He still has Story Flaws which draw him out of the lab.
Fine, then make it automatic at a warping score of 10 or 11. But yes, under RAW, there are a number of techniques that one can employ to avoid a final twilight issue. But, let's face it, his Arts aren't improving at all, especially his favored Arts, since he's likely exhausted all reading material and wouldn't experiment with vis to learn more about his Arts.
Yes, but at low warping you get virtues. When in Twilight, you are invulnerable in combat. If you want to be vulnerable you try and avoid going into Twilight. But you're the magus, so you don't care, go into twilight and wake up 10 hours/days/weeks/months/years later.
I prefer to play in Mythic Europe, and agree it should remain the default setting. "Default" is not the same as "only."
There a handful of rules in the ArM5 core book -- like the rule that grogs need a Virtue to learn Martial Abilities -- that bind the mechanics of the game to particular assumptions about the setting. The trouble is, those assumptions aren't true for all times and places in historical Europe, let alone alternate worlds. I would like to see the rules de-coupled from the setting in that sense, so you can play in a non-standard setting without having to work around the character-creation rules.
Really, I think it would make sense to publish the core rules in one volume and the setting in a second. The Order of Hermes is part of the setting. This would allow players who want to play in Mythic Europe using D20 or Savage Worlds to do that, and players who want to use Ars Magica rules in Glorantha or the Forgotten Realms to do that. I think the number of players Ars could pick up that way is probably small, but it would also be useful to have an in-depth book on the Order and Mythic Europe to help the newbies come on board.
I liked when apprentices were rare enough that you took what you found, and it took a lot of time to find one. You didn't get the perfect shining child: you got an orphan who was probably mistreated by the mundanes. I thought it added character, and made a potential apprentice a treasure. The big Order argues for thousands of potentials.
We need the Big Order for the following reasons:
it lets mystery cults exist.
It allows a single setting Mythic Europ0e with 12 play arenas each copying a similar template of having 5 covenants, each of which perform similar roles and therefore need duplicate people.
It means there's always another guy, when you need another guy, to make the villain, or victim.
You can run really great games where there are only 100 magical people in the whole world. You invent a spell to shatter armour and -you- invented that spell and 75 people want a copy. I find it odd that we don't have people's names on spells from the early years.
My fiction project for this year is about a guy who does this after the Schism War. He's the reason the House aren't good necromancers anymore. After the war he churned out a lot of apprentices with his inability to do necromancy, and they also churned out a lot of apprentices, so the old House Virtue died off.
I'm just finding this post, and loving the apologetic ton of the question CJ. +1 sir.
Mythic Europe should remain as the setting, and further I think the historic "accuracy" is a key factor in the dedication that many ArM players have. If that is removed then I think most of the player base here will drop. There are also many other system now which have caught up to ArM in terms of dynamic magic mechanics, clever itemisation, and magical creatures.
ArM does not prohibit players doing as they wish with the setting, but it sets the content within the historic context because so much of the fluff is sources from the same context. It would be illogical to have a medieval mindset in a setting akin to DnD: Forgotten Realms.
...That said, I've been pondering for a long time doing a game in a made up higher fantasy setting, using some of the ArM gameplay mechanics. I would make wholesale changes to many aspects of the gameplay mechanics when doing this, and include societal impacts in the setting of having 25 year old people who can throw lightning bolts around. Seriously - it is too much power for a youngster for the setting to not know about them.
The idea has legs, but it is against my desire to see that happen to ArM as a product.
Doing that wisely might indeed get you a fresh start for ArM6 or such, if you need some space for new ideas.
Just remember, that most existing campaigns cannot follow you there. So adoption rate of this setting, hence its rate of return on investment, might be low.
To me, this looks rather like a possible second setting for ArM6: leveraging the Ars Magica basic ideas to appeal to gamers desiring more power and less social restrictions for their characters. As a second setting, it might be interesting to preserve the initial history of the OoH and start around 850 with all founders but one gone, Tremere's memory partially wiped, and with the Empire divided by the Treaty of Verdun.
Is that a possible web guide or Sub Rosa issue? I mean, each of us pitch a time period and say "If you play in X you get Y!" and then troupes can go. Hey the guys who says 890 has some great ideas and the guy who says 925 has some great ideas and we can do both!"
I'm not up for pushing this as a possible project, but if one of you is up for it, I'm up for writing 1050.
From a sub rosa perspective, I'd be up for that. We have already been asked about future special projects in the line if the Diedne issue and this is high on the list. If we can get some interested parties we can thrash out an approach. We can throw some art in there, do some freebies maybe. How about issue 16? Issue 14 is out next week, 15 has some content planned, so I'm happy to see maybe four alternate start years explored in the issue after that.
I'd definitely plunk down money for a copy of that. If I were to adjust ME as a setting, changing the start date would be my go-to option. There are so many interesting times as well as places, and information to help explore them would be of significant value to me.
I would rather see it as an official game supplement than a Sub Rosa magazine article, but maybe thats just me, as an official book about playing the Order of Hermes in various time settings, would grant Atlas Games some financial boost and therefor help them in teh long run to make more and better books
I like Mythic Europe. I like the Order of Hermes. I would like the option however to play one without the other.
I like the option of non-Hermetic Sagas - it's why we worked hard with Cradle and the Crescent to provide this as a viable option and it's why I like Hedge Magic, Rival Magic and the various supplements that support play of Companions / Mythic Companions without Hermetic magi.
I wouldn't make it unavoidable personally, but a forced check every time you cross a warping threshold would work well IMO.
Another thing to keep in mind is that, with a warping score of 10, every other magus in the world knows how to get rid of you... untraceably, and permanently.
Maybe you're not actually dead, but you don't want to meet anyone, and you can't do any research or learn anything because you've advanced as far as you can without taking chances...
You really wouldn't be better off with the core books effects. A major flaw every warping point after 5? And only one (minor) virtue ever?
And some hedge traditions effects are worse than twilight (Elementalists spring to mind)
However, you would be better off with Witch's Moon. Which is one of the reasons I have an extremely arrogant hedge witch tradition IMS which won't even consider the "join" option.
I'm not sure, however, that it needs fixing. In fact I quite like the fact that Hermetic Magi aren't the best at everything, that their power has drawbacks.
I don't think you'll likely get more than the equivalent than one minor Virtue from early Twilight.
But yes, the Major Flaws are a drag. Still - at Warping 6 it's probably a wash, as your negative Twilight scars suck too. At Warping 7 the core book might have a slight advantage - the effect is more painful, but there isn't that whole "you dropped from the face of the earth for a week, so your covenant was burned down" aspect to it. Things look grimmer at Warping 8 and, for a brief time, at Warping 9 - which are very late in one's career.
Overall, yeah, I concede - Twilight is probably better. But it definitely has its downside, especially for gaming, where characters get away from the saga suddenly. I really think it could be done better.
That's a good point. I still suspect things can be made better, even while allowing certain traditions even better Warping.
Hmmm, I've been thinking it over today, and one idea for a modified Twilight would be to have the same "comprehension" roll etc. but have the ever increasing effect be injury. Possibly still have you go away for a matter of minutes or hours, but no longer.
So 1=1 point long term fatigue->5=5 points long term fatigue, 6=+light wound->10+=Fatal.
Works quite elegantly, and I'm quite surprised no hedge tradition has it.
Does mean you can't have the "It wasn't actually final twilight, they're back now" concept however.
Sourcebooks could provide other settings. Mythic Europe should always be the default setting of ArM; I wouldn't want to see the default setting become "generic no-setting."
