Hi there - first post on this forum for me. Revisting Ars Magica after a few years away from the fold. Unfortunately working away from home on some ideas and I dont have all my books available.
I am thinking of a new game with a new covenant, the last campaign ended with a number of players accused of diabolism so we had to draw the curtain on that one, and my players are considering the Bath area in Stonehenge tribunal. With its roman connections obviously there is some prospect of uncovering mercurial wisdom.
I just wanted to check, are there any 'official' covenants in the area that might cause problems. I do have 'heirs to merlin' back home, but its a few weeks before I can put a hand to it just to check one small point.
According to "Heirs To Merlin" there are no other covenants in the immediate vicinity. In fact the closest one is Blackthorn in Wales, and you would also become their closest neighbour... and they might not be model neighbours, but at least they are not close by
And welcome to Stonehenge as well as to the forum.
Do you know if there's any hope for a revamp of some old tribunal books?
While some are fine or even great, a few, notably 3rd edition books, would IMO greatly benefit for it.
Some time ago, John Nephew said there were no plans to rewrite any of the old Tribunal books. I forget where he said this but I think it may have been on the old Atlas boards...
Could we not rewrite them ourselves in a joint project kind of way?
Of course we'd have to agree to certain things. I mean IMHO most of the 3rd edition Tribunal books need serious reworking (except Rome; we can just bin the majority of that). Of the three 3rd edition Tribunal books I own IMHO only Iberia can be left with a minimal update to bring it up to 1220. Loch Leglean needs some serious reworking; the history is fine but the culture and language stuff is off (but then being up here in Scotland myself I would say that). I mean where is the titular loch? We've had to settle on Loch Leven (the landlocked loch, not the sea loch). Like the Scottish Dominion though. As for Rome, the less said the better, but we have to at least remove the bizarre (and setting breaking) hate-on for the Church that is evident throughout the entire book.
The two fourth edition tribunals I have copies of (Stonehenge and Novogrod) are brilliant and only really need to be brought up to date with the new edition.
If you are counting 4e as "official", then Land of Fire and Ice has a mention of Bath - one of the members of Vindolanda had a sanctum at Bath. All the magi of this (expired) covenant on Hadrian's Wall had sancta which were remote from the main covenant site, and connected via magical gates.
Land of Fire and Ice seems to be still in print, and available from Warehouse 23. It's primarily about Iceland, however. (Good book, but then I would say that...)
