It results in unhappy players only if the SG and players expect Ars Magica to work just like other RPGs, and try to play it just like other RPGs.
There should probably be a few more notes in the core rule book about how Ars Magica is designed to be played, and how this differs from other RPGs.
In Ars Magica you are not supposed to go on adventures for the XP. You go on adventures to achieve some goal - and achieving that goal is often a significant reward by itself.
Troupe-style play should be remembered. One of the reasons not to give tons of bonus experience for adventures is so that no one gets left way behind when only certain characters go on any given adventure.
That's fair, but after trying troupe play multiple times as a teenager, I gave up on it about 15 years ago.
As others have said, you are not playing Ars Magica in accordance with the game's fundamental assumptions. There is nothing wrong with that, but it does mean that some of the rules will not work for you — including the advancement rules. House ruling advancement to be per session rather than per season is fine, but it's a house rule, and there are very good reasons for not changing it in canon (which others have already mentioned).
That's totally fine. I strongly urge spelling out those expectations much more clearly in the core rule book.
I really do wish that Adventure XP was its own thing outside of the seasonal structure. Its a PC special feature and thus should be above and beyond the laboratory work projects.
So yeah, this is a houserule I would always implement - xp gained form adventure is outside of the four seasons per year structure.
Take a look at the text under "Books". (ArM5 p. 165) It's much, much less explicit about only studying one book per season than the Adventure season is about only getting one set of adventure XP per season, and yet no-one, as far as I am aware, has wondered how to deal with a character who studies 20 books in a season.
I stand by my claim. The text is clear. This is a good example of how unconscious biases can shape one's reading. (It's a good example because no-one, I hope, thinks that there is anything morally significant about whether a game awards XP by season or by session.)
This does not mean that the text would not benefit from revision. If you find out that unconscious biases are leading people to misunderstand you, then you should take steps to block the misunderstanding.
"Saga Speed", page 218. There's a whole page spelling out these expectations, including a note that players might get frustrated by lack of advancement. It's in the Sagas chapter, which would seem the obvious place for it.
Where should it be?
The fundamental difference is you can only read one book per season. You can go on more than one adventure. therefore experience per season and experience per book are the same thing, while experience per adventure and experience per season are not.
Additionally, I might point out that if many people are misreading it the same way it is, by direct evidence, not perfectly clear.
That breaks the fundamental magi/companions/grogs split, by giving characters that are played more often more experience. There are really good reasons for not doing this as anything other than a house rule.
A consideration to set out this expectation is in the Adventure XP section on page 163. Where, I'm 100% positive both players and ST's look up that section far, far more than Saga Speed on page 218.
Can you give me a quote from the rules supporting that? (I would note that, in Real Life™, I read about forty books per season.)
I mean, obviously, you are right, but the RAW are actually less explicit about that than they are about adventure experience.
Anyway, we are agreed that some revision to the text here would be helpful, and that this is not really errata, because the rules do say what they are supposed to.
When you say "clarify the impact on requisites", do you mean "boost the Virtue's power like the version in HMRE", or do you actually mean that the statement about requisites is unclear? The Hermetic Virtue seems entirely clear to me (but we have seen that this is not necessarily decisive), although it is clear that it is weaker than the hedge magic version. The problem with applying the hedge magic version is that it would mean that an Elementalist would only need to study one of the elemental arts, because it is trivial to invent spells with pointless requisites. Since most magi do not have the Virtue, that would provide a motive for the existence of lots of elemental spells that most magi cannot realistically use.
The experience thing does need to be cleared up, however.
Guilty. I posted it a while back. Study 90 different summa for 1 day apiece. You get 1/3 the experience from each of them, giving you 30 x average quality in experience in one season. And then all that learning goes down the tubes due to a bolt from the blue. Despite the GM-orchestrated execution, this is how the book study rules work. Want to fix that?
Some people have claimed that spells invented by these magi completely lack those requisites. I don't know how they read it that way as the book clearly says there is no penalty for adding requisites. How can you be adding requisites if you're not adding them? Anyway, that's a confusion I've witnessed.
Elemental Magic has all sorts of problems. that have been thoroughly debated on the board, because the virtue is not clearly written. It has led to a bunch of arguments. Funnily enough, when I came accross this statement: "A Hermetic version of this Virtue is relatively common among magi of the Order of Hermes (ArM5, page 41), and affects the Forms of Aquam, Auram, Ignem, and Terram
instead of the elemental powers." I came to the conclusion that the HMRE virtue was the revised (read: unpublished errata) for the base book one because it answers all its problems, with just a minor tweak of calling the arts under the Hedge magic name.
As to the impact on requisites, let me quote the paragraph here for reference: "Your elemental magics are also more flexible than those of other magi — there is no disadvantage in adding elemental Form requisites to any elemental spell. If an Aquam, Auram, Ignem, or Terram spell has another element as a requisite, you may ignore the requisite."
There's a number of interpretations that I've heard on this:
The existence of two virtues with the same name is always going to cause confusion. It is no surprise that players see them as the same, and try to reinterpret the text to make it so. Just to avoid the confusion one should have either renamed one of them, or actually made a unifying description to make them one and the same.
I agree with you, @David_Chart, that the treatment of requisites is clear in core. My problem is rather that I find the effect rather useless and the virtue underpowered as a whole. Frankly, making an elementalist I would normally not take the virtue.
It is possible that you are right that taking the hedge magic approach of using the higher art would be overpowered, never really thought about that. You could always rule that superfluous and cosmetic requisites do not count, and then it is not that bad. I don't see a problem if a line of elementalists happen to invent myriads of spells that nobody else can cast. There is some precedence for that already in Mutantum magic, isn't there?
But this question would take more thought than I have been able to put into it.
Hi,
Where should it be? It should be up front. This game is different from most other games in a few ways that most people do not expect, especially if they have played other role-playing games before, weather tabletop or computer. New paragraph
A section up front, early in the book, advising players about some key differences would probably go a long way. New paragraph new paragraph
In this case, players coming from most games expect to gain experience points from adventures. The more adventures they go on, the more experience points they gain. This is true in dungeons and dragons, it is true in world of Warcraft, it is true almost everywhere. Most games do not even allow you to gain experience points or improve abilities merely by studying or practicing where training.
Anyway,
Can
On page 4? In a section headed "Basic Ideas"? (Actually, this particular point is covered on page 6, because it's the last of the four main differences from other RPGs that is covered.)
The section on page 4 says:
There are also a number of differences. None of these features are unique to Ars Magica, but they are rare enough that you can have played roleplaying games for years with- out encountering them.
@temprobe, I have created a new thread about this, because there is a problem, but it's not an easy erratum.