Against the Dark

atlas-games.com/product_tables/AG0302.php

Ooooh... Well, there goes another bit of the gaming budget. :slight_smile:

Idem :slight_smile:

... One Tribunal with many White Wolves, Vampyrs and Tremeres... i feel fear and a great "dejà vu".

Been interested in that tribunal for many years - bravo. Looking forward to it.

Sweet!

I want to see the the sign of the lion rampant and the covenant of the wizards of the coast!!! :mrgreen: :mrgreen:

At last! 2012 looks like an awesome year in supplements...

And just as I'm kicking off a mythweavers saga set in that very tribunal!

If there isn't a covenant in the Danube Delta, there should be! That's where my groups covenant is going up.

Another tribunal down, two to go! 8)

I haven't read the Sorcerer's Crusade version of Transylvania. Not because I somehow think I don't want to pollute my pristine brain with their work, or anything like that: it's just that there's an awful lot of folklore for Hungary kicking around and if we'd had 150 000 words to fill, we could still have found good material for them, I feel. So I can't say "No, completely different" because they might, by coincidence, be similar. I read Clanbook Tremere about 15 or 20 years ago and it won't suprise anyone that it could never be anything similar to that, just because of the complete difference in setting, style, game tone, and mechanics. I also read Masque of the Red Death : Transylvania for AD&D back in uni. Again, its not similar, from what I recall.

What I will say is that I think the writing process for WW games is a lot different to the writing process for Ars. I think they get a collection of cool ideas and put them together, and if the history is a bit funny, well, its only a game and history is a lie anyway. The writing process for Ars books generally involves us putting in the really hard graft to research what myths are on the ground, and then buiding up from there. This gives a very different tone between the two lines, IMO, so even if you started with the same motifs, you'd end at a different place.

Or perhaps that's not what you meant at all. NDA being up, I can't talk about the contents on the book. 8)

I'll try to phrase my question so that it only skirts the NDA :slight_smile:

I think the main problem with Transylvania is that it's dominated by House Tremere. I think that this seriously limits the range of sagas that can be played. Basically, you have to find a reason why all, or at least most, the PCs would want to be "subservient" -- or why the Tribunal would tolerate an "independent" attitude from the PCs. Did you find this was a problem when writing Against the Dark?

I, too, am someone who has been waiting many years (certainly pre-5th ed) for this book. Thank you for finally getting it into the publication cycle!

Not that I have anything to do with the writing of AtD, but I've never felt, in my sagas, that the Tremere dominance of Transylvania was much different, in terms of the stories it generates, than the Gild dominance of the Rhine, or, to a lesser extent, the way the King of England theoretically owns everything (including your covenant) in the Stonehenge Tribunal. In my previous saga, I went with the notion that the Tremere allowed a new mixed covenant to be formed (so long as a loyal Tremere was involved) because they thought the folks from the other houses could unearth some stuff faster/easier than Tremere could itself... at which point, Tremere could waltz in and take it if they needed to. (Of course, that wasn't how they presented their position to the magi involved!)

You're certainly going to be politically dominated in Transylvania if you're not a Tremere house, but that really just means that playing in Transylvania probably isn't a good call if the characters want to focus on Tribunal political/voting mechanations. I think most of the Tribunals-as-written have certain stories they lend themselves to, and certain stories that take more work to integrate into the canonical tribunal.

hear! hear!

No, I thought it was a bonus. You can only write so many Tribunals where every covenant just does its own thing off in the woods. We know how that works. (Although, we haven't done that in a while. TLATL and GOTF don't work that way.) It's really hard to find new ways to say "We are an autocephalous covenant far away from human civilisation. We are either bullied by an Autumn covenant, or not" that readers don't just look at and go "Um...didn't I buy you already?" or "You are just writing increasingly bizzare stuff to break the stereotype of a castle by a faerie forest, aren't you?" I love vanilla ice cream, but a lot of other people don't. They see it as the default and say "I know the default. I want something novel."

So, it's nice for once to turn up and have the pre-exisiting setting say "It's not about the default. There's stuff going down." As a writer you can go "Really? How can I muck with this stuff, and where is it going down?"

So, no. I thought it was great.

birbin.mystica.hu/ars-altern ... lvania.htm :slight_smile:

Excellent. I like the apparent theme of an open-Order very much, and am looking forward to reading it. (That won't be soon, but still.)

Awesome!

I wish shipping costs were not to stupid so I could buy them as they came out instead of waiting for a few to buy in bundles...

You know, I really don't care if things look "familiar" with White Wolf. White Wolf didn't originate all of the legends around Transylvania and the like, nor did they invent the rich tradition of legend and superstition surrounding Eastern Europe and the Carpathians. I think such things carry a stigma simply due to the White Wolf association with Ars Magica.

I most certainly hope that we see Old World superstition and horror spread throughout this tribunal. Give me werewolves and vampires! I know it's about 200 years too early for Dracula, but still...I'd still love to see this Tribunal get the horror treatment.

I've been waiting for this tribunal for years, and I'm very excited to see what comes of it!