[Green Ronin] Preview Testament: Roleplaying in the Biblical Era

[HalWhitewyrm]

Finally!!! Gotta get my order for this book in.

 

[Nikchick]

Your page says MSRP is $32.95

Bestbookbuys.com and buy.com both say the List Price is $27.95

Whats up with that?

They're offering a discount? I dunno man.

Nicole

 

[Nikchick]

I do not like the black on grey;I have very weak eyes,it is hard for me to read it.

Hal Mangold, the graphic designer, posted this response on the Green Ronin boards to a similar comment:
One thing to remember is that the preview is at 72 DPI. That's screen resolution. I can promise you that the book is considerably easier to read when at full printing resolution.

That said, these things are often a matter of individual taste. YMMV.

Originally posted by elforcelf And are you going to have the jewish Patheon(sp) or are you going to forget about that fact.elforcelf

Hmm, I'm afraid I'm going to have to leave that question for someone more intimately familiar with the manuscript. I'm Scott, Spike, or Chris will be along shortly to answer this one.

Nicole

 

[Pramas]

And are you going to have the jewish Patheon(sp) or are you going to forget about that fact.elforcelf

It'd be a pretty sad Biblical setting is there wasn't info on Israelite religion.

There is cultural and religious info for Israelites, Babylonians, Canaanites, and Egyptians in Testament. We'll be doing Hittites as a web extra.

 

[Eridanis]

We'll be doing Hittites as a web extra.

Now that's a sentence you don't read every day. I love our hobby.

 

[Nikchick]

And are you going to have the jewish Patheon(sp) or are you going to forget about that fact.elforcelf

I'm so glad Pramas took this one. When I read the question, I just couldn't make it make sense... I couldn't wrap my brain around how we could have an Old Testament game without Israelites and kept thinking, "He can't really be asking what it seems like he's asking. There must be some other answer he's looking for."

Heh heh. Glad I'm not as clueless as I thought I was.

Nicole

 

[Spike Y Jones]

Jewish Pantheon

And are you going to have the jewish Patheon(sp) or are you going to forget about that fact. elforcelf

It depends on what you mean by "Jewish pantheon." As Chris Pramas has pointed out, there will be plenty of info on Israelite culture and religious practices of the time period: what the holidays were, when you made pilgrimages to the Temple, what was sacreligious and what wasn't. If that's what you mean, then it's there.

If you mean a set of gods that the Israelites worshipped, well, there's YHWH. Individual Israelites may also have picked gods and goddesses from the pantheons of neighbouring cultures to workship too (e.g., Asherah from the Caananite pantheon; see the preview), but the Temple orthodoxy tended to frown on that, so there's no equivalent chart in the Israelite Religion chapter listing all the possible gods an Israelite might pick up to sin with.

And as for the theory that monotheism was a late development in Biblical history and that the early Israelites worshipped Asherah alongside YHWH without any complaint from the priests, the prophets, or the Lord, while that's a supportable position (and I happen to believe it personally, outside of my position as editor), it's not something that was made an explicit part of the Testament text.

Or were you looking for some other information?

Spike Y Jones, editor, Testament

 

[smetzger]

They're offering a discount? I dunno man.

Nicole

Well Amazon.com also has a 'List Price' of
$27.95. The List Price is _before_ any discounts. I just thought you might want to know because it looks like either your web page or they have the MSRP wrong.

 

[elforcelf]

What I was saying is that if you read H.W.F.Saggs's The Babylonians that a tribe of arabs that worshiped EL as their main not only god;1,000 of years before Abraham might have been proto-jews.And some of the early jewish goddess are known.EL was the storm and war and voloco (sp) god of the jews in the early years.He rode in a sky chariot and his main weapon was a bow;the rainbow.elforcelf

 

[Spike Y Jones]

What I was saying is that if you read H.W.F.Saggs's The Babylonians that a tribe of arabs that worshiped EL as their main not only god;1,000 of years before Abraham might have been proto-jews.And some of the early jewish goddess are known.EL was the storm and war and voloco (sp) god of the jews in the early years.He rode in a sky chariot and his main weapon was a bow;the rainbow.elforcelf

Ah. That was the third possibility that I listed in my response.

That isn't dealt with in depth in Testament, mostly because it's all conjecture and theory at this point. As I said in my response, I personally believe it to be the case, and a GM can certainly take El, Asherah and the others and insert them into a pre-Israelite pantheon of some sort, but it won't be explicit in the Testament text.

Spike Y Jones, editor, Testament