This is my first proper post to this forum. I felt I had to make an intervention at this point because I have a lot invested in the Ars Magica line but at the same time I think my perspective is very different to that of most people here and perhaps of interest for that.
I have been a huge admirer of Ars Magica since fourth edition, and I own and have used dozens of the books. But I have only played in a few short-lived Ars Magica sagas. However, I have used the ArM rules and supplements very extensively in my own home-brewed games.
What do I love about Ars Magica? I love its approach to historical fantasy, I love the way it takes the folklore, superstition, religion and pseudo-scientific beliefs of a particular time and place very seriously on their own terms and makes them real within the game. No other RPG approaches Ars Magica in doing this as sensitively, imaginatively and thoroughly. Ars Magica also has very robust, flexible and adaptable core mechanics, which are great for creating stories in a setting with a high level of internal consistency.
I have used adaptations of the Ars Magica core rules and drawn on its supplements in an Arthurian Dark Age Britain campaign, a Vikings game, and a game set at the edge of the Byzantine Empire. A friend of mine has now adapted one of my adaptations for his Glorantha game. We didn’t use Ars Magica for all these games because we were unaware of other systems – far from it. We use Ars Magica rather than games designed for these settings (or generic systems like GURPS or FATE) because ArM works better for the kind of games we want to play – highly immersive, character-driven games, in a consistent environment that aims for historical accuracy (or a simulation of a fantasy world, in the case of Glorantha), and which takes myth, religion and the supernatural very seriously. With the flexible and intuitive core mechanics that ArM has it is easy to bolt on other things if needed (such as more granular, tactical combat for those games where combat is important).
I think Atlas is completely right not to dive into a sixth edition. Current players of the game seem largely happy with fifth, which is hugely well supported in terms of supplements, and expecting these players to transition to a sixth edition and buy a similarly extensive range of supplements would be a big ask.
I strongly believe that it would be far better for Atlas to do what I understand it to be contemplating, which is build on the success of Ars Magica through diversification, drawing on the strengths of what has already been published. This might mean publishing games which involve playing characters from the Order of Hermes in different timeframes (the founding of the Order, the Renaissance, even the present day), but it could also mean publishing other kinds of games set in Mythic Europe, without necessarily involving the Order at all. My hope is that it will do the latter. Fourth edition seemed to be moving a bit in that direction with supplements looking at the fringes of the Order’s world and detailing various non-Hermetic traditions – like ‘Land of Fire & Ice’. Fifth edition pulled away from that because (as I recall) players complained that these supplements weren’t useful for their games based as they were around the Order of Hermes. I found that a pity, because those supplements were very useful for me!
I can imagine a great range of RPGs, all with the Mythic Europe brand and the same core mechanics (but with different abilities, variants of the magic rules, variants of the realms, etc): e.g. a game set in ancient Greece drawing on Greek mythology, a game set in Scandinavia during the time of the sagas, a Celtic game in Gaul or Britain on the eve of the Roman conquests, an Arthurian game set immediately after the Romans leave Britain, a mythic Russian game.
I think these games could be very popular. There is demand for historical fantasy games like these, but having read a lot of the published games and played some of them, I am confident that Mythic Europe games, using some of the excellent writers who have worked on the ArM supplements, and using and adapting the ArM core system, could come to dominate the field.
These games would have to be accessible to new players, which sadly ArM fifth edition is not. Compared to the fifth edition core rulebook, any new game would need to have more taster text, better art, a clearer layout, and a less dense account of the rules. Ideally, the rules for any of these new Mythic Europe games should have simpler rules than we have for ArM fifth edition. That is easily done if the new game has different magical traditions (or even no magical traditions at all) because most of the ArM5 rules concern the minutiae of Hermetic magic.
If a game sold a lot of copies, then Atlas could publish supplements for it, but publication of a long line of supplements is not so very important for running a good game so I don’t think we should see that as essential. While individual groups might restrict themselves to playing one or two Mythic Europe games, I can imagine a lot of people at least buying and reading up on the other games and using some of their ideas. Different games might be set in the same time period (e.g. a Vikings game and a Mythic Russia game and a legendary Charlemagne game) and characters could cross from one environment to another, or else the saga could be based in a place where two environments co-exist to some extent (e.g. if a group played a saga centred on early Rus and its Varangian founders). In other cases the PCs might encounter echoes of the past in some way (through a Faerie regio or equivalent, a spirit trapped for centuries in a device, or an ancient text) which would allow a storyguide to draw on ideas published for a game set in that earlier time period. But I wouldn’t advocate going too far in that direction (towards, say, a generic rules system with cross-cultural supplements) because much of the attraction of Ars Magica is its close attention to a specific moment in time in all its aspects, and if you want to replicate this appeal in various sister games then this needs to be kept.
David
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