolls as the ‘children of Lilith’, the ‘first wife’ of primordeal Adam, who was never exiled from the immortal garden. Shakespeare himself presents the view that these nature spirits are childlike, not yet mature enough to fully understand the difference between good and evil, or to fully understand the consequences of their actions. In all cases, the popular cultures are unanimous that these nature spirits are a mix of good and evil, and like humans, are capable of either. Christian theology is an important part of the Elizabethan setting, and the status of indigenous nature spirits is a puzzling enigma that defies traditional good-versus-evil paradigms. It is probably instructive to consider one among several Jewish views that such nature spirits are a kind of ‘shedim’, a Hebrew word occurring in the Bible. This word, singular ‘shed’, is used to describe various kinds of nature spirits, including English ‘elf’, Latin ‘genius’, Greek ‘daimon’, Arabic ‘djinn’, and so on. All of these creatures were viewed as capable of good or bad, by their respective cultures. Certain rabbinic traditions viewed the armies of angels as coming into existence as the result of human behaviors, and shedim as coming into existence by bad human actions. Altho shedim are born in sin sotospeak, humans who return to the ways of God and especially who study the ways of God, transform the nature spirits into angelic spirits doing good, even bringing worldy blessings to humans, as long as humans continue the ways of God. In any case, various Renaissance (and Classical and Medieval) theologies could and did view indigenous nature spirits within a more positive framework. Elizabethan Adventures focuses on the humans of the Renaissance Age, and does so in a vivid and thought-provoking way. [/QUOTE]
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