In line with what other people here have said, I think sourcebooks about personally altering the setting would be massively popular, while making the default setting anything other than Mythic Europe would ostracize nearly the entire current fan-base. I'll also agree that perhaps a "setting book" for each time period (or a thick one with a lot of them) would be really interesting; the current books are, quite reasonably of course, all very 1220-centric, while getting some chapters on the major societal differences in the times of, say, just before the Schism War or something, would be quite nice and keep the players from grasping at straws and hashing together incomplete information from historical books and ending up with a setting that doesn't really function and only reveals its disfunctionality when people try to play in it.
Though, I disagree with the aforementioned notion of splitting the setting and rules into two different books, for a number of reasons. First off, a lot of the game rules exist because, not in lieu of, the existence of the Medieval Paradigm and the setting. Some more sidebars about rules variants for non-ME settings would be highly appreciated, but one of the greatest things about the system is how intrinsically linked the setting and rules are, and it's a beautiful mesh. Second, and more primarily, is my experience with Ars Magica fans on other boards; a major draw for people who have switched from D&D or similar to Ars is that a lot of other games need three or more core rulebooks just for the game to be functional and playable. The required expenditure of more money would turn a lot of people off of trying Ars Magica in the first place, while hooking them with a complete game in the Core rulebook encourages them to then by sourcebooks to enhance the already enjoyable experience further. In other words, you don't lose money on individual players in the long run, while in the short-term, more players will be willing to give the game a try.
Well if the thread was truely dead, it couldn't have come back. Limit of the Soul and all.
That said I'd love to hear if any of the "Snapshots of the Order of Hermes" historical settings ( such as OoH/ME 1190, 1050 etc.) made it into the Subrosa plans...
Heck even alternate hermetic histories could work. Playing in standard Mythic Europe but a different version of the Order could be cool. Aside from the obivous, I don't see a reason why you couldn't have House Guorna if decide to explore that route.
Reason works as long as you accept you're playing Mage:The Ascension in the 13th century with a more structured rules-setting, and that mage-style reality is in operation. Under such circumstances, Vampire Magi work as long as you realise you're trying to shoehorn in the characters half your gaming group wants to play (cos back in the 90s when I played 3rd ed Ars, everybody was playing Vampire,Werewolf and Mage but one of our friends persuaded us Ars was more fun...and he was right)
I am just fine playing at turns Ars magica and Vampire the Masquerade/Dark Ages; the mix isn't needed (and i love mage the ascension too btw).
And... I must say it, i am one of the traslators of the V20 to Spanish.
Mage: Sorcerer's Crusade was a fine imprint of the Mage line. I'd be happy to see a similar idea for Ars Magica, set significantly earlier (900's) or later (1400's). However, as others have noticed, "later" starts to become more and more difficult as scientific progress and exploration starts to change the map of the world and society's understanding of it. And while things like the Protestant Reformation, Copernicus, and the New World (to say nothing of central and East Asia) would certainly be interesting topics of discussion, I think the Core book does a good job of NOT touching on those areas, in order to maintain the medieval paradigm.
As such, any publication would have to address those issues.
Going back in time, of course, seems to be a bit easier, as both the timeline can simply be regressed, and the hermetic system can be "devolved" based on when insights are made.
