Interesting thread. While I will refrain on commenting whether an American-based ArM book would be a good idea; if someone wants to develop such a setting in their own sagas, ideas abound.
In particular, if someone wants to avoid a land virgin of hermetic politics, one could take the stand that the multiple certain/probable/theorized pre-Colombus contacts were actively paralleled in the "magic-using class", with active rivalry for natural AND magical resources on the new continent.
I can cite from page one of a Quebec history book I have at hand:
-5th century BC Phoenicians might have sailed up the Saint-Lawrence river.
-9th century AD Irish Monks probably left crosses in Atlantic Canada to be found by 16th century explorers, and might have taught christian rituals to some tribes.
-The well-known Vikings, settled certainly in Newfoundland and controversially up to Minnesota.
-Long-time fishing expeditions by the Basques, who certainly also landed in America.
To which we can add the more whimsical, mysterious Templar Knights expedition, as "evidenced" by early 15th century sculptures of exclusively American plants in Rosslyn Chapel, Scotland.
And on the Pacific coast of Canada, early European explorers met native chiefs sporting ceremonial metal armor made of ancient Chinese coins (I actually saw one in a museum).
So a storyguide could pick and match for interesting rivalry.
Two last thoughts:
1- I would definitely try finding a satisfying rationale for restricting transatlantic Hermes Portals...
2- Barring any major re-writing of North American history, if one misses the game balance brought by Dominion in ArM, perhaps a point can be made for attributing Dominion to "mainstream" American native beliefs? (I know this is heretical in more than one way!!!)
Just to point something out. There is really no information about America in the ArM time period. Most of the historically documented Native American groups orginated in the 1500-1700s after plagues swept away the original groups. I suppose you could do something based on archaeological evidence but 1220 is generally considered to be to far removed to draw detailed cultural conclusions.
Just to throw something into the mix for those of you playing this way: are Mandan tribe the descendents of House Diedne? Are they really descendants of an eccentric Welsh prince from only 70 years ago (in 1220)?
Actually, I did sneak an American hook into canon, via the back door, arguably.
Here's how it works.
"The Book of Roger" exists in M.E. "Ancient Magic" says so.
"The Book of Roger" has not been translated into English at any point, with the exception of breif passages, so none of the authors who can't speak Arabic or French have read it in full.
I have seen a translation from the French translation of the Arabic that says a group of traders were blown out to sea in the Atlantic, and that they discovered land there. They were surrounded by men with red-skin in canoes, who they fought off. Now, this could be a bogus claim: I do not read either of the original languages and so cannot check.
Therefore, in Ars M.E. there is -theoretically- a book that says there is land in the Atlantic inhabited by men with red skin.
The problem with criamons is not that. The problem was that the Enigma became revealed. Having an enigma-less Enigma is kind of dull in the opinion of my troupe. We prefered the way less defined Enigma of previous editions. It has nothoing to do with killing.
I like the jerbitons, even if I find them a little bit too detached from reality in their approaches to mundane relations.
So, overall I am not sure I agree with your pro-massacre statement Probably not
Thats what wargames are for. RPGs deals with interaction.
Which is also why i really dislike how some seem to play in worlds where actions has no consequences. Then its just a wargame with pretty pictures and fancy backgrounds.
No it isnt. Thats frankly an outright dumb assertion.
If i want to play an actiongame or a wargame, i do that, i dont go for a RPG where its just as good, or often much better to avoid killing, because you dont endanger your carefully thought out character and you might gain something from whoever you didnt kill(or very commonly, avoid BAD things happening because someone else really didnt like you killing someone).
AM (usually) isnt a dungeoncrawl game. And its certainly not a KiLL-game(Kill-loot-level).
OK, pony up. Write some stuff for Sub Rosa which people actually enjoy where you aren't using combat as a likely resolution mechanic. Remember, you need to have material for those people who have chosen Flambeau and Tytalus as their character houses. Prove me wrong. No skiving out by having Certamen because "it's not real combat". No having interminable tribunal meetings either.
It is, it's just the covenant doing the levelling, rather than the magus.
Mary Magdelane has combat stats in Ars, just in case you want to fight her.
Remember the context we are discussing here: books set in North America, or in India. Try to write an adventure in India which has Hindu gods and -not- stat them, without your readers telling you you aren't being fair, because you are using these NPCs to move the plot in a particular direction and their magi have the right to resist this sort of railroading by killing these gods and sucking their vis.
I get that this isn't how -you- play. But how -you- play doesn't define if my statement is dumb or not. Total War: Medieval II is a game which strongly rewards genocidal behavior. I, personally, prefer to play using the Geneva Conventions as a guidleine and hindrance. I do this in GalCiv too. The fact that I attempt non-violent strategies doesn't mean that the average player attemtpts non-violent strategies, or that, when they designed Empire, the guys who make Total War needed to think too hard about non-violnet strategies.
The statement ,ight be true for RPGs in general but for Ars, that happens to be a niche game, that statement is not necessarily true. A lab rat with no combat spells is playable. We had a short campaign where each killed person caused great pains for us, since we didn't want to go to hell, so it ended up with 4 dead guys (1 killed in an accident) over a saga that spanned 40 years of game time.... etc etc.
So for Ars Magica I do not think that the statement is true. I like playing mass murderers from time to time, biut not most of the time. Even in our last saga, that was located in a WAR with davnalleus, I think we only had 1 combat every 2 months or so. Playing almost every weekend.
So, depending on who you consider to be "your public" here your statement is true or not.
Sure, but as a writer, what support do you need from me, exactly, to run a lab rat? My point was that the function of a writer is to give you stuff to kill. What does a lab rat player need from a writer?
Also, is the lab rat just killing things by one remove, like Q in the Bond films?
No monsters, though?
"Things to kill" includes animals, a point you seem to be missing, unless you invest animals with personhood, which is something I can accept as a philosophical premise for discussion, but is confusing in short paragraphs like this.
So, the war with Davnalleus was a political game for you?
The lab rat loves integration rules, loves new magical traditions and loves diuscussions about the limits of magic and what he can do with his muto imaginem specialty
About davnalleus war, for most of the saga, yes, it was a political and resource arms race. We knew it was him, but few people believed us, then we had to go there and get proof. Still some people refused to back the call to arms and we had to manoeuvre around that and find a way for them to support us: davnalleus was getting powerful, you know
Killing monsters happens. In the campaign I mentioned the 4 killed dudes were the only stuff we killed on purpose. Animals died, yes, but only because the mule retenue fell down the cliff and stuff like that 2 of the magi in that campaign were perfectly combat capable, but they prefere dto use non lethal spells since we were playing around the concept of Damnation (that was the name of the saga BTW) as a story arc for the saga. They could massacre an army in 10 combat rounds, but they deemed more useful to cripple its combat effectiveness (destroy weapons & armour, leavc epeople floating in mid air....) in 20 rounds instead When people feel they have been beaten and that can be beaten again as easily they tend to be rather accepting of their bloodless defeat and not try to kill you again. In a while, at least. Still, combat scenes were rare.
Ars supports that kind of campaign. And also supports the demon hunting covenant we had in an other saga.
I still think that your statement is correct at large, but in Ars it is not necessarily the main focus. Some action ios good, but it is not the focus of the game if you do not want it to be. I consider you to be a really good ars writer, even if I do not like all your ideas (in fact, agreeing in everything with someone would made me worry a lot! heheheh) and I like some of the violence plots scattered around. But I like even more the political ploys, the economics problems and the guy that stole something and that you cannot accuse even if you know that was him.
And of course im a pro storywriter who can deliver such a thing asap right?
Very well, fine, this is as close as it gets to writing...
You want access to item X, which is in the posession of a king, extremely well guarded and the whole place and its people are under direct divine protection. However the "court wizard" as well as the steward and a few others might be persuaded to let you see it, servants might be open to bribes, misdirection or persuasion, covert entry might be possible with thorough preparation...
The above situation would make it an extremely bad idea to start a killing spree, but offers plenty of potentials for a crafty player.
Thought up in about as long as it took to write(which is why its on the verge of being totally sucky on a quality basis).
Oh and why should i cater specifically to Flambeau and Tytalus STEREOTYPES? I can easily see ways for such characters to be successful in the above scenario(the Flambeau could trade a nice little "firey" item for example...)
Writing stories based on what kind of characters there "should" be, IMO sucks. Thats just going over to the dreadful side of D&D where characters are supposed to level up every X encounters and each encounter should on average spend 1/Y part of their resources. Thats just a hideous way of doing it.
Good stories are based on an idea or concept, if player characters happens to not be useful in the story, thats a problem for them to solve, not a bad story.
Except most of the time, its more "profitable" to "level up" the covenant relatively peacefully(actually even more so by RAW than by our regular HR).
Whyever would i make Hindu gods any less powerful than the christian god? And the same goes for American deities.
Why should ANY magi have even the slightest chance to smack around any gods?
Whatever says for example that the NA natives worship isnt bringing in the Dominion in yet another variation?
Our standard is that monotheistic religions cause dominion and polytheist brings magic aura. Faeries cant be gods, they can only try to impersonate them.
Doesnt matter how i play(and that varies alot and through the years i´ve played in a dozen or more wildly differing RPG or action game systems including a couple of Unisystem, Tristat, Mechwarrior B5(the original better one) D&D*2(the one you probably know as well as "Drakar och Demoner" which isnt just a translated version of the former) LOTR/MERP (the Swedish one from the 80s that runs a simplified Rolemaster system) Chock, Mutant, Aliens, Space 1889 etc etc), the statement still is dumb.
Its dumb because it assumes there is only one way to deal with an obstacle. The very point about RPGs is the very opposite.
That it doesnt matter HOW you deal with something, as long as you can succeed in coming up with a solution that works.
Also because a "killgame" usually means removing or severely reducing consequences due to actions(otherwise every campaign ends up with characters dead asap, because there´s always someone or something that can kill them, and will get upset if they get to agressive and "visible").
AND, some of the characters i have played(or set up or played as opponents) have been more or less directly based on fictional characters like Cerryl(from "The White Order" and "Colors of Chaos", a very good magical assasin among other things), Secca(from "The Shadow Sorceress"/"Shadowsinger", who ends up using magic to literally cause a thermonuclear explosion, when obliterating an island kingdom wasnt enough, and with the "shadow" part for the trail of troublesome nobles that just happens to die not too long after she is nearby) just as i have used ideas from for example Dallandra, Jill, Nevyn and Lilli(from Deverry series), Raeshaldis(from "Circle of the Moon")...
And if THAT doesnt make you realise how diverse set of characters i play/have played...
Is it now? Why then are for example "Ancient Magic" so popular(as far as i know at least)?
The function of a writer is to provide stories. They may include "stuff to kill". Or they may not.
Again, killing isnt the point, overcoming obstacles or reaching goals is. If that includes killing, fine, but it shouldnt be the basis of any story. Most killstories are just onedimensional and boring and far better suited for action rpgs.
Can you tell stories for your own troupe that include these elements? Why can't you write them up? I don't see the mockery iplied in the rolled eyes. I don't get the "pro" thing either. I'm a "pro" librarian. None of the Ars writers do it as their profession: it's a side thing.
Flambeau who likes to fight things is a valid character choice. Tytalus who likes to fight is a valid character choice. So yes, you do need specifically to cater for those stereotypes. You don't get to tell people what is good or bad play, right or wrong play. THeeir character is theuir vote on what stories they want, and so, since you can't see the votes, you need to do what you can not to tell them "Your vote sucks.".
I agree. How do you feel about writing for characters that "might" be, rather than should?
I'm ambivalent about that. I agree on the level of writer, but I'm not sure that I agree on the level of "guy who buys books". If I open a book and it says "Not suitable for combat PCs." or "Only suitable for combat PCs" then there's a problem there, for me as a buyer, because it is saying to me "Thanks for buying our book, sucker, but it will not work in your game. You have wasted your cash!".
I can see that as an aesthetic choice. I think though that the RAW assume that outside forces will prick that bubble a bit and that these may require force. I do accept that this is de-emphasised in the new edition, so that you don;t design your castle's defenses and the equipment of every soldier, as you did in the old edition.
So you'd make -each- Hindu god as powerful as the Christian God?
So, just to be clear, every American deity as powerful as the Christian God?
Because they can do it to European pagan gods? Because the sotry is about the PCs, not the NPCs?
Well, sure, you could do that. It does mean that your Dominion God is now eating the hearts of the victims of the Aztecs, and so its an odd artistic choice, but I can see that as valid. What price the salvation of the world from eternal darkness? Is it right to kill children to save even more children? Do you walk away from Olemas? I can see that. That's workable. I'm not sure its good as a vanilla choice, but sure, there's a story in that.
OK.
Ah, but my point is that I, as writer, don't get to -tell- you which way to circumvent the obstacle. The choice is yours. Now, given the fact that Ars characters are magi, and likely has offensive spells, in what sense am I allowed to say "All of your obstacles are non-combat obstacles." Combat is the default obstacle resolution method in RPGs, even in Ars, despite it being less combat orientated than some other games. We have a whole chapter in five books about how to stat up monsters. People -like- monsters and I'm not really sure how many of them are going to be as interested in faerie bargaining, for example, as fighting faeries.
I agree, but the solution of "shoot it and suck its vis" seems to be a very popular one, doesn't it?
I can agree that its not the "basis of the story". My point, however, is that combat is basically presented as the consistently viable technique in virtually all RPGs, and Ars has less of this, but always -has- some of this. Therefore as a writer, the basic job is, sure, to give you obstacles, but if I continually give you obstacles where "I kill it" is not one of your options, how am I giving players any more free choice than if I continually give you "Killing it is your only option". And if I'm giving you both "kill it" and "do something else as options" a goodly large chunk of players are going to go with option 1. As such when designing material, that matters. Designing stuff for players to kill matters. And that means that I think, personally, I'd not like to do North American or Indian gods.
I mean, and sorry to repeat myself, the game has combat stats for the Patron Saint of Downtrodden Women in case you want to beat her up. Why is it so terrible for me to say "I personally do not want to have player characters using stats I have written for the purpose of slapping down Ghenesh and Masauwu"?
Probably not 
Sad but true, IMO