Ancient Magic Sneak Peek Now Available

In such a case, the existence of some Minnesota retailer being willing to ship overseas would be greately appreciated, since my tryout with Warehouse 23 has been deeply unsatisfactory. Allow me to be a bit skeptical on the likelihood of a release date just after New Year holidays being strictly respected. :confused: Anyway, I guess the fact that the PDF preview has become available on mid-November means the book is marching towards the printer like clockwork just now, right ??

By all means, thanks and congrats for the book. Judging from the index, it looks like another chock-full treasure trove of magical goodness that any group can wallow in for a long time. And it also looks like something that the authors really enjoyed writing.

Indeed. However, as far as I understand them, these rules supplement, not substitute, Original Research. The former are expected to be used when the mage has access to a pre-existent (if fragmentary) body of mystical knowledge to integrate in Hermetic Theory, whereas Original Research should be used when one only has personal inspiration as a guide.

However, being reminded of a discussion we had sometime ago, I would reckon that the new rules can and should be used not only to integrate Ancient non-Hermetic magic, but also other oddities like Mystery Virtues, vanilla Hermetic Virtues, and so on. Or at least integrate them into existing Hermetic mysteries. I mean, the affinities and smiliarities between some Ancient magics and some mystery lores seem blatant to me, cfr. Defixio magic or Adamite magic and Name or Folk magic, Hesperides magic and Astrology mysteries, Necromancy and Spirit magic, Alchemy and Verditius mysteries and Heron magic or Rune magic.

Now THESE are the types of books I crave!

"Ego morum, et adire caelum! Atlas Gratias!"

With Ancient Magic, I think the coolest thing will be to see what troupes do with it. It's kind of like how we have such excellent stuff now because the current batch of authors got to stand on the work of the earlier batch. I presume that all of the Ancient Magics have added material which, after a few years, will just be common knowledge on the list. The way, for example, that Nephilim were a massive idea in 2nd ed and now are just "Hey: Nephilim! Cool!"

In some of my private research for another thing I'm doing, I've found Ptolemaic, Defixione and Nephilim information that expands on the book. That's not to say the book is bad or the authors are wrong or any of that, just that there are plot hooks and novel twists and things which are based on material which is really obscure until you have had the chance to read AM, digest it for six months, and then see the connections. I think, when everyone has read AM, and we have two hundred sets of eyes looking, that in the same way I've turned up new ideas, so other people similarly be finding new and useful stuff. I think that'll be a lot of fun on the list, and lead to some really interesting games.

So, for me, I think the interesting thing about AM isn't so much what it contains, but that having read it , the community will have a common set of tools to forage around on a collection of cool topics with a lot of story potential.

In the days of second edition, I was of the opinion that all I needed was the core books for a game and anything else had to be darned important to warant my money. Since that time I've graduated from college and realized that I really enjoy reading sourcebooks and I really value how they do so much work for me. As a result I didn't really start collecting second edition materal outside of the core book with any vigor until the late 90's.

I didn't necessarily study each of the old books that I picked up to the extent that I read a new release. Where the heck were Nephilim mentioned in second edition?

Concerning Nephilim.

I was scratching my head thinking the same thing.

I think I have all the 2nd Ed material and while the books are at home I don't recall Nephilm. Perhaps Malficium? If it's in that book, wasn't it simply a blurb in the corner? Maybe??? Curious.

I am looking forward to this greatly. I mean, I never new the Ewoks were Canaanite necromancers!

Seeing as this thread has been brought back to thte top of the list...

Where were Nephilim included in second edition?

Tim?

from the front page;

What happened to the bold typing? :laughing:

Did the wonderful news from Atlas make you cheery and lower your voice? :laughing:

Great news by the way - some times I do wish I lived in the US. The "sweetness" of waiting is very very overrated!

(Sooo, Tim.... enlighten us)

The Nephilim have a section in the Maleficium starting on page 42.

I had a chance to look at it and judge that it was possible to misconstrue my statement as impolite.

I had a suspicion that might be it. Lacking a tone of voice to show irony can at times make some postings come off in horribly wrong way - lucky are the ones that realise it in time :confused:

Good spotted, but we had been teased that it should be in the 2nd edition, so I'll still be waiting for further enlightenment...

What a letdown !! My interest in C&G is more of a completist sort, so I can gladly wait for my copy to be delivered me by camel's back, if need be. But the thought that my deliriously awaited copy of Ancient Magic will waste a whole month rotting in Atlas' warehouse is almost temptation enough to pick a plane to Minnesota and stage a burglary. :angry: A nifty copy of AM would have been a perfect Christmas gift to myself. :cry:

Seriously, I don't understand the policy here. I thought C&G and AM were supposed to release with almost three months' distance, so I expected them to be printed separately. If they went together because of C&G delay, why not release them together like TMRE & RoP:I ?? I heard a lot from John & co. about how important printing books together was to save money for a little company, and I deemed only the super-big fish like Hasbro and WWP could afford the wasteful expense of letting a book in warehouse for a whole month, so I confess I'm confused.

Oh, in discussion on the Berklist when the Nephilim RPG came out. I didn't mean in the formal sense. I meant it in the sense that, even now, I've found material on several of the Ancient Magics that, when someone does them again in five years time, will be just run-of-the-mill inclusion, but now is the limit of what we know.

I'll give you some examples when the thing is out.

Ok I've NEVER spoken with any of the gameing industry crowd on this issue so my guesses are pure unadulterated speculation. But I won't let that stop me; here are my ideas in order of decreasing likelyhood.

Atlas said that they'd release Ancient magic in the first quarter of 2007. It will do them more harm than good to release it early.

John wants to have one release of the game come out every quarter in order to keep the game in the minds of the less avid fans and to keep the retailers and distributers happy and thinking about the game.

They released TL with guardiens of the forrest and they released Infernal with Mysteries revised. They learned something from the sales numbers of these books.

There is always a bit of net buzz about a new release. This net buzz is a limited quantity and you'll get more of it if you release the two books one after another rather than two at once.

If you release two books for the same line at the same time there will be a subset of people who will not be able to afford them both and will therefore only purchase one. The incentive to purchase a new release is going to be greater than the incentive to by one that has already been out for a few months. As a result you might loose some sales.

Erik hit a number of valid reasons for us holding AM.

Reason #1 is that we told distributors that January would be the release of Ancient Magic. Distributors deal with late releases all the time, and it's actually not that big a problem for them (within a few months' window). Early releases, however, really mess them up, because they have a process for soliciting orders from retailers, which involves printing catalogs, giving order deadlines for a particular month's releases, collecting and collating those orders, and ultimately cutting a purchase order to the manufacturer (us). It throws a serious monkey wrench in the process to demand orders before distributors and retailers have had a chance to put them together.

It's a bit like your boss coming in and telling you that project that he said was due next month, really needs to be turned in tomorrow.

The Jan. 2 release date is the very earliest I felt I could set (Jan. 1 being a holiday). If we had been later in getting the books to press, we might have shipped them together -- but it would have been together in January, not together in December. (I do at least like having some spacing between them.)

The savings from print-ganging are significant enough that we would print two books like this together and hold the second one for 2-3 months before putting it on sale, and it would more than pay for the cost of storage, etc.

Ok, if the book gets shipped overseas after Christmas, there's till a tiny chance I get to enjoy it before the holidays are over with Jan, 6. Hopefully. :slight_smile:

Who were the authors of the various chapters, by the way (and what about your experience in writing them, if you want to share folks) ? Now that the table of contents is out, I deem this is a safe question to ask. All of them look like very nice adds to a chronicle, even if I'd already earmarked some special favorites.

We've been asked not to discuss the book until January 2. I will say this about it, it's available for $20 on Amazon pre-order. I'm all for supporting FLGS, but $10 is a fair savings.

amazon.com/Ancient-Timothy-F ... F8&s=books

I went for the Amazon pre-order as well.
The cost saving helped offset the shipping cost to Australia.