Without making any significant change to the mechanics or the history of the Order of Hermes as present in the core rules, why can we not imagine them as something closer kin to a secret society like the Freemasons or the Rosicrucians? Sure, the Order started about 600 years early for either of those... it's an anachronism... but we can accept that. The existence of the Order as an entity does not necessarily mean that the Hermetic economy, book cycle, political power and force of the Order that have been introduced in the supplements like Covenants and Houses of Hermes must follow. Yes, you can make a clear and reasonable argument for how the Order as envisioned in those books could come to pass... but that doesn't mean it has to. If you make even some small changes to your assumptions, a completely different picture can appear.
Yes, you can turn everything up to 11... but you don't have to... and, I strongly suggest, the default assumption of the setting should not be "11".
That doesn't make for a less powerful Order. It just makes for less powerful young PCs. What happens when they reach the point of selling instead of buying? Do prices suddenly drop or do they collect enormous amounts of vis for their services?
I think it's up to 11, because there isn't an economic system clearly defined.
Turn on the vis spigots.
Ramp up book production
Include all the Mysteries (which isn't supposed to happen).
Grab the latest shiny and go!
The build points don't really tie back to anything... I can make a covenant with hundreds of pawns of vis and no sources that can run for a long time, even the length of a saga. I can give it tons of books but no vis sources or stocks... All these things require a lot of discussion with players to ascertain what kind of game is desired. If the players aren't at all familiar it becomes the SG's responsibility.
I had a horrible Ars intro, where magi had like 1 or 2 pawns of vis a year. That environment was not a lot of fun. Oh, yeah, one of those pawns was infernal. Yeah us...we're doomed.
Are they competing with established suppliers of services? You betcha prices are going to drop, unless demand increases. Bidding wars begin! Sabotaging work projects and other acts of magical industrial espionage.
I'm pretty tolerant as to the requirements of stories when I play, but that would really piss me off as a player. If I've been paying 15 vis for service X and I finally reach a competency level to start selling the same service, and am then told I can only charge 5 I would be very unhappy.
In any event, the power level of the Order is unaffected because someone is in the Order is making out like a bandit at high prices.
There was a dragon around when we started playing. For reference, there is an amazing piece of work i Hermes Portal #14 and #15 regarding the isle of Mann. We used that verbatim, changing almost nothing, except a few more gruagach and folk witches around, and 2 competing covenants in the island. By the time the saga was developed in a fairly normal way (as we see it in the supplements) Termaneagh was basically at our command. Did we decide to have him available? Sure, he was around. I did not anticipate a Tremere Rego master investing the resources to "forge a new weapon" of those characteristics for his house, though. If uyou are vis rich 8rich in hermetic terms, basically) you end up with this kind of stories. We had vis stolen, yup. And traded over, and used up to buy stuff (that, a lot) but the order as a whole when it develops using what the current setting seems to be doing does not hold very well when your magi population is older than 20 years out of apprenticeship.
Let's imagine the Order of Hermes as a secret society... a Mystery Cult. A lot of the elements are already there. Apprenticeship is your first degree, the Opening of the Gift is your first initiation. Magus is your second degree, the Gauntlet serves as your ordeal and Parma Magica is the secret that your learn. Archmagus is the third degree, with the Challenge as your ordeal (do you gain something for it? perhaps in this model you should).
What changes? Secrecy is power. Magic is a secret, a mystery to be protected. We already have a hint of that in the Code. Magi are forbidden from scrying on their sodales. Why? Least they learn our secrets. What secrets? The only ones that matter are your magic. You can't spy on someone to learn the secrets of their magic. So why give those secrets away. No, you jealously guard your secrets. You protect them. You keep them safe. You don't hand out your best books. You don't give away your best spells. What about House Bonisagus? They must share their discoveries, sure, but that doesn't mean they have to publish an annual Journal of Magical Theory. No, you want to learn my secrets, I will teach you... as Bonisagus taught Trianoma. Come and be my student (Goody, a lab assistant with a decent Magic Theory score).
The Order is a Mystery and wizards jealously guard their secrets. Sure, there are magi out there with a lot of power. That old fellow, he's been a magus for a century and more. He guards his secrets well. You want to learn them. Phfa, he says, why should I weaken myself by giving away the secrets of my power? You are a magus now, no longer an apprentice. Go, learn the secrets for yourself.
Secrecy is power and magic is mystery. That's my Order.
What if your character went to a wise old Redcap skilled in the Art of Commerce to ask for advice on how to set out his shingle? He provides you with some advice, get to know your competitors, research them, get to understand your market, research it. Prepare for consequences when you enter that market, they've been along a lot longer, if this is a cash cow, they might be willing to drop their prices to drive you out of the market. They might have agents spreading lies about your product/service which might dry up your customers. In other words, you're preparing for it from the entry into the saga or start of the saga, and I'm giving you constant feedback over what to expect when you get in. I don't tell stories in such a way that, he know, you can't do that, some unnamed NPC you never heard of comes in and steals all your customers requiring you to lower your price. It's a story, I weave your character and my NPCs into a broader arc of the saga. If you expect me to rollover and let you accomplish all of your goals as a player without some effort you're expecting a lot from the SG. But say over the 20 years you build to get ready to accomplish your goal of becoming a seller of some service, and it's core to your concept, I'm going to help you get there, but the way you get there may not be as easy or as quick as you like. Your character may end up growing in unexpected ways. Your initial allies become your enemies, your initial enemies become your allies. That's storytelling that's myth.
Don't paint me as an SG who doesn't let characters accomplish their goals. I will let them within the confines of the saga. If some goals a player has for their character are not compatible with either the saga goals or some of their own, other goals, I'm going to tell them flat out. If they want to play a character who is at cross purposes with himself, well, that can be a lot of fun to play, but they have to have a certain maturity level to do it. That character may go out in a blaze of glory, but it might just be a fun ride while it lasts. Then again, if they try and get me to rollover on everything the character wants, he's (the character) going to be miserable, and so will the player.
But is he making out like a bandit? That's an assumption on your part. He earns how much, and how often? Have you worked those questions for your saga out? Maybe he's really living hand-to-mouth, and it only appears he's rich, you don't dig deeper into that character's motivations. Maybe that vis has to last him for 5 years, because the jobs come along only so often. As you say there are others out there who choose the make decision in the make/buy matrix. Maybe he's the squirrel who packs nuts away for the long winter. You can't answer those questions without thinking about the broader economics of your saga, and you can't determine a power level of the Order in your saga without making some basic assumptions about economics in your saga. If you accept what the books provide, and take it all, yeah, you're going to 11, as I've said.
Sure...someone like that exists. And guess what...that's commerce. Something is being exchanged for a price... Knowledge for seasons of labor. How did they get their best books? Did they steal them, engage in the black market? Doesn't make sense that they write them, they can't benefit from their own books. So those books came from somewhere...someone wrote them, for what reason? Glory? No, they don't share secrets...unless they have a price. Unless they are vain and think that they can demonstrate that they understand an Art better than anyone else, and hey make a little Vis on the side, too.
You might accuse me of having an anachronistic view, but I invite you to review The Bible for all the ways it talks about money, and Vis is the money of the Order...
And the love of money is the root of all evil...it destroys saga without prejudice.
LOL, now you're just reaching. Sure it's commerce... but it's not commerce like the Hermetic economy described in Covenants, etc. I've been very specific about what I'm objecting to and I think you've ignored that to try and make your point.
As for books, "historically" European magi did steal them usually from "the East," see Gerbert de Aurilliac as an example.
Arguably... Bibracte has magi 30 year out of apprenticeship. And so far, no one is breaking down city walls for fun, or finding a dragon to enslave (although an NPC has a fire drake familiar, but they seriously needed some firepower for some stuff I had planned). If you play Ars like D&D, kill monsters to earn the loot and experience, yeah, it's going to be unbreakable, and not fun. But not every encounter drops loot. Or sometimes the loot is a diamond in the rough and requires years of polishing before it pays off. Or sometimes the loot is a piece of information. Or sometimes, just sometimes the players get there a$$es handed to them and have to turn tail and run.
No, I'm not just reaching, i'm trying to understand the genesis for where those books come from...so now you've satisfied that. And now you've clarified that they were stolen. And now someone probably wants to steal them back, or plunder the wizened old wizard's sanctum... All those things exist within myth and folklore. Riches beyond the dreams of avarice. Greed that motivates characters. Secret knowledge that beckons...
Either we're talking about an Order that has books or one that doesn't. Even the main rule book has books. If you're not playing in that environment, then you're not playing in that environment. I'm talking about the Order as it is published and ways to tamp it down, which is primarily to understand the economics of a saga come to some agreement as a troupe, and then go from there, adjusting as necessary. it may not be perfect, but it's a method, but it is certainly not an invalid method. It's a method that you don't wish to use, and that's fine. It's not wrong.
Let's go back a step and make this simple. My argument explicitly assumed a "fair price", whatever that means in practice. In such a case division of labor benefits both parties to a transaction, by basic economics, and the Order as a whole becomes more powerful than a magical society without commerce.
Raise the price, as you suggest, and the benefit disproportionately accrues to the seller. Since he's in the Order, the Order as a whole continues to benefit and is more powerful than a magical society without commerce.
Raise the price beyond a level of reasonable value and the buyer walks away and there's no commerce. This is more like my model of the Order than it is yours.
My point is that raising the price doesn't reduce the benefit of commerce to the order of the whole, just to poorer members, such as starting PCs. Eliminating routine commerce in arcane items, on the other hand, does.
Alright, eliminate commerce...no vis trade, no book trade, no services trade. Done. Next step to make a less powerful order.
Are we really talking about a less powerful order, or are we talking about a saga running out of control because of PCs able to do anything after a certain time. You're saying eliminate the story elements of trade, I say keep them, because they're interesting but control them tightly. Is this a fair synthesis of our discussion so far?
Ultimately, it comes back to a game contract, wither implicit or explicit. If the game/saga has veered so far away from where it was originally from, it either needs to have some way to bring it back to normal, or you need to consider scrapping it and starting over. I play Ars because I'm interested in telling some compelling stories, not hunting Orcs, or whatever. For the most part, players and characters are not going to get everything they want, the more they get other players involved in their plots, the more successful they're going to be, TEAM (together each achieves more).
We're now down to the point in an argument (debate/discussion) where I get sparsely quoted, which has a tendency to peeve me off. You completely discounted (at best) or ignored (at worst) what I said about how I would handle your character's progress were you a player of mine. I work from and toward consensus with what I believe are reasonable assumptions and propositions. If you're a player in my saga, and you don't like something and you want to change it, get the table over to your point of view. If I ruled against you and you think it's inconsistent with the saga, the game contract, rules, etc, again, get the table over to your point of view. I work very hard to not play favorites. I work hard to make characters be involved in what I hope are interesting stories for everyone. Sometimes characters surprise me, sometimes I surprise them. Hopefully all the participants are having fun, because at the end of the day that's what it's all about. That means I have some buy in, too, if the players are always against me, well, that saga just isn't going to last, because it means I'm not having fun, and more than likely the players are getting everything they want, and the stories are getting dull, and it's a what the point moment. Been there. Done that.
Bottom line, if the Order is too powerful for you, it's point of discussion for the troupe, and while outsiders can offer suggested input on how to tamp down on it, ultimately it's up to the troupe/SG to decide how to make it not so powerful.
Edit: I'm probably out of this discussion, as it seems we're now at the point of arguing past each other, and I've already been told I'm doing it wrong..
See, of course we disagree. We're talking about completely different things.
At best I'm saying that the vision of the Order, as presented in supplements like Covenants and Houses of Hermes, is flat wrong and must be discarded in it's entirety. No amount of adjusting or "tamping down" can save it. It is simply wrong and detrimental to the game as a whole. As Xavi pointed out early today, the Order as published doesn't fit into Mythic Europe and breaks the game. I'm saying that that vision of the Order is wrong because it is harmful to the setting and so to the game.
I think that it's just possible for the Order as written in the Core rules... for the basic history and background of the Order that has existed through the last several editions... to be preserved (though there are significant aspects of it that I would like to change). However, IMO, the Order as published in all the supplements of the current edition must go.
Naturally, David Chart and the good people at Atlas Games disagree with me. So, I'm sure, do a lot... if not most... of the folks on this forum. That's fine. David is free to run the line however he likes. Atlas is free to publish the supplements however they like. Everyone is free to play the game however they like. The only actual negative effect of my view is that I won't buy the rest of the Houses of Hermes series, the Tribunal books (except maybe Transylvania) or most other supplements specific to the Order of Hermes. I'm sure Atlas doesn't cry too much over those few lost sales.
And if, instead of banning commerce, you juste decreased book quality by, say, 3 points? Because commerce and trade ain't your problem. Study is.
Another possibility is to keep base quality at 3, by then have all modifiers apply at half value, rounding down. This is probably better, now that I think about it. If you also apply is to XP-boosting virtues, as seems logical, I think you'll have toned down the OoH power considerably without having wizards who keep to themselves useless books, items or vis instead of trading it for something useful.
As I'm seeing it, and as, I think, JL has amply demonstrated, lack of trade is both irealistic and at odds with the society at the time. It makes no sense that your magus would write a book and then hoard it, instead of having people read from it.
I simply get the feeling that you're picking at things that make your problem more or less worse (depending on how they're handled) and depriving yourself of stories, instead of tackling the root of the problem.
I'd add something, related in part to Xavi's oft-quoted saga. If a spell is too powerful, well, that's because it's a ritual! I've said this before, I'll say it again, because it comes regularly here. Hell, you can even keep the whole system as it is but bring down the ritual ceiling to lvl 30. Yes, this'll kill some spells, such as BoaF. But isn't this what you're after?
Another possibility, probably better, is that magical power over 50 is too great for a simple spell, and must be ritual. That is, you can still cast that BoaF, but it'll have at most Pen 15 as a formulaic. If you want to channel more magical energy into Penetration, you'll have to go ritual. This implies that binding dragons, or might-stripping powerful creatures, becomes impossible without the use of Ritual Magic.
Just when I think I'm out, The Fixer pulls me back in...
Again, I mentioned it earlier...if powerful spells become rituals, they cost vis. If you want to tamp down on powerful spells that are rituals, then you enforce a "rituals are always stressful circumstance" despite the contradictions in the main rule book. You're going to see some covenants without an Aegis, because they can't take the botch risk. You're going to see many with a significantly weaker Aegis than normal, and a "war time" Aegis when necessary, because of botch risk. You're going to see magi sink XP into mastery of their rituals to reduce or eliminate botch risk. You'll see much more Flawless Magic, Cautious Sorcerer and Mercurian magi pursuing familiars and a stronger golden cord, rather than a strong bronze cord, to reduce botch risk. You'll see much less magical healing, which will in turn make keeping your grogs safe more important. Or you're going to see a lot of fried magi in the saga because they botch a ritual regularly. Direwolf argued with me extensively in another thread that the rules allow a mastery score of 1 to negate all botch risk, at best the rule book is contradictory on this issue. If you really want to make the Order less powerful, make botching rituals that much worse, and you'll divert a lot of XP away from Arts and into spell mastery... Or virtues will be chose that mitigate the risks of botching, such as Mercurian, and Cautious Sorcerer. Or both!
I'm not sure that is quite the right way to look at it. Certainly the Order doesn't fit into historic Europe...but it does fit into Mythic Europe. It's one of the defining features of Mythic Europe.
IMO, the trade part of the Order is actually one of the most realistic bits of Mythic Europe. In historic Europe there is lots of trade, that is what all the guilds and leagues are about. It is what many wars are about. Even the Templars, for example, are partly important because they are a banking empire, as much as they are zealous, religious shock troops. Internal trade (of knowledge, resources, and services) is exactly what a "real" Order of Hermes would do.
In my experience what tends to "break the game" is simply stories where what the story-guide thought would be difficult turns out to be easy. Many stories are liable to crash when the player characters say "right, on the count of three let's all cast our multi-cast mastered, level 5 Demon's Eternal Oblivion spells", or "OK, let's go away for a year and invent a spell to drop a mountain on this problem". This is nothing unique to Ars Magica, all role-playing games suffer from this, particularly when the characters get powerful, and in conventional Ars Magica the characters start relatively powerful.
For me, the solution was, as story-guide, to stop trying to structure stories around creating obstacles for the characters to overcome, but instead concentrate on telling stories about what the characters are doing, and why the characters are choosing to do those things. Many stories are structured around "something is happening in the game world" and the story is about "how the player characters react". Instead try to (sometimes at least) structure stories in the reverse: "the player characters are doing something" and the story is "how does the game world react" and then "does this cause the player characters to do something else". In the second story structure, the story becomes all about "what the player characters do", whereas the former is more about "what is done to the player characters".
All the published stuff about the internal politics and trade within the Order (and Mystery Cults, etc) really helps with this second kind of story structure. This is because it gives the player characters things to do and reasons to do it. And of course, Story Flaws and Personality Flaws help structure these stories too.
Reading some of the interviews, etc. with George R.R. Martin about A Song of Ice and Fire, what Richard outlined above is pretty much how he is writing that series: it's a whole string of 'and the consequences of that act are...'
Ars Magica lends itself very well to stories about the use (and abuse) of power. It is very easy to throw things at a group that are either far too potent or far too weak for the group to handle, and quickly discover your assumption was almost the inverse: what you thought would be simple stumps the group, what you thought would be a challenge they walk all over.
Some of the most interesting stories I've encountered have been dilemmas over the use of power. There's been no question as to whether the magi can deal with something, but the drama and conflict arises out of how they deal with the problem and what the ramifications are.
Where you get the 'less powerful' stories is when adventures happen with mostly or all grogs/companions. Early on this won't happen - everyone has young magi, they want to get out and explore the world, etc. It's a new character, its a new way of toying with the system. As the magi mature, however, and if you give them the option, they will start using grogs more.
Spells like Leap of Homecoming actually help curb the direct presence of the magi - once the magi learn that they can dispatch a group of grogs off to far-flung-locale then just teleport in for the 'crunchy' bit of the adventure, you find yourself with grog parties that have maybe some magic items and no magus present. These give you fantastic medieval stories that can be told about the grogs' adventure, with little or no magic making an appearance. Even if the magi are contactable, chances are good they won't get involved unless things really take a turn for the 'oh crap!'
My recommendation for encouraging more 'low magic' stories is to ensure everyone has a grog (or companion) they can play that isn't their shield grog and is part of an 'adventuring' party. Whenever an expedition happens, this should be their go-to character unless their magus really would get out of the lab for the story. It may not start out that way, but it will move in that direction - especially when the magi who keep going adventuring find themselves bereft of seasons of study.
You can go one further and have non-combat covenfolk adventures, too. However, this really depends on how many character sheets your troupe want to invest in. When each player is juggling 4+ characters, it can get quite logistical.
Well, yes. I've been demonstrating how trade increases the power of the Order but I don't necessarily think banning trade is either realistic or desirable. I think we need to look at specific sorts of trade and the rules that facilitate that.
Longevity for hire I've already mentioned as a pet peeve. Casting tablets in general are another one, since they essentially allow magi to cast spells that are rarely used but highly useful without investing time. Books, vis, and enchanted items are different. Wizards will always trade such items.
My preferred fix for books is to require the authors of tractatuses to actually have high level knowledge of their subjects. Suddenly there are far less books for trade, other than introductory textbooks. It adds a certain complication but it's better than letting every apprentice research paper give an archmagus a season of study at high XP levels. I do also think along the lines of LuciusT that wizards are likely to keep the top of their knowledge secret or restricted to small groups, rather than just dumping each tractatus or summa onto the market.
I'd also go along with The Fixer on doing something about the XP boosting virtues. I've always regarded virtues like Good Teacher as devices to make players and key NPCs exceptional and interesting, not as traits to be allocated statistically across wizardly society. Most other AM players seem to disagree with me, leading to such effects as the estimated average levels for book quality presented in Covenants, which seem extraordinarily overpowered to me. If one just goes back to the core book rule of Tractatus Quality = Com + 6, then you get a common range of say 5 to 8, with 6 and 7 for most books. That's a lot more reasonable than 11, even without adding the Art knowledge prerequisites that I favor.
