How do we welcome the newbies for Anno Magical?

Games Discussion Ars Magica
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When it comes to new ArM players it seems like it might be easier for those with experience with other games to overcome the initial hurdle of learning enough of the rules to get started. This certainly makes sense as there are some concepts that are shared by most RPGs. The idea that you play a character who is represented by numbers and descriptions and that you roll dice, trying to beat some target number, for example, will be familiar to experienced players.

However, I wonder whether this discussion is overlooking the fact that some of the differences between ArM and other games may trip up these experienced players because their expectation of how an RPG "should" work don't align with how ArM actually works. An experienced D&D or PbtA player may well be confused how this is all supposed to work in actual play. Someone who is completely new to RPGs at least doesn't have any old habits to unlearn.

Should we be more mindful of the audience and consider different approaches to introducing ArM depending on their background? For example, a (gentle) introduction for completely new players vs. an introduction for D&D players vs. an introduction for players of narrative games.

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Absolutely, but there are games in the entire span from ½km to 50+, and each game covers a long span depending on how players and SG decide to use it. Fifty km, which is longer than the average day march in Nijmegen, would compare to Ars Magica in the extreme (full historical research and a hundred detailed covenfolk, or something like that). It is a matter of degree, and there is no need to choose the extreme even if the game is Ars Magica.

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I think this is quite possibly true. The open license will make it possible — multiple different starter sets is definitely outside the scope of what Atlas can do.

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No argument there. I wasn't even thinking about different stater sets in this case, it seems like that would be targeting an exceedingly small niche.
Maybe a YouTube (or blog) series like "Ars Magica for X" would be more viable and still helpful.

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I think a good starter set would be valuable also to experienced players. OK, not the fancy box and the abbreviated rules, but all the rest. Particularly, but not only, those who have tried one genre and a few aspects of the game, and want to broaden their repertoire.

  1. a well-written mini-saga
  2. a fully designed covenant
  3. good colourful maps
  4. a tapestry of covenfolk, for pool or NPC use
  5. a tapestry of neighbours with plot hooks

Sure, experienced players would typically take individual elements and use them separately, but that does not mean that the set does not add value. Completeness gives a richer understanding of story potential. I would certainly buy such a set if the postage is not prohibitive.

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That sounds verrry much like Triamore from 2000.

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Strange. Triamore looks very little like what I was dreaming of.

I'd like to see the mini-saga in the style of Nigrasaxa.

I would like to see characters in the style of Medieval Tapestry; easier quickly to get a grasp of how to play them.

I would have liked less of the long prose and more of a reference volume.

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You are technically correct, and as we know from Futurama, that is the best kind of correct. I think my point was clear though.

AM is not the kind of game that can be up there with D&D and Pathfinder... and Pathfinder is only up there as D&D tried a bold experiment with 4th and it failed in the marketplace, leaving the door open for Pathfinder.

AM has to be strategic, and my interpretation (and I appreciate I could be wrong), is that the key decision makers of AM definitive are aware of that. I would be pleasantly surprised if a wave of new TTRPG players pick AM as their first game. I wouldn't suggest planning or aiming for them.

AM is complex because it gives so much flexibility in character creation, character advancement, spells and stories. That flexibility cannot be delivered without complexity. Complexity is daunting for many players. A bunch of things to help make game elements easy is the key to successfully integrating newbies.

As has been mentioned by many people earlier, a bunch of pre-gen characters. This can't take up too much book space, so have other pre-gens online, and a reference in book to the online resources.

In the spell chapter, at the end, have a page of low level easy spells, to get over the problem of beginners dealing with spont magic. Short explanations so one can fit in a lot.
An Example

Name: Banish the parasitic pest.
Parameters: PeCo level 3 personal, momentary, Instantaneous (base 3+0+0+0)
Effect: Destroy all creatures of size -4 or less (Lice, bed bugs, etc) on the caster.

One could also, at the end of the bunch of low level spells refer to internet resources.

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Well, I started to work on my piece collecting advices to Ars players, and it is 15 pages long, not finished at all, with paragraphs being just a few words as space holder to fill up later...

So, not so short for a Quick starter...
I have three main sections, but I believed I would better make three separate documents to make them more palatable: Discovering Mythic Europe, Understanding the System and How to Start.
Anyway, I have to go back to pounding my keyboard.

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Talk to me if you need some graphic design

171

You know what, I'm pretty sure that a number of us have a similar thing written. I have no idea what's the best way of making one Quick Start guide to rule them all...

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I'm pretty sure the way to do it is to colaborate between us, and once the open license comes out, work to make an edited compendium of all the advice + resources with proper attribution to everyone involved.

173

Considering how some topics are "hotly" debated to put it mildly, I decided to make a very personal one, where the first paragraph is a disclaimer stating that it reflects only my personal experience and is in no way endorsed by Atlas Games.

Because I don't go in the rules themselves, I am not changing anything fundamental, it is personal opinion and approaches on how to deal with issues I have been confronted to. Which are probably not the one other players have met, and definitely not covering all of them.

By keeping it personal, I am trying to avoid debates on the "one way to run Ars right".

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Having multiple points of view probably wouldn't hurt, we all have different prep methods, different levels of Play Away From The Table (Pawftt) that we are comfortable with etc offering different advice from different people would let the beginner pick and mix.

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Having done the Bataan Memorial Death March (Full/Heavy) twice, I can tell you right now that I would never want to do it two days in a row.

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It might be helpful to have a dedicated place to discuss, share works in progress, and collaborate. A channel on the ArM Discord server could work, or maybe a separate server would be better.

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Or a private message on this board to those interested

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We do need somewhere to work together.

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Alright, I've gone ahead and set up a Discord server where we can talk. Maybe that will help us to collaborate a bit to come up with some products that will actually help newbies. You can find it here: Scriptorium

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Hi! I am one of the newbies haha I've been lurking here for a bit and made an account just to reply here. I encountered ars magica a while ago and instantly loved the concept so I grabbed a load of the books for my gaming group, but we've been struggling to get started. I thought I'd lay out our experiences here in case it's helpful.

First, the good:

  • The setting is super evocative and coming up with large-scale big ideas for the Saga is easy!
  • My group has a lot of experience with ttrpgs and complex strategy games, we weren't overly intimidated by the math or the wide range of rules.
  • People really like the wide-open possibilities for magical research and invention and stuff

The challenges we're facing:

  • Although I'm confident we can handle the complexity in play, character creation and covenant design are really time-consuming. I'm trying to speed it up by designing the covenant and grogs for them, but I feel like we can't skip over everyone making their mage and companion because without both of them there's a lot of stories we can't do. We've gotten so bogged down in that it's hard to get to play - we can't fit it all into one session zero like we normally would. Idk if there's an easy solution for this but it would be so nice if there was some kind of excel character sheet we could use that would auto-calculate casting totals and stuff.
  • Coming up with my own adventures feels a little daunting at first. I have Tales of Mythic Europe so I want to try starting with one of those, but even before that I was thinking of trying to do smaller adventures - finding a vis source, fighting some pirates, establishing relations with a neighbor, stuff like that to ease into different mechanics. But it's hard to gauge what kinds of challenges would be "level-appropriate" to our freshly Gauntleted magi. Little sample adventures like that could be cool to have on hand.
  • Looking ahead, I'm already a little nervous about how to manage all the NPCs and factions etc I'm likely to accumulate. I know there are rules to advance characters over time season-by-season, but like do STs normally do that for every NPC they have? Are there any methods to streamline that into packages of 1 year, 5 years, etc?

Lastly, I know this will be a little out-of-scope here, but I think sometimes certain aspects of the worldbuilding can be off-putting for some players. Mainly the thing that's come up for my group is that it seems like certain religions, the Divine ones, are considered sort of "correct" in-universe? I want to set my game in the Provencal Tribunal and was reading the book and there's a major antagonist demon who "makes women desire glory beyond their place in the Christian hierarchy", and I was like ... lmao. No offense or anything to the writers. But my group is all LGBT women and I read this and I'm like, okay everyone's going to want to side with the demon and why wouldn't they? So I'm going to end up homebrewing the setting so that the Divine isn't portrayed as just flatly correct in everything. A lot of our Saga will probably revolve around conflict with the Divine even, and I might use the rules for research to let them try to figure out why Hermetic magic is so weak against the Divine, what makes the Divine so powerful, etc, so we can sort of collectively rewrite the worldbuilding through gameplay to suit us. But yeah, I do think that kind of religious worldbuilding can be an obstacle at times.

Thanks all! I'm excited for whatever resources come out :slight_smile: