Can somebody who has run the game recently check the combat section and see if it's still he original rules, or if the rules from Lord's of Men have been substituted? I don't have access to my books right now (though am eyeing an add-on to fix that issue).
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I consider this a feature, not a bug.
The road to hell should be wide and easy! 
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I just noticed the new 575K$ stretch goal:
Open License Icons
The Arts, Forms, and Houses symbols will all go under the Creative Commons license. And yes, the Order of Hermes sigil, too!
Hmm. I understood that reaching the 500K$ threshold put the entire Ars Magica (5th edition) line under Creative Commons License. Including all the art, and thus the "Arts, Forms (aren't these a subset of the Arts?), and Houses symbols... And yes, the Order of Hermes sigil, too!".
So it seems to me that either:
a) that understanding is faulty, or
b) that this "Arts and Forms etc." stuff is something other than what I understand it to be (and in particular, it is not found in the 5th edition books), in which case it should be identified,
c) that there is some "double selling" of the same stuff over multiple stretch goals, probably due to some good-faith mistake.
Could anyone be so kind as to provide some clarification?
Only the text is included in the open license.
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As I understand it, what was put under the Creative Commons license so far was the text of the books. None of the art was under the CC. This stretch goal would allow you to use the icons for Arts, Houses and the HoH in your products, if you want to.
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Hmm. I see now. Thanks everyone for the quick clarification.
I think it could have made a little clearer in the stretch goals page, but ... none of my business, really
IIRC, they did say that they will have an Ars Magica logo that can be used for third-party products to identify them as Ars Magica compatible.
And generally speaking, the use of the symbols for Arts, Houses and even the OoH symbols isn't gonna come up a lot.
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The open licence logo is already out there and getting some use!
As for the Art, House, and OoH symbols, I'm kind of surprised they've been added so late! As key symbols for Ars Magica I think it would be difficult to make art for third party projects without including them!
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It is now clearer.
The Art symbols don't get used much, but the others, yes. They are quite important.
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That is pretty much the entire reason why they are not in there.
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It should be a Virtue. That's weird. I can see how I could have put the name in the wrong insert, but the whole text is in the Flaws section, as well.
Ah, now that one is listed as a Flaw, but pasted into the Virtues section. Easier to understand.
The lists are split by type. Past experience suggests that simple alphabetical order actually makes reference easier.
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Is any feedback, such as small formatting issues helpful? Is there capacity for minor adjustments at this point?
I doubt opinion stuff is too useful. I'm sure that's been talked about a lot by those with the power to make final decisions (and there have been multiple feedback opportunities before). Things like flaws/virtues in the wrong place, is it worthwhile, or should we all shut up already?
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@David_Chart David, could you make the ArM5 writers guidelines public? One potential publisher mentioned to me that they would find a set of templates useful, and the writer's guidelines were the templates we used back in the day for appropriateness of format.
So, if you could publish them, and maybe add them to the digital freebies layer as well, that would let new authors do useful things like import the specific terms to their dictionaries, work out line style for capitalisations, and have a monster stat template. (This should perhaps be in the third party thread, but it's not so much a product launch as an ask for a tool).
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Three questions:
How good a deal is the $150 pdf add on compared to prior (and likely future) bundles?
Does the open license mean we may get more tools in VTT etc to support play? I'm especially curious about Alchemy RPG support.
Has anyone used Google's notebookLM for ars magica to support play?
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I fully agree with Mr Ferguson. I am sure that the vast majority of people who want to share Ars Magica material want to do it well. They want their contributions to be as close as possible to the standard presented by Atlas over the years. They don't want their material to be seen as a product that detracts from this great game.
We really love Ars Magica, that's why we don't want to lower the great level it is currently at.
Mr. Ferguson's choice would be a great benefit to the best game about wizards and magic ever written.
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And if on top of that some charitable soul creates/sells a Creator's Kit... Then sky (or the lunar sphere) will really be the limit for the Ars Magica line.
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The Creator's Kit for AGON looks like a three page Word document. Can't be that hard.
I mean, I can't do inDesign templates or whatever because I use the free version of Canva. (Yes, I did all of the headers and footers manually.) Still, it would be good to have some of the basics in order. I'd also like Atlas to say what their fonts are so that we can find free alternatives or license sites. I must admit to hating their pagination font: the 5 and 3 look too similar. This may be my Twilight Scar from reading all 40 books recently for the creature index.
I think David is AFK for a day or more, but the writers' guidelines are probably something we could make public facing. It doesn't need to be CC-BY-SA, I don't think. But I also don't think it has anything that needs to be secret or proprietary.
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If John says it is OK, who am I to argue?
Should I leave the section about the writing process in? What do you think, Timothy — you've read it?
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The open license makes it impossible to say. Someone else could put together a free PDF bundle of all the text, or even put in art and layout and make their own versions.
@John_Nephew could speak to what Atlas is likely to do.
If other people create them, yes. In the current RPG environment, I think that is likely to happen.
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