An op-ed on the upside and downside of canon

Games Discussion Ars Magica
21

The obvious counter is: the authors are paid a small honorarium for being authors. Atlas is relatively generous as an RPG company, but RPG pay rates are to an American standard, which means they are pittances compared to what other people are paid for doing the same work in other countries, and they are denominated in the American dollar, which is now worth a lot less than when I started. (An Australian dollar was about 65 US Cents when I wrote SoI. Currently an Australian dollar is about 90 US cents, and last year it was up in the 102 US cents range).

You need to think of the author pool as a pool of volunteers, and as such they can take their work anywhere else. (For example, fair royalty in Australia, where I live, is considered by various industrial tribunals to be 10%. No roleplaying company gets anywhere near this.)

Ars is ridiculously difficult to write compared to, say, Doctor Who, or a kickstarted homebrew. Personally I find Art and Academe is the book that lays snares in my path, but I'm sure other people have similar issues with books I've co-written. Also, creature design is so precise that if you were doing it for the money you'd never do it. You are paid by the word for a block of perhaps 500 words which takes half an hour and two revisions to get right. By comparison, I can whip up a DW:AITAS alien in five minutes or less.

I image this is why the developed magi you see in the game so rarely have familiars or talismans. They are just a pain to write.

None of the Ars Magica games I have ever played had even the remotest connection to (or interest in) the UK.
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Well, then maybe you should give it a go.

I think it would be better for the French supplements and Spanish supplements and Polish supplements to be written by people from those areas, and translated back to English. The reason this does not happen, IMO, is because the author pool is basically made up of volunteers, and you take your volunteer labour where you can find it. In the current case it's disproportionately Australian.

22

See, that's the sort of hyperbole I'm talking about. You are seriously saying that if Atlas said "We'd like to be able to flog T-shirts, and that'll work better if we just call it the Order of Mercury and House Mycetias." that this would make it an entirely new game?

Hard to see why. It adds considerable verisimilitude.
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It adds unnecessarily to the learning curve.

Yes, but why? We know that the reason Provencal is where it is because the original writers had no idea where it was. We have worked out various kludges to retroactively make it look like it made sense, but why not, if there is a new edition, say "You know what, how about we just remove the original error, instead of trying to spackle over it?" See also: Tremere's lack of a useful House Virtue.

I'm not sure why that would be case?
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It makes the research load easier on the new authors, for one thing.

23

It's all a matter of extent, of course. Is ArM a different game to D&D? Is Mage a different game to ArM?

You could change a House name, and still be playing ArM. But drop the House names, drop the Latin Art names, and drop the Order of Hermes, then sure that is a different game.

Besides, there are plenty of bits of IP in the game that Atlas does (I think anyway) completely own. So, if the business model for a potential ArM6 is "T-Shirts", then there is plenty of stuff that can go on the shirts. Even if a royalty does need to be paid on some shirts, that doesn't need to make those shirts unprofitable. You pay a royalty because you can make a profit by using the protected IP.

I would also be a bit suspicious of game design decisions driven by t-shirt design. Is there even a worthwhile market to be chasing in t-shirts (or similar branded stuff)? Certainly, I wouldn't be seen dead in an ArM branded t-shirt until I'd first seen Miranda Kerr wear one.

24

I totally agree with Andrew Gronowsky in disagreeing with Timothy Ferguson's often stated "Canon is for authors, not for players"; and I think that the article does a good job at explaining why. Canon is certainly a set of constraints applying to authors. But all statements like "troupes are free to keep, throw away, or change stuff to their heart's content", that are so often quoted in roleplaying products, are only superficially true. Any troupe deviating from canon (including from canonical mechanics, i.e. RAW) incurs drawbacks that discourage any such deviation without strong cause.

The article focuses on one of these drawbacks. In a nutshell, it's the risk that by "fixing" one bit the players will break one or three that are "connected" to it. If the players remove the "dealing with demons" clause from the Oath, for example, the entire Tytalus corruption portion of Hermetic history no longer works as written. The ripples produced by a single change can require a lot of work to smooth and, in the worst case, can create inconsistencies within the game that the players recognize only once in the middle of them.

Unfortunately, the problem becomes more serious as the total volume of canon increases. The larger canon grows, the more likely it becomes that something disagreeable to a player will be there. But at the same time the larger canon grows, the more "entangled" it usually becomes, in the sense that there are more things that an individual change will affect - thus increasing the "painfulness" of any deviation from canon. Careful game design can reduce these entanglements and/or explicitly identify them (so that the players immediately understand all the implications of a change) but in practice only to a point.

25

I'm agreeing with you here. In a new edition Tribunal borders and names can indeed simply be moved without the need for further explanation.

26

Is it? It seems to me that without those disparate hedge traditions the idea that the Order formed from many disparate hedge traditions would seem rather implausible.

After all, if all hedge traditions work basically the same way, why was the order able to gain so much from joining them together?

They mostly don't.

Learned Magicians, Amazons, Soqatrans and Gruagachan all use game mechanics only slightly different from hermetic magic.

Folk Witches combine regular supernatural abilities and hermetic labwork.

Nightwalkers are just a basic supernatural ability.

That leaves Elementalists, Augustans, Muspelli and Viktir as the truly different ones.

And I'd only call Muspelli totally different.

27

But what the fan-base can't easily find in a history book, the authors can just make up?

Perhaps, but reasonable minds might differ as to that assessment and/or whether or not that is too many different mechanics.

Also, I think that you are forgetting about a number of hedge wizard (or perhaps more strictly "other supernatural traditions") scattered throughout the various Realm and Tribunal books (and a few other places).

28

True. I just tend to feel that if you're going to detail the traditions you might as well add some cool twists, rather than just "they have this bit of hermetic magic and nothing else".

I doubtless am, I just pulled out Hedge Magic and Rival Magic to look over. I don't have all the tribunal books, because I don't find them anywhere near as interesting as I do things like those two, and Ancient Magic.

29

Absolutely. Traditions should be "personalised", but that doesn't need to imply a whole new set of mechanics and powers. In my opinion, ArM5 does tend a bit too much towards reinventing the wheel over and over again for every new tradition.

30

Thanks, that is a good observation and in line with my views. Now that you mention it, if and when ArM6 comes around, it would make sense for designers to take a look at canon and see what opportunities there are to "disentangle" it.

Most of the changes to canon from ArM4 to ArM5 were well-bounded and were a definite win. For example, Timothy Ferguson took House Tremere and made them AWESOME, IMO. :slight_smile: I, for one, look forward to more of the same.

31

I feel prompted to speak up in favor of the canonical Ars setting. This post addresses both the current thread and Andrew's second on Alternate Settings, and for that I apologize.

Let me begin by saying that Tim's frustration over the token pay, the restrictions of canon, and the fact that it is hard to find people who will volunteer their services to work so hard for so little is heard and understood. I totally get the fact that there just aren't many people who are willing to write for this game, and every degree by which the game can be made author-friendly is a degree by which the game will benefit.

But, speaking solely for myself and the three Sagas I either run or play in, we have not yet tired of the official setting.

I do NOT want to throw out House Guernicus. Why would we do that now, when the police procedural is more popular than ever and CSI: Hibernia is a saga waiting to happen? I do NOT want to rename Tremere, the Order of Hermes, or even silly names like Jerbiton; if Atlas can put out all these books while paying royalties on Order of Hermes and Tremere, then I dare say they can continue to do so. And I don't want to replace the back stories of the Houses, precisely because people like Tim have done such a great job rationalizing them. I do NOT want to get rid of House Mercere; I personally think the writeup of the Founder Mercere is the most Gary Stu of all 12, but I find the idea of the Order creating a special place for their favorite non-magical allies to be a great representation of the Order's modern-style egalitarianism.

Now, I am not a purist. The borders of Tribunals, for example, is something that could be changed without bothering me at all. Heck, I may not even NOTICE, except to note that, hey, look at that, the Provencal Tribunal is actually in Provencal now, and the map doesn't look as much like the board for Diplomacy.

One ongoing Saga in which I am a member is set in the Scilly Isles, and it is there because the SG's previous Saga was set in Stonehenge as well and he wanted to keep all the characters and setting he'd built there. My current player group is off to Hibernia soon to found a covenant. Games set in the British Isles are common in my experience, precisely for the reason others have mentioned: it's easier to research them. None of this is to say I would not welcome a fresh book on Stonehenge; the change to Tremere has made the whole meta-narrative in Stonehenge a bit unbelievable, unless we write Blackthorne off as some kind of rebel Tremere faction.

If there were changes made to the game, I would like to change the way botches are determined. Every time someone rolls a 0, my game grinds to a halt as I have to decide how many botch dice to roll, the player gathers and rolls the dice, and then I have to come up with a colorful botch off the top of my head. The optional rule in Lords of Men -- to just presume every NPC rolls a 6 in combat -- is awful, as it ensures that only PCs will ever botch.

I would also like to see the return of spells which allow scrying into the past or future, albeit imperfectly. I fondly remember past editions of Ars when magi could do this, and I would allow Intellego to bend the Law of Time in ways that did not ruin the story.

I have profound respect for Timothy's vision of Faeries and the craft and art he put into realizing it, but new players find it very counter intuitive. The idea that the Queen of Faeries does not exist unless there's a mundane around to watch her just seems terribly arcane (so to speak) and alien to these players, who are totally down with a Faerie Court which likes meddling in human affairs, but not a Faerie Court completely dependent on mortals for their existence. I'm perfectly happy with separate Magic and Faerie Realms.

In comics, we call canon by the word "continuity," and, much as with Ars, people debate its value endlessly. Some insist that continuity is a barrier to new readers and partly responsible for the declining sales of comics. Others revel in continuity and sneer at those who ignore it. But what ends up happening when the rubber hits the road is that writers use the continuity they like and downplay the continuity they don't like. Readers are filled in on the continuity they need, while the stuff which contradicts or isn't necessary is ignored in the current story. New experiments create parallel worlds which are continuity free, in an effort to grab new audiences and tell stories that cannot otherwise be told.

I would like to see more of that. If authors will write a book for Ars Magica, but only if they can ignore canon, well, then let them write that book. That doesn't mean the bathwater is thrown out with the baby! So long as there are authors willing to work with the current setting, let us keep it. Let us expand the boundaries of Ars Magica, rather than restrict, and let alternate canons exist alongside the traditional one, all "official."

32

Like ArM5 did for the Age of Aries. :slight_smile:

33

Interesting op-ed and thread.

In my opinion, canon is for the players. To misquote somebody fairly famous, canon was made for players, not players for canon. That is why canon is not binding on players. On the other hand, it is binding on authors, because they are making the canon for the players. Canon certainly isn't for the authors; it makes nothing but trouble for them.

It is true that, at some point, canon gets big and heavy enough to be a real barrier to recruiting new authors (because fans will post to the forum bemoaning any inconsistencies that crop up), and to be a perceived barrier to new players. Either of these problems, alone, could be fatal to the game. Both together will be.

Thus, if and when ArM6 happens, I expect there to be a reboot. I would expect something similar to what happened between ArM4 and ArM5, because that actually worked quite well: it freed up the authors, and doesn't seem to have alienated too many ArM4 people. However, ArM6 will happen after I've left as Line Editor, because I don't want to make any changes that are large enough to justify a new edition, so I won't be making that decision.

The possibility of disentangling canon is superficially appealing. The problem is that people complain when no later books take any notice of things that appeared in earlier books, or even seem to be contradictory. There is a similar problem with doing alternate continuities: the customer base for Ars Magica isn't really big enough to support it.

One other point that I think is important. ArM is a second-generation RPG. It looks it, too. However, I think it should stay second generation, and not revise itself to look like more recent narrative games. They are good, but so are second-generation RPGs. Current generation games are not an improvement of roleplaying, in any simple sense. They are a radically different approach to the whole concept. There are bits that can be taken to improve ArM, but I think ArM should stay as it is.

Mind you, there might be room for new generation games set in Mythic Europe. They would appeal to a different set of people, and might broaden the market for the game.

34

Meaning no offense to David, what seems to have happened between ArM4 and ArM5 was that ArM5 authors re-implemented ArM4 canon as fast as they could, so the reboot did not challenge major assumptions of the setting, like whether we might be better off with Celtic/Druidic traditions of magic still alive in the 13th century, or whether the benefits of mystery cults can be realized in another way that doesn't introduce a tidal wave of complexity and fragment the Order.

Major assumptions, though, are not something the authors can challenge. It's the Line Editor's job to set the strategic direction. If you look at it from that point of view, from my "insider" perspective, I can see and appreciate what David's vision was. Among other things, he brought a lot more authenticity to magic, emphasized historical accuracy, and rounded out the Order of Hermes so it's not all about infighting like some kind of Magi: The Masquerade. David's editorial stance on canon has a lot to do with why my ArM Code says 5+. :slight_smile:

ArM6 is still a long way off, but I do think it's inevitable because of the weight of canon. Now I am even more excited about the possibility. :slight_smile: Not just a reboot, but a new direction, presumably having learned from David's positive example.

35

No, I think there are some radical changes and you have forgotten how radical they were. 8)

Things are a lot more high fantasy now.
Faeries as interested in stories
Story hooks as Flaws
Castles as a flaw?
Covenants bounded by what the players can use, not by a maximum point value for Doisettep.
Criamon having a function.
Chivalrous Flambeau
Tytalusian views of Conflict.
Tremere (and everyone else) giving up on Evil for its own sake.
Demons unable to make long term plans.
God as SG sockpuppet.
Focus on non-magi PCs in many books.
...and others.

36

I use the system with an initative roll at first round only, then there are two rolls, (attack vs defense) and with those you see how much damage one gives/takes. If it was only one dice roll, it would be like I.C.E.'s MERP or Rolemaster, which sucked as there was no good way to describe combat.

Oh yes. Philosophiae is a great way to describe how to understand the political and economic workings of an enemy of the players or to roll it for the lore of plants, minerals and animals that is not covered by any area lore that you might have or not have. Also with the ruuless for making Theriacs and philosophical alchemy in Arts & Academics, i consider it invaluable. It also shoes the scholastic training of a character

Philosophiae is divided into three subskills:
Natural Philosophy - The ability to understand how the world works as well as how to identify a single plant, mineral or animal as well as defining things like the tide and thereby calculating how to use it to ones advatage, as well as other aspects of nature. Say that I play a person with this skill and I am in England, but I need information about the Ibis bird. No other skill, save Area Lore: Egypt will tell me anything about this berd as I have never set my foot outside england. But by reading the works of Aristotle and other natural philosophers, I can learn about the Ibis.

Moral Philosophy - An advance form of Folk Ken, by the use of philosophy - you can understand the scholastic level of a person after how he behaves, also you can understand ancient cultures better as you can decipher their view of ethics and morals compared to the Christian world and thus understand them.
As an advanced form of Intrigue, while intrige is used as practical politics, philosophiae is a theoretical ppolitical tool. You can predict the rise and falls of kings and leaders, how a city will act given certain circumstances and thereby be used as a strategy skill.
Also Economics, will take into bigger considerations than say bargain or profession: merchant. Like with the advanced politics, philosophiae is an advanced way to understand why say the Genoese quarter of Constantinople needs a certain ware or why the venetian doge act in a certain way in a deal with the pope.

Metaphysic can boost the understanding of the criamon enigma for those who are not from that house, or to understand the basic concept of magic theory for the uninitiated.

But this is just me and my view. If you don't like it, you just dont. I have had players using it as a tool to gain insigt in how a certain lord acted and how they could beat him without breaking the code of hermes through a study of the lord's economy and political alliances and enemities.

37

Here just my 2 cent as someone who didn't play a lot of Ars Magica.
For RPGs I usually avoid to read to deep into the lore
-as GM because I need breathing room to put my own ideas in and my experience with other systems is that I have to throw out many of the canon for this.
-as player even more because I want the GM to describe the world to me and its nothing worse then i.e. you remember something interesting for your character in a city you visit and the GM don't know about this.

In Ars Magica i.e. the 4th edition Sanctuary of Ice is something that have a interesting background but I would avoid to play a game there except maybe as Elder Mage because of the system that you can voted to left the Tribunal.
This simple rule force every young mage there to be a "slave" of the older one or risk to have leaving the tribunal and I doubt this is a good background for a longer running campaign.
(Sadly this means I can't use any of the local legends I know about witches, devil hounds etc. because it would be in this tribunal unless I complete break with the cannon there)

38

For every story reason you think you can't play in the Tribunal, I can come up with another story reason why you can. Fear of ostracism by a PC should either limit the PC's actions or make them find a more worthy candidate for ostracism, and advertise it heavily to anyone in the Tribunal. And some years no one is ostracized, because not enough votes are cast in favor of any one magus. In Doctorcomic's Alpine Apprentice saga, I play an apprentice who a maga who was almost surely going to be ostracized, my PC intervened and she wasn't. If my apprentice hadn't intervened, I'd probably have either gone where she went after being ostracized, or would've been taken by a Bonisagus who recently had an apprentice stolen from her.
The Elder mage issue doesn't have to be the case, you just need to make sure that the PC covenant can meet the vis requirements, of 10 pawns per magus +2 for the Guernicus and Redcaps. Yes, it puts a lot of vis into play, but it's vis income, and they may not have the stores in place to take advantage of it for some time. And then the stories are about how the PCs are nouveau riche, new money injected into the Greater Alps. Everyone will be suspicious as to where and how they acquired their wealth, and their actions will tend to make some magi think their behavior is uncouth and work to get them out of the Tribunal one way or another.
Greater Alps is not a tribunal where magi are beholden to other magi, to use your term, slaves of other magi. The Normandy Tribunal has covenants that are in a liege/vassal relationship, but that's not directly to magi.
So, run your game there, and make some adjustments to fit the canon, or adjust the canon to fit the game you want to tell.

39

Ostracisim (being voted out of the tribunal) is usually something older magi do to other older magi. It's not generally done to younger magi unless they are doing things which annoy their elders. It gives the Alpine magi a third option in law. In other tribunals their other two options are fines of various sorts, and Marches, which are death sentences. Outside the law, there's also the fact that in the Order, any magus is allowed to attempt to murder any other magus at any time, provided he gives sufficient warning in the correct way (These are called "Wizards' Wars"). I see a lot less of that happening in the Alps because of ostracism.

Ostracism was also, back in that edition, an attempt to explain a common covenant design trope, which was that a powerful magus would strike out to the wilderness (of which there was a lot more in that version of Mythic Europe) set up a covenant, grab some PCs as supporters, give orders for a few years and then mysteriously vanish. This is what happened in, say, Mistridge, which was the model covenant for the previous edition. Ostracism from the Alps explained where some of these people came from, and let them disappear without having ot have weird mystical experiences which pulled them from the world that PCs never had.

Being voted out of the Tribunal's not the end of the world.