Would it be possible, somewhere along the line, for Ars magica to have a new big book of pre-generated, interesting and illustrated characters?
I'm enjoying (and have bought) all the books so far, in particular the two Realms of Power books released which were splendid. However, I'm just feeling that the game is a little short of character examples at the moment - particularly at Companion level. Note: that there only half a dozen pre-gen Companions in the core rules, which isn't an awful lot in my view
Character generation in Ars Magica is quite an involved process, which is time consuming if you want to generate characters quickly (as Storytellers often do!) whilst good pre-gens are often very useful for newbie players as well as general idea fermentation for stories.
The previous "A Medieval Tapestry" was extremely useful for all these aspects. Having illustrated, pregenerated 'splats' covering 1-2 pages each is surely an easy formula to get into!
I've no idea what new books are in the pipeline for the next few years, but please can we see something like this?
Actually I'll readily second any notion on more Ars books from Atlas. It's positively thrilling how much have happened to the revival of the setting with the publishing of 5th edtion - not only in the term of books and streamlining but also in the vitality of the "Ars commuity".
In other words: keep publishing and I'll keep buying them as fast as you can pop them out (and ship them 3/4 around the world...!)!
I've had great use of that as well - I made a folder of more than 70 illustrated grogs and npc before we even started playing (but only added stats later on) mostly being inspired or downright robbing some of them from various great websites. I seldomly need numbers for random npc's - either having prepared them, ignoring stats or winging it. But I've also had joy from Mythic Tapestry - and if you ignore the stats it's still a treasure trove of inspiration. I've personally had more trouble with some animal stats (though I have several ars bestiaries) as they to me have seemed more difficult to wing.
I recognise that you can get hold of example characters from online sources, and that grog templates are quite well laid out in the Covenants book.
I still feel that having, basically, a splat book for pre-gen Companions (in particular) would be immensly useful though. Especially if the book also details story ideas for each and has each character illustrated with a big portrait.
I agree, I would love to see another MTapestry. Great ideas for magi, companions and grogs. I'd even buy it in a pdf only format. The thing I found most vaulable about MTapestry was the insets on the variety of medieval topics - everything from hounds to nuns. One of the only disappoints I have with HOH:MC is that it makes the Bjornaer character that turn to mist as her heartbeast outside of the that house's tradition. Currently planning her as an NPC, guess she become an ex misc tradition.
Wouldn't mind seeing a pure companion and grog book. Considering the quality of the ARM5 line, everything they put out I'll buy.
I like the idea of the tapestry in PDF format. Being able to do a quick search for the exact character I'm looking for and then being able to print out his character sheet is quite appealing to me.
