I’m starting a new saga in a bit. In games I’ve previously run I’ve homebrewed the XP rules for simplicity, but I’d like to fully engage with Ars Magica in this game.
In thinking about a library for a spring covenant I’m not sure how things tend to work in practice. The “Weak Covenant” on page 72 of the core rules describes a library that has three arts summae. One of those is suitable to get a character to level 6 in a season. The other two reward longer term study.
How does that work for a group of 6 PC magi? Are they all supposed to specialize in the same arts? Do or two magi happen to get lucky by having access to books they want while the others try to study vis? Or is getting access to more books a critical issue that gets dealt with in the first story arc?
Maybe it’s just that the core book example is now how most actual player covenants work. But the few other worked examples I’ve found, even older covenants like Semita Errabunda, seem to have the same narrow library issues.
In my experience improving the library is a primary goal of the Magi. This seems true whether the Library is extremely poor or is pretty good because the build point system is going to leave holes because books are quite expensive.
I think Spring Covenants are inevitably going to have gaps in their library, and, as nullsettings says, the magi will want to improve them. Probably some magi are luckier than others. Expect the unluckier ones to be chasing their desired texts as a priority.
I don't think this is ever a "done in one arc" problem. Our campaign has got through 15 game years, and we still have significant gaps: but they are now in the areas our characters care about less.
This is a great way to generate stories, either by trade, by doing adventures in return for books from other magi, or by other means. (I think it's rare for books to be found as loot down a dungeon.) But also, I wouldn't require a story for all books. If someone is willing to spend a little time talking nicely to other covenants, it should be possible to arrange some exchanges without too much fuss.
I think it's also true that what books you have to start with will affect the development of your magi for a while. ("Well, I guess it can't hurt to study a little Ignem, and the light spells will be useful.") But eventually I think everyone should be able to raise their favourite arts to a medium level, so I wouldn't worry about the characters becoming too similar.
And that's when they start hunting Tractatus instead of Summae!
In my sagas, any good Hermetic book is quite precious and with very few copies in existence - very rarely more than one copy is easily accessible from any given point of space and time. This means that in order to study it, you can either visit the covenant owning it, or you can arrange to borrow it (for a fee, no copying allowed); perhaps you can buy it outright.
Of course, this is balanced by the fact that other magi will regularly pester you for access to your good books, often trading in kind. So, if you are willing to engage in a lot of dealing and wheeling (i.e. Stories!), your library is effectively larger than it looks, because books in it can be exchanged for (stuff that can be exchanged for) other books on a temporary or permanent basis.
Generally speaking, 1 good Hermetic Summa + 1-2 good Tractatus for every 2 magi is a bit tight (especially if the Covenant is young and/or isolated) but not too painful. Twice that is comfortable. Going significantly beyond that means the covenant is either showing off (like many Summer and Autumn covenants like to do), or trying to be a serious player in the Hermetic knowledge economy.
Mundane books are a completely different story, and should be easily acquired with minimum effort. Then again, they are - for most covenants - not nearly as crucial, so it makes sense young covenants may not have any.
I agree with the observation that improving the library is a major driver of stories for a Spring covenant. Encourage the players to seek out libraries at nearby covenants and barter for trades or loans. One way to start this off is to have an NPC covenant that sees the players as potential useful allies show up in the first year with a diplomatic welcome and a few books as a gift. Put some ruins nearby, and some useful books in those ruins. Consider what books might be in the libraries of nearby churches or nobles. Perhaps there is an Hermetic fair, where magi meet annually to buy, sell, trade, and order books. If you’re using the canonical start date of 1220, your first regional tribunal is in 1221 and this is an excellent place for the characters to acquire books.
According to COVENANTS, books on mundane topics (including Artes, Philosophiae, and Lores) can be bought with money, not vis. A NPC at the covenant might suggest a shopping trip to a city with booksellers where these mundane books might be found.
Your magi may not all be as blocked as it seems, since in a Spring covenant there are so many things demanding the magi’s attention. These early years are spent establishing the covenant and seasons are often spent on adventure. Your characters can significantly increase the size of the library just by copying out their own spells for their sodales to use!
One last note: if you can pick up Through the Aegis, that book includes five covenant libraries, including a Spring covenant, a “new Spring,” and a Winter covenant, with great illustrations of starting libraries (and the Hidden Resources Boon).
All 6 magi will most likely use the Q21 L6 Summae at some point, especially if there are limited other study options. The other 2 summae, again depending on what time the magi have and what arts they are in, all the magi may end up studying them. That can make the magi a bit too similar.
Very much. The Q21 L6 summae ("magic for dummies" as I call them) are very popular, at least in our saga. Getting a few scores to 6, gives a lot more latitude in casting sponts. Also, for things which are often requisites, such as herbam and terram, having more flexibility in choosing spells that have requisites because of the extra 6 points is useful. Long term, if somoene wants an apprentice, they want all arts at least 5, so the beginner summae are great.
After that, at some point, you probably want to give most people a summae in their area or a few tractatii in their area.
There are other options. Learning from vis. Being taught useful mundane skills such as philosophae, artes liberales, foreign languages, etc. Spending a season to master an oft used spell is often overlooked. Also, having a bunch of lab text with useful formulaic spells is another option for a magi's season.
Generally you don't want your magi thinking there's nothing I want to learn this season of the options available, so the options of what the magi do, are an important consideration.
Absolutely. There has to be something. If they don't get adventure XP or useful study XP, while some other magi is getting 12+ XP consistently, it can be a disappointing experience.
I think we have to realise that depends a lot on the other parameter, the experience and inclinations of the players, what stories you play, and how much time you have to play stories about desperate quests for resources.
Players who are inclined to read rules and play the system will be very quickly annoyed with poor libraries, particularly if they have played high-powered sagas before. Inexperienced players are a lot more likely to read a tractatus from score 0 or study from vis, which I do think is makes a better narrative if books are scarce.
However that may be, I think you have to make sure that all the magi either have one favourite sound summa each or none have. Unevenly annoyed players could not possibly be a good thing. I would generally take an approach where if each players get to choose one art where the covenant has a sound summa.
What annoys me the most as a player is the zero arts where we do not have a primer to take us to five in a season. If you get a set of nine roots, the player who wants one of the remaining six would feel rather left out.
Is that a good thing or a bad thing? It depends on the saga. Do you want to play the stories where the magi hunt for books or vis to boost their studies, cause that is probably what they are going to do every season when they do not have useful studies to do. The stories can be fun to play, at the risk of a slow-paced saga. You could resolve it downtime, but that's rather boring, I think. If you want a quicker pace and reasonable advancement, you can just as well make sure that they start with better resources.
The cost of Art Summae does not work well: it costs the same to have Q10 L15 than Q15L10. So it costs the same to have a lot of two low level books (like the roots people mentioned L5Q15/L6Q21) than to have one Q11L20, which is supposed to be some of the best book in the Order. And arguably, lots of covenant would rather have the high level book that they can rent/copy than roots. So we implemented two house rules in our saga: Arts Summa - (Level x Quality)/5 (round up) and Ability Summa - ((Level x 3) x Quality)/5 (round up). Low level book are cheaper, medium level books are similar in cost and high level books are more expensive. You can toy and fine-tune the formula, but this one is kind of OK if you don't want to go too much in calculation for optimal formula
Don't take roots (L5Q15/L6Q21), since according to the rule, you can easily borrow/rent them for a few pawns: most covenant should willingly lent them as senior mage are not interested in them. Also, by mentioning to your player they are easy to get, it offers opportunity to quickly establish link with another covenant, without having high stakes, giving ST opportunity to introduce NPCs that could become meaningful later in the saga.
Create interesting books by putting a few spells (labtext) into the Summae or even Tractatus.
If you feel like it, maybe an old Summa could contain one or two Insights into Original Research.
Older covenants are usually keen to have Spring covenant owning them: it is beneficial for both of them to trade book for favours when senior mages don't want to tackle minor issue not worth their time. So as a rule of thumb, it should not be too difficult to secure books up to level 10-12. Above that, it start to be more specialised, and rarer, so favours will become more challenging. That is if a covenant is willing to trade such higher quality/level book for favour.
Of course, what is consider high quality/high level varies A LOT from saga to saga. Keep in mind that the faster they climb, the faster the mage will plateau. So you want to strike a balance where the mages can achieve their project within a reasonable time while keeping the feeling that they achieved something so their achievement are not trivialised. Of course "reasonable" is again saga-dependent but also objective-dependent: a level 15 spell should be easier to achieve than a 45 enchantment effect.
Which brings me to the conclusion: discuss ahead of time with your player where you want to set the power cursor of the game. You can have a high-fantasy game, low power, where fae intervention are a weekly things, where every mundane family knows to take care of the nice brownies that milk the cows at night, somebody knows somebody who can direct you to a witch to help you with such and such issue, yet most mage Arts could cap at 10-12. Prevalence of wonders and fantasy is different than powerful magical/supernatural effect.
Or you can go high fantasy and high powers with dragons becoming source of knowledge as long as you can trade on an equal basis with them, with flying castles, menagerie of griffins auctioning on a yearly basis their best mounts.
For clarity, calculations from what is written in Covenants and from the general rules on advancement show that canonically roots should be Level 7, Quality 21+.
But your point on the BP costs is totally valid, even moreso when we look at having a copy of the Bible or similar at the covenant.
Agreed. But it's good if your magi are thinking "I'm OK for this year - but I can't see what I'll do next year." And if they don't do anything to fix that problem, a boring season is a reasonable consequence. Magi should be able to plan ahead.
As others have stated, the library is often the single most important feature of a Covenant. More than any other improvement, expanding the library will result in the Magi becoming more powerful.
Early on your players might want to focus on gathering Vis and arranging contacts that are willing to sell copies of books. Having them ask the Redcaps to put out the word that they want to buy/trade books is a good idea. While the Magi are young and not able to create very effective enchanted items, excess Vis is often better used to add additional books to the library. Building up their Vis production will allow them to expand their library early and have Vis to use later.
Don't overly focus on Summa. Tractatus are useful once you start getting up in an Art and cheaper. Lab Text for both spells and common enchanted items can greatly expand the capabilities of individual Magi and the Covenant as a whole. For simple and common spells, you can find Grimoires containing multiple for sale or trade.
By the same standard, if any of your Magi are skilled at writing having them spend a season creating a Tractatus is useful for other Magi in the Covenant and for trade. Writing out Lab Text for any interesting spells or items they create can also serve well in trade.
I will say that for a first game, a Spring Covenant is not the best choice. The players will generally end up staying weak the whole game, spending most of their time with minimal focus on being Magi and more on survival. They are mostly directing everything themselves, which will force the players to figure out what they need to do to survive and improve.
I would recommend a Summer or Winter Covenant that has had some serious loss of Magi and is looking for new blood as a better first Covenant. They will have more resources which will let the players improve and a couple of older Magi who can guide them until the players learn how best to build up a Covenant.
Ars Magica tends to be far more open and player directed than other RPGs. If your players have all be playing games where they get missions and direction, coming into Ars Magica where they are the sole direction will be rough. Magi actually advance and become more powerful when they spend most of their time studying and enchanting, rather than taking part in adventures.
Another point worth saying explicitly: a companion or specialist who's a good scribe and has a little Magic Theory is near essential. Troy's suggestion that it can be useful for someone to write a Tractatus is sensible, as is Lee's suggestion to create Lab Texts for your spells to share. But if magi are spending their time copying books for trade, something is badly wrong.
A piece of advice that unfortunately will be unlikely to be of much help to OP, is that designing the library can set a lot of the tone (as well as - obviously - the power level) of a saga, is the library.
If the library is narrow, all of the player magi are likely to become at least somewhat competent in those Arts. If the library has width but little depth, player magi will find their Arts similarly distributed.
If the library is poor, power level will be low (which good be acceptable for a novice SG/troupe?),
and there will be potential for a lot of stories about either expanding the library or paying for access to other covenants' libraries.
If the library is massive, there's going to be a lot more power available. And that genie will be hard to put back into the bottle. Maybe start with a limit library - especially if this is your first saga. You can always add more books if your troupe would like.
I agree. Playing a Spring covenant should call for a slow pace, where the magi have to quest most seasons, be it to recruit new staff, manage old staff, acquire books, find vis, make alliances, fight enemies, or whatever. Most Spring covenants fail, and hard work is behind those that succeed.
Playing such a style, it does not matter an awful lot if the library is poor, because there is not that much time to read anyway, and over time it improves.
Fast-paced sagas are better played in stable covenants providing the comfort to study and long-term planning.
Thanks to everyone for excellent suggestions and explanations. I’ve gone ahead and picked up the through the Aegis book, which is very much what I was looking for. Based on that (and also the last few comments) I’m considering running the PCs in a non spring covenant as well.
Reinvigorating a winter covenant, with 1 or 2 doddering old magi near twilight, can mean a decent library. It also gives the SG the ability to prod the characters to adventure via the occasional intervention of the old magi, while having a fair degree of agency for the players.
Another option is discovering a fallen covenant, so there are no old magi, but there is the library, maybe some items, maybe some kooky NPCs floating around from the old days, etc. It's what my SG has done for our saga.
They do 3 summae, but also several tractati, and may improve the library by writing tractati and summa commentaries (Covenants addition with +1 bonus to quality, but requiring the summa is available, or studied at least once and magus having the mastered the summa by achieving the cap level of the summa).