Why do you keep claiming i want to get rid of fighting or tell how people are supposed to play or get past obstacles?
Thats the very point i´ve been making, that THAT should be player choice, not writer choice...
Then we are agreeing with each other in very loud voices, no? 
I think what Timothy is trying to say here, and please correct me if I'm misunderstanding, is that his job as a writer is to create obstacles for the story and that when he creates obstacles that cannot be overcome through combat, he loses a substantial portion of his audience. He has to (essentially) create "things to kill" because this is often the most expedient solution chosen by the players-- not all the players, all of the time, but it is the most common solution.
He could design specifically so that killing isn't an option, but that costs him audience just as certainly as if he'd designed so that the only option was burning everything, or turning it into small animals, or finding someone else to solve the problem for the characters. That's not necessarily good design, because it limits the players or even eliminates them as the active agents in the story-- sure, designing for single solution can be done once in a while as a change of pace, but you have to design for the open ended table which might consist of 5 Perdo specialist Flambeau, or 4 investigative Guernicus, or a pack of barely social, anti-civilization Bjornaer. When you do that, you have to also embrace the "kill it and suck its vis" solution.
-Ben.
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Elegantly put, Ben.
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Uhm, would anyone care to split this thread at the point where it strayed majorly from its original focus, ArM in North America?
Some forums have a smily for "this thread has been hijacked."
I guess it wasn't a hijack, just got majorly off topic. If you were willing to, it seems you can runa tribunal in North America pre colonization by just doing some research yourself... As Timothy has pointed out, Atlas has no intent of releasing material for NA.
I have written loads of scenarios for my sagas. More often than not, I have found that my players enjoy scenarios where they can go on a killing spree, but they know that
- there will be consequences if they do, so they payoff might be a negative sum game for them regardless of the short term advantage
- other, slightly more elaborate ploys might work better for them.
It took some time and mistakes (several by myself) but after some time the fact that they realized that Intelligence +3 did mean that you were capable of thinking other strategies than "kill everything on sight" seemed to work here 
As said, I agree that violence must be there. I, as a guy that totally abhors violence in the real world, like to play "conan style". Not always, but I like that option to exist in my roleplaying games where I have a "combat ability" numerical statline. However, I also enjoy A LOT when this is not the only solution.
Ars has this thing abpout brainless acts coming back to haunt you. Random viloence tends to have this consequence along with plenty other acts.
And I still dislike the Criamons for not being enigmatic anymore, not for being a bunch of medieval hippies. 
Cheers,
Xavi
Role of New world in Ars Magica campaign
!!SPOILER WARNING!!
Any player of Cadus Elohim campaign may regret reading this post.
!!SPOILER WARNING!!
My post is little off-topic because our campaign has continued far over campaignmaterial included to basic Ars Magica setting.
Details of our timeline Campaign part 1: 1198-1300 AD Played 1994-1998 Campaign part 2: 1330-1500 AD Played 2000-2006 Campaign part 3: 1800- AD Played 2008-
Few notes:
Campaign uses written history as source material. I am not aiming to 100% accuracy. If story flows in it’s own way details may differ greatly from written history.
Our campaign is crossover between Ars magica/Mage ascension/Kult so do not be surprised if my text contains terms not used in Ars Magica.
About medieval paradigm of Ars Magica.
After playing second edition adventure South of the sun (prester john and infernal Africa) I found projecting medieval paradigm to all areas of world dull and monotonous.
My own solution has been dividing world to different paradigms. So basic Ars Magica paradigm is roughly valid around Europe, Near east and North Africa between 100BC-1500AD. Africa, Far east, New world, Australia and Siberia have their own paradigms which differ from Ars Magica’s medieval paradigm. When characters are inside of certain paradigm their actions, magic, perspective and belief are influenced by that paradigm. Travelling from one paradigm to another is Mystical voyage and not possible to make by mundane travelling. Mundane travelling will just bring you to Edge regions of current paradigm.
Good example of Mystical voyage between paradigms is Silk road which makes travelling possible between Occidental and Oriental paradigms around 200 BC.
c. 1000 BC-1495 AD on our campaign mystical contact was non-existing between new and old world.
Main reason was that if you started to sail west from Europe you would come to Edge of world-regio as defined by medieval paradigm of Europe. And if you sailed from New world to east you would come to Throne of Sun from where it rises through power of daily sacrifices.
Some brave explorers might have been able to penetrate barricade created by medieval paradigm. But their influence on mystical or mundane society was marginal.
1492
Columbus breaks Edge of world region and travelling to New world becomes possible. However first Hermetic explorers find that Hermes portal between New and Old world is impossible create. That forces travelling mages to use ships as method of travelling. Many elder mage were unwilling to change their quality labs and nice living quarters to extra botches and maggoty bread.
During Age of exploration 1500-1700 AD
Seekers actively loot Inca, Aztec, Maya and Valusian regions/ruins/graves for Bloodgold from central America. Helps Order through hard years of Inkvisition. Interaction between Order and native Gifted mainly hostile. Hermetic mages are greedy and arrogant. Native gifted untrusting and cruel.
1700-1900 AD conquering of North America.
As powers of Dominion and Reason conquer New world Hermetic Order tries to get hold of mystical resources. Several chapterhouses, outposts and few covenants are created. 1790 tribunal of New England and Tribunal of California were founded. Itemcontest of House Verdi brought new innovation 1816, Separator for Vis. With this automaton you can separate animal vis from buffalocorpse faster than saying “Salve sodalisâ€.
From this perspective Order of Hermes is able to keep vis consumption up until End of Indian wars.
When spiritanimals have been butchered and last Aztec temple looted Order has to face facts that vis consumption of High magic exceeds Orders resources and incomes. My estimation is that in my campaign Order is in brink of 2. Schism war and it escalates to Order breaking up or fall of Old Regime. Future seems dark but there is group of young, idealistic and angry mages whose deeds might have great influence to outcome of crisis.
Hope that you find points of interest from text. Sorry for grammar and typo, writing this during workday.
If someone is interested to discuss further on long term development of Order of Hermes and Mythical world post me and let ideas fly.
Regards,
Kim Niskanen
olenkoen@luukku.com
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On the topic of what makes a RPG...
Timothy is right, when it comes down to it your character is a grave robbing merc for hire in most games. Does that mean everyone plays such character or all adventures are about killing things and taking their stuff?
No. It is inevitable that conflict will occur in a story, but it is not required that you kill everything that moves, or potentially could move. I've ran Spacemaster campaigns where I expressly told the players that due to the extreme leathality of the combat system that combat would not factor majorly into things. I play two character in Ars one that is a combat character and one that is not. Both are fun to play.
In C-RPGs the single player versions are clear cases of taking Timothy's point to the extreme, especially when you get XP largely or in some cases solely by killing things. That is one of the primary advantages to the game Vampire The Masquerade:Bloodlines. You have a choice in how much you kill, infact it is so ingrained in me that I have a hard time NOT killing every NPC even though it doesn't really matter if I do or don't.
For a GM it is often easy-ist to have a fight as it is a clear stress situation. But personally I've ran adventures where there was no combat but conflict of different sorts. It is far far more difficult to do this, and frankly it might not appeal to all players anyway which means a lot of work on the part of the GM is then wasted if the players don't appreciate it.
One of the things that I feel was lost in Ars was having the Order come out of the closet. When you had to keep what you were a secret then it meant that magic was not just tossing fireballs around. Being able to work overt magic without consiquence removes one of the most potent limitations on Magi I think. It makes companions less important. One of my limitations on my character is that if confronted in a fight by a mundane knight my character will NOT use his magic normally.
But this is not different then way back when in AD&D Dieties and Demigods came out...it became basically the next monster manual. And the trouble, speaking as a GM, is that most supplements focus on providing you with NPCs for fights rather than the sort of information that is useful for developing stories. This was particularily bad in SpaceMaster where far too much effort was given to giving obvious combat related information and far less to things like the politics, history and economy which would allow you to develop the universe. The fact Ars has a huge number of source books out which do detail non-combat aspects of the setting is very impressive to me.
In our covenant submission we had established a daughter convenant in Newfoundland linked via a hermes portal. There is no reason you could not use Newfoundland in particular in an Ars setting...as both Iceland and Greenland are.
Back to the Phaat Lootz and kill'em all and let the gods sort it out, and Grave-Robbing R US fer funz and profitz... This just does not appeal to me, but I know from playing MMOs and from both being a player and DM on NWNx PWs that there are some people who want nothing more then to get new gear, kill things, and get the bragging rights to be the most Ãœber character in existance. Frankly, my paladin confronting 5 evil characters had more conflict and much more fun factor then most fights I can think of, and people used to gather round and watch when I dealt with criminals. Or hell I had most of a server on my back because I kept killing a hell hound familier a low level mage kept trotting past me.
As a GM I believe firmly in conflict and both challenging and rewarding my players. I am probably a softy as well since "total party kill" doesn't interest me at all...since quite obviously I can do it anytime I want to...NWN DM's even had an insta kill ability. "You annoy me, You die."
But no matter how you slice and dice it, no matter how unpalatable it is to admit it...Timothy is just being honest about the reality, if it is not the reality for you in particular I am sure it is the reality for someone else.
I'm reminded of talking to people who were playing traveller and hearing about their power armoured wearing fusion gun MP 15 toting characters getting into bar fights. Or when a friend described his Call of Cthuthlu expeience where he was gernading, submachine gunning and dynamiting the NPCs left and right. In both cases the experience was...rather different then what I was used to.