You're right. Opening that door is just as exciting as seeing the game spread to a new media.
I'm in. I don't have much, but what I have I have put in. Anyone want to fund freezing Ars Magica writers too? 
Is this really an alternative setting? Will the Diedne book and world book not be canonical? This is a kind of important question, for me and the other authors at least?
cj x
Whimper I am no longer able to play video games sad face
Anyway,
Ken
Nice 
This is very similar to an Ars Magica-inspired computer game concept I've been banging around for a while: generational, focus on key events rather than minutiae, turn based, centered on a covenant.
Shall have to drop Black Chicken a line and see if they need any extra hands on. This kind of procedural story construction is something I'm keenly interested in.
Any plans to do a tablet/iPhone version if the funding target goes beyond its initial numbers?
Let me refer you to David's post in this thread:
The Diedne supplement will be an official part of the game line, and the intent is, as much as possible, to make the video game itself canonical.
The folks at Black Chicken Studios are very enthusiastic fans of ArM, and they are passionate about making the video game true to the RPG. From the first time I talked on the phone with Larry (he's the guy doing most of the talking in the KS video), it was clear that he is extremely familiar with the game and has a clear vision of how to port it into an engrossing computer game experience. It won't replace the tabletop game by any stretch, but for those of us who enjoy the game and the setting it will give us a new and fun way to explore it.
They have several ideas for stretch goals if funding passes the original target, including porting the game to other platforms such as Mac and iOS. The way they envision the game, I think it would be a great fit for the iPad.
Ah cheers. The comments above about an alternative setting made me ask.I had not seen David's comment in the other thread. Will the Diedne book and World Guide (which I assume will be another Ars 5th book?) be available separately through Atlas? (and up to 99 subscribers now). If I had not already pledged i would have been the hundredth, so c'mon, some one else sign up now! 
cj x
101 now. I've increased my pledge cos I really want to see this succeed Is it set in the history of the Heirs to Merlin setting, or can we not know that at this time?
cj x
In my experience, chances are if it works for tablet it can probably be engineered to work for the more modern generation of smartphones, too. Interface changes would be required, but if it's being developed for iOS or Android then tablet vs. phone is primarily an issue of screen resolution.
Being about to submit my first own-developed mobile game to Google, I'm now fairly familiar with the phone vs. tablet requirements.
While this is probably buried under NDA, I'd be curious to know if they're developing the entire thing from the ground up or using a toolset such as Torque or Unity or similar. Some of those third-party toolsets can really make cross-platform development a breeze, and they're not that expensive when you compare them to the coder time it takes to implement the same features internally.
Anyway - this is for the Black Chicken guys to decide - they've already released a couple of games, they know what they're doing. I'm just being a sticky-beak. 
So how does this game expect to actually run? I mean is it a FPS? (joke)
How does a computer game while still using 5th edition rules?
Can you point in the direction of a computer game that might give us an idea of what it might be like?
Civ, X-com, anything like that?
http://www.BlackChickenGames.com/
Black Chicken Studios has produced a couple of games already. Years of Conquest will be the same basic format.
Right. I would like the world book to be a canonical "Stonehenge 1000" sourcebook for Ars Magica Fifth Edition if possible, but it might not be possible.
Computer games and table top games are different media, and there are different problems for each. Here's a concrete example that's already come up.
In the computer game, Longevity Rituals will not work for unGifted characters. If they did, then virtually every character who was alive at the beginning of the game would have to be taken into account in every storyline, right to the end of the century. There would be no guarantee that anyone would die. No problem for a tabletop game, but for the computer game it creates a huge amount of extra work, much of which will never be used, because most unGifted characters won't be given a Longevity Ritual.
So, it will become part of Ars Magica canon that Longevity Rituals for the unGifted were a 12th (or maybe late 11th, in Thebes) century Hermetic breakthrough. I'm pretty sure we can actually do this; I don't think we've said anything that contradicts it. However, similar things might come up that can't be accommodated that easily, and that might mean that the setting for the computer game can't be, quite, the canonical setting for the tabletop game. We'll be working to keep things as close together as possible, but at this point we can't make firm commitments that we will be able to keep the computer game entirely within tabletop canon. Fingers crossed...
Of course, even if it is, it's set 220 years earlier, so it's still an alternative setting of sorts.
The Diedne book is different. First, a fair bit of it will be for 1220, and thus will not affect the computer game. Second, the magical secrets of the Diedne will be properly integrated into Ars Magica canon, because failing to do so would be too much of a break from the tabletop game. (Yes, of course they will have magical secrets.) I don't plan to describe the plans of the Diedne leadership, or take sides in the Schism War, in the book. So, we can promise that this book will be canonical.
This sums up my impression when I talked to Larry as well. I'm really looking forward to seeing how this develops. (Although I may need to find a Windows laptop from somewhere.)
I'm on board now as well. THis sounds really fascinating.
Well, I dropped the guys a line and was pleasantly surprised to get a reply within an hour, despite it being some ungodly hour of the morning over in CA.
I think the Black Chicken format is a very sensible approach to take for an Ars Magica game. The nice thing about their games structure is it leaves enough to the imagination to 'paper over' the cracks that you just couldn't do with a third-person-Skyrim kind of game.
I expect the game won't be able to stick 100% to the 5th edition rules. Some things will have to change purely from a workload point of view (longevity potion example above), while other things will have to be marked as purely outside of scope; I will be extremely surprised if the game supports ReTe-ing your covenant to make it fly then going in search of the New World.
I plan to pledge once I've decided how much.
This despite being almost certain I don't hae a computer new enough to run it...
Ah good point. Wonder what spec is required. I don't play computer games apart from King of Dragon Pass, and I'm not even sure how to check, but I have had this machine about ... well seven or eight years I think. I'll have a look at my PC.
Processor x86 Family 6 Model 14 Stepping 8 GenuineIntel ~1728 Mhz : Total Physical Memory 1,024.00 MB : Available Physical Memory 287.02 MB Total Virtual Memory 2 GB
I suspect this means my computer dates from the Age of the Founders, and will never run anything!It's better than my first computer, which had 3.5k memory, but still a way off modern. Are the specs for the game listed anywhere?
cj x
I'd guess they'd be at or above those of their previous game...but that's just a guess.
In terms of comparison to other video games: King of Dragon Pass is certainly one that comes to mind, but I have an idea in my mind that there way also be some similarities to other turn-based games that have a sort of sweeping historical scope -- ones I've played addictively over the years like Imperialism II and Master of Orion II.
In fact, thinking of this makes me think I should fish out KODP and see if I can get it running on my MacBook Pro, maybe via SheepShaver (which is how I still use this thing to play Imperialism II).
I don't know what the system requirements will be, so this is speculation, but my guess is that it won't take an enormous graphics card because it won't have a lot of 3D rendering and motion graphics (unless something amazing happens that leads to stretch goals). Given that you don't need to maintain a lot of real-time responsiveness (like a shooter game), an old/slow processor might be OK, just longer for the computer to react between turns. I could see memory being an issue, depending on how much is hogged by your operating system and other programs being open.
For comparison, Black Chicken's latest game, Scheherazade, has these requirements:
Windows 7 / Vista / XP
1 GHz Processor (2 GHz Recommended)
2 GB Available System Memory
1 GB Available Hard Disk Space
Best on Resolutions higher than 800x600
Note that they don't even mention graphics card, unlike many PC games. You could play it with a lot of 10-year-old computer systems, though they may require maxed-out RAM.
The Maxed-Out Ram (MuAn 20)
- as Beast of Outlandish Size, but +1 magnitude to render the ram as large as a warhorse