Backerkit is live, grogs!https://www.backerkit.com/c/projects/atlas-games/ars-magica-5th-edition-definitive>What is Ars Magica?Ars Magica is the award-winning roleplaying game by Jonathan Tweet and Mark Rein•Hagen about wizards and their allies in Mythic Europe. This flexible, deeply built world can support games that are historically accurate or fantasy-based, epic or small scale, political or personal.Players work together to tell the story of their covenant — all of the magi, their companions, and grogs. This history can span decades. It might be heroic, tragic, or both in turn. The covenant could influence the entirety of Mythic Europe or the fates of a small corner of the world.Spells will be cast. Duels won and lost. Houses may rise and fall. But magic is forever.>Grimoire: Gameplay BasicsArs Magica is a troupe-style, storytelling game. This means that players will not only play a magus, but also the companions and grogs who serve them. Each of these characters contributes to the covenant they belong to, and therefore to the story itself.The game is famous for its magic rules, which set a new standard for RPG magic systems. The system is divided into arts, each of which comes with a set of verbs and nouns (called Techniques and Forms). Players simply put them together into phrases like "Control Fire" to represent what they want to do.
First three chapters previeweddrive google com/file/d/1_fQ9cwZrzl_7lizFtgdeu3iM3MZ7MP15/view
literally this board
Oh, just yesterday I was looking up Ars magica and it felt like a pity that all the stuff was old and had quite a bit of cringe.
>>94164440I like the comments in the grog templates for customization. Solid advice.
I had night reader on, making the pages rather yellow in the screencaps.
>female scholar>not "male knight", "male priest", "male rogue"adding gender shit is just either begging for edgy tryhards to fill the game with misogyny, or for green haired freaks to make it about women's lib.>b... b... but muh medieval setting!lmao
>>94166254ars has a long history of long forum flamewars, they will manage
>>94164426I like the concept of the mage being acknowledged as OP rather than the awkward balancing that other games make, and the whole covenant play seems fun too.But every time I've tried reading these sourcebooks, something about them just feels so utterly boring to me in a way that I haven't experienced with any other game.I do like history, so it's not just about reading or lore
>>94168589Ars magica is a very simulationist game, you can do quite a lot of things within the system but this also creates a lot of number crunching and different rules for everything. That's why its often recommended to only use the corebook when first starting to play the game. The sourcebooks give way too many new rules. I think the best way to learn to play Ars is through joining a more experienced gm or group. Hopefully new revised edition will make the game a bit more beginner friendly.But besides the rules I enjoy reading the lore in the sourcebooks.
>>94171929I like crunch/simulationism, it's just something about the default setting/the style of the books that puts me off somehow.
>>94171965That's interesting. I liked their setting very much. But many sourcebooks are written by librarians, people with masters in medieval history if not by professors. They do their research seriously. Some books like Lords of Men are considered to be decent enough introductions for medieval feudalism, not in the same degree of academic works of course but in the level of osprey books.But starting from 4th edition I think they pushed realism/research at the expense of narrative. Previous ars magica editions particularly 3rd edition is far more narrative focused. But they were published under White Wolf (4th edition cut most of the world of darkness ties).You might want to check out 3rd edition corebook I heard of all the corebooks it has the best introduction lore-story wise. But Ars is not for everyone so feel free to ditch it I guess. You really must like medieval history, medieval myths to like the setting. There is a sizeable Pendragon to Ars Magica pipeline (besides the wod mage -> ars and d&d wizard players who want more details -> ars pipelines)
>>94166254>oh look, it's this argument againYou are boring, just leave.
Don't feed the troll
This should be a solo game.
>>94173873You can play it solo, design a covenant from start, design mages, companions, servants, advance them through time.
>>94164426>Atlas Games POD Slopno thanks, ive still got my 1e offsets published by lion rampant
>>94175506>1st editiondamn, I couldn't find it anywhere, I'm very jealous.
>>94172543no>>94173098not troll, just mad to see games that look cool yet it'd be really fucking hard to bring to a group without stirring annoying crap
>>94175585
>>94164490>all NPCs have notes purely about how they can be changed mechanically>The Female Scholar, the only one who specifies gender, has a whole backstory about muh patriarchy, drive to be a girlboss, and skill descriptions including women-related things wherever possibleHmmm
>>94179923the characters on the left page there are Grogs which are technically player characters intended to be the red shirts of the setting. the customization tips are to give them a bit of personality or to tailor them to a specific purpose to serve the covenant The character on the right page is a companion that is more plot central. not all of them are so girlboss, the next page has more notes for The Knight, The Rogue, and The Witch
>>94180514>male CHARACTERS and FEMALE characters
>>94180838i think it's helpful for establishing the setting to show that female academics would be societally estranged, but one of the customization notes is that you can change her academic interests into whatever you preferThe Witch doesn't have anything like that in her block either
>>94181243Rogue, witch (ie herbalist or hedge mage) and scholar could have easily just been made as either gender anyway, with some separate note on gender and the setting for whoever wants to roleplay that shit.Scholar doesn't need the girlboss narrative to work, a male nerd can still be shunned from their family if they refuse to follow certain traditions or obsess over eccentric shit.
>>94179923Sexism is mentioned as something given in the medieval setting. Order of Hermes is more egalitarian but mages are already repulsive to mundane folk in general so I guess there was no need to distinguish female wizards from male wizards
Favorite Tribunal? I ran my last campaign to completion in the Transylvanian Tribunal but I don't think I really took advantage of its unique features, I'm thinking the Rhine Tribunal could be fun for its factional gilds and connect the campaign to the ongoing commercial revolution in Northern Germany (hello Hanseatic League!).
>>94164426>no English translation for the Iberia book>"We will have the Spanish text available for a future English translation!"Worthless. It's been out for a year now, hasn't it? Good to see they haven't forgotten the IP though.
I want someone to rework the economic subsystems in the various splats to work together and not be annoying for bookkeeping. The workshop rules from City and Guild and the covenant productivity / upkeep rules from Covenant (and maybe the creation of special materials in Art and Academe) should work off a single unified subsystem, perhaps sharing lab-system mechanics for even more rules overlap.Same thing is true for some other things as well. There are three debate subsystems, spread across Art and Academe (academic debates!), Changing Mythic Europe (rules for changing opinions), and HoH: Societates (Tytalus disputatio). Alchemy rules don't share enough theme (Mysteries Revised, Art and Academe, Hedge Magic Revised), neither does astrology (Mysteries Revised, Art and Academe). Disparate takes on thematically similar ideas call out for refactoring!With the open license maybe I'll just do it myself.
Don't argue with the nogame.
>>94183626In terms of content, probably Theban. In terms of "feel," obviously Normandy.
>>94183735Which alchemy do you think is best? I've never interacted with them in-game.
>>94183839The rules in TMRE are the most boring, the ones in Art and Academe are the most flavorful, and the subsystem in Hedge Magic adds onto the A&A one with the Mythic Alchemy / Herbalism virtue, and fits well / can be integrated into the Learned Magician hedge practitioner. The hermetic stuff is really the odd man out and would benefit from a pass to fit in with the other two types.
>>94164426After seeing what nuAtlas Games did to Unknown Armies with 3e, I'm good on never supporting anything they put out ever again.
>>94183932I see. Thanks anon.
>>94172051My group seems to have a Crusader Kings to Ars Magica pipeline
>>94183989You want pain?I have a friend whose photo is in the UA 3rd books. he still runs 2nd
>>94186053based & eastern ontarian pilled
