How do we welcome the newbies for Anno Magical?

So I have a lot of thoughts about this.

My first saga of ArM5 was a flop: I spend like 6 hours making a mage and learning the rules, only for it to end after the first session because the GM just didn't know what to do with the game ( we explored a bit, killed a demon and secured the location for the Covenant). It was a big investment, and while in this case the game was not so much to blame as the GM, it was a bit frustrating.

I was then in a three-ish year saga as a player, which was great and made me want to run. Which I did, for a year or so. But I felt absolutely unprepared at the beginning. The books have story seeds but not something that a fresh Storguide can just pick up and go "this is one of the basic Ars Magica adventures". That's what led me to post up my session notes in a way that I hope would be more accessible to a new Storyguide. I did 2 dungeon crawls because that is a stable of the TTRPGs and everyone involved has a good idea of what a dungeon crawl is. I also tried to write up different kinds of adventures: low stakes ones, talky ones... The Narva scenario aims to expose fresh players to all 4 realms and vis, without the need for a fight.

So actionable items:

  • A guided accelerated chargen, especially for first time Magi-Players.

The project Redcap has a good one that I adapted for my players, but just going through the full virtue and flaw lists ion the main book is a big hurdle. I'd recommend something even simpler: pick one major hermetic virtue from a short list of the most easily applicable ones, a minor magic focus, puissant/affinity for the two main arts and a seventh point spend on something for flavour (like Warrior or a supernatural skill) balance that one major hermetic flaw and a major and minor personality/story flaw. One doesn't need to max out to 10, 6-7 are fine to get started.

Pre-stat up the base mage and leave less xp to spend on the non-essential skills (ie not: art libs 1, MT 3, Latin 4) and arts from apprenticeship onwards. Maybe even have 2-3 basic childhoods to chose from as in the apprentice book: a bookish (Bonisagus) covenant born one, a violent (Flambeau/Tytallus combat mage) one and a sociable (Jerbiton) one. While the game has a strong simulationist vibe which stays fresh by giving experienced players lots of options to try something new, I think that for new players cutting down the choices into more narrowed down with help flatten the learning curve. Similarly, some houses I would not recommend for new players: Criamon are quite weird and the Bjornaer animal form is more rules, an extra sheet for the animal form, the Tremere needs to do Certamen to get "their money's worth" with the minor focus which is a lot of crunch while at the same time not very interesting for the rest of the people just watching a slow dice-off... Essentially semi-pre-gen mages, not as finished as the ones in the core book, but maybe 75% of the way there.

In the same vein, the easy grog generation is "hidden away" in expansion books, which first time players and story tellers might not have despite needing this aid more than the experience players. I know that my grog-generation time has dropped massively in the process of doing my grog-a-day.

  • A few written up adventures for the storyteller.

This helps by giving something to run and also have a few (3-5) gives an idea of what kind of stories can be told an how to approach things. Sub Rosa and the Hermetic portals do have some fully written up adventures that can be slotted into existing sagas. I was sent Sub Rosa nr 5, and The Bishop's Bird is a ready to run adventure. There is all the info needed: the NPCs, chronology, locations, events, stakes etc. I tried to do the same in my write ups. I really like the Curse of the Rhine Gorge as a Saga, but I simply didn't know what to do in the beginning besides have the characters meet in Durenmar and go scout places let's see where that goes.

Running a Tribunal or similar event was intimidating to me as a story teller, because there are a lot of NPCs, who are socially more important than the PCs and the point of the game is not for my friends to listen to me talking to myself in funny voices for ages. Advice on running one, avoiding that pitfall and making the players involved without breaking verisimilitude by having everything revolve around them. Having some kind of example Tribunal would be nice too, though I don't know if it needs to be in the 3-5 basic scenarios...

This makes sense to me, and would be a way to string together the starting scenarios.

Option 1:

A winter covenant trying to go back into Spring, with an old Maga given the young Magi missions and as the PCs do stuff for the covenant unlock old lost/locked away ressources, with the training wheels coming off as the old Maga goes into final twilight and the PC-Magi take charge. This is more "rail roaded" as the old Maga will be the mouth of the Storyteller pushed the players into a certain direction.

Option 2
Your own fresh spring Covenant, more Rhine Gorge like: here are 3 possible locations (urban, remote,
or in between) for a Covenant, scout them out, meet local people, make friends and enemies based on the choices (faerie queen vs local Count?) and set up the Covenant, then go around the Tribunal doing either quests and/or paying bribes to other Covenants to set up shop, get your gifts and now you are standing on your own and have an idea of the world and what you can do.

Edit:

Having spoken with my former ArM gaming group, another thing comes to mind: more stated up opponents in the core book. The 4 wolves are cool and any stated up grog could also be working for an antagonist, but a few (more) stated up combat faeries and demons would be nice. Might 50 NPCs make for big enemies, but probably less often used than say a FM 15 faerie fighter. Maybe a box on how to switch things easily from one realm to another, like some kind of template?

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