I'm going to try out Ars Magica 5 with my friends sometime soon and I wonder where to start. I have red large parts of the rulebook and I think I would like them to start as new magicians that are going to create their own covenant. I guess I want the problems they face in the beginning to be quite mundane like, getting people to start living there and not get in trouble with the local authorities. I want it to stay quite low fantasy at the beginning and not so much difficult situations until they understand the open magic system and I am comfortable with the rules and such. Any tips for a starting mission like that? And also do you have some tips on how to make them feel like they really are in a really old forest during 1220 and not in my living room?
Any general tip would also be appriciated:D
This is for future games I hope to play but, how do you create a saga without a plot?
Thank you.
I would suggest to start as a part of an established covenant. Building own covenant from scratch is certainly rewarding, but people need to get used to the rules. I would recommend to try tu use storyline from "Twelfth Night", very old AM supplement
Just a quick suggestion: read the "Covenants" chapter in the corebook, or (even better) get the "Covenants" book. Covenants have their own virtues and flaws, like characters, except that they are named respectively Boons and Hooks; in particular, Hooks are really Story Flaws, in that each details some problem or circumstance that will generate stories as the characters struggle with it (e.g. a rival covenant, lack of mundane resources, a pesky fairy or saint, a nearby ruin to explore).
Ideally, you should go through it with your players. Let them define the type of problems they want to struggle against. Since every Hook allows the covenant to take an extra Boon in return (a great book, a supernatural ally, a better Aura etc.) they'll be eager to get plenty of them, and give you plenty of ideas on the type of stories they'd like to see.
As a historical note, this involvement of players into defining the theme and scope of their adventures - specifically through covenant design - was one of the great innovations brought to the RPG scene by Ars Magica 1st and 2nd edition all the way back in the late 80s/early 90s. And it has influenced many other famous roleplaying games such as Nobilis.
As has already been mentioned, it's usually recommended that new players be introduced to a Summer or Autumn covenant so that they'll be able to start with basic stuff like labs & libraries as well as have senior magi who can be a valuable resource in their own right providing the PCs with the political and magical muscle needed to get the players out of the various messes they get themselves into.
I recommend the following strategy: Have the players accompany one or more older magi to resettle an abandoned Winter Covenant. This provides many of the mundane challenges of a Spring saga combined with the safety net that results from having a competent supervisor looking out for the covenants well-being. If you like, the older magus can be enfeebled and on the cusp of Final Twilight and thus making him hesitant to venture beyond the covenant walls or use magic on the players' behalf, instead spending his seasons cooped up in his lab persuing his own inscrutable goals...
THe problem is that you are trying to play D&D. I'm not being critical of you here! I'm just pointing out you are missing how the game works, and makes your task easier.
In the first session, you sit with your players, design their magi as a group, and you take note of all their Flaws, because these are stories the players have volunteered to tell. You then design the Covenant, possibly using "Covenants" and through this process you and your players design together the foes, goals and so on of your communal story.
It's not up to you, to decide what you want, then design it all and then have the players work through it, like in D&D.
Nice starting adventure for low fantasy. Add a combat vs bandits to experiment the combat system if your troupe feels like it. It can be played with throw-away characters if you feel like it, or simple grogs that might not be really significant in the adventure late ron if you don't want it.
After that, the first adventure in the Nigrasaxa saga (4th edition, free online) works great.
Firstly, welcome aboard. I'm very jealous. I love hearing about new sagas starting up.
Cool. That's a really useful way to start; let the players get used to the game world and introduce new things as you go. On that point, the starting out and setting up the covenant, I would say get it done fairly quickly. There are so many stories you could tell, so I'd let them get grounded and them throw in something fantastic. Remember, you don't need to account for how each of your grogs arrived, just that a bunch of them did. You don't need to account for every source of income, just the important one. That kind of thing. If you want to populate your library, tell the story of how they help another covenant and get their first few books. You can afford to flesh things out later.
And I'd ensure that they have one key ally from the outset. If the players are just starting out, you'll find it useful to have a guiding voice within the game. It could be a local noble who knows of the Order, a steward secretly uneasy with his lord's harsh reign, or an abbot mindful that magic can be a force for good in the world.
I'm not sure about the forest thing, unless you ship a couple of shrubs and a squirrel in. But you'll be fine with 1220. The peasants work hard and tend to be very deferential to the wealthy. The wealthy probably own the land you're walking on. And the Church is very important. People have rank and expect to be treated accordingly. Depending on how bleak you want to be, there's nothing like throwing a funeral into the background to make the hardship of life well and truly understood. That's a good moment to also have the tolling of church bells, which always feel a little medieval to me.
I'm going to throw two words out there that might cause offence to some... "soap opera". Yes, Ars Magica is a soap opera. Each of your characters, and you could have plenty, will likely have a story flaw. And they'll probably each have a personality flaw. And, here's the nice fallback, they'll all have House affiliations, duties, and responsibilities. You can design stories that draw upon each of these. If you have a Verditius, watch how he reacts when a rival's venditor turns up trying to find commissions for his master. If you have a Bjornaer, see how quickly they respond when rumours of shapechangers and werewolves reach the area. So yes, you have a roster of characters and the story focus can shift from character to character, and each character builds up their own history; their own personal continuity.
Although that's more about individual stories, there's nothing to prevent you from linking these. What if the shapechangers have been lured to the area by another force? Why? And how? Is it a distraction? From what? Now you've got another story and you're thinking about plot.
For me, it's about enticing the players to give their characters a number of goals that you can help them achieve. One magus might want to become leader of the covenant, so present the opportunities for her to try. Another might want to learn to fuse magic and the divine.
And of course, don't forget that you don't have to own everything. Encourage (don't coerce/trick/bribe) the other players to play storyguide now and then. This is one of the strengths of the game, which is emphasised more than in some D20-based games. Your group doesn't have to just listen to your voice telling your stories, they can each get involved and put their own stories out there. This is actually a really rewarding part of the wider game.
I hope you find the above helpful. Let us know how you get on.
Thank you for the ideas and tips. They're really useful and I think I really appreciate it.
I red through "Nigrasaxa" and "Going home" and I liked them. They are really a good starting point so I thought that the players start by creating characters that still are at the end of their apprenticeship and their parens sends them away to the covenant of Nigrasaxa to visit/help/get to now the reigning Magi there. The parens also tells them to meet him on the next tribunal. On the way there they do the short "Going home" mission and when they get to Nigrasaxa they do, of course, the Nigrasaxa mission. This mission is for several seasons and it ends in a Tribunal. This part is not for the Nigrasaxa mission but I thought they could have their gauntlet there and then be free to create their own covenant. So after this they should know a lot more about the world and how things works.
Is this a reasonable approach? The biggest problem I have is that there are only two players but we have managed during other RPG:s so I think this will work too.
Although the changing of the mission creates some problems. How much xp should I let have when they create their characters? Since they are not just out of the apprenticeship they haven't learned Parma Magica but I guess their parens could have bend the rules and learnt them that anyway?
And also there is not a lot information about gauntlets in the rulebook, so I was wondering if you guys had any ideas about a good exciting gauntlet or some "template" gauntlets which fit different types of magicians, since I don't know what type of magicians they want to be?
I agree Soap Opera is a great model for an ArM saga.
Another good model is a seasonal TV series like Buffy, or Star Trek or Heroes. Think of the saga as being like a season of the show. Each gaming session is like an episode. There is a central cast (the player characters) who are mostly present throughout the season, and there might be one or two "villans" (the Big Bad) who appear off and on throughout the season, and the show-down with the season villian(s) is the final episode(s). Individual episodes have their own minor villans who might be somehow connected to the main season villans, or they might be independent. And individual episodes might concentrate on just one or two of the characters from the central cast. Some of the episodes are prompted as much by the quirks of the central cast than any external threat. You can also have different players "direct" (i.e. take turns at being the storyguide) for different episodes.
The main difference between the Soap Opera model and the seasonal TV series model is that the Soap Opera model doesn't really have a natural end, it just goes on and on (which is fine). Whereas the seasonal TV series has a sort of structure with an "end", although, of course, you can always start again with another season (assuming that your ratings hold up!).
Most of my sagas have been soap operas - to some extent.
There have usually been other elements, but with several people with 'great personalities' live in a close enviroment for an extended time, soap occurs.
Most magi have 'great personalities' - indeed most PCs do in my experience.
Most covenants classify as a close enviroment, especially after a few decades (and a few years of play).
Add to the fun that magi tend to have the means (magic) to act on their excentricites and suddently its not about finding your neighbours pantyhoses in the sink anymore.
How can you compare a saga to a multi-season show if the saga only represents a single season? I agree in the episodes=sessions. But I see the saga as several seasons, easn season-finale is a major event, the ending of a major plot hook and/or the move of the saga/covenant to a 'higher level' if you will. Like the changing of seasons power wise, og the covenant attaining a new role in the tribunal and so on.
I Dunno how other people do it, but I've never in my 22 years og gaming played in or run a campaign with a set end. We always play until it's no fun anymore or we can't find a time to play where all players can come. It'd be a shame to plan a campaign with an end, only to see that it was too short and that you want to continue. Sure, you might make a sequel campaign, but if you've already played towards an end? Or you could do a spin off.
My sagas and campaigns are like those TV shows which either get too thin or too wierd so noone sees the final episodes, and no plotlines are ever ended. Or those which stop mid season because of lack of funding or popularity. Never one with a good ending.
We have done open ended stories and also sagas that develop until an event (the season finale) is reached. Even open ended stories tend to have some linking story arc as well as "filler episodes" that do not deal with the major plot hook. We have also have had our own fill of weird, thin and unpopular sagas but we try to reach some kind of conclusion even for those: sometimes it looks bad, but we prefer to "end the serie" than allowing it to lay around unfinished. For some reason we tend to go for "big and nasty" to wrap things up, acting like sociopaths and paying the consequences.
As long as the end isn't "and then everybody dies", sure you can continue into a new "season". There's no big deal.
In the saga I'm in at the moment, the first "season" was basically "we set up the covenant and then goto our first Tribunal meeting". So the "season" was a series of plots and so forth, that were (mostly) tied up at Tribunal. The next "season" was "the ice king tries to take over the forest". The following "season" was "the Mongol Horde invades". The next "season" looks like it is going to shape up as "the magi become masters". And there is a sort of parallel "season" involving "chasing down and prosecuting a powerful infernalist". We don't get all formal about it, or even talk much about it as players. There are just natural big events in-game that we sort of turn the plot around at. These are the end of the "seasons".
Any long-running saga probably does this naturally. You just probably don't think about it in quite this way. Which is fine. This is just a model for thinking about how to decide what to do next as players. If, as players, you already know what you are going to do next, then you don't need anyone to tell you that you are doing it Wrong. Do what you are already doing.
It's quite a nice model for controlling the tempo of a saga as you build to a "season finale" and start to lay the seeds for the next one.
One problem I've seen in sagas (I'm guilty of this) is not knowing when to drop something and leave it behind. Sometimes plots have a natural longevity and they tend to suffer if you stretch them out too much. Having an end-point in sight for a given plot or theme allows you to be a little more confident about wrapping it up and moving on to the next big thing.
Well, yes and no. You can come to a planned end without massive death, but with other huge things impacting on the fate of the world or Order. My old 4th ed saga featured a plotline from a Beta SG about hard evidence about the return of House Diedne. AFter we managed to convince our own Praeco and Tribunal about it, the motion waa taken to Grand Tribunal and accepted as a fact. The saga ended before we did much of anything else, but it would forever change the Order. Had it been planned, it might have been too much of a chage for some players, but my maga was all into his.
Other examples could be a new Schism and the destruction of a en entire House or line of magi. Or the player covenant could attain some new level of power and influence that noone really wants to keep playing with?
It sounds like you run large story lines, one after the other. We've always had some big tings gworing and moving over the years, mixed in with littel things. Once in a while a big thing ends. More often than not a little thing grows beyond what the SG had planned. On several occasions we've had to do a 'quest log update' event and start listing up all loose ends and such with events and NPCs that need some kind of closure. Sometimes some things are over but the players or their magi just haven't realized it. Sometimes a thing they've though ended pops up back again. And then we'll start ticking things off, because it is too chaotic when too many plotlines run at once.
Right now in my 2 sagas, we really don't have major plotlines. We have a lot of personal ones, but none for us all. In the one saga we're set in the realtively new North Sea Tribunal, consisting of splitters from Rhine and Normandy. Our covenant is in Denmark, and so far we've managed to take this territory from Novgorod without any incident. The hypothetical Order of Odin was a thing we used as excuse for settling there. So out main themes are politics of ther new Tribunal and OoO. But we tend to do small, independent stories. Our original ASG said he thought we should find a main theme (which nobody objected to, but we still haven't!) and always decide why stories run and to what end. He left the saga, so we're back to our usual pace. Still looking for some overall thing.
The other saga is in Constantinople and we have some over all things, although not very intense plotlines. One thing is about the tensions between the classical greco-roman magi and the various pagan and infidel traditions of Ex Misc. Apparently some magi actively recruit these kinds of people. But the Tribunal is not at all in agreement on which traditions are unwelcome, except of course those actively trying to steal the secrets of Parma Magica and take it back to their old traditions. The other thing is getting knowledge and control over the vis sources. We play young magi in and old covemant with a few old and powerful magi. We run things day to day in accordance with a strict charter, and have found a lot of holes in their information and ways of governing. Especially in the time they kept dishing out vis from the stores when the income was weak because the only old maga who knew the sources was in Twillight. A maga of ours took it upon her to straighten things out and find and cultivate the sources. A lot of stories circle around this since a lot of us others help.
Well.. I don't know how my saga will turn out since I haven't played the first session yet. So I could use some comments on my game plan instead of a long discussion about soap operas and their grandparents ( I don't dislike them its more like the thread lost focus.). So what do you think of the following?
I red through "Nigrasaxa" and "Going home" and I liked them. They are really a good starting point so I thought that the players start by creating characters that still are at the end of their apprenticeship and their parens sends them away to the covenant of Nigrasaxa to visit/help/get to now the reigning Magi there. The parens also tells them to meet him on the next tribunal. On the way there they do the short "Going home" mission and when they get to Nigrasaxa they do, of course, the Nigrasaxa mission. This mission is for several seasons and it ends in a Tribunal. This part is not for the Nigrasaxa mission but I thought they could have their gauntlet there and then be free to create their own covenant. So after this they should know a lot more about the world and how things works.
Is this a reasonable approach? The biggest problem I have is that there are only two players but we have managed during other RPG:s so I think this will work too.
Although the changing of the mission creates some problems. How much xp should I let have when they create their characters? Since they are not just out of the apprenticeship they haven't learned Parma Magica but I guess their parens could have bend the rules and learnt them that anyway?
And also there is not a lot information about gauntlets in the rulebook, so I was wondering if you guys had any ideas about a good exciting gauntlet or some "template" gauntlets which fit different types of magicians, since I don't know what type of magicians they want to be?
I can't remember the various gauntlets that the Houses put their apprentices through, I'm afraid. I'm pretty sure that the Verditius apprentices create an enchanted device, which they then give to their parens. They pass their gauntlet if the device is of suitable quality. if you end up with a Verditius player, the seasons at Nigrasaxa could be the time and place where the device is created.
You don't need to refer to the canonical gauntlets at this stage though if you don't have the other books yet. Just think of something that's fitting for the House; presenting a lecture on Magic Theory for House Bonisagus (or writing a book), getting from A to B for a Redcap, etc.
