I feel, that the first place to take complexity out of a renewed Ars is the covenants.
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Covenants ground sagas in Mythic Europe.
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Setting them up did always benefit from a cooperative, narrativist approach, driven by research of their place and its history - and did suffer from gamesy catalogues of covenant properties to pick from.
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Laboratories are rather extensions of mage characters than parts of the covenant. Shouldn't they also be treated like this in the rules?
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The covenant's library and vis income are the main joint resources for the development of characters in the saga. It is these sagas, not the covenants themselves, that IMO warrant classifications by seasons - and thereby should be discussed with the troupe when determining the power curve of magi (as Andrew Gronosky suggests in https://forum.atlas-games.com/t/card-board-games-archive-links/116/1 ).
What do you think?
Cheers