A Future ArM 6 -- what is ESSENTIAL?

Games Discussion Ars Magica
1

Hi all,

If you have not checked out the thread on Discussing the Gen Con 2015 panel yet, please be advised this topic builds on that one so it would be good to read Timothy's summary at least.

Let me paint you a hypothetical scenario. Let's say Atlas decides to develop a new edition of Ars Magica. Let's say this new edition will start with a single core rule book with the same page count as ArM5. This will have to be a complete, user-friendly orientation to Ars Magica, Mythic Europe, troupe style play, covenant building, storytelling and roleplaying, and all the mechanics you need to run the best and longest saga you've ever had.

Let us also say that you have a friend who is a great GM and is all excited to launch a new saga using this new core book and ONLY this new core book. She really wants you to join that saga, so what is in this book is going to be your entire Ars Magica experience if you accept the invitation.

Apart from the obvious -- an explanation of the Techniques and Forms, how to make a character, a list of spells -- what do you think MUST be in that book? And if you are adding something that is not in the ArM5 core book, what would you cut to make room for it?

It's all well and good to say "we need gruagachan in the core book" (for example) but the challenge from an author's and publisher's point of view is that there is not time and budget and page count to fill everyone's wish list. So what would you say is essential to making Ars Magica great, and what is perhaps important to you but able to be sacrificed to make room for what's really essential?

2

I don't think everything essential could be crammed into a book the same size as Ars5, but since you asked...

Creature creation rules; not having this in the core book is IMO a deal breaker for a lot of people. Yes, you can wild-guess your way through it (this is true of any system), BUT this is a system that lets you get creatures with Might attached to your character several ways (Ghostly Warder, Magical Animal Companion, Familiar, etc) with little help in that regard. Both RoP:Magic and RoP:Faerie have such rules, so cramming them together for a universal set that can deal with angels/demons/etc as well should not be a huge issue.

Covenant Hooks/Boons and Laboratory customizing rules from Covenants.

A generic Method/Power system for Gifted hedge magicians of any realm to act as a stand-in for the RoP books. You can include Power guidelines that are realm-specific, and Methods might vary by realm, but overall they all function similarly. Better explanations of what you can do with (Realm) Lore.

All the spell guidelines and S/M bonuses from various 5th books (plus more!) in the core book. Spell stuff that needs more explanation (Craft Magic) gets explained in the spellcasting section.

Original research rules.

Complete Mystery path rules for Mystery Houses - probably requiring some condensing, which would be fine, really - and some simplified mystery stuff for the 'standard' Mystery cults of the setting (Titanoi, Legion of Mithras). Simplifying some of the mysteries to be like short virtues would probably be necessary; IMO Mysteries tend to be needlessly complex, mechanically.

One-page summaries of the various tribunals and how they differ, and the important covenants in the tribunal.

One-page summaries of the various Hermetic houses and their peculiarities.

3

Keep it 5th edition, but print a comprehensive rulebook minus the setting/RP stuff. This will remain compatible with our supplements, and encourage us to buy more, but remove the obstacle of flipping through 12 books and 17 pdfs to create a single character.

If you make a 6th edition, you obsolete all the 5th ed stuff and people with limited income keep playing 5th ed and don't buy any more books.

4

There should be 3 Core books:

  1. Core Rules:
    Character Creation
    The Houses
    The Rules

  2. Mythic Europe:
    Lords of Men
    The Church
    Covenants
    Basic description of Tribunals
    City & Guild (or what it is called, never bought it)

  3. Denizens of Mythic Europe:
    Creatures (a la Medieval bestiary)
    Realms of Power

Additional Books

  1. The Tribunals
    A description of All Tribunals in one book

  2. Storyguide's book:
    Ancient Magic
    Hedge Magic
    Rival Magic
    Adventures

5

Though I will most probably not support a ARM 6. I have put all my money in ARM 5 and I am happy with this, I rather put money in other RPGs with different genres than buy another version of a game I already like.

6

I think there's two parts to this question:

  1. what is missing from the ArM5 core book that should be there

and

  1. what is in the core ArM5 book that does not need to be there

Ars Magica as an IP speaks to me of the following things:

  • Flexible magic system
  • Vastly different time scale to traditional RPGs
  • Troupe-style play
  • Home-as-character
  • Historical world setting

That seems to be the primary unique (or near-unique) selling points of the franchise.

So to get a game going, a GM needs:

  • some characters
  • an adventure
  • some antagonists
  • some rewards
  • the tools to build their own characters/adventures/antagonists/rewards

This,to me, suggests that the core book - whatever it contains - needs to at least contain enough to provide these in an ongoing fashion.

With something like this in mind, it should be a realtively easy process to go through all the things we love in 5th edition - both the core book and the splatbooks - and mark things as 'yes', 'no' or 'not sure'.

For instance, original research? No. Original research doesn't feed any of the above goals, so mechanics for it are best left for fan publications or system extension.

Mystery cults are a bit more 'not sure' - the mechanics behind developing a mystery cult or calculating initiation script bonuses is probably not something for the core book, but the idea that virtues can be player rewards should be something introduced explicitly if that's still intended for the system; that meets the 'some rewards' requirement above.

Anyway, this is how I'd tackle the question of what is essential: going through everything with a fine tooth'd comb and being brutally honest about whether whatever the system/mechanic/thing actually meets the required goals for a core-system feature.

If no, it should get the axe. Moving editions is like moving house; there's a lot of things in the attic that you have fond memories of, but that doesn't mean you should hoard everything.

I think this is going to be step one; long before we get to more nitty discussions on whether Etiquette and Carouse should be merged. No point in having that discussion until we know whether or not Abilities are even going to exist in their current form.

7

More fundamentally you need something that remakes Ars Magica, so it isn't just a condensed and repackaged reworking of Ars Magica 5. Until you know what that is, discussion of what should be in the core rulebook is premature at best.

8

Andrew probably knows what I'm going to say here. 8)

You need to take out all of the unnecessary minigames, and simplify those that remain.

The game is only as strong as its weakest used minigame. THe minigames which need to remain, as unavoidable are

A flexible magic system (although, I personally would make the skills and arts on the same scale and make x2 for formulaic, not /2 for spontaneous).
Character design. All of the virtues which do the same thing need to be rationalised, though.
Character advancement.
Covenant design, but not advancement. Also, libraries need to go back to the one score per art model. They don't simulate actual libraries now, so there's no virtue in having them as they are.
Opposed Resolution rolls. (Note, I prefer combat to be a series of simple opposed skill rolls. I don't accept it as a viable minigame in any of its previous incarnations, and it adds immeasurably to the complexity of monster design.)
I think having a separate magic system for hedge magicians makes sense as a simulation of a world, but for actual ease of play it's just another pointless minigame, and I'd cut it.
Monster design would be immeasurably simpler with a simple combat mechanic, and a simpler virtue mechanic. Also, this idea that everything needs to be playable has to go. Playing simple Ars Magica? Don't play a mobile tree, a singing sword, or a dragon. Get with the program.

9

You are getting a point that I think the Atlas team was trying to make at the panel discussion, that other people seem to be missing. If you are really happy with ArM5 and it works for you, then ArM6 is not for you. Keep enjoying ArM5. You can do that. In fact, you should.

It will still help John Nephew pay his kids' college tuition, because if you are enjoying ArM5 and running ArM5, then people in your group will be interested in the great products in the ArM5 line and will be buying PDFs one or two or five at a time for years and years. New people will be learning the game through your group, and the Ars Magica community will keep growing.

For my part, I am still looking for the perfect edition, so I am eager to see an ArM6. YMMV.

10

AM5 was not profitable. Continually refining the same product for people who want to see a better version of it means a continually shrinking market.
for AM6 to be profitable it needs to change. Have multiple worlds with alternative histories. Don't shackle it to the theology of medieval Catholicism. expand the audience, but in a way that can maintain the core audience as well. A hermetic breakthrough that discovers alternate timelines would even allow it to continue from the current system, but with room for change.

11

People in my group has not and is not interested in buying any ARs Books. In fact they are buying games like Pathfinder, Anima, Western and Saga (The last two are Swedish RPGs), which they are GM:ing in groups I am in. Maybe it is a cultural thing, but no one in my two groups actually buys books that we play at my house, just as little as I buy books to the other games they are GM:ing.

Maybe it is more common in the US that the entire group buys the books to the gaes they play and not GM. I have never had it like that.

12

Then in my eyes, it will just be a new Pathfinder, GURPS or Fate. It will no longer be Ars Magica. To me Ars Magica is tied to Mythic Europe with the power of the Church tied to the divine - so why invest money in ARM 6 if the other games are more developed. We all know your dislike to the Christian theology and Mythic Europe and the reason why pagan and heathen mythology is not bound to the divine realm.

13

Things that I think MUST be in the book:

  • interesting long term events for magi so that a saga is possible. Principally this means rules for "inventing spells", "inventing items", "reading and writing books", "familiar and apprentice stuff" (and perhaps a truncated form of "customising labs").
  • truncated covenant creation rules (much like in the existing ArM5 core book).
  • a bestiary that contains enough "mundane" animals to provide a reasonable selection for Bjornaer, shape-shifters, and familiars. Also, a simple way to create Beasts of Virtue (i.e. take the mundane beast plus add a supernatural ability from a small menu and add a Might)
  • a bestiary that contains enough "Mythic" opponents to be interesting and to provide a reasonable selection for the storyguide to base improvisation of similar creatures. One Angel would be plenty. Three or Four demons of various Might. Four or Five each of Magic and Faerie Creatures (archetypical things of myth like centaurs, one or two big things like a dragon, etc). Also (brief versions of) things likely to eventuate from spell effects (i.e. simple undead, animated trees, simple elementals). Don't need creature creation rules in the core book.
  • a (relatively) detailed description of the Hermetic organisation of a "typical" Tribunal; i.e. not the travel guide, history, or non-Hermetic bits, but the "typical" Hermetic social structure. This is because the Hermetic social structure drives much of what player magi are doing in a "typical" saga. Detail about a "typical" Tribunal is much more valuable than overviews of lots of Tribunals.
  • a selection of basic characters that can be used as grogs or opponents. I.e. much like what is currently in the ArM5 core book.
  • a small chapter on "human" supernatural opponents. Some example characters driven by the standard Virtues and Flaws (like Shapeshifter, etc), and some Virtues and Flaws for a Hermetic Infernalist. Not Infernal Methods/Powers etc, just some simple Virtues and Flaws that can be taken by an infernalist magus. The risk/temptation of Infernalism is supposed to be a big deal for magi, but in ArM5, it isn't really clear what an Infernalist magus might look like, and they tend to be crippled in comparison to vanilla magi (because they have all sorts of other Abilities and Arts to sink XP into).
14

Expanding a little on providing stats for opponents, I think one of the things Ars Magica 5th edition did wrong in the core book is the provided stats for monsters in the back of the book were all monsters with fairly specific stories. This made it a bit of a barrier to transplant such critters into other encounters / stories. Obviously not hard, but any barrier to such risks disengaging players.

What the game needs is the Ars Magica equivalent of goblins, be it bandits or actual goblins or zombies or whatever. Things that a beginner SG can plonk into their game easily with minimal effort.

15

I think there is some room for expansion of what constitutes "interesting" long term events. I would love to see senior magi summoning ghosts and daimons in order to learn Arts and spells from them. Mechanics could be pretty simple -- give supernatural beings a Teaching Total for Arts based on their Might score or similar.

Does "learning exciting new spells from a demonic familiar" count as an interesting long term event? :smiling_imp:

16

Yes, but it doesn't need rules. I meant "inventing spells" to encompass inventing via teaching. Nothing says that the teacher needs to be either living or a magus --- they just need a relevant Teaching Total (put an example ghost/creature with a relevant teaching total in the bestiary). Also, "Daimon/Ancestral-Ghost Teacher with Teaching Total of X" could be a fine Virtue to acquire via "mystery cult stuff".

Which reminds me, "mystery cult stuff" is another "interesting" long term event that should probably be included in the core rulebook. I wouldn't use the existing Mystery Cult rules though. I'd make it simpler and more like the Forest Paths (i.e. do a thing, gain a flaw, gain a virtue). Have three or four examples for each Mystery Cult House, plus a handful of other examples to represent a few other mystery cults. I would represent Infernalism in the same way (i.e. just a small set of Quest/Flaw/Virtue pairings). You don't need rules on how to devise new Mystery Cults/Paths (in the Core rulebook at least).

17

The real problem is that medieval Catholicism didn't address the Magic and Faerie realms at all, so all we get is hand-waved explanations that don't integrate these realms into the theology. If you're going to take the hard line that God is all-powerful and all-knowing (but inscrutable), then give reasons as to why the Magic and Faerie realms exist at all. Something that big shouldn't be a complete mystery. Make the Magic Realm the Garden of Eden - a perfect realm meant for perfect man, who got kicked out. Make the Faerie Realm the middle destination for souls not damned by Infernal influence but not made holy by the touch of the Divine. Or Magic is the stuff God made the universe out of (Realm of Forms) and Faerie is the realm of Dreams. Or SOMETHING that isn't "nobody knows".

Moving the game around in the timeline is probably good, though; being able to play 10th century Ars Magica or 15th century Ars Magica would be nice.

Medieval physics is IMO a bigger problem for the line (causes too much confusion with new players), but would require dramatic tinkering to fix (Imaginem stops being an art if species go away, because light is Ignem and sound is mostly Auram and Taste/Smell is the art of the substance being smelled and Touch is just Corpus or Animal). But it's a big turn-off for players to have to learn new assumptions of physics for a setting that are counter to all the physics they learned in school.

18

It did; it just made the eminently sensible point that witches do not exist and that the folk belief in faeries as the souls of dead children was undemonstrable...which is not useful for game play, so we ignore it beyond using it once in Transylvania.

Seriously, the current Pope has indicated that aliens are welcome to be baptized if we ever meet them, and the formal position of the modern Church is that Jesus died for the sins of whatever tentacular horrors dwell in the depths of space (literally, the chief astronomer for the Vatican has made reference to tentacles not being a bar ot having a soul). These positions were first determined when considering alien beings like foreigners, faeries and airy spirits.

In real theology there are big mysteries like this. What's the mechanism of salvation for the souls of unbaptized children? Where do the souls of righteous people who have not heard the gospel go? The Church is really comfortable with the idea that God has not told people how the world works. The Church knows folklore may or may not be true. That's why it sponsored so much science, and I say this as the guy that hammered the church for its treatment of peasants in Lords of Men.

I agree.

I jovially ignore medieval physics most of the time, except species.

I note that our modern understanding of how light works was first published in 1215 (the anniversary of this is why it's the UN International Year of light this year), so I'd encourage you to do it too.

19

It did; it just made the eminently sensible point that witches do not exist and that the folk belief in faeries as the souls of dead children was undemonstrable...which is not useful for game play, so we ignore it beyond using it once in Transylvania.

Seriously, the current Pope has indicated that aliens are welcome to be baptized if we ever meet them, and the formal position of the modern Church is that Jesus died for the sins of whatever tentacular horrors dwell in the depths of space (literally, the chief astronomer for the Vatican has made reference to tentacles not being a bar ot having a soul). These positions were first determined when considering alien beings like foreigners, faeries and airy spirits.

In real theology there are big mysteries like this. What's the mechanism of salvation for the souls of unbaptized children? Where do the souls of righteous people who have not heard the gospel go? The Church is really comfortable with the idea that God has not told people how the world works. The Church knows folklore may or may not be true. That's why it sponsored so much science, and I say this as the guy that hammered the church for its treatment of peasants in Lords of Men.

I agree.

I jovially ignore medieval physics most of the time, except species.

I note that our modern understanding of how light works was first published in 1215 (the anniversary of this is why it's the UN International Year of light this year), so I'd encourage you to do it too.

20

Yes, there are big theological mysteries in the real world religions. But Ars Magica is a game. It has no problem calling out the Criamon as fundamentally deluded as to their goal as far as the default setting is concerned. Real world theology can't prove God exists and is omnipotent and omniscient - but the Ars Magica setting affirms that this is so in the game. There are default assumptions imposed for some things, why not others? We just end up with an incomplete cosmology for a single-setting game, where multi-setting games (like D&D) get fully explained planar cosmologies.