I'm having a ton of troubles looking up that site. A banner page systematically hijacks it upon loading to redirect me to third party websites that seem to want to take control of my browser :D.You may want to change host, or otherwise check what the problem is.
I'm sorry to hear about your troubles. I haven't been having any trouble with ads, but that may be because I'm using an ad blocker on my web browser.
I don't own or control the geocities.ws site, which is a third-party-maintained archive. I'm also no longer the site-maintainer of SHR. Thus what you have is essentially a snapshot of what was on the site just before Geocities was closed down all those years ago.
Sorry I can't be any more help than this.
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I would go a different direction than this. One of the example magi in Magi of Hermes specifically develops a version of the Longevity Ritual that no longer causes infertility. In addition, I seem to recall that one of the things you could do with fertility magic was increase the likelihood of a child being born with the Gift. After 800 years, these advances have both likely been so thoroughly integrated into the Order that they are standard operating procedure. With more Gifted children, and with parents reluctant to send their own children through the (frankly fairly brutal) old school process of Hermetic apprenticeship, the model of magical education has likely shifted to a school based model, and/or home education.
In addition, since the end of the Wars of Religion and especially since the French Revolution, the power of the Divine has shrunk. No longer do cities and towns automatically carry a Divine aura; instead, auras within major populated areas are likely to be highly fragmented. One can thus imagine, e.g., a Magic regio within the heart of Central Park, or a Bloodcap imitating Jack the Ripper stalking the streets of Whitechapel. As for the Infernal... well, they're as powerful as ever.
The Houses may have changed as well, and may have become less important. It is plausible to imagine that the Verditius and Bjornaer mystery cults have since been integrated into Hermetic magic, while the Criamon may well have died out. Perhaps hidden survivors of the Diedne have been reintegrated, or other magical traditions have joined en masse.
However, with the rise of modern media, remaining hidden has become more and more important, to the point, as YR7 suggested, that simply revealing magic to mundanes (other than thoroughly vetted covenfolk) is considered a breach of the Code.
You likely need to ditch the Aristotelian science. The changes needed to do this are fairly small.
De-emphasizing combat is also likely important. Combat in ArM5 has, frankly, never been that great, and adapting it to the modern world would be very challenging. Timothy Ferguson's simplified combat rules could offer a good starting point here: https://timothyferguson.wordpress.com/2019/01/03/a-simplified-combat-system-for-ars-magica/
Finally, think about the effects of magic on technology. Do they conflict, or do they ignore each other?
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How similar is Mage to Ars in terms of spell creation, magic items, and other aspects of laboratory research? As those are some of the aspects I like most about Ars, I would want them in any modern version I played.
Not very, to be blunt. I'd even go as far as 'not at all'.
Essentially, in Mage, all magic is spontaneous, guidelines are much more 'White Wolf' and there isn't much labwork at all. Well, there is some with creating magic items but even that would be unsatisfactory I suspect.
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Have to agree with Tellus on this, the magic in MtA is almost completely spontaneous and free form. There are less Arts (they call them Spheres), with far less levels (only 5 each in the base game). Pretty much no lab work. Though their Order of Hermes is actually pretty much the Order of Hermes from AM, with the exception that House Tremere became vampires in 1022.
Another thing they have is Paradox, which is that the "common people" do not believe in magic and thous the world does not respond well to obvious magic. In other words, you do something with magic that is obviously magic and bad things happen to you. If you have ever played or at least looked at AM3 (the version mad by White Wolf), you will find a Realm of Power in it called Reason. The world MtA is set in is completely dominated by that Realm of Power.
Cool aside, they do have an enemy faction called the Technocracy. Their most common field agents might as well be the varies types of Terminators from the movie franchise of the same name.
Yes White Wolf ripped off vast amounts of their "World of Darkness" from other RPGs (which to be fair they owned at the time) and pop culture. They are very up front about how AM was a key source for the history.
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I have played AM3 (it was the first version I ever played) and remember the Reason realm. Although it didn't really fit with the setting, I like the idea of something similar in a modern setting much better, as justification for how powerful magic can exist in the modern world yet most people remain unaware of it. I could even see it leading to some creative approaches in how to use magic effectively. But from what you and Tellus have said, the other aspects of the Mage setting sound much less appealing.
Something I hate with the whole "Arm in modern days" is, well, the modern days part.
Mythic Europe is not our world, and its physics are different. Conversely, an "Arm 2k" game would look very different from "year 2000 with magic".
While you could have some aspects be similar, others would be really, really different, simply due to physics not being the same.
Unless, of course, you pull a tolkien, and say that the rules changed with the new age.
But... I'm not that interested in "modern world with magic". I want "Ars Magica, 800 years later".
So, what could we have?
Obviously, "technology" based on natural magic, with giant (sweat)workshops and mass production of goods.
Beyond that, it's a giant sandbox, so that not 2 "future AM" would be the same, depending on choices, without any preference being the "right" one.
For example, take America.
You can have a game in which it doesn't exists.
You can have one in which current (afaik) Ars is wrong, and it exists just as in the real world.
You can have one in which it's been land forcibly torn from faerie by the presence of too many Christian explorers, in which case it may be wildly different.
The same goes for magic. You can have a campain in which learned magicians develop across europe, with "future" ars in which advanced education in just being a mundane initiated into a few arts, and widespread enchantments, kinda like technology. But you can make a similar case for other traditions.
In short, do some traditions develop? Which ones, why and how?
In short, I don't want yet another boring (IMO) urban fantasy setting. This would require scrapping too much of what make Ars Ars, and rewrite most of the setting, including how magic works.
I'd look more at something like Castle Falkenstein, although more modern. This, IMO, would be interesting and unique (although looooots of work)
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There are a few places in various Ars products that hint at the idea that this might have already happened in Mythic Europe - I can think of at least one example where there are some Mercurian rituals that no longer function because the changing of the astrological age around the 1st-5th centuries "changed the rules" somehow. But then the next such change isn't going to be until well after any "modern" setting (like 2500 AD or something I think).
Honestly I think the idea of taking Mythic Europe as a world with its own internal rules (which are not identical to the real world) and carrying that forward in time would make for a really unique and fascinating setting. It would also be really complex and counter-intuitive to write...
Even just taking individual bits of the Ars premise and propagating them forward in time gets pretty complicated when you're talking about 800 years of progression. For example humorism is actually true in Mythic Europe, which means all the later developments of modern medicine never happen.
Just looking at the 19th century, do all the advances in sanitation that came about as a result of germ theory not happen (huge ramifications on global civilization if so)? Or do they actually happen faster because miasma theory is correct from the get go? The anti-miasma sanitation methods would be different in many ways to the real world equivalents. Or does it even take until the 19th century for this to happen if humoral medicine is actually real? Does medicine end up advancing faster and earlier than in our world just with different methods and technologies?
Really interesting stuff imo, but it would be way way more work to build up a convincing setting like that as opposed to just plopping some of the Ars mechanics into the modern world as we know it.
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on the topic of alternative directions to go based on how mythic europe works.
I would suggest ditching the "dying magic/masquerade-by-another-name" idea combination. Other games have done it better.
The rules of ars magica in many ways suggest that magic might equally as well get stronger over time as it might get weaker. Magic auras arise around things have been around for long so letting 800 years pass naturally gives you 800 more years for things to have been around.
Even if you dont go with the idea of the divine fragmenting because of the reformation, wars of religion etc. it is possible that tethers are already present in many ME cities where certain impressive places have been around for long enough to cause them. Over time those tethers and their associated auras could grow strong enough to overwhelm the divine aura. I am thinking of places like oxford/cambridge university with their old buildings and aura of mystery and power, or the many castles that exist all over europe, sure they may be new in 1220 but in 2000 they are ancient and mystical.
Is there any reason why the order couldnt exist in the year 2000 similar to how it exists in 1220? yeah its illogical but so is the entire ME setting. It is already illogical that hermetic magic has not transformed medieval europe entirely. I would have no problem accepting an order the exists much like the free masons already do. A sort of secretive, maybe cultic group with secret rituals and inner workings. One where everyone kind of knows that the groups exists but most of the time dont bother to devote much mental capacity to it.
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To add to this idea, I really liked the idea in the Conciatta chapter of Legends of Hermes that a lot of auras that have been "destroyed" by the rise of the dominion are actually still there and just not the dominant aura anymore.
A future Ars setting could run with the idea that at some point Magi learnt to tap into these subsumed auras as part of core hermetic magic. If that were the case a future Mythic Europe could have "fewer" magic auras from a 13th century perspective but the magi of the day can actually access magic auras more readily than their earlier counterparts - they are just hidden to the uninitiated.
There's a cool setting in that I think, where magic auras become less overt but not actually fewer in number. Vis (magic vis at least) might be harder to find in such a setting because so many magic auras are subsumed, but perhaps magi have developed better ways to extract vis from auras to counter this.
Magic becomes more powerful while simultaneously becoming less accessible to the uninitiated - you can no longer stumble on something magical so easily as a mundane but once trained by a magus you have access to much more power than your earlier counterparts except in a few select ways. And the need for that sort of initiation and training gives the Order a reason to continue existing through the ages (perhaps as more of a secret society?).
You could even use how hard learning magic would be in this setting to flip the Order of Hermes on it's head and say magi found a way to grand the gift through ritual magic or initiation or something. Magic is basically seen as a particularly tricky and unrewarding science that requires decades of study to master but which is not in any way secret. The Order of Hermes isn't secret either, and is viewed as a fraternity that only the best magicians are invited to join - but in fact being inducted into the Order is what grants the power that is out of the reach of most students of magic.
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