It would be hard to think of another game that is more focused on the group and their home base, than the individuals in the group. Most RPGs, the characters are murder-hobos, doing it for the money, or the glory, or to save the world (which conveniently involved murdering villains).
There’s a few more long term and less murder-hobo games, such as Amber and Vampire: the Masquerade. I could argue they do politics better, because one can do the politics, if that is the focus, without being as number crunching as Ars Majica.
I would put Ars Majica as the best for a troupe setting. Inevitably, to focus on the troupe and the home, it has to be long term…
I'm back after reading at least some of Art & Academe. Some observations:
– The core rulebook's theorized "warm ice" would be quite brittle, having less cold particles in it– it'd be less likely to stick together. Actually, might it turn into a dry snow?
– This book is pretty keen on the idea of Creo being able to make something permanently larger by truly adding "more matter" to it. I find that a bit surprising, as it implies that the Forms of things are always the upper limit of scale? You couldn't keep making something giant (usually) because that woukd be going beyond the thing's Form right? Perdo suggests "big is good" as well, if shrinking is always bad.
– The book going all-in on Aristotle's confusion over momentum is... they know that it didn't take very long for Aristotle to get called out on that, right? You can't throw something any faster or slower than someone else? That falls apart under immediate observation, which is what Aristotle was all about...
I’ve only skimmed Art & Academe, but if you’re looking at page 25, I think it’s talking about Creo mimicking ‘natural’ growth/maturation, as the mature adult form of a living thing is the perfect form. (Creo also includes certain kinds of ‘unnatural but perfecting’ growth, e.g. restoring missing limbs). E.g. to turn a calf into an adult cow, you use Creo Animal. To turn a cow into a house-sized cow, you use Muto Animal. (EDIT: This is consistent with the guidelines in the corebook.) Both effects involve getting extra matter and adding it to the cow, but they’re adding it in different ways.*
(To turn a cow into a mouse-sized cow, you also use Muto Animal.)
*EDIT 2: Well, maybe you’re not actually adding matter with Muto? If the Lyceum folks are right, Creo creates substance, Muto changes quantity without affecting the substance.
For example:
PRETERNATURAL GROWTH AND SHRINKING
R: Touch, D: Sun, T: Ind
Adds +1 to the target’s normal Size or decreases it by up to 2 points.
(Base 3, +1 Touch, +2 Sun, +1 because the spell allows growth or two kinds of shrinking)
It is a size change which not only makes the target bigger (or smaller), but also heavier (lighter) proportionally. “Size” in Ars encompasses both dimensions and weight.
At first glance of the quoted sentence, I would have thought that “manipulating quantity“ covered “adding or removing substance“.
Yeah, the idea is that matter can only be "informed" (lit. given form) by, well, associating it with a real Form.
Creo magic that grows things (mostly just making living things mature) causes that thing to gather more matter into itself, "informing" the matter by association. Or, y'know, if you just Creo a giant dog, it is in fact giant because it's made of a lot of matter.
The size of something is only loosely connected to matter, though. The size of an individual object is just a "property" of the object. Normally that property is influenced by how much matter something's made of, but Muto magic influences the property directly, in an "unnatural" way, so it can never be permanent.
Here's where things get tricky. On p. 24 Art & Academe has this to say about Creo:
It is impossible for a magus to use Creo to create something that cannot exist, such as a four-sided triangle — such things are not natural, pre-existing forms, and so are outside the capacity of Creo magics. However, a green dog is possible, because “green” is part of the category of quality of the dog, not part of its form. Further, Creo magic cannot cause a cat to grow wings, because wings are not part of the form of a cat, but it can restore a leg which has been removed.
...But, then, size is a part of the category of quantity, so I guess it isn't part of a thing's form, either.
I guess the idea here is that Creo magic can establish something's initial properties quite flexibly, but only if you're creating a new "thing that exists independently". So you can Creo a green dog or an unnaturally large dog if you're making a new dog. Perhaps it can be said that this is because YOU are the efficient cause of that thing and you are ESTABLISHING it's material cause. You can't make yourself it's formal cause because Forms.
It's almost like each individual thing ends up having it's own little Form established by it's four causes (not really, but close enough).
With something that already exists, you are not that thing's efficient cause, and it's material cause was established long ago. Therefore changes to it's properties outside of what is natural for that form + material + efficient + final cause combination requires Muto magic, warping it's properties directly in a rather unnatural way. It's "less real" metaphysically, almost like you overlayed a hologram over it which happens to interact with the world just like any real thing would.
I checked out their SRD. It's a strange system, has a very Old-School D&D vibe, with its focus on gold-piece values. I can see the appeal, especially combined with other domain-level play. Reminds me of Birthright (which I love).
While I agree it does simulate a wizard's life somehwat, I maintain Ars Magica does it better, and has a better setting-support for that in the sense that it has a very rich underlying "magic theory" e.g. the philosophical discussion here.
Ah, what a fascinating book. I never played it, but I cherish the atmosphere and the interesting ideas in it.