Well, we ended up changing the ruling dynasty in England and Scotland, changing the official Church in the British isles, ensured that the isle of Mann remains independent from England and Norway and created 2 new tribunals of the Order of Hermes in Mann and the Isles and the low countries. Proactive enough?
That was great fun to do. It was also extremely tongue in cheek. If we can do that, others can as well. The funny thing is that you can do that without breaking the no intervention clause fairly easily. You are so powerful that people do not want to step on your assets. And that means that such level of changes should be relatively common. For us that breaks the setting. And hence the changes. But yes, it depends on how you see the setting. For us it certainly that barrel does not hold water. If it does for you, I fail to see why you are reading a thread about diminishing the power of the OoH, since it is basically a radically different view of ME. No offense intended, but it puzzles me somewhat.
The OoH is the least important bit of ME. The faeries angels demons and dragons are what makes ME ME. The OoH is just a random crust thrown in in the end. One that as designed does not fit very well into the setting IMO. And my troupe tends to share that opinion. As much as we liked how we ravaged the islands of England and Hibernia along our own home turf of Mann, we think it was more akin to a Discworld novel in the end than what we think Ars Magica should be.
We went around doing what we feel the setting allows you to do, and in the end you are such a world mover that (for us) it breaks down the house. For us. Now we want to go the other way around and design a bunch of losers that are powerful individually, but cannot change the setting big time in such an easy/casual way.
One way to curb trade in books while generating stories is to require magi to do book-copying. I think many sagas do that, but it really makes little sense if you can have covenfolk trained in Magic Theory do this. The rationale I prefer here is that the Arts are not knowledge, and so cannot be simply written about. Rather, "books" on Arts are minor magical creations, weaving together resonant materials and such in a way that only a magus can [without increasing the Quality like resonant materials do in Covenants]. A book copied by a mundane, or even a Gifted person that has not been initiated into the Ars Magica, simply cannot copy the resonances and subtle relations of the words to them, leaving the book a strange collection of words that does not really make sense - since the words were never meant to make sense by themselves, but merely to serve as a ladder to speak of the unpseakable, and that way of communication only works with the aid of the resonant materials. This is the great advance made by the late Cult of Mercury - inventing a way to communicate magic through books, rather than directly by teacher.
Even in historic Europe the ruling dynasty in England and Scotland changes occassionally, and the official Church in the British Isles changes too, and it's not exactly a radical change for the Isle of Mann to be aligned differently politcally. And minor shuffles to the political structure of the Order of Hermes hardly seem "setting breaking" either.
It is hard to see how what you have described "breaks the setting". Sure, it evolves the setting from 1220, but that's why published material ends at 1220 --- so your troupe can decide what happens after 1220.
Assuming that magi generally are interested in doing such things, sure. And the accumulated interference and non-interterference of such minded members of The Order of Hermes (and its predecessors and rivals) is why Mythic Europe is the way that it is in 1220. The condition of 1220 Mythic Europe includes The Order of Hermes.
However, it's important to note that much of the published material tends to assume (perhaps realistically?) that most magi are more interested in studying magic (or becoming faeries, or becoming bears, or escaping the circle of time, or fighting demons, or politicing within the Order of Hermes, or something else esoteric) rather than merely wielding mundane political power. In fact, most of the published material is "stuff that magi are interested in doing".
We have two pages in a source book to explaining, and I quote, Why Don't Magi Break Mythic European Feudalism... and the first answer give is ignore the problem. I think that in itself is proof of the existence of the problem... and Ignore It isn't a good enough solution for some us. For my campaign I'm trying to fix it. So is Xavi. That is the purpose of this thread. You posting "there is no problem" does not help this discussion. It is not a positive contribution.
Let me put this a blunter way: do you have something constructive to contribute to this discussion other than disagreeing with it's basic premise? If not, why are participating?
I suppose the nuclear attacks on Japan were not world changing then It just flattened a city, killed thousands, demonstrated massive power in the hands of a country and changed a dynasty.
I guess we have different ideas of what world changing means. Scotland free of Normans, London ruled by the Welsh, the Roman church having nothing to do in England and the medieval knights in decline after their ineffectiveness in front of a shield wall being demonstrated seems like rather large changes to the setting in our opinion. But that must be us. Mount Snowdon does not exist anymore since we used it to create a twin isle to Mann and we have 2 more tribunals in the Order of Hermes. This is the work of two generations of magi. The third generation was finishing their studies by the time we ended the saga.
Xavi, pulling this back on track, if we can ignore the distractions...
Game mechanics wise, I think we've got some solid ideas for lowering the power of the average magus. I like shifting the emphasis toward ceremonial magic, since it means magi can still do powerful things given time to prepare and perform the ritual.
One thing I've found that I really like is Quick Charged Items from Hedge Magic. Basically, it allows a magus to make a single use charged item in a few hours instead of in a season. My experience of it was that my magi started relying on these items rather than formulaic spells and tended to stay at home more. It was much easier for them to churn out a few items to give to the companions and let them go fight the ogre. It had a more "wizard as adviser to the hero" feel... which worked well but definitely shifted the focus of the active parts of game play onto the companions. I don't know how that works with your vision of a less powerful Order an a more shape and material magic system, but it works well with mine.
I like the shift towards ceremonial, ritualistic magic. That is cool and how I envision magic. Good.
I do not like the decrease in power difference between the old man and a newly gauntleted magus. Need to think about it.
Quick charged items... dunno. First, gut feeling is "no way" for me. Grogs using magic items left and right goes exactly contrary to what I was trying to design. it just changes who uses the magic, not how much magic is used. I was thinking more along the lines of removing charged items than adding quick charged stuff here.
Will need to think about these things. Right now I am tinkering with my own HR RPG system adding the magic section (and I went way overboard and now it looks like a fast play Ars Magica system. To my troupe: yeah, I cahanged the system again) so will give this a rest for some days.
I like the way you're trying to improve the flavor of the magic system, in addition to just reducing the power of the magi. The ceremonial aspects and the increased use of components are great.
I also like the flavor of quick charged items, but I take your point about spreading magic to grogs and other mundanes. Perhaps charged items need to have an expiration date so that you can brew up a love potion but you can't keep a keg of it on hand for future use.
I've started thinking about it the other way round... Magus isn't the beginning of the road, it's closer to the end. Once you're a magus you become more experience, more diverse, perhaps more skilled at you specialty but your power level doesn't jump hugely. The young character without a lot of power, that's an apprentice, an initiate... by the time you've earned the title magus, you've got your power.
Of course, a lot of that comes from my different model of handling the Gift and the Order in general... that Hermetic magic is a mystery initiation you take in your late teens or early 20's. That by the time you're counted as a magus, you're in your 30s or 40s. A character doesn't necessarily start as a full magus... I've even borrowed the intermediate rank of adeptus from some occult society or other (Golden Dawn? I don't recall) to cover the concept.
I think here it might depend on the magic item... grogs with protective amulets, "good luck" charms, healing poultices and the odd love potion all sound very Mythic to me. Sure, grogs totting fireball wands around, not so much... but we've essentially nixed that idea by the weaker Arts to begin with.
That sounds like a natural magician, right? I know you like them, but I still like my hermetics being able to levitate stones and create tsunamis sometime. Argh! Too much food for thought and too little time!
Ah, well in that case you need to rethink your model. Rather than Arts as Abilities, you pretty much need to advance Arts as Arts. To limit the power of young magi to the 5-10 level spells as we've discussed, the answer is obvious... reduce the number of starting experience points for Hermetic magi. Assume a shorter apprenticeship... perhaps instead of a 15 year apprenticeship granting 240 exp and 120 levels of spells, start magi with a 6 year apprenticeship 90 exp and 40 levels of spells. After that, you just need to control their access to advancement resources.... if you assume a low vis saga, an average book quality 8 and only low level (5-8) summa than you can slow their advancement. If you want to slow their advancement even further, assume magi have to work for a living... that they must devote at least one season per year to some kind of profession or covenant service for which they only gain Exposure. With this model, magi will start weaker with a greater emphasis on lower level spells and ceremonial magic to perform larger effects. However, over time and with the right resources, they will eventually advance to become the levitating tsunami summoners of the Isle of Mann.
Truthfully, you don't need to change the rules at all to have weaker magi who focus on lower level spells. You just need to get your players to agree that's the kind of saga you want to have. I speak from experience. My last saga which included magi was made with that agreement in place. The magi consisted of a village witch, a clerk and a parish priest. They were made more or less with the core rules, but the highest level spell anyone knew was, I think, a 15 and the highest Art was a 6 or 7. They probably could have hurled around level 20 or 25 spells and been rulers of the barony, but that wasn't the game we agreed on. Instead, we had a clerk hiding from the local knight because he was also a smuggler and fence for bandits, the village witch bowing respectfully to the Faerie Lady of the Bitch Grave and old wizard-priest laying low when the Archdeacon came to town. Why? Because that was the game we agreed to play.
It just flattened a city, killed thousands, demonstrated massive power in the hands of a country and changed a dynasty.