This was written up based on notes for a one-shot I ran at a local ttrpg club. All the players were familiar with D&D, but none of them had played Ars Magica before. As such, it assumes the Storyguide is familiar with the rules, but is intended to make things easy for the players - including minimising character sheet "clutter", and elaborating on Virtues, Flaws, and spells.
*My ego is fragile, and this is my first time publishing anything, so I ask for your mercy in offering corrections, in the spirit of improving the work I've already spotted one typo in one of the pregens, and plan to update the documents at some point.
It is late autumn, in the year 1220. Strange forces are preying on the isolated nuns of St Ninian's, and the abbess has resorted to contacting wizards for help. A motley crew of young magi and their companions must face the darkness lurking in the snow, as All Hallows Eve approaches...
Blood on the Snow is a one-shot adventure for Ars Magica 5th Edition, intended to introduce new players to the game. The Storyguide should be familiar with the core rules of Ars Magica, but should not need an awful lot of experience running games.
While Blood on the Snow can be played with any set of characters, it was written for (and playtested with) the pre-generated characters packaged with the adventure.
This scenario is released under the Ars Magica Open License.
Pregenerated characters are based on those found in Ars Magica 5th Edition, and the supplement Grogs. NPC statistics are based on those found in Realms of Power: Faerie
Those character sheets look very nicely laid out, and the virtue / flaw and spell descriptions should definitely make things easier for players.
and would welcome any reviews/critiques*!
On this note, I'd also recommend people who buy it and like it to give it a rating or review on DriveThru. While there isn't an algorithm, they definitely help drive sales. (The same applies for other Ars Magica products).
(The reason I haven't is because publishers can't give ratings)
Nice Love the approach to stats, and laughed out loud at the trigger warning for Nuns. I can see this as a really good intro to Ars. I couldn't leave a review (my DTRPG account is a publisher account), but it would have been 5 stars. Very happy to keep this on hand to use in a Saga as appropriate.
I thought this was great! A very good introduction to the game. I liked your quick and dirty mechanic for letting the NPCs roll. No need for character sheets for those characters, and good scaffolding for the gm