Yes, thank you for your feedback.
A poll is a good idea. Let’s see what happens in this thread first.
I can see what you mean there about folklore to story, That’s a good idea I need to let brew. It’ll probably be a Mythic Europe Magazine article, though.
I really enjoyed CJ’s Thirty Tribunal Cases thread, and would love to see more cases or other ideas/seeds for stories that involve Quaesitors and magical investigations. I’m sad that the Gumshoe game development stopped - maybe Atlas would be willing to release those notes / work for publication in Mythic Europe or in some other form?
I also think some advice on running a one-shot at a Con with ready made scenarios would be welcome - as the game is now available, at least in pdf, people might be curious and I think would be more willing to try a game at a con to see what they think rather than commit to a long game at first.
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This is a really useful thread. Thank you, @darkwing.
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This is something where we can make use of the global multi-lingual polymathic Ars Magica community. I can easily give you advice on researching the British Isles, because there are lots of sources in English and they are readily available. I can research a bit about the Levant, because there are some good English sources on crusaders. Provence - I can find the history, but not much on folklore. For my current Novgorod saga, I am stuck at the wikipedia stage because I don’t know Polish and it’s a struggle to find good English books on Polish history of that period. However, I’m sure the many people from different nations can find sources in their native languages a lot more easily. I have had valuable education from Jewish friends on medieval Judaism in the past, and in some topics on the forums we have managed to discuss sensitive historical topics constructively. Long may this continue!
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Before I forget, let’s have another entry!
DAY 10: SCENARIOS USING RIVAL/HEDGE MAGI AS ANTAGONISTS
I loved the story in Tales of Power where you go to Rome and the players find themselves interacting with a papal conclave, and in turn deal with divine, infernal, faerie, hermetic and rival magic plots. The use of Virgillian/Augustan Brotherhood magic was very well done. I also enjoyed seeing the Muspelli use shapeshifting Utiseta in Dies Irae. I’ve had some ideas about using hedge magi (an army of witches using flying ointment dropping things on the covenant; an elementalist summoning a mountain for magi to build their tower of Babel upon; Soqotran sorcerers waving incense to shipwreck people in the Red Sea) which could all make dramatic opposition for Hermetic magi.
I’m also sure there’s a bunch of traditions I don’t fully comprehend, or have missed the most powerful opportunities to use. Are there more vicious uses for a Nightwalker than I can think of? (I’ve never played one, as I’m not entirely sure it’s worth a major virtue.) Can I make a good scenario using the rippers from Between Sand and Sea? I think scenarios are probably the best way to display the utility of a magic tradition, and to make it something people can slot into their ongoing sagas for variety. By using them, players may decide whether it’s worth playing such characters as companions or not.
As an aside into roleplaying history, the Traveller alien modules all described an alien race and had an included scenario - some really helped get people into the spirit, some didn’t. They had a supplement called Alien Realms which had a scenario for each alien race, and I found these really helped.
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The thing I keep hearing about with Nightwalkers is that they can scare the pants of your players by going right through the Aegis. They really don’t have to do much more than that to induce panic, because suddenly you don’t feel like you have locks on your doors anymore.
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Rippers are a minor sort of tradition in their area. The full-blown thing that they tie to is the bardic tradition in the area of the Mali empire. They’re one of those bits where you can see traces of the next step if you wanted to head on out for even more geography. It’s well beyond my skills, but there were a gang of people who did an African folklore D&D setting for Atlas, so…the skill is nebulously around.
Nightwalkers work in groups and are immune to the primary magical defense of the Order of Hermes, so, sabotage. The Hamr variants are effectively werebears that ignore the Aegis and are invisible until they manifest their body. They can go wherever they want, see whatever’s going on there, and roguelike you to death.
I like that idea. I’d also love to see more material that helps tie up some of the fringe hedge / rival traditions that would make them playable.
Together with yesterday’s entry, this brings us to
DAY 11: USING RIVAL/HEDGE MAGI AS PROTAGONISTS
So 8 years ago, I finally published Amazons on my blog, a scenario designed to use the five Amazon sorceresses I had created (one for each Amazon form) and a way to get multiple Gifted amazons working together. I had run it at Grand Tribunal one year, then rewritten it slightly and run it twice in 2017.
The traditions in Rival Magic all work well, as Muspelli are very flexible, but tend to work solo; the Augustan Brotherhood/Virgillians use Gently Gifted wizards to work in courts; the Soqotran wizards are integrated with their society with the aid of guiding magical spirits. There’s also the possibility raised of creating a hreppur of 10 to 30 hedge wizards as per the “Raudskinna compact” section of Rival Magic pages 106-9.
Thinking further, an academic saga could easily make use of Learned Magicians and people using the natural philosopy rules, and these could interact with magi looking to find books or suitable companions to work in a covenant.
Some things would need working out - I understand how some traditions can study from vis, but some traditions don’t make it explicit how they improve and you’d need to create some workable house rules to make sure the characters advance in a way that works for your troupe.
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One tradition that might work well for this is the Berber settuten that can shut off their Gift with Disjunction, leaving them functionally mundane until it’s up and running again, but not repellent to each other. Reference is pg 105-106 of BS&S where they’re talking about settut convocations.
DAY 12: ILLUSTRATING COMMON VIRTUES/FLAWS
I submitted to Mythic Europe Magazine issue 1 an article on Personal Vis Sources (and Timothy published it on his blog as a promotion for the debut issue). The most-viewed article on my blog is my list of study bonus/study requirements tables. I’m sure there’s other things we could write up, such as someone daring to have a go at the neverending argument that is a big list of Major and Minor Magical Foci, and trying to derive some consistency. You could also make a good article on uses of Purifying Touch or Immunity that enhance your saga.
There’s a lot of virtues and flaws out there, I’m sure there’s plenty that could be written to help make good use of them or inspire people to use them more interestingly. I’ve also done a brief list comparing the personality traits in Art & Academe to the four humours, and how this might interact with Bjornaer.
What virtues or flaws (or other common in-game things from the core book) do you think need more discussion?
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DAY 13: THE JUMPSTART KIT
I have a confession to make. Ever since I’ve known Ars Magica well enough to want to write for it, I’ve thought that someone should make a 5th edition of the jumpstart kits for earlier editions. Maybe someone could expand it and really help people launch a new saga. In this blog post I was thinking should I do for November 2012 a post a day on verditius items or spells for a bonisagus folio, or should I do something ambitious like “A jump-start kit of covenant, some sample characters and short adventures.”
That was on September the tenth 2012, so over 13 years ago. I quickly realised it’s going require more than a modest amount of time for 30 days to write such a thing. People have proposed such things on this forum, on more than one discord, and as yet I haven’t seen a really good one. We’re still stuck at pointing people at a sample covenant or some sample characters and then saying “have you seen Broken Covenant of Calebais?” or “I think Promises, Promises is really easy to adapt to 5th edition”
2026 should bring David Chart’s work to fruition. A set of linked adventures to showcase different characters in turn sounds fascinating, and should be interesting to read. The question that fascinates me is how much to put in, and what to leave out. Should you make a big covenant with lots of characters for people to play, or a small intimate covenant of a handful of magi and companions? Do you just have one introductory adventure, or do you try to include multiple? Do you start with grogs and companions, or start with lots of magi?
These design decisions have sparked a lot of discussion. I’ve looked at starter sets for other games, and I think the latest Runequest one is my favourite - a huge number of illustrated sample characters to show the range of backgrounds you can choose, a couple of short scenarios, and a solo adventure to help you through the rules (including resurrection in case you die).
What do you think a kit to jumpstart a new group should include?
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DAY 14: LIBER TIROCINII
I came up with the name for this one while researching apprentices. It turns out that the classic Latin of ancient Rome used the same word (tirocinium) to refer to the period of apprenticeship it takes to learn a trade and to refer to a legionary’s first military tour. This reminded me of how D&D always refers to a linked series of adventures as “campaigns”, because D&D got its root in skirmish wargames. Ars Magica used “saga” to refer to the linked stories over a covenant’s life, and storytelling games from the 80s onwards appear to prefer terms like “saga” to “campaign”.
Anyway, the point of my hypothetical Liber Tirocinii (or book of apprenticeships) would be to compile things to help with the eternal problem “How we reduce the apprenticeship time for new players and storyguides to Ars Magica?”
For players, you could have some templates (or making good use of ideas from the “better starting magi” thread) to help people understand character creation; advice on builder a character you will enjoy from the start; and ideas on how to use spontaneous magic.
For storyguides, you could have ideas on how to write scenarios, what you can use to hook players, different story types, ideas on how to research history and folklore to inspire your games, how to link stories into a saga.
For troupes, you could have advice on how to mix magi, companions and grogs to good effect, and ideas to write scenarios for each other.
Which areas do you think most need help for new players and storyguides?
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I recently became a patron on David’s project, and I’m really impressed with the work he’s done so far! He explains different approaches to solving problems, gives a good worked example on how adventures for AM are -different- and -why- that’s interesting. There’s a lot to read, but AM is a complicated game that rewards deep engagement.
DAY 15: TEACHING TROUPE PLAY KIT
How do we encourage troupe play to the fullest extent? Perhaps we could design a product that really encourages a saga to be fully troupe style from the start.
I can see two obvious methods. One would be to create a sample covenant with interesting magi, companions and grogs (to encourage people to switch between characters) and a map of the surrounding area. The map would have lots of interesting locations marked, and a story seed or two for each named place. Hopefully that would encourage exploration of these places and slowly develop a saga.
The other method would be to have a set of scenario books. Each one contains several adventures with a linking thread, whether it be a location (a monastery that may be near the covenant) or a theme (dealing with magical animals). Each member of the gaming group is encouraged to grab one of these and use it as a source of premade adventures to get a saga going, and hopefully this start will be enough to sustain a saga with no alpha storyguide.
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Thank you! The concept, which will be explicitly explained in the introduction when I write that, is "experienced storyguide in a box", so there is a lot of hand-holding that would not be needed by people who were already familiar with ArM. I think it would be about a quarter the current length if written for experienced troupes.
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DAY 16: THE EPIC SAGA
Ars Magica does not have any published sagas, but people do make use of saga suggestions such as the Rhine Valley in Guardians of the Forest, or the Confluensis saga in The Lion and the Lily.
David Chart, author of “Paths of the Damned 2: Ashes of Altdorf” has pointed out that writing a saga for publication for Ars Magica is difficult, and that from his experience books of roleplaying campaigns don’t sell amazingly well. He handled discussions on why no saga has been published for Ars at the UK Grand Tribunal Convention, and did a good job of explaining the publisher’s perspective.
I did enjoy looking at David's bibliography which includes the thought “As a result, it is very, very hard to simply fail in this adventure. On the other hand, it is very possible succeed in ways that cause quite a lot of damage to the characters, and rather hard to succeed in the easy way, which inflicts no damage. I think this is an important aspect of RPG adventure design, and one that is overlooked far too often. There should be degrees of failure that do not kill all the characters, so that the campaign can move on.”
Anyway, a fan product could attempt to put a published saga out there and determine if there’s actually a decent audience for such a thing. Pendragon does an amazing job with “The Boy King” outlining a timeline to cover the rise and fall of Arthur, and including a lot of adventure ideas.
I’ve had a couple of ideas. My first is to look into the link between dragons and magic, and have magi move across Mythic Europe looking into ancient myths and living dragons. It would be a lot more mobile and travelling than your classic saga, but would allow you to showcase a lot of different areas.
A second would be to have a theme of Seven Deadly Sins - using traditional themes reflected in how the mundane people surrounding the covenant desire wealth and make war on each other, while leaving it open as to how much is demon-influenced (in a 90s Iberia/Rome way) and how much is plain old human desire.
I’d also like to see an epic journey to the edge of the world, simply because The Cradle and The Crescent includes so many wonderful descriptions in the far east, so travelling along the Silk Road until you reach the end of the mundane world would be fascinating.
Are you going to do both?
That has occurred to me. I will take a look at the end and consider how much work it would be.