You are behind the times.
We are chefs who do magic through food preparation.
Feeding the king hamburger and fries will blow his hose up. Then you somehow bring tomatoes to Sicily and Frederick will give you his daughter. You manage a farm with faeries and your talisman (a magical hoe) to use the freshest ingredients.
But still isekai though.
Knights of Last Call had a stream recently discussing ArM. Derik was pretty positive about it. The community over there is full of players keen to try out new games. I'm sure a few playtesters with no prior ArM experience for a mini saga could be found on the Discord server.
I agree, except I think it would be even better if that material were available at the start of the crowdfunding campaign so everyone who might be interested has the opportunity to figure out what the game is like upfront.
Given what Atlas has said about not wanting to offer things which are not written and playtested and ready to go as stretch-goals, the best thing people can do if they want to see this is to start writing it now.
I am, in all seriousness, not at all sure what that would look like. We already have quite a few pages on this topic, which are clearly not enough for this purpose (and, also, clearly enough for some people, because there are YouTube videos by people who have understood Ars Magica based on them).
I think there is a "valley of death" here. You can provide the general guidelines that we already have, and those are useful. You can provide a starter set, and that is definitely useful. But the things in between are a lot less useful than you might think. You can't just pick them up and start playing — you need to adapt them to your group, add statistics, work out how the plots fit together, handle the downtime, decide what is in the covenant library, etc. On the other hand, if it's supposed to be inspiration, there is a lot of material that you don't need, and probably won't use. And that extra information might get in the way of what you would prefer to do, forcing you to rewrite the bits you can use.
This is why I am in favour of a starter set as a separate product.
It's not that we haven't thought about the need for this, it's that it is not that easy.
which is why I want to help with starter sets here on the forum, hence my earlier comment on some sort of framework that we could slot our homebrews into.
Bob
I very much agree that coordinating our efforts would be good. We can all go off and try to do our own thing, and some of these efforts will probably produce something useful. It would be great to have a collection of starter resources like that, but it might be even better to have a more polished offering that can be the default starting point for those who want more guidance to get started. Having a lot of fan resources floating about can be very useful and provide ideas to scavenge even once you know what you are doing, but it can also be confusing for someone trying to figure out where to start.
There is an apparently smoothly-run open source project for a character generator for ArM on discord, gathering different people to do everything from coding, to contents, to graphic design.
Pending licensing issue, something similar would be nice to do for a starter set. Covenant design, story design, maps, and artwork are tasks that could be delegated to different people. Shared work in progress is also a source of inspiration. The covenant should inspire the story and vice versa.
But it is not easy to take the agile methods from software engineering and make them work in practice in a different domain. It would be an interesting experiment.
Just thinking out loud.
I'm not sure about (capital A) Agile, which may or may not work in its intended environment, but I've never seen it succeed outside of it. But a collaborative writing/game design effort isn't impossible. I think it does require some direction, though.
Agreement on goals and scope would be helpful, as would be clear communication about who is doing what. There are a lot of individual components that go into a starter set that could be worked on by several people in parallel, but obviously, everything needs to fit together nicely in the end.
Would it be easier to organise this via Discord?
that's where the agility comes in; transparency and continuous dialogue which allows the team to renegotiate targets and roles when original targets and ideas prove to be incompatible, futile, or over-ambitious
and agility is not confined to Agile Methods, but echo a trends in a range of methodologies from different disciplines
discord will be better when somebody steps forward to take a lead role
I don't
The problem here, as I'm sure the team is aware, is not if people can understand the ethos of the game, which is pretty clear from reading only the core book. The problem is that it takes a gargantuan ammount of effort to put together a saga if you are new (or even relatively new) to the game. What I'm envisioning would not be a starter set, but rather 'a toolbox to create your own starter set, with an example to boot'.
This here is my main point regarding starter sets. Ars Magica can be played in so many different ways that what new players need is not some fish, it's the fishing pole and an experienced fisherperson to teach them how to go fishing. You can argue that a starter set is already that example, but you're already saying that even in that case you'll be rewriting stuff to fit your troupe.
In a game like this, it's never going to be 'plug and play', I sincerely don't think so. There's so much to consider and decide (either as a group or as a storyteller) that the Starter Set solution will be no more than a nice addition to your library if you want to read it, unless the starter set also includes the tools needed to make your own.
How does that toolbox look like? If you look at the TTRPG scene in the last 13 years (Apocalypse World was released in 2010 if my memory doesn't fail me) you can see a myriad of world-building, planning and narrating tools that can (and in my honest opinion should) get adapted and be readily available to new troupes: Progress clocks, campaign hooks and fronts, faction turns, adversary rosters, node-based mystery resolutions, rumor tables, urbancrawling tools, node-based adventures in general... the list goes on and on, and with a handful of those tools stringed together, you get a framework, even if not exhaustive, that will decrease the amount of work a troupe should do.
Ars Magica 5th might be a 20 years old game, but it's not immune to the passage of time, so modernize it. Every single one of these tools can be adapted and put into a comprehensive exempli gratia that any troupe will feel like they can narrate this game.
Regardless of what Atlas as a company decides to do, there is no discussion that the game needs to welcome new players. The community already does, as it's patent in this thread: there are already quite a lot of volunteers to make this a reality. The point is that, if this work is done in the definitive edition, people will not need to come here to ask 'How do I do everything?' and instead will come asking 'I want to do X. I already know how to but I need some inspiration.' or even better 'I want to customize what the book told me, even if I like it. How did you people do it?'. And if you don't want to or don't know there is a space where people can help you, at least you have got the book, with the tools I already mentioned.
Again, this is just my opinion, and I very well could be wrong. I just hope I got my point across as my exact situation was this one two years ago. I don't mean any offense.
Kudos to the team and specially to you, David, for all the errata work. I'm excited to see it reflected in ArM:DE 
I think a partial solution to this is to provide some procedures, you know, like the faction/downtime procedure from worlds without number or blades in the dark or something similar for use during periods of seasonal lab work, this will take some pressure off the gm to be constantly generating hooks and allow them to focus their efforts more elsewhere, and it'll only take up a handful of pages. If you in the osr you can find procedures people have already put together for all kinds of things, and plenty of fodder for making your own.
Just made an account to put in my two cents as someone who's just picked up a good number of AM5e books with intent to maybe run it.
Agreed that while this book does a good job explaining what things are, it doesn't do as much a good job as explaining how or why. What does a beginning session look like? How can I as a storyguide do a good job of going on an adventure with my friends if I don't know how to formally structure one?
All in all I agree with Kandahar entirely, basically, and he has done a much better job of elaborating on my opinions. Now I just need to finish making a test character...
Thank you kindly for your words. I've seen a recent video that labels this game 'A weird TTRPG you will probably never play' and it broke my heart. I've seen it being called 'The best TTRPG you will never run' and it hurt a lot.
Hopefully we can come to a solution to get rid of those nasty labels and claim a proud place in the list of 'TTRPGs you will run and enjoy' 
Yes, good GM tools go a long way to make planning and running a campaign less daunting. Kevin Crawford does an amazing job at this in the "without Number" games.
To be fair, the ArM books already provide details on a lot of factions and their aims. What would really help is a system (like the Faction Turn) that helps Story Guides figure out how the relevant factions go about advancing their agenda.
I think the reason I disagree with this, and perhaps the reason David doesn't totally see, is that I don't think it takes more effort to set up a saga in ArM5 than it does a campaign in most any other RPG I GM. If anything, ArM5 is easier than many because of the resources at my disposal.
The big difference I have found isn't really ArM5 v. others. It's more that many people play RPG's much as tabletop boardgames rather than RPG's. They have a map, move their characters around on it, go through sequences for combat, etc. Basically, many groups just do dungeon crawling and don't even play a role much. I've seen that between my friends and me. When I run something I work on the atmosphere, interactions with NPC's, motivations of NPC's, etc. alongside some story arcs. When several friends run something it's not so different from D&D Miniatures with character sheets attached.
ArM5 seems to bill itself as a true RPG, not just a dungeon-crawl miniatures game. You can do this with any RPG I'm aware of; it just that many GM's default away from this. Games like D&D have tended to cater more to this default dungeon-crawl miniatures, especially with the doomed 4e where it was basically trying to replicate MMORPG dungeon crawls and mostly traits only mattered for combat.
So in the end I tend to agree with your comments like
Yes, teaching people to go fishing if they're just used to the other way. But David is right that there is a ton of this in the core book already. Just look at Chapter 7, starting on p.216. That's 7 full pages devoted to this in addition to a whole bunch of other things in the book.
As for things like progress clocks, etc., That's probably a good opening for people to write their own stuff. I think you have ideas that may help a lot of people adjust and get into the game. I could see something more as an SG's manual rather than a starter set fitting what you're describing well. Walk an SG through setting things up based on how a bunch of experienced SG's have done it.
Just brainstorming some other procedures that might be useful:
I think this may be the first time that people have suggested that what Ars Magica needs to attract new players is more rules.
I'm sure a lot of these tools could be adapted and reinvented for Ars Magica, but, as @callen says, that's something for an SG guide. It isn't something that can be developed and playtested in time for ArM5D.
Fortunately, there's going to be this open license thing…
This discussion got me thinking more about why creating a new ArM saga seems so daunting. I have no doubt that it appears that way to players, and more so than for many other RPGs. It is also true that there is a lot of material out there, including in the core book, that should be helpful, but apparently that isn't enough.
Two main things come to mind. Firstly, Ars Magica is different from pretty much any game that newcomers are likely to be familiar with. Not because there are a lot of rules or because it requires more bookkeeping than many games, but because it emphasises the simulation and narrative aspects of the hobby. Very few games do that. Add to that troupe style and (potentially) generational play, and you have a very unique experience that is quite different from the usual fare. It may not be surprising that even seasoned roleplayers can struggle to understand how this is supposed to work.
Secondly, Ars Magica thrives on sandbox play (or at least that is my experience). While there may be multiple story arcs that develop over various time scales, there is a lot of potential for player characters to go out and interact with the world. Preparing a sandbox campaign can be very daunting. The world is very large and any attempt to figure out all the details up front is likely to fail. There are great tools out there to help with that for sandboxes in general and some games designed for sandbox play offer good advice on this (which mostly boils down to "prep as long as you enjoy doing it but never feel like you need to prep more than what is required for the next game session"). This is helped by the fact that in many systems improvising content if a session takes an unexpected turn is relatively easy. If I run, say, an OSR hex crawl and need an NPC I can just make up a name and figure out stats if I need them. In Ars Magica, if I suddenly need stats for a magus, things can get a bit dicey. I think the fact that there is a large, intricate world out there and that this is a game that emphasises simulation can make it feel like there is an overwhelming amount of detail that needs to be prepared and tracked.
This leads me to a third (bonus!) point. Games with deep lore can be intimidating to newcomers simply because it is hard to catch up on all the lore the existing community has spent years (decades, even) absorbing. Ars Magica is possibly the game with the most detailed lore of all (real history, real-world myths, and Mythic Europe/Order of Hermes lore).
I don't think there is much that can be done about the last point except to say don't sweat the details unless you want to. Regarding the unusual style of play, I don't think there is much that the core book can do beyond what it is already doing. Having a good actual play demonstrating a possible approach to running ArM could help, I suppose. The starter set we've been discussing could help by providing some structure and demonstrating how stories and downtime can be interwoven. And maybe also by simply encouraging new players to jump in and figure out something that works for them.
The problem of how to help new (and existing) players prepare for a new saga (and future sessions in an ongoing one) seems less straightforward to me. Sure, it probably would help to have more tools available to help a SG figure out what the various factions did this year to advance their goals ahead of the upcoming Tribunal. But the problem I see is that individual sagas are likely varying a lot in what they need (or would most benefit from). So, a few pages of random tables will probably not do it. These would also be somewhat at odds with the narrative elements of ArM.
For what it's worth, I agree with @David_Chart that the core rules don't need more rules. I think all of this should go into a starter set or SG advice book.
@callen makes a good point on different play styles. Most games which explain how to get started focus on a tactical game. ArM never wanted to promote the tactical game, and that's what makes it so hard to give a good explanation for beginners. We do not even want to make that a default mode of play for beginners, because many of the players we want to attract simple do not want to play that game. We might lose them before they become the advanced players who can invent the narrative game for themselves.
OTOH we do not want to put off the mechanical and tactical players either, so it is not necessarily a good idea to make the narrative game the default for starters either.
Whatever mode of play we want to explain, it is not specific to Ars Magica. Narrative roleplay for dummies is a book worth writing. The Alexandrian has a very good blog post on tribunal sessions and similar grand assemblies.