Made a trip to the game store, and lo! Grogs is now mine.
It looks REALLY good. Lots of new minor flaws and so on to give more grog making options. Saga fodder on every page - I hate how every new book makes me want to alter my campaign, but the meaty story hooks herein are once again making my mind consider how to incorporate Ex-Prostitutes, Savants, Murderers and more into my game. In particular I like the Role-Bound flaw, a nice flaw to represent Warping, as noted in the text.
I even see what might be a nice nod to Downton Abbey in a sidebar dealing with upstairs vs. downstairs folk. All the Grog archetypes have advice for upgrading them to a Companion, which is pretty cool.
A fair amount of material talking about potential "grog only" sagas of various stripes.
I'll endeavor to answer any questions asked, though last time I did so I was whisked away from the PC for a long while by the fae called "Work".
Pretty strong overall, IMO.
A large number, likely the majority, are taken from outside sources and are not original works. "Dore's Illustrations of the Crusades", books by Dover Publishing, etc. - stuff int he woodcut vein that I generally approve of over some of the IMO less-skilled original works in recent books that have stuck out.
The original pieces are nice. I particularly like the woman pictured in Ex-Prostitutes - something about her expression makes me think it is showing an interesting character
I also particularly like the illustration of a glassblower on page 108, and Time Lost Witnesses has a good pic of some angry Roman Legionnaires confronting what looks to be a medieval peasant. A lot of this is down to taste of course, but this does not feel like it misses the mark in terms of art.
Also, rules for playing animals! GROG DOG TO THE RESCUE!
My copy will have to wait until next week's paycheck, so I can't comment on the art in this book yet.
I'm not a huge fan of woodcuts and other historical artworks depicting the middle ages, for the same reason it drives me crazy when I see them used in documentaries - most of the common illustrations come from much later 17th-19th century artists, so they are very anachronistic and inaccurate. Vikings in plate armor and horned helmets. I'd love to see actual medieval artwork, but romantic period stuff depicting the dark ages drives be batty.
I got back from a week away yesterday to find my copies of Grogs waiting for me. I'm really impressed. I think Mark Shirley has done a fantastic job of opening up the Grog character type and making it something we can be really enthusiastic about.
The grog archetypes are really nice and I'm glad we put those little character quotes into each one as they really help to sell them.
I'm happy with the original art too. I got a little thrill seeing the Role-Bound Ferryman as he was lifted directly from my (currently defunct) saga, which was nice.
I'm really curious about the Creating & Maintaining Grogs chapter, especially the "Aging the Easy Way" and "Training Packages" sections. Without giving too much away, can anyone tell me what those are like?
Broadly... training packages are a way of deciding what the character has been doing over the last three or five years and then applying XP to a set of Abilities. There are lots of different training packages representing the different ways that a character might have spent their time.
The section on aging is designed for characters which are not updated frequently, or for creating older characters without having to make dozens of aging rolls. It tells you how many aging points (and crises) you can expect to receive per decade as you age, and where to put them.
The Training Packages allow you to assemble or update a grog quickly. Each gives you the Abilities and xp for three or five years in a particular role. Keep adding packages until you reach the age you want, then turn the numbers into Ability scores.
So you might build a grog by taking an Athletic Childhood, then add five years of being a Farmer (born to a serf family), three years as an Animal Trainer (experience as a drover), five years as Woodsman (became an outlaw), then three years as a Sentry (joined the covenant). This gives you the Ability scores for a 21 year old grog in a matter of minutes.
Yeah, I ordered mine on 14 July, and it still hasn't shipped yet (even though the product page shows it as "in stock"), although my order page does say "shipping soon". Here's hoping.
Sadly, not only does my local store not carry Ars Magica, his distributor doesn't even carry Ars Magica. I have long ago given up on my local store as a source for anything other D&D and Warhammer 40K... and I don't play D&D.
