How do we welcome the newbies for Anno Magical?

Games Discussion Ars Magica
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I agree this is a weakness.
It is also a strength (sorry to sound like an annoying job applicant here). Most games in a sword and sorcery setting have a bunch of murder hobos killing nearly everything they see. The progression of the covenant being sometimes more important than the progression of the character is unusual. An aging grog going on the first job with his son, etc, is unique.

How to address the weakness mentioned. There should be a sidebar on covenants creation, troupe play and character creation. Something like the following, but more polished as I'm not a professional writer.

Creating a covenant with the rules in this chapter takes some time. Some storyguides will create all the details of the covenant themselves so the players can get to the adventure a bit sooner.

We recommend troupe style play, however creating three characters can take some time. Some story guides will have the players create 1 character initially, and then create a few more characters once they've played some more game sessions. We also recommend allowing players to modify their characters, changing some of the virtues, flaws, skill choices,etc, up to the third session.

Ars Majica has more flexibility in character creation than most games. While we have some example characters in the rulebook, we invite people to visit the following web site www.{stuff} for example characters that can be played straight away.

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142

Maybe add:
Factions, and how to handle them over time.
To me, an ArM game needs to have a bunch of NPC individuals and groups: Other magi and covenants, nobles, clergy, hedge magi, people in villages, towns, and cities, craft guilds etc. Not all, but some of these. How do you decide which factions to include, how many? How to you keep tabs on their development and planes over time?
This may be difficult to grasp and handle for new players.
Some free, downloadable saga starter pack should include these.

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143

It may also make things easier for first-timers, to add some information about how to set up verious types of sagas.
Back when I started reading ArM2 2nd ed, I had no idea how to start up this game, which was different from the others I'd rad about and playes at that time. I was perhaps 2-3 years into rpgs at that time. But I don't recall this being a problem.
Years later, when I finally got aroudn to playing it, it was started up by a guy who's played the game before.
We started out with a bunch of newly gauntleted magi forming out own covenant, a really fresh Spring start. But will new players think this is how to do it? I mean, this is only one possible way to start. Although most sagas I've started up with troupes seem to have started this way. New magi would be a lot easier than strating play with experienced magi, but is it harder to start out in an established covenant? Then you don't need to invent a lot of stuff yourself.

Maybe some brief descriptions of example starting setups?

  • Young spring saga: New magi found own new covenant
  • Apprenticeship saga: Start out as new apprentices, players learn about OoH and magic as the characters do. Either play season by season, or play a story at year 0, advance to year 5 for another story, and so on until gauntled
  • Chapterhouse: Young magi, own buildings but established covenant and older magi around somewhere
  • New generation: Young magi at established covenant, older magi around, but they allow (or force, or require) the youngsters to do stuff
    etc.
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When we started out with 3ed, we played it just like any other game. That works too.

The problem as a beginner, is not that they cannot imagine all the different starting setups you list, but to gloss over all the detail they do not have time to play. For instance, starting as founders of a new Spring covenant, the placers face umpteen different decisions that are critically important to their survival. Resources must be procured, alliances forged, surroundings explored, and covenfolk recruited. We are used to playing the critically important decisions, but if we do that in Ars Magica, we can play every week for a year without making it through the first season.

Thus the problem is not how to play an Ars Magica story, but how not to play every story.

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Having different factions and having to handle them is hardly unique to Ars Magica. That's something that can pop up in most RPGs, most certainly including D&D in all its versions.

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This Winter back to Spring set up makes a lot of sense for a more guided saga: the lest remaining old mage/mages are the voice of the storyteller who pushes the story, gives the magi defined adventure. It is more hand-holding and less sandbox-y, which has some advantages.

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The sandbox factor may increase rapidly with the onset of dementia. A smooth transition may be achieved if desired.

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Dementia, twilight, dagger in the back from the party who no longer want to be under their thumb... They might even be the end-boss of the saga.

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It may be a known thing for some. But in my experience, I've never had so many factions than in Ars Magica in any other game. Just think of all the other covenants and magi. And with the long time scale of Ars, it's important to keep tabs on their evolution.
In our current Rhine Gorge saga, time passes for magi in such a rate, that the mundane lords and clergy grow old, die, and are replaced. Ruling lords change, new alliances are forged with marriage between families, high ranking clerics are replaces, villages grow into market towns.
This may feel daunting to new players, used to their characters getting quests from the old man an the inn.

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150

Many of the elements come from the same underlying feature of Ars Magica. Instead of telling the story of a single quest of a small party, one aims to tell the life-long story of the covenant and the entire ragne. This leads to

  • covenant as a character
  • larger casts and the need for multiple characters per player and pool characters, which in turn makes it easier to share the SG load
  • the long timescale
  • the wide range of NPCs
  • the need not to tell every story and consequently the significance of downtime development

I don't want to talk about troupe style, because it entails many different independent features. Switching SG is not that uncommon in other games, but multiple characters is. Multiple characters seems to be more common in actual play in ArM than having multiple SGs.

None of this seem exclusive to ArM. I have heard of groups playing effective covenants in Call of Cthulhu, many games stretch the timescale compared to the old-fashion Odyssean stories, and I have seen downtime institutionalised in Vampire. However, Ars Magica is the game that encourages all of it to the extreme. It is not conceptually unique, and rather a matter of the degree.

I am not convinced that frontloaded rules is a necessity. Yes, if character optimisation is a goal, then it is, but does it have to be?

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Of course frontloaded rules aren't strictly necessary. But unless there is a massive overhaul of the rules - which won't happen for the definitive edition - frontloaded rules are what we have to deal with.

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I think a lot of answers are approaching this the wrong way.

I play a lot of board games. I'm not starting a board game newby on Gloomhaven, Ark Nova or World in Flames. I'm starting with things like Catan and Ticket to ride, and slowly going up in complexity, maybe Isle of Cats and Wingspan, before going on to the heavy games.

Planning on a group of people who have never played an RPG to pick up Ars Majica and play, is aiming at a tiny market. It's better to aim for the likelihood of a SG with some experience, and give options to simplify some of the more complex play elements, as they are the bigger barriers,

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I am not convinced the current rules require frontloading. I think one can set off the newbies designing making characters whim by whim, relying on narrative choices and stick to playing mechanically suboptimal characters.

You missed the point. We have been arguing that Ars Magica is difficult to pick up, even for an SG with decades of experience from other games. Whether you are right or not is rather moot when it is so hard for experienced players and SGs.

Although, in my experience, the main obstacle is the major investment to make characters and covenants. It is simply not worth the effort to start a short-lived saga, let alone a one-shot. Targetting the dedicated few is a narrow target to start with, which obviously means that we ought not to narrow it further.

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Slightly suboptimal characters is not a problem. Downright bad choices made simply because the player did not understand the impact of certain combinations of virtues and flaws, that's a problem.

But the problem with frontloaded rules does not stop just because the characters have been made.

The very first time someone tries to cast a spontaneous spell, you need to understand the whole magic system and how to put together a spell. And it has to be handled during play, not in between sessions.

Ars Magica has a very flexible and powerful system for magic, and it is one of the strong points of the game, but it is far from a simple system. As long as one sticks to formulaic spells picked from the books it is okay, but spontaneous magic can get very complicated very quickly.

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That's a good point, but it is not one solved by frontloading. The understanding you need to handle spontaneous magic well is gained only by experience, and not by trying to `load' the rules.

So I agree that the complexity of the magic system is a challenge, but this too is a matter of degree.

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Even worse then.
What I mean by the rules being frontloaded is that you need to know most of the rules before you can start playing - as opposed to games where you can learn the rules bit by bit as you need them.
Having frontloaded rules is not a good thing or a way to solve anything, it is just a description of them.

Now, if you are correct and just knowing the rules is not enough to handle spontaneous magic, and you need experience too, then there is a real problem, since that would mean a group of new players would not be able to handle spontaneous magic well even if they took the time to read the rules forwards and backwards.

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Planning on a group of people who have never played an RPG to pick up Ars Majica and play, is aiming at a tiny market.>

This is a very interesting conversation but I must point out in this case the exact opposite is true. The number of people who have never played an RPG is exponentially larger than the number of people who have.

Iā€™m not saying itā€™s easier to recruit those people, or that challenges donā€™t exist. But if, in one timeline, you recruited 1 out of every 10 RPG players into Ars, and in another timeline you got 1 out of every 100 people who had never played RPGs at all, the second timeline would vastly outnumber the first.

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indeed ... the only solution is to accept errors and suboptimal behaviour

and with magi straight out of gauntlet, this is a limited problem; there repertoire of missed opportunities isn't huge

and it is not at all different from my experience with games like Vampire

I agree that it is a challenge which is somewhat greater in Ars Magica than other games, but it is not unique, and played as a narrative game, I do not think it is anything to fret about

played as a tactical game OTOH ... well ...

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It's worth noting that a matter of degree can be very important. I walk about five kilometres every day. Walking fifty kilometres in a day is just a matter of degree ā€” but I suspect that being asked to do that two days running would be an insurmountable barrier. (I'm not even certain I could do it once.)

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It really comes down to what type of TTRPers that Atlas and the community want to attract to Ars.

I donā€™t have the experience of running Ars for hundreds of players. But I have since 4th edition been running a long term campaign. During this time I have introduced the game to a number of new players. Some experienced in RPGs, some with little experience at all. This is what I found, there are certain groups of people that respond in different ways. (4 off the top of my head).

I) people who are open to organizing and running their own RPGs

POSITIVES: These people are more open to the Ars system. They will tend to read the books, even purchase them, pull out the spell guidelines (we have then complied for easy use) to see if a spontaneous spell is worth while. They will plan for the longer term.

NEGATIVES: they do tend to get a little lost with the formula, but will at least have a go.

WORKAROUNDS: cheat sheets on the formula in a visual format, not a wall of text. A how do I did this guide.

2) experienced players, who like to tell stories etc

POSITIVES: The story is central for them, they have lots of ideas, and just want the system to support it - quickly! They take good notes and love details.

NEGATIVES: Any bookkeeping or formula are eye rolling moments for them, they just want to get on with creating the story, I find they work great supported by type 1 player. Character generation for them is boring if itā€™s manual, has to be guided and usually from a template. The magic system rules get in the way of the story.

WORKAROUNDS: use of automated programs for character generation and bookkeeping. Anything to automate spell generation, combat etc, bringing it back to the story. This means a lot of preparation to have a 5 hours of play run smoothly.

They also love the historical and cultural details, so having these is important.

3) experienced players, who like to ROLL play

(side note they sometimes have mentally demanding occupations, so they donā€™t want to think too much)

POSITIVES: they get formula, they usually love to min/max too. Bookkeeping for just their character is important for them, They need to get the most experience points to have the best character they can have. They donā€™t mind character gen - MIN/MAX

NEGATIVES: Itā€™s about the now moment, planning or longer term benefits for the group arenā€™t what they want. They are action junkies, be it combat, to political intrigue.

The magic system can be seen as an issue, they have become used to the simplicity of D&D, known spell, cast spell.

WORKAROUNDS: no spont magic, feed them spells, and lab notes. They take a good deal of organisation. Avoid slow stories.

4) unexperienced RPG players.

POSITIVES: they are keen, and usually excited, being open to anything.

NEGATIVES: character generation, magic system, even formulas at the core of the system can be too much, bookkeeping, the character sheets themselves can be overwhelming. The book isnā€™t very helpful in this regard, itā€™s a little too much.

WORKAROUNDS: pre generation of characters, considered a cut down character sheet as well, slow introduction to magic over a number of sessions. Removal of all bookkeeping, and formulas, getting them to role play is the first thing. Keep it mainly as just a narrative around the characters background, motivations, appearances etc. All the rest can come later.

Itā€™s a simple fact Ars is a complex system, I have summarized all the rules - itā€™s 100s of pages worth (one day Iā€™ll share them here). But it doesnā€™t need to be, for new people sometimes we need to come back to what the core is of the games we what to run. For me thatā€™s the story.

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