The Scriptorium has indeed be quiet for a while now, although we had some activity today. If you post about your progress or ask for feedback there, chances are pretty good you'll trigger a little burst of activity, I think.
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Sorry if I missed something, but what and where is "The Scriptorium"?
The Scriptorium is a Discord server where we (occasionally) discuss work on content to go along with the Definitive Edition. You can join us here: https://discord.gg/dHaT2Rwksa
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Well, everything is very busy, but I wanted to pop in here to say that we are in communication with Paradox (who know own the World of Darkness) and they are excited and supportive about ArM5 Definitive and our open licensing plan, and in basic principle they are thumbs up on permitted use of "Order of Hermes" and "Tremere" in open-licensed Ars Magica RPG materials with appropriate acknowledgement/disclaimers. We will work on having something clearly defined and public about it. I expect it will be something like the old d20 System Trademark License -- i.e., separate from the CC-BY-SA of the text but compatible with it. If you wanted to use the Ars Magica rules/text without whatever limitations are in the trademark license, then you would need to omit or replace those names. Maybe we'll come up with some generally understood substitutes for those eventualities.
My thought is that if someone wants to do an ArM derivative about Space Wizards, they probably won't have a problem with devising their own names for a Galacto-Magical Order and House Draco or whatever. (And would most likely want to have distinct and trademarkable names anyhow.)
My guiding principle with this is just to have a clear safe harbor for folks to know what they can do without worrying they might be stepping on any toes.
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This is awesome news!!!
Thanks to you all at Atlas for making such an effort, and kudos to Paradox for being gracious about it.
Following the whole OGL debacle - pleaes do make sure the granting of rights is perpetual, irrevocable, and transferrable to derivative works of derivative works.
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Hello, long time player and GM of other TTRPGs, looking into Ars Magica more.
I explored running a Ars Magica game about a year ago, I was hoping to use it to run a modern Mage game without all the trappings and edge of WoD.
Turns out that Ars Magica is so ingrained with Middle Agesl understanding of natural sciences that it's borderline impossible. Reading the game, and finding very few actual plays to watch or listen too, I came away feel like it's very complicated and going to be very hard to recruit and teach. And that's ignoring the monumental task of trying to get this game to work with modern physics.
I personally feel that a section at the front of the book, detailing out a lot of the assumptions around the Middle Ages that a player will need to play this game, would be very helpful. I also think a chapter on tips converting this game to other time periods would be really helpful. Or even a whole supplement about that, perhaps in another book.
I understand that this isn't the point of Ars Magica. But I think if you could bring the concept of troupe play, laboratories, and eccentric wizards to other time periods, you'd have an incredibly successful resurgence of Ars Magica on your hands. Especially as CofD Mage is basically dead now, and who knows what WoD is going to do with Mage: Ascension 5e.
I get that it's hard to write adventures for wizards, but anything that can be done to make this easier for newer players, such as adventure supplements or letting us modernize it to a time period easier to grok... would certainly put Ars Magica on a lot of people's radars that probably have no idea the game exists.
Just my 0.2 from a potential Ars Magica GM. 
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That sounds like exactly the kind of project that you could do when the open licence comes out! But personally I think the focus of Ars Magica on a medieval worldview is to its credit, and (to take a less subjective tone) part of the brand. I don't think ArM would be more popular for diluting that.
In case you're interested: there is an issue of Sub Rosa focusing on adapting ArM to other times, though I haven't yet read it and they didn't go as far as to adapt it to modern day.
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But not without renaming the Order of Hermes and House Tremere…
With that caveat, however, this is indeed exactly the sort of thing that the open licence should enable.
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It is probably worth noting that the structural premise of Ars Magica has, in a way, found itself in other games as part of its wide ranging influence.
I know of seven Traveller groups who essentially play Troupe-style play with Scientists on a large laboratory ship now - directly influenced by the Ars Magica but using a futuristic sci-fi paradigm. If you to add Hermetic Houses being presented as corporate facsimiles you could even integrate the political angle.
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Well, that's a kick in the coin pouch....
I know I said I'd be doing a big index of Ars monsters, but I've found out that Historia Arcarnum, the Ennie winning D&D 5E publisher of excellent stuff about the Silk Road, is crowdfunding their Venice book in September.
So, I'm doing mine. I'd like it to be live before theirs is live just so that if anyone goes "Hey, you have X character, so you must have copied" I can go "Oh, no...I published first and have been drafting this in public for a year."
It does rather wreck my idea of getting a secondary market by recutting this as a domain of dread in the Shadowfell. I can still do a roll-and-write game, though, so...
Anyhow, sorry for the lack of a monster index. If no-one has done one by the time I get everything squared away for Mythic Venice I'll do one.
This weekend, I try and stretch a public domain budget to cover a whole book. It's good thing my faerie characters are playing with time so I can use images from Turner and Canaletto.
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Just got a Facebook ad: the kickstarter launchbis 15.10.2024 at 11 "central" (european? American?) time.
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Since Atlas is in Minneapolis, and Minneapolis is in the US's "Central Time Zone", that would be my assumption as to which time zone is being indicated.
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We're actually a good 150 miles north of Minneapolis now, in the Duluth area on the western tip of Lake Superior! But for a long while we were in the Twin Cities metro.
In any case...same time zone... Yes, it's Central US time!
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If I want to play a modern day magic RPG my go-to is Unknown Armies. I do like Mage: the Ascension too but only 2nd ed. I hated 1st ed. and newer editions (I've lost track) all seem to be far too far stuck up the whole World of Darkess metaplot hole. I've occasionally pondered over the idea of modern day Ars Magica but it just doesn't feel right.
may I ask why not?
There is of course a huge challenge in that Ars Magica is designed to play out many decades, and playing present day one quickly has to deal the future, and even if we start in 1920, there is a lot of extra work redetailing the setting with every change seen. That does not feel wrong to me, though, merely difficult.
I don't disagree, though the 20th Anniversary edition has been trying to dig itself out of that hole. At least a little bit. Sort of.
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In the modern day people don't believe in heaven, hell, faeries or wizards like they might have done eight hundred years ago. I just think the game was designed with the medieval paradigm in mind. Note how Atlas Games have never produced ArM books about different settings, whereas there are multiple core rulebooks for World of Darkness games set in different periods, e.g. Vampire the Dark Ages.
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That, I think, is because Ars Magica rules are too heavy, and hence (1) attract too few players to make a living, and (2) take more work to adapt.
I see your point though. Thanks for sharing. For me, however,the premise is medieval beliefs, whatever the setting, rather than contemporary beliefs which just happen to set in the Middle Ages.
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There might not be divine or faerie auras, but what about reason?