I'm very interested in the feasibility of non-Hermetic sagas.
One of the playtest groups for tCatC did play a sahir only Saga and at least one of the line authors (I can't for the life of me remember who now... damn) had a Redcap only Saga that sounded great (an idea now officially suggested as an option in Grogs pages 42-43).
Edit note: I forgot to set the poll to allow more than one response. You may now choose up to 3 choices. Apologies.
Apart from play-testing the sahir for TC&TC (which for us at least, was a mix of jinn, holy magicians, hermetics, and sahirs), my troupe and I were also involved in a mixed hedgie saga shortly after HMRE was released.
There was also an attempt at playing a redcap based saga, but it didn't quite pan out...
I ran the Redcap only saga. Three players made three Mythic Companions, two Redcaps and a faerie companion. They were the party that I designed the adventure "A Cardinal Decision" for. It was great fun.
I also ran a sahir only saga while playtesting tC&tC, which was also a lot of fun.
The poll makes me think of another thing we've done; we've used a different set of rules to run adventures in Mythic Europe, keeping the fluff and fantasy of Ars Magica and jettisoning the rules. Similar to the Redcap saga, we ran a campaign in which a handful of knights were trying to track down the mysterious wizards who were living in the Black Forest. I thick we used the 7th Sea rules (I wasn't running the show). It was essentially a grog only game, but with rules that gave us a different slant on the characters. There were no PC wizards, and the PCs were pretty vulnerable when they did find those three towers in the middle of the forest.
I have always love the idea of playing the concept of using the Learned Magician template with the Cunning-Folk sort of tradition. I am not sure how such a game would go about working, but the idea of being the local magician in an otherwise dark age like environment, helping the citizenry of the nearby town and communities with their mystical and monstrous and mundane problems would be very cool. Especially if the world beyond the town's borders are a dark and hostile place (not in a horror sense) and its thanks to your hedge magic that the folk you help and respond to continue to prosper and survive.
I especially think it would be cool if the players are part of the generation which turns the local hedge wizard tradition into the much greater and mighty national force, finding a way to connect with other towns and their Cunning-folk, providing a link that can connect groups to create a kingdom and a nation.
I think this is an interesting option - Heirs to Merlin springs to mind (all fluff / no crunch) but also the approaches used in David's "The Medieval Handbook" and "Black Monks of Glastonbury" - I think Mythic Europe is a great setting, but the current Ars Magica ruleset makes non-Hermetic wizards less viable and grog Sagas difficult.
One approach would be to use the setting but change the rules - perhaps Atlas would consider this approach as a means to broaden appeal?
We just finished our davnalleus mini saga. PC were a spirit master (pralix), a modified hyperborean magician (ignes festi), a gruagach (brude deathless) and a folk witch. Compared to mundanes they were powerful, but not as much as hermetics. It was great fun and it can certainly play well. In the designing stages of another hedgie saga now set in triamore.
We have never played a companion/grog only saga, but we have run quite a few adventures in that format. It can also work. I would like to try a companion saga with these, where enchanting music and the.like is what the OoH is all about, but this has not met toupe aproval
If there were an option in the poll for "No, but I'd like to", I'd have checked it. There are a ton of fascinating story (and saga) ideas lurking 'bout the fringes of the Order.
