CRB desperately needs organizing

Games Discussion Ars Magica
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ArM's rulebook has not been criticized enough. Not the rules, the book they're contained in.

Case in point, magic resistance. This is very important, right? This is something that's going to come up on a regular basis in a lot of games. So let's open the book up and try to remind ourselves how it (and spell penetration) work.

The actual calculation for magic resistance is hidden within three paragraphs of text under the heading Magic Resistance on p.82, with nothing to signpost it. Same with the effect Parma Magica has on this score several paragraphs later. Any sane author would include this in the character creation rules, as that's when you're going to initially work out what your character's magic resistance is, but no, they're in the Hermetic Magic chapter, a categorization that isn't very helpful from a rules perspective (particularly when there's a DIFFERENT chapter for Spells). Any player that hasn't dutifully read through this whole chapter of the book, which they probably haven't at this point, isn't actually going to have any idea what their magic resistance is.

Can I find this section on Magic Resistance if I need to remind myself? Not really. The Table of Contents only lists full chapters, with no page references for headings at all, so it's anyone's guess. The closest you can get is checking the index in the back of the book, and of course it's entry on magic resistance lists every significant mention of the term- pages 85-86, 87, 183,
184, 189, and 191. What you're looking for is on p.85 but there's no indication of that anywhere.

Guess what isn't referenced at all in the Magic Resistance section?

Penetration! Not once is penetration, the one value which directly interacts with Magic Resistance, mentioned. This is obviously because penetration is explained slightly earlier in the same chapter, but from a reference perspective, this is a mess. Finding out how Penetration works, of course, runs up against the same problems as Magic Resistance if you're just searching for Da Rules. Right on down to how Magic Resistance and Penetration interact with each other, probably the most important part of all this. It's only brought up at the very end of the section on p.82.

I'm currently starting the process of transferring RoP: The Divine to Project Redcap, but after that...

In theory, PR includes rules reference pages, which would be massively helpful, but they were written long before the Open License so they don't actually function as rules references at all. When I'm done with this current project of mine I'm going to look into helping to fix this. It should be possible to learn how to play ArM without feeling like you're hunting information for your college finals.

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Yeah, I agree the rulebook should be better organized, and a lot of things could be written more clearly and explained better.

I recently had to find the rules about how magic items use ranges. Two ranges are mentioned in the Laboratory chapter, and not in a very obvious, signposted, way. Two ranges are mentioned in the Spells chapter, in the range's respective descriptions. The rules on these are also somewhat vague; you need "InMe" or "CrIm", but precsie details aren't given, and it isn't clear if items really can't use their own sounds as Voice or what the range for voices willl be. Two ranges (Eye and Arcane Connection) don't have the relevant rules at all.

At any rare, re-editing the book is beyond my capabilties, even if i had the time (and I don't). I'm also not sure if such a book would be of use to the community. I personally largely use the wiki and Word files, so could imaigne a properly-edited wiki-book or Word-files being very useful. But I suspect I'm a dinosaur and all the young and hip players abhor wikis and use... Obsidian? I don't know.

Very good :slight_smile: I suggest importing the raw text from

The formatting is very far from perfect, but using this text is easier than scouring the PDFs directly. I'm sure a little programming can improve the formatting significantly, but I never managed to bring myself to attempt to do that (and I don't trust AI with editing the text without butchering it).

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Ooh, thank you for that, it'll help a lot.

My concern here is less "this is inconvenient for current players" and more that ArM might be trapped in a state where it's passed on than learned independently, seriously limiting it's reach. If I didn't currently have the time to do something like shoving a whole book in the wiki, I don't think I'd have the time to learn how the game works in the first place. It has taken many hours to even begin to "grok" the game, treating the rules like a college textbook, and the vast majority of people are never going to do that.

ArM isn't the only game I've felt this way about. Everyone seems to be pretty good at oral transmission, so I'm not totally sure why so many rulebooks are like this.

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The Definitive Edition doesn't help here, as it's a massive tome, much of it not really needed for a starting saga, expensive, and not better organized. A new printing of the standard book, that incoporates the (extensive) errata, would help somewhat. But it still would suffer from two big problems - the editing, as you say. And the art.

To be more appealing, the book really needs better and more art. Like the art of the spanish version (Ars Magica Edición Definitiva - BackerKit). The fact that we don't have icornic images for the House templates is, I think, borderline crazy. Imagine a D&D book without art for each class.

I think the book's poor art, especially the opening big piece on page 5 which, I'm sorry, is not very good, detracts from the book's appeal.

Unfortunately, getting good appropriate art is essentially impossible for free. Some works in the public domain might be appropriate, but getting a consistent feel with contemporary-style art (and layout), that will not look like a cheap cartoon or a historical artpiece (which, sorry, sin't going to appeal to people), requires either real artists like in the spanish version, which is crazy expensive, or heavy us of AI art, which people don't accept (I, for one, have no real problem with AI art, especially when it isn't copying a specific living artist, and especially for fan or indie projects, but the general sentiment is firmly against it).

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It’s like that because some authors believe that you can’t be didactic, entertaining, and instructional at the same time (at least within specific word counts). I beg to differ, but my job just requires extensive academic reading and writing on complex technical topics, nobody cares about motivation, readability, or the comprehensibility in those. What do I know.

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I agree, PR could use an overhaul. Having wiki pages that summarize rules and link directly to the relevant sections of the rule books in the wiki would be helpful. Unfortunately, that’s a lot of work and the people who know the rules well a) won’t benefit from doing that work b) might not see what problems a newbie might have and what he would need.
Case in point: The page Penetration - Project: Redcap does look pretty good to me - what would you like to change there?

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That is, admittedly, one of the better pages. I wish I'd bookmarked a page I saw earlier, can't remember what the topic was now, but it outright stated that actual formulas wouldn't be included due to the game's licensing at the time.

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David is doing an introductory campaign through Patreon.

ArM5DE is a bit like the four volume version of the Good Eats cookbook. It's a reference guide, but it's not intended as the final word in onboarding. To think of it that way is to not be clear on what it's for.

ArM5DE is the combined toolkit for the open license. Sure, I'll never use some of the stuff, but that was never the point. It's to make it possible for new authors to get going without reading 50 books. It's not the players guide. It's the tools with which someone will build a players guide. Likely several, on a campaign or genre basis.

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I had the impression that Colby was asking for a well-organized reference guide. My first impression of the DE book is that it’s much better organized than the Core Rulebook. I’d probably wait for the final version of the DE, which will take some time to get into the PR wiki. Maybe that’s a good base to rewrite some of the wiki pages.

Onboarding is a completely different game. I’ve tried my hand at it and currently favor tutorial adventures to familiarize players with the setting and the rules. But that’s probably off-topic for this thread.

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Do you have any good examples of tutorial adventures for particular RPGs, or are you thinking of scenarios you have created for Ars Magica which are particularly good for teaching the basics?

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For people who know nothing about Ars Magica, I'd start out with an adventure for companion characters, no magi. I think there are quite a few people who share this approach, because it allows you to introduce the setting of Mythic Europe, basic mechanics like stress rolls, and combat while ignoring all the rules on magic. I use an adventure I wrote myself (which I'd be happy to share, but it's currently just a large document in German that would need a lot of editing). Medusa published an adventure "The Raven, Narva more" on DTRPG (https://www.drivethrurpg.com/de/product/517243/the-raven-narva-more-an-ars-magica-adventure), which I've never played, but which seems to follow the same tutorial idea.

After that, I'd follow up with the first two adventures of the Nigrasaxa mini-saga to introduce formulaic and spontaneous spell casting, magic in combat, magic resistance, penetration, advancement and twilight.

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It's worthnoty that David Chart is writing a "Starter Set" consisting of five (IIRC) adventures.

Personally, I think you should always start off strong. Ars Magica is a game about mighty wizards in medieval Europe with the supernatural dialed up, and the first adventure, even the first session, should highlight that. No one joined the game to play grogs, or companions, or even apprentices. This isn't what this game is about.

Cramming all of that into an introductory adventure, that gradually showcases the various aspects of the game without overwhleming the players.... that's not easy. I don't really have a good idea how to do that.

My personal quintessential Ars Magica adventure is the Pact of Pasaquine. It would need heavy reworking for Fifth Edition, and I'm not sure if it's the best starting adventure. But it's the classic "problem in the village" hook, leading to a "Magic doesn't care about humans" with an option for "make a pact with the Magical spirit", and ultimately dealing with mundane encroachment and "choose between supporting Magic or the Dominion/village".

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That's your personal take on the game and unsurprisingly I disagree. While wizards are at the center of attention, one feature of the game is that everybody gets to play multiple characters. Companions are fun, and I tell people that they will probably play their companion character more than their mage.

Ars Magica is a really big tree to hit someone on the head with, and I found that introducing Mythic Europe, how the Dominion works, what Faeries are, is already quite challenging and people were happy to have a character with a clear role and just a single supernatural ability. That's not an absolute, of course. Maybe some people like starting out by learning the magic system. I'm just saying that "No one joined the game to play companions" is wrong.

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Fair enough. That's not my experience or take of the game, but of course YMMV.

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