That answer can apply to nearly anything. Some people are happy with the classic fantasy worlds such as Tolkien where no-one asks "where are the elf peasants who farm?". RPGs can be fun escapism and that's great. I've played D&D with it's classic fantasy and it's fun.
I find it an entertaining thought exercise to think what would be required to make a consistent world. As mentioned AM integrates the magic well, with a combination of magicians being hated and strong magi applying compelling rules on other magi.
Exactly. Your gaming group are who needs to like it. Take from the forum whatever you think is helpful and dump the rest.
Tolkien works because he never tells stories about peasants. I am sure they are there, but they weren't relevant to the story, so they are never mentioned. This is what makes classic 1980s fantasty RP work too ... it works all the way until the characters starts thinking about settling down, and develop with a fixed abode. That calls for a different level of detail.
You hit on Gödel's incompleteness theorem, I think. You have to choose between inconsistent and incomplete.
Incomplete is fine, really, you just have to know to draw your story to completion before you hit the limits of incompleteness of your world.
I really appreciate what Rory Hughes points out: that first edition ArM suggested Mythic Europe as a setting, but didn't require it.
Ars Magica really has two pretty cool ideas: the magic system, which makes wizards feel like WIZARDS (not "magic-users"); and the setting, which is full of potential and draws on a vast resource (actual history).
But I think it's a mistake to think that those two ideas can't exist independently. I, for one, enjoy D&D but would prefer it with the ArM magic system. I enjoy ME, but I wouldn't mind tweaking it in certain ways.
Fortunately, the principle rule of RPGs applies here. We can homebrew whatever we like. We don't all have to agree on what an ArM fantasy setting would be like, but we can help each other develop multiple settings without any harm to ME.
One of the things I've always liked about ArM is that magi feel more like wizards in legend, mythology, and fantasy literature than "magic users" do in other games. But some aspects of these archetypes get neutered in the Mythic Europe setting.
One of the classic wizard archetypes is Merlin. He's a kingmaker. He manipulates mundane politics. He arranges for a young warrior to acquire a magic sword and a magic scabbard. He essentially serves as a court magician. All of this behavior fits easily in the archetype of a fictional wizard, yet it's verboten in Ars Magica as the setting is written.
The trope of the court magician shows up in a lot of stories. That was one of the things I enjoyed about the Witcher. I would have liked to see a world in which a magical order is manipulating politics by assigning magi to court positions, so that individual magi deal with conflicting loyalties to their courts vs the order.
I've toyed with the idea of homebrewing a branch of Jerbiton that operates this way on behalf of the Order of Hermes, perhaps in game as a contemporary experiment or perhaps as a long-established tradition.
@CedricFithelere the lack of Hermetic Magi as Court Wizards is one of those things in the official setting that I hate. Like seriously hate. I want my Merlin figure in the court of a king, or high king, or emperor. I want to be able to whisper into the ears of a noble, prince, king or ruler and have my whispers turn into policy. I want to aid the ruler in expanding his kingdom by day and then by night deal with the magical issues that crop up.
Basically, I want to play Merlin in the TV Show Merlin.
So yeah, I really hate the whole banning of court wizards within the Order of Hermes. But the sad thing it can't just be ignored as written because if there was never a policy then history would probably change as from the get go magi would assist in pretty much every kingdom there was.
While I agree with much you have said, I dont think the current ArM setting would forbid a character like Merlin. He is AFAIK pretty distant much of the time and very circumspect in his helping. Much of what you describe would be possible within the code so long as one is sufficiently circumspect about doing it. Supporting a mundane's claim by giving them a discreet item or helping them to perform some act that legitimize them is a pretty good strategy for meddling without directly declaring support for the mundane in public.
I beg to differ. I think you exaggerate the independence.
Of course, I agree that you can adapt ArM rules to another setting, or adapt other rule sets to work in Mythic Europe, but you cannot pick and choose independently. You have to adapt your way around certain dependencies.
For instance, if you want to play ArM in Middle Earth or another setting with Tolkienesque elves and dwarves, you have to invent rules for those races. Many of the virtues and flaws, like priest, mendicant friar, landed noble, and abilities like infernal lore, make certain assumptions about the social structure of the world. Even less formal flaws, like transvestite, assume a certain attitude to be prevalent.
In the same way, systems like D&D, DoD, Rolemaster/MERP etc. are all built on the assumption of a multi-race society, where elves and dwarves are humanoid in spirit as well as in body, and typically also that weak magic is rather ubiquitous. If you move them into Mythic Europe you have to invent rules for all the realms, and ditch the existing races.
Truly independent setting and system is extremely hard to achieve, and IMHO rarely worth the trouble. One would risk clogging down the rules in conditionals and universalities, where simple concrete straight-forward rules would be easier to read.
Taking ArM as a prototype for the system and setting you want has a lot of advantages over making generic universal RP systems and settings which you can mix and match from a shopping list.
Of course, I agree that playing Iron Age or even Bronze Age Ars Magica could be fun, and I think your Merlin stereotype would fit better there than in 1220. One would then have to decide if one changes the history of the Order, or if one simply uses Hedge Wizard rules and let Bonisagus with his theory be a character of the distant future.
@loke no, not really. They did a whole time skip and then battle and then the show ended. So there was much whispering into Arthur's ears but less Arthur as a full king in a relatively peaceful kingdom. Which is a sort of thing I would totally want when it comes to a Court Wizard.
I do agree with you that adding some elements like court wizardry would cause major changes. I also agree that to put say the Order of Hermes into a standard fantasy world would also lead to the need to ask and answer a whole separate set of questions.
Some thoughts.
A magical order of Techniques and Forms that can basically do more than any of the older, more limited, traditions that existed beforehand is going to be a major power. If they are allowed to manipulate politics in a way that their Order declares internally legal then they will either become a ruling force or they will advice and provide a shadow structure. Or both, depending on the nature of individual magi. Some nations would be ruled by magi other nations would have a magus as a chief advisor and others would listen to a magus when they make an occasional voice. A major benefit of the Houses could be to allow such a thing to be much more organized, though I would totally change the nature of the houses in such a setting.
I kind of like the idea that there is Low Magic and High Magic, with low magic being the simple, traditional magics practiced by even the most common peasant. High Magic, on the other hand, requires the Gift and is therefore much rarer. Up until the rise of Hermetic Magic by the great Wizard Bonisagus most High Magic was limited in the form of Traditions that focused on one or a few specialized magical styles. What he did was study many many traditions in order to create a more comprehensive system (the Ars Magica Arts, though depending on the setting in question I could see modifying them; I have a thread where I posted an example of how I would do such a thing). Upon the establishment of this greater grouping, an Order rather than a Tradition, magic use in the Known Lands will become a much more nuanced and visible thing.
In such a world, since it probably has multiple species, I totally could see the Gift being available to more than just humans. Maybe humans are unique in that there are more of them with the Gift compared to say some other species, who while might having less in number are greater in potency. Just an idea.
This would be really brilliant to me. hehe
(As you can probably tell I have long though hard on this topic. hehe)
Perhaps because my first interaction was with ArM1, I've always been comfortable with the idea that the magic system and the setting were two separate ideas.
Sure, you'd have to homebrew the rules to use the system in a different setting, but why not? If it's fun, do it! The rules have changed enough over five editions that I believe players are pretty good at adapting.
And the beauty is that people who don't want to play it that way don't have to.
Court magicians would change history, but then again, the mere existence of the Order of Hermes would change history. It's always been a bit of a stretch to imagine that the magi don't just take over.
I've toyed with the idea of court wizards in some of the fiction I've written, and I've pondered that question of why court wizards wouldn't just depose kings and install a magocracy. One idea I've kicked around is that investiture and coronation gives a ruler Magic Resistance. I'm not proposing that as an idea for ArM, but it's a thought.
This is giving me some story ideas. A powerful enough hedge wizard might take a post as court magician and turn the local rulers against the Order ... yet attacking him would seriously interfere with mundane authorities. Hmmm, that would be a fun pickle to throw at some PCs.
That is literally the case in ArM5. Magic resistance from coronation is mostly reserved for the higher nobles like kings and maybe dukes. But Nobles do get magic resistance from (properly observed) coronation rites. Sometimes they even get other benefits too.
The church is also a good source of mgic-resistant foils. Most clergy have some levels of magic resistance or access to relics that grant magic resistance (also good for noblemen).
I think in ME the greatest explanation for why magi dont take over is twofold.
A large portion of magi simply dont care about the mundane world. They just want to able to ignore worldly concerns such a farming for food and shopping for lab supplies.
The order of Hermes is not really a unified political entity, most magi dont want the same things out of the mundane world. Sure some want to rule, maybe even many. But only one person can sit on a throne and there are in all likelyhood more magi wanting to sit on a throne than there are thrones. Most of those who want to rule, want to rule for different reasons that are not compatible. Some want to create a magocracy and in essence turn entire countries into subservient economies that support covenants, some want freedom for the oppressed, some want a state for their particular group, religious, ethnic, cultural etc. Some magi just want to give their own relatives a leg up. Some magi might want to install a ruling council instead of a single monarch, and bam! you've just invented the covenant-that-rules-a-kingdom, but such a covenant likely has enemies that do not want to see their rival control the resources of an entire kingdom.
In essence I think the primary reason why magi dont meddle in politics too directly is to avoid magus-on-magus conflict rather than to avoid mundane-on-magus conflict. Politics is an intensely personal topic and one that many people feel very strongly about, so it is a hotbed for conflict. Allowing magi to meddle in politics is a sure way to get them into conflict with one another, in ways that are almost guaranteed to create powerblocks and political parties (tribes if you will) that are in conflict with one another over ideology, resources etc. Currently the OoH is inadequately structured to handle such tribal conflict, because the only way to get justice for slights is to be in the majority at tribunal the system only works if people are primarily loyal to justice and not to their political party/tribe.
If you do want to make a plot about an order of court wizards threatening the hermetic status quo I suggest you look up the Augustan Brotherhood from Rival magic, which is set up to do exactly that. If presented with a coordinated group of politically active hedge magi then the non-interference politic of the OoH will have to change and that makes for a really great plot.
The thing that makes me tremble at the prospect of writing a treatment of Ars Magica for another world is getting rid of the monotheistic elements and bringing in polytheistic pantheons.
But perhaps this is just my personal obsessions getting in the way. I don't entirely like the way that the One God and His/Her/Its Big Bad Rival appear in the game but I know that it's at least consistent with the assumed medieval metaphysics. Introducing multiple gods makes life complicated as I saw when running IN NOMINE and trying to reconcile the existence of pagan gods with the One God that was also undoubtedly there.
Well one way to go about such a thing is to say that there is a Creator, and that Creator is a singular overwhelming being of unimaginable potency and power. But that under that being there are other divine forces, Divinities, who also partake of some divine essence. Some realms, worlds, and life forms are formed by the Creator personally while others were formed by the Divinities. The Divinities are more personalized, they are fundamentally entities that can be spoken to, while the Creator is beyond that, to the point that even the Divinities are hard pressed to truly understand their maker.
You could have the Divinities represent certain archtypes like Magic or Fate or Weather or the Earth or whatever and so they can be created as beings who can do stuff.
I should note that this idea is not that dissmilar to how the gods are in Middle Earth. There is but one single overarching Creator and then under said being there are entities are are Gods in all ways that really matter.
Personally I would get rid of the four realms split and just basically create the World and the Overworld and maybe Elsewhere for places representing parallel or variant dimensions. I could also see potent beings creating Auras that boost like and such with say Magic as one major aura, the same with say Dominion to represent spirit and god both good and evil.
Who says that a non-real world fantasy settings for Ars Magica must have polytheism as the dominant form of religion? I know that it is a staple of contemporary fantasy to have lots of polytheism everywhere, but it doesn't need to be like that. A fantasy world can just as well have monotheism be the dominant form of religion in the part of the world where the players can chose to be from.
While inventing a new monotheism is a less daunting prospect than taking it out of the picture altogether it does turn the fantasy world into another Europe, another Crystal Dragon Jesus.
So we upgrade the saints and angels to get to a new monotheism...
Thing is that though I want to get to something different from the current model, the existence of the Divine is a limiting factor on the power and arrogance of the Magi. I'm not so sure that the existence of the Infernal is needed and the Fairies I could take or leave.
Given that Bonisagus is known to have de-sacrilised magic from the pagan religions I wonder if you could replace the One God with a pantheon each of which embodies one of the forms or techniques. They would be pissed off with the Mages and so would their clergy and worshippers but less powerful than a One God might be.
I assume that by "another Europe" you mean that the fantasy game world is mostly similar to how contemporary writers imagine medieval Europe. There is no reason why a fantasy game world with a predominantly monotheistic religion must necessarily be "another Europe". You simply state that it is so without providing any evidence.
I also dont think that not including a monotheistic religion results in a fantasy game world that does not resemble a contemporary re-imagining of medieval Europe. In fact I would point to the existence of most of the classical d&d settings as evidence to the contrary. In my opinion the most likely explanation for why fantasy game world often resemble a version of medieval Europe is because the writers are predominantly European or north American and that these writers write what they know and what they expect their similarly geographically distributed audiences to know.
Lastly I gather from the way you write it that it would be an undesirable thing if the fantasy game world ended up looking like another Europe. I disagree with that too. There is no good reason why a good fantasy world cannot resemble a version of medieval Europe but tweaked to make for a better game.
Well, you see there's an excellent game for running a fantasy Europe game.
It's called ARS MAGICA.
But this thread was about alternate versions of it and I replied about the difficulties I see in making such a version both work and be worth all the effort.
Some people are happy with the classic fantasy worlds such as Tolkien where no-one asks "where are the elf peasants who farm?". RPGs can be fun escapism and that's great. I've played D&D with it's classic fantasy and it's fun.