How do we welcome the newbies for Anno Magical?

Games Discussion Ars Magica
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Is it though? I think I may have some kind of problem myself then, and the same for many storytellers that have come into this thread. No, I do not think ArM5 is anywhere close to easy to set up a saga. That is not to say that other games are easier, but almost every TTRPG that does any way of long-term form of play at least does the bare minimum job of how to run it. It may be easy for you, but for the average gamer it is not easy to start.

While I don't agree on the point that there is a "true" RPG, I don't think it's fair to compare Ars to D&D. I would think it would be fair to compare it to something like Vampire or Changeling, highly narrativist games. Many people like these kind of narrativist games and 'we're more complex and so we can afford to not explain how to work the game out as a new group, you have to work it out yourselves' is not an argument for me, sorry.

Is there a ton? I couldn't disagree more. From page 221:

Pick your area from a modern map, as above. Then find a history of that area, and
read the chapters on the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. This will give you quite a few names,
a fair bit of social detail, and some idea of which towns were important back then. Work
what you’ve learned into your saga in a way that will impress your players.

Ok. How do I do that?

From the same page:

[...] Give characters names that match the sorts of names you find in the book,
so that they “sound right.” Have the repercussions of events you read about affect the covenant. Foreshadow future history, giving the players a chance to change it. And so on.

Ok... how do I do that? "And so on" What?

The game is telling me the questions I should ask, but does absolutely nothing on the answers. As people said, the what is clear, but the how is in a nebula of work that you have to do with no frame of reference. I sincerely do not think "go figure out on your own how to play this game" is a serious answer if you want to attract new players to a system as complex as this one. I really do not think so.

On this we can argue, but it is my opinion that it shouldn't be the community's job to teach people how to play: this burden should fall first on the developers of said game. If a videogame does not have tutorials, I will praise the wiki for the info that I need, but the developer also should give me the information I need to play.

No, I am not suggesting more rules, I'm suggesting better and more guides so that players know how to run the game, so they do not feel like they have to overcome such a daunting task on their own.

It is my opinion that these could be included in a core edition, and this sentiment comes from the fear of quite a lot of people banking the kickstarter, reading the game, feeling like it's too much of a hassle to run, and then putting it on the shelf and not looking at it again. It would be a shame. But then again, the authors know better than me.

That is fair enough. I'll take it as an invitation and stop litigating this point and start writing my own guide. Hope it comes in time for the crowdfunding campaign.

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I think one of the more challenging parts to keep players engaged is character progression. People are used to "I level up, I get these things" or I used this skill, it gets a check box, it increases at point X.

The what do you study can get bogged down.
Player: "My magi is a rego specialist, I want to increase rego."
SG "You don't have a book for that. You can use vis, however, you might regret using that later, as it is important for magic items. Also the XP gain is very random."
Player: "OK then, I'm a bit frustrated about all those failed finesse rolls. I want to increase finesse.
SG: The best you can get is practice and 4 XP.
Player: But when I learned Corpus I got 21 XP.
SG: Yes, that was because you had no skill, and you had the right book.
Player: 4 XP seems bad considering the opportunity cost of 21 XP elsewhere. I know no Mentem, lets get the 21 XP.
SG: No beginner book, sorry.

I could go on.

A optional rule of simplied advancement could exist.
When learning XP is 15 a season for any technique or form under 5, 10 a season for 6 through 10, 5 XP for 11+.
Same for skills, but the 15/10/5 XP is at 2/4/6+

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@Kandahar, I think your perspective on this is really valuable. A lot of people here have been through the process of successfully creating a saga at least once. In hindsight, it all doesn't seem so bad and with some experience under your belt and knowing what works for you, it actually isn't that bad, I think. But there is a bit of survivorship bias here. Potential players who never manage to get a saga going because they don't know where to start don't hang out here as much. But those are the voices we should listen to if we want to make the game more welcoming and grow the community.

Thinking about this some more, one other difference between Ars Magica and many other games is that, for most games, it is relatively easy to run a one-shot and get a good idea of what this game is like. I can play a single session of D&D (or Pathfinder or Savage Worlds or Feng Shui or Gumshoe, etc.) and get a pretty good idea of whether I'd want to play more of this. I'm not sure that is true for Ars Magica. Sure, you can hand out pre-gens and play a session, but downtime is quite important, as are long-term events, developing relationships with NPCs and the consequences of past actions. In essence, this is why I think a starter set with a mini saga is important. It would provide something that can be used out of the box without the need for lengthy preparation but (hopefully) also provide some advice on how to keep going. It is perfectly fine if this is a community-driven/third-party project, provided the quality is good. As I said in the other thread, I think a community project like this would benefit from someone taking charge of coordinating it, but so far, it doesn't look like there are any volunteers for that role. That means we are likely to end up with several attempts at a starting saga, many of which will either be abandoned or released somewhat half-baked. It is entirely possible that at least one of them will turn out to be good (and we might even get more than one, which would be great), but I think it would be preferable to funnel more of this creative energy into a single product. Unfortunately, I don't think I'm the person to do that.

I don't think a Starter Set and SG Guide are necessarily the only things that can be done, though. Video content would be good, I think. Many players learn about new systems by watching YouTube. Would it be helpful to have video content that goes through how you would prep for a saga, or at least individual game sessions? I remember watching an AP for the Dracula Dossier that had a mix of play and prep sessions. I thought it did a good job of demonstrating how you might run that campaign (the first episode is here). Again, this would require someone to organise it. Personally, I think it would be best if this was at least supported by Atlas Games and timed to coincide with the crowdfunding campaign for ArM5D, but that may not be very realistic.

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Be fair. That's the summary of what a "Medium Research Saga" looks like, not the instructions on how to do it. We don't explain how to get a PhD in medieval studies either, and that's listed in the suggestions on the same page (for the "Extreme Research Saga").

The instructions are on page 199, with concrete examples on pages 202 to 210.

What is missing?

This is a serious question. It is worth knowing that you feel that the core rules do not tell you enough about how to run a saga, and it is something I would like to fix, even if it can't be done for ArM5D at this point, but I honestly do not know what you think is missing. I can't start writing it without a more concrete idea.

This might help. What does the C20 core rule book have in it to help people run a chronicle that is missing from ArM5? (C20 because I have that on my hard drive, while I don't have V20. M20, or either edition of MtAw, would also do.)

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I couldn't. The only idea would get is if I would want another session with the same SG and troupe.

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Sure, that's fair enough. But you'd have a pretty good idea what you are getting because the general game structure trends not to differ that much from session to session. After a one-shot of ArM you still haven't seen the majority of the game.

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That's also the case for Vampire as played by the better Storytellers that I have met, and for all that I know, for D&D or whatever with some GMs I haven't met.

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There are some things that are, if not unique to Ars Magica, at least unusual compared to most other RPGs.

  1. Troupe play. That every player has more than one character, and a set of characters (grogs) that are shared among all the players, plus the idea of alternating Storyguide/Gamemaster, this differs from most other RPGs.
    It is also one of the special aspects of Ars Magica that is easiest to ignore - the game works perfectly fine if played with just one character per player and a fixed SG.

  2. Downtime. There are several important parts of Ars Magica (study/training; spell invention; creating enchanted items; etc) that are usually done in between gaming sessions. This unlike most other games where the SG/GM is the only one who has to do any work in between sessions.

  3. Timescale. In Ars Magica it is common to have several seasons between adventures, and a saga can easily stretch over many decades, making aging an important part of the game.
    While in games like D&D a full campaign usually only lasts a few years of in-game time, with only days or weeks in between individual adventures.

  4. Frontloaded rules. Unfortunately, you need to have a fairly good grasp of a lot of the rules system just to create a character - especially if that character is a magus. In many other games you only need to know a little to create a character, and can then pick up the rest as needed while playing.

Several other things mentioned in this thread - like how to create a saga, or how to run a scenario - while those may be problematic, they are problems common to most RPGs and I don't think I have seen any other game providing good answers to them.

Asking how to create a saga is like asking "How do I write a novel?". While some general rules (spelling, grammar, etc) and general advice can be provided, most of it has to be learnt through practice before you are any good at it. Especially since there is no single way to do it, and what works for one person may not work for another.

I know there are some games (that I have no personal experience with) that attempts to provide tools to handle some aspects of running a campaign, but my understanding is that they are pretty hit-and-miss - some people find them useful, while others think they just complicate things.

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That is precisely my point. Where are the instructions? Why are those texts included, then? How does this help anyone? You are not telling anything to the person reading the book. As you say, the "Extreme Research Saga" is kind of a joke, which is fine, but you cannot expect to pass it as a serious tip for someone looking to play this game, even less so for someone who's 'new'.

Okay. I will answer seriously, as I've done in every reply on this thread, from the first to the last.

What is missing is a lot of tools for a storyteller to tell things in exactly this game.

  1. Chapter Fourteen: Mythic Europe

This chapter is fine, and in fact I would advise even players to read it to get a good understanding on the background of Mythic Europe. The epigraph about 'Errors and Anachronisms' is specially good advice.

  1. Chapter Fifteen: Stories

This chapter is a complete hit and miss. What this chapter amounts to is 'To make an adventure you have these so and so parts, and these so and so types of stories. Have a bunch of ideas, hope they help.' Which is... fine, but clearly insufficient if you stop reading it and still don't know hoy to make an adventure for this game. You are telling the what to the reader, and not the how. How do I design a, let's say, a reactive political story? How do I design the climax of an exploration adventure? How is this section useful to anyone looking to run this game?

  1. Chapter Sixteen: Sagas

It's fine to tell a storyguide 'Here are the questions you might want to consider before starting a saga. What follows is the speed of sagas. How do sagas look like?. The part about Troupe-style play is fine, but 'Researching a saga' is, as I said, not really usefull for anyone reading it. It amounts to 'If you want to have X, just do X' in my opinion. To top it off, the 'Saga Styles' section has 'descriptions that are merely intended to give you some ideas', which is, again, not useful in my opinion.

I seriously ask, and repeat that maybe the problem is mine, but do we really think that reading this will give someone everything they need to run a saga? I do not think so.

I would personally rework these three chapters to give a new player (and a veteran one) the how of all the questions that are already asked. Of course you can disagree, but I seriously do not think what is written is functional. It is not a useful 'SG Guide' section.

What can be useful to a new troupe?

  • A section on 'The day to day of a Spring Covenant'
    • Optionally, explain how it would differ within a Summer, Autumn, Winter Covenants...
  • Tips about the pace of the saga, things to be aware of when you narrate, hooks, adversaries
  • Another section about traveling, explaining the different kinds of adventures, problems and hooks that can arise (e.g. having people with The Gift in the group. I know this is explained in page 76 onwards, it's just an example), how to provide a challenge for magi in a trip, maybe even some encounter tables...
  • A section on factions, political or otherwise, and how to manage them
  • A section on how to manage a saga as it expands over time
  • How does an average session look like?

These are just some examples.

Let me be clear: It is absolutely fine if ArM5:DE is marketed for people who already have ArM5. Better package, new art, all the errata, maybe some other things to boot... But if you ask me, as a relatively newbie Ars Magica storyteller, what might have made my life easier, I'm telling you: Modernize the SG section to accomodate said players. As it stands, you can probably not bother reading it and work out something on your own and it'll be about the same ammount of work: A lot.

Everything else I've said in my other comments, specially the first one.

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How would you design those for some other game? I haven't seen any game explain that, so while good explanations of that would be nice to have, the lack of it is common to all RPGs.

Writing adventures for Ars Magica is really not much different to writing adventures for some other RPG.
And all those other RPGs seem to manage fine without having better explanations on how to run a game.

Sure, it would be nice to have a good groundwork for how to structure sagas and adventures, but doing a proper presentation of it would make for a book all by itself. A thick book.
Perhaps someone will write that some day.

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Yes, I agree with you: Ars Magic is unique. Ars Magica is hard. But that does not make it incognizable. It can be broken down, part by part, and explained to a new person. It can be done for the mechanic part and it can be done for the narrative part.

There are plenty of games that do this, though, and with great success. Blades in the Dark has an award winning GM section, with objectives, principles, agenda, a structure, tips for an SG; Lady Blackbird has interesting mechanics about what constitutes a scene and how to integrate that into a greater narrative; many of the most prominent PbtA games have such SG section, the examples I've run and work are Dungeon World and Masks; Legend of the Five Rings makes crystal clear where the drama of the game is, and gives you some tips on how to make the drama pop up.

The best example I can come up with is, as I've mentioned in this thread already, Kevin Crawford's Stars/Worlds Without Number. If you read that piece of text, you will know how to run it, top to bottom. You may have some questions, but they will surely relate to how to do something specific to what you want to run, and there you can ask the community.

In contrast, what does Ars Magica 5th say? 'There are many ways to play this game. These are some of them. Good luck!'

Which, I'll repeat, is perfectly fine. But it will not attract new people to this system, ever.

I quite disagree, as I've said it's a matter of deciding, as an editorial group, what constitutes the 'default' way to play this game, or at least what is the intention of play, the language of the play of the game. Developing that, and then saying, as I said above:

There are many ways to run this game, but we've worked on a framework we think could benefit new and upcoming storytellers and troupes. Feel free to customize it once you're comfortable with this game's complexity.

Yes, mechanics and tools can be useless to some troupes, but I seriously ask: What is the alternative? Is what we already have enough to welcome new people? There we can argue. I hope I've made my opinion clear, and while I understand not everyone will agree, I think it's clear some other do. It's up to the team to decide.

I will stop litigating this point, as I don't want to repeat myself and risk sounding obtuse.

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Already answered you in my post above :slight_smile:

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I am not familiar with any of those games, but would I be wrong if I assume they have all been designed to be run in one particular way?
This unlike more traditional RPGs like Ars Magica that can be run in many different ways, none of them more right or wrong than the other?

What I am trying to say is that one can't write a simple text describing how to play Ars Magica.
One could, potentially, write a text on how to play it in one way. But the mere existence of such a text would make most players think that is the only way to play the game - which is not the case.

One can run action-filled monster hunts in Ars Magica.
One can run political stories set in and around a Tribunal meeting.
One can run investigative stories with a Quaesitor as center.
One can run whimsical stories with faeries.
One can run very dark stories dealing with demonic corruption.
Or a slice-of-life story around a couple of grogs.
Or large-scale warfare during one of the crusades.
Etc, etc, etc.

And all of those should (preferably) be written and played differently, so one can't write a simple "How to create a story" document that covers them all. (If someone want to prove me wrong and write such a text, please go ahead. I would love to be proven wrong on this point)

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I made an account just to reply to this. I want to be an Ars Magica player, and while I am interested enough to invest many hours upfront to play, it's difficult to find others who are willing to. I think many players like that the game itself can be esoteric—learning Ars Magica makes you feel like you're mastering a Hermetic Art. I haven't managed to find other people willing to invest in the system, so I don't have any actual experience to speak from, but I assume the systems make more sense once you start seeing them action. The problem is getting that far.

I think that there's actually nothing wrong with ArM as a system: it's a perfect union of mechanic, affect, and aesthetic; it's just hard to approach when you're starting from scratch. The fact that all those systems are there when you want them is actually a huge appeal, but each component introduced to a new player compounds the cognitive load to get started.

"Start with a grog," really isn't sufficient advice to introduce anybody to the awesome wizard-game you're trying to sell them on, and it appears in almost every thread from seasoned players. Playing a grog isn't introducing any of the mechanics that people are actually interested in or struggle to understand.

I think apprenticeship should be re-imagined as the way new players enter the game. It's the perfect marriage between the meta-game experience and the narrative of the game: The character starts with just enough Arts to perform a couple cantrips so that magic is quickly accessible. You grasp the system as your character grasps the Hermetic Arts. The character has enough access to the tools of the trade (vis, labs, books) and comes to understand their importance before ever dreaming of building their own and bookkeeping all of it. Having the gauntlet as the big goal is a no-brainer. I realize all of this could be done with a GM who's familiar with the system, but having some sort of module or saga specifically intended to teach the game rather than trying to be a great saga for long-time players would be really helpful. It would guide a new GM and their players simultaneously. Maybe something like that is in the Apprentice book. (Quickly looking back at my copy, and this is not what I'm talking about. This is clearly for people who are already playing and are going deeper, not a starting point.)

And other than that, I'll beat the dead horse: Actual Play. They're essentially non-existent. The ones that do exist have low production value and are usually incomplete glimpses into these games. I just mean muffled audio, creepy webcam lighting, internet latency issues; they're friction points that make them unsuitable for peaking people's interest.

SO MUCH could be accomplished in spreading the good news of ArM if one could point someone to literally anything worth their time. It should include session zero conversations and particularly focus on the players who are coming to grips with the system for the first time—maybe they're even an apprentice.

An actual play does a lot to mitigate the problem of not having a GM with ArM experience. It's something to model as a starting point, and will inevitably contain the sort of litigation of the game that can demystify some of it.

Those are my suggestions. I know I haven't played the game, but it's not for lack of wanting to. I'm feeling the pressure points as I try to learn it, and my good friend is beginning to be interested, but I know they would never have learned the game on their own as it is.

And one last thing that I have no one else to tell: I once spent almost two weeks trying to create a fully functional ArM character spreadsheet without ever having played. I hope that gives one of you a good laugh lol

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Welcome aboard @nemophilius !

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I'm in that server. It's pretty much one man's passion project. It's all but defunct, honestly. It's been a work in progress for like three years. I actually downloaded the project a few days ago on github, but I'm not sure it's even in a state that's intended to actually run as a program. I couldn't get it to run, at least.

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I agree with your other points, but I think this one, as others have pointed out also, is quite vital. There is virtually no online pressence of this game outside this forum plus a couple of Discord servers. The saga I'm currently working on started out as a podcast, and we had the production value needed, but with 9-to-5 jobs, six players at the table and many things to grasp, we soon realized it was simply too much work. We do it privately now, as I believe almost 100% of tables do. It's not easy to run an Ars Magica game, and even harder to show it to the world.

Hahahaha! I've spent countless hours trying to create a fully functional spreadsheet in GDocs for my players also. At the end, I had to compromise, ask for help, and we've come to a good basis. If you're so inclined, I could give you a copy of it, but it's in spanish, sadly.

Last thing I'll add is: try to convince your friend. This game is awesome and I'm sure you'll have a blast, even with the eventual hurdles you'll overcome. My private messages here are always open if you have any question about narrating this game, day or night. I hope to write something for this game that can help people in your situation.

Cheers!

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I would have been surprised if the software worked. I was merely referring to the range of people who had signed up to make different contributions. I have not paid attention for a year or two though.

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But noone is suggesting that. As I've said, it's an editorial decision to present an example of play...

...And then telling the reader that many, many other ways are possible. Absolutely none of the things I've suggested are restricted to a single kind of play: they can be plugged in as tools to virtually any system.

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I've played three sessions of really bad DnD in my life. I fell in love with Ars Magica the first time I encountered a brief explanation of it. I still haven't played three years later. It was EXTREMELY overwhelming the first time I read the core book. Revisiting it now, I see how most rolls really are just Characteristic + Ability + die or Technique and Form + die or whatever little modification to that equation is being factored in against an Ease Factor—but because there's so many systems that come into play, it overwhelms despite being simple at the core, if you're not bringing a lot of game sense to the table to begin with.

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