I agree that for many people on this forum, the complexity may not be an issue.
But the complexity is certainly present when you try to explain the advancement rules to someone new to Ars Magica.
In my experience, most new systems require some time to familiarize with. I'm running a Genesys game for three years, to the same group, and they still sometimes have questions
The advancement rules themselves are somewhat complex, yes. But once they are understood, adding an Affinity doesn't increase the complexity in any noticeable way.
We used to play a lot of Call of Cthulhu and Drakar och Demoner¹ back in the day. Questions were almost unheard of after the first session.
There is a big difference between systems.
Ars Magica can be excused the complexity only because it is designed to handle complex stories. Both troupe style and long-term advancement are complex. Furthermore, advancement is a lot easier to manage if the game is handled sequentially, processing one season at a time and forcing the player to choose. It is just that when everybody has a handful of characters to manage, they do not have time to look at all of them, and focus on the ones being played.
A lot of complexity issues can be handled with better workflow, but then roleplaying is not supposed to be work so we do not want to think about workflow.
¹ another basic roleplaying derivative
Well yes and no. Having both means you have the options of a very specialized character, with Affinity + Puissant in the same art, but also the option of a somewhat diversified character that has 2 Puissant and 2 Affinity in 4 different arts, whereas having 4 Puissant or 4 Affinities is not currently legit. Of course, you're free to houserule whatever you want, but I'm not sure we need to fix any of this. It's not like affinity requires an accounting degree - if you want to houserule in favor of half XPs, go for it, more power to you.
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Years ago there as a joke about a person in customer service trying to deal with a man whose claimed his computer didn't work, and after a series of questions found out that the power was out in the man's house and told him to take the computer back to the store because he was too stupid to own a computer.
Now we have batteries in most computers and the people who used to be too stupid to own a computer are propagating fake news all over the internet.
The moral to this story is that seeking simplicity for a system (such as ars magica) means deciding that you are marketing to simpler people. I don't believe I personally want to play with people who are to simple to understand the current system.
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Well, I wouldn't agree with THAT point of view. The whole point of this topic is, after all, to present a cleaner rule, easier both to understand and apply.
Ars Magica is complex, yes, both in rules and setting, and that is part of what attracts some people (myself included). But there is complexity that adds depth and there is complexity that adds nothing. Any attempt of seeking simplicity when complexity adds nothing is good. This is not about marketing to simpler people, but about making a great game greater.
Of course, the discussion on what adds and what detracts from the game is sometimes personal, and different points of view are bound to arise.
Sometimes it is not. For example, bad phrasing of the rules is never good (saying that as a clear and obvious example, this is not a jab at the rules for Affinity, nor anyone, nor anything else).
There is a difference between trying disentangle the spaghetti code of rules the game has developed with people writing rules and counter rules with differing views of how the game should be played over the years and seeking simplicity for the sake of simplicity. I think, however, that for that to happen what is needed is not simply a goal of simplification but rather a goal of greater consistency instead of having a cascading series of "yes, but" rules vying with each other.
It's well-known, and it is a very good example of this class of RPG designs, in that it dumps most of the complexity onto the group. That's why I said it would be best designed by the group playing it — they would share enough assumptions to make their conversion work for them.
I give you the example of ArM5 Magic Resistance as a counter-example. As I have said before, ArM5 had the first version of Magic Resistance in the game in which it was easy to judge what the RAI were supposed to be. A significant number of people don't like that, and want to go back to vague formulations that require judgement calls in a significant number of cases. They don't like it because they don't like some of the consequences of the clear rules.
They might be right. Obviously, I don't think so, or I wouldn't have done it this way, but "weird" consequences of clear and consistent rules are just as much a flaw in a game as unclear and inconsistent rules, and sometimes the balance may well be in favour of unclarity and inconsistency. The location of the balance is likely to be different for different games, as well as for different groups playing the same game.
This is an important point. You can't have Hermetic magic without a great deal of complexity, and you can't have Ars Magica without Hermetic magic. If you also want non-Hermetic wizards who are not simply more powerful than Hermetic magi but are an interesting option to play — well, then you need more rule systems.
There was quite a strong push for consistency throughout ArM5, particularly after the wobble with RoP:tI, where a few novel structures made it through. Authors were told, "You cannot do that. You have to use one of the existing rule structures". And I think it has done very well, by the standards of most games. ("Well, he would, wouldn't he?") It's a lot harder than people who have not tried to do it tend to think.
In any case, I am not going to delete Affinities in errata, and I am not working on ArM6, so I think the phrasing of Affinity is going to remain as it is for now.
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Best way of putting it that I've encountered so far.
Agreed. And even if we were deleting things in the errata, there are higher priorities that Affinities.
I'm cool with that. I did not actually expect them to be removed -- I just thought it worth mentioning that I felt that virtues with multiplicative effect on xp (examplified by Affinity) add some complexity to the advancement rules without a proportionate gain in value. Obviously YMMV
I am fine with the proposed wording change.
I just got an idea for an alternative formulation, that maybe eases the bookkeeping:
"The amount of xp required to reach new ranks in the Skill are reduced by 1/3."
Now xp can be slotted in 1:1, the only change happens at the point one picks the virtue, it isn't suddenly backwards compatible and yeah, bookkeeping still gets messy if you get and lose the affinity repeatedly, but I see no Situation where that wouldn't be the result.
(Though excel probably wouldn't like it a lot. But well, can't have everything, worst case scenario, a handful of players need to track 1-4 skills manually)
Wouldn't that have all the same problems as the formulation proposed first in this thread?
And just like that one, not actually make anything simpler but just move around where you do the calculations, while introducing a bunch of problems due to changing how Affinity works?
(Affinity as written in the rules only matter when you study the Art/Ability in question and calculate your Advancement Total. The rest of the time it has absolutely no effect on anything at all.
These attempts at reformulating Affinity all have the unfortunate effect of changing this, so Affinity can matter at several other times as well, which can cause it to interact with various other rules with unintended consequences and overall increases complexity of the system rather than reduce it.)
Since it's not a total that is modified, but a xp difference, the calculation might be a bit more complex, but, no, it avoids the backwards compatibility that the first suggestion introduced and the weird unclear extra-step in allocation that the current version has. And works simple (but bookkeeping-extensive) with later acquisition/loss.
It would still bring a few minor rounding issues. For example, getting an Ability from 0 to 3, do you need 20 xp (30*2/3) or 19xp (3xp from 0 to 1 + 6xp from 1 to 2 + 10xp from 2 to 3)? Or maybe 21, if you round up? Also, division is generally regarded as more complex than multiplying (well, we use excel and calculators, so maybe that's not a big deal).
Sure, it solves backward compatibility, but I honestly think it creates more trouble than it solves. Personally I think that multiplying the total for 1.5 is more elegant, and if it does not keep backward compatibility, well, maybe that is a feature, not a bug.
What "weird unclear extra-step"?
Well, not all that unclear, but the books mostly try to use a language of "source quality" and "advancement total" and Affinity does, if I read the discussions correctly, apply after the creation of the advancement total, at a point that we can maybe call "xp allocation", where no other rule operates (again, IIRC).
Affinity adjusts the Advancement Total. I really don't see anything weird or unclear about that.
There are other virtues and flaws which also adjust the Advancement Total, just as there are virtues and flaws that adjust Source Quality.
[Off topic, but since the topic appears exhausted...]
I am curious: what are the novel structures in RoP:tI?
The Goetic Arts use a lot of extra multiplications in bonuses and modifiers, and Vituperation uses unconventional formulae. They are not a problem in themselves, but if we had kept doing that sort of thing, the rules would have become too complicated.
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