Sound Summae unrealistic?

Games Discussion Ars Magica
82

Well I don't take issue with your disagreement, butwith RP, you can do what you want.
You do not need a rule because this is a role posture. Even with rules, there are those who respect or not the rule.

If you wanna copy a book you cannot, do it and defend yourself in tribunal.
If you wanna buy a book at a price it is not worth, you can RP it as for example "the stupid magus who buy anything".
Your reason for doing so? you don't need one.

But if you want a reason, you won't find one and thus, the mechanics enter in play, and they don't help you.

Maybe I was unclear, but imo: sound summae are unrealistic because all the book thing in the game is unrealistic. All of this is gameplay.

On that gameplay feature, the RP is provided. You adhere, or you don't. Personally, I don't find interesting.
The order can become a modern-university system with PC intervention. NPC canon are shit (although the latest ones, from Through the aegis and those of Magi of hermes are a lot better than the rest... maybe because the creators of such magi had an idea AND devoted themselves to make those characters "having a soul"... I'm not sure you will understand, but personaly, and that's my current issue, I'm unable to create any character with a soul, because my current magus is the ideal for me. Since I have made it in 2011 and playing him since then, I never had any other desire to play another magus.). NPC books are bad. The order has a lot of magi, but not enough, etc.

Books and trade ... just avoid it, it's my advice. (Personaly, I have not read a book in game since the 10 years post gauntlet, and that's for a 70+ years gauntlet character. And yet, I have the highest arts of all characters due to experimentation [which lead me 3 times in breaking reality adventures, where we had to repair what my character had done... and which was fun]. But not all players will agree.)

83

IMS we read a lot of tractatus in the 9-11 range. Not so much summae, but tha tis because 4 tractatus tend to be cheaper than a summa granting the same XP level. High level summae are just prohibitive in cost in our sagas, and generally you do not spend your academic life reading books that go through all the basics of a subject regardless of how good they are. You read journals, books on concrete topics and stuff like that. You also read summae, but you tend to get inspiration from them more than new knowledge. At least that is what I gathered living among an academic family for most of my life (both parents, sister, cousin and aunt).

Summae granting you level 20 in an art? Unlikely. Level 10-12 at most. beyond that it is tractatus territory. At least IMS. (and yeah, I am aware that the summae/tractatus difference is not how medieval books really operated)

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84

Really good summae can be worth it (L+Q=30 to 31) as it's hard to get Q15 Tractatus, but L15 Q15 Summae are certainly possible. Out past L15-ish, Tractatus quickly become the equal of Summae can cost a lot less.

It might be better if Summae gave more XP the lower your art was, effectively making it a lower Level higher Quality Summae (up to the max of double Quality). So a L20 Q8 summae would operate like a L12 Q16 Summae in the hands of someone at 0-12 in an Art. and get progressively worse as your level in that Art increased. There's still reason to pen the lower level summae (it's faster to write), but your magnum opus is also a good primer as well. This does kind of make Tractatus junk before L15 however.

As for Verditus items, they're worth buying to get Lesser Invested Devices. If you want a level 35 effect but have a lab total of 50, you can either wait and raise your arts, make a greater device (4 seasons and 14 pawns), or buy Verditus lesser item (0 seasons of your work and 21 pawns). I'd spend 7 extra pawns to save 4 seasons.

As to greater devices, don't forget the high Magic Theory requirements and magi have flaws like Weak Enchanter or Waster of Vis, or just lack the arts in a particular area. Having a Creo of 40 is meaningless when making a Muto effect. Plenty of older magi have large banks of vis to draw upon and 150 pawns isn't an everyday purchase, it's something you can do a few times in your hermetic lifespan. It's like saying that spending $100k to build your house is stupid when you could do it yourself for $33k, but it'll take you 3 times as long to do it yourself and you make far more money working your actual job than you'd save building the house. People in real life hire expensive specialists all the time.

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85

This is how ArM3 books worked. You only had summae there, with a level (no quality). If the Summa was 3x your current level 10 got +3 levels. If it was double your current level you got +2 levels and it was just above your Art level but less than your double, you got +1 level studying it. Or something like that. it has been 25 years since we used that system.

86

life is tactical to some degree. I wrote a book once RL- I spent years crafting it to what I wanted it to be, then self published on Amazon.
I made $5.
I have not written another book since. I still have ideas for books, I still consider writing them, but the fact is I am lousy at self promotion, and so when it comes time to decide whether to GM a game or write a book, I GM the game.
If I had made thousands or even hundreds of dollars off that book it would be different.
Even within a narrative style, tactical considerations will be made by the characters, if not on a player basis. They may not be optimized tactical decisions, but they will be part of the situation.

from my perspective, calf and cow is a "patch" put on the game to cover a glitch that occurred because the idea (throughout fantasy fiction) that you can just take a medieval world and add magic without it fundamentally altering that world simply doesn't work. AM has it better than most by having magi largely withdrawn from the mundane world, and the divine aura as a big stick to enforce that separation, but it is still fundamentally flawed.

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87

On that point I agree with you. Sound summæ may well be unrealistic, especially in a given setting or saga.

RAW does indeed not help very much, because the relevant rules have been left vague and ambiguous, and that I think has been deliberate. They are not rule mechanics as such, but guidelines about the setting. It is left to the troupe to decide how easy it is to get access to a book and how good books can reasonably be accessed for what price.

If, however, you want sound summæ, you design the Teacher's Mystery Cult, who initiate the Good Teacher Virtue, and provide ritual casters who boost Communication. The Cult actively seek out the most famous archmage specialist for each art, to help them write their life's great opus. It is plausible enough in the setting.

As long as you insist on a particular interpretation of canon, it is easy to get stuck.

88

I've always interpreted that the NPCs who break the default of the world are rare: Bonisagus and the founders. Gallileo. Caine. Prometheus.
But the PCs are the next characters in the Mythic Europe saga to break the mold of magi. A lot of people ask 'why hasn't anyone done this before', and the only real answer I can give usually is "Because people do not lean instinctively towards change, but towards similarity."

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89

I love that explanation. It perfectly explains why those ridiculous L25 Q 16 summae aren't around.

90

I believe there are rules for exactly that in Transforming Mythic Europe.
The distribution rules (Circulation total) very much effect how easy it is to share books and thus gain reputation for great writing.

91

I am curious: what is this glitch in your view? And how does the "cow and calf oath" (i.e. copyright, to a first approximation) "patch" it?

92

The glitch is a deep one- essentially in this case the fact that in the middle ages books were rare, and with the order they would cease to be if a mechanism was not put in place to stop widespread copying of texts. the cow and calf changes the market dynamics so you don't have a contrived situation (scarcity of books which are valuable and easy to make) that the players can take advantage of simply by recognizing it.

93

Basically per the RAW nobody would use vis in the first 10-15 years of his liftime as a magus. You would simply be a postdoc student. After that you might start looking for vis, but bnooks are a better (less risky) investment. And they are very cheap in the setting both in game mechanics (build points) and game currency (vis/silver), and they are VERY FAST to write and produce. If there was a cap of say 2 levels of Summae per season things mighrt be different, but as it is, writing a summae is very easy-. Easier than in the real world with word processors and trained editors in some cases.

Books are also a very reliable as a source of XP. Given the dynamics of the game, small libraries for magi do not make much sense.

94

Absolutely, but RAW is not entirely unambiguous on this point.

  1. Books are not that cheap in BP. If you have sound summæ in every art and most core abilities, you have quite a respectable power level already.
  2. Canon covenants with reputable libraries do not allow others to take away copies easily. Durenmar, Voluntas, and Elk's Run spring to mind.
  3. There is this Cow and Calf which is mentioned a few times but never elaborated, to restrict distribution of books.
  4. It is not clear how much political and social skill it takes to recruit and keep a cohort of scribes to do the copying for you. This is entirely up to the troupe.
  5. It is not clear how many good and sound books are actually written. As we have seen already, the top quality summæ (L20Q11 or so) pretty much assumes an archmage specialised in the art and with Com boosted to +5. How many specialist archmages want to write books? How many of them will accept the warping from rituals of the Heroes? The book market depends heavily on how you answer such questions.

If you swamp the game with easily accessible high-quality books, like L15Q15 in every art, and a few Q14 tractatus for the specialisation, you are absolutely right, but then I think the the long-term advancement game becomes boring. The RAW book system can be quite fun if good books are sparse and worth some political and mercantile stories to acquire, and more mediocre Q8 are worth reading too. Once Q11 become mediocre, we are better off scrapping the book system, save the bookkeeping, and just asign a flat source quality (maybe 14, or whatever suits your power level) for all library use.

Whatever decision you make about accessibility of books, it depends on a stack of assumptions which should be worked into the setting.

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95

fundamentally books cost silver to copy and save vis to use. In terms of the game economy that is huge. You write a book, hire a scribe to copy it, sell it for vis, use the vis to make silver to pay the scribe- instant income engine.
So we throw in the two band aid rules- cow and calf and the ban on creating silver. It was supposed to be that nobody would create silver because vis was so fundamentally more valuable, but the books linked the two in a way that made silver part of the engine. The other limit on income is competition- you sell a copy of the book, someone else hires a scribe to copy it, and soon the market is saturated, and as long as enough covenants can afford scribes, it will still distribute quickly.
So you throw in cow and calf to slow the distribution of books down. But now you have two laws that have to be enforced to make the system work the way the game designers want t to work, but nobody in the setting has incentive to not work towards breaking the rules...

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96

I agree with your analysis here, and it has some interesting implications. Because covenants need silver to produce books and need books to advance and earn vis they are incentivized to try to acquire silver. It has been mentioned before but I will provide a quick summation here anyway, books save vis by providing a better source of progression in the arts than study from vis. They also directly boost magical power by being the best source of experience. Lastly books can be sold or rented for vis.
The main way of acquiring silver is by becoming a successful business of some sort which require integration with the mundane world. In other words the rules make it so that becoming a successful business and integrating with the mundane world provides a clear advantage to covenants. It is quite possible that older more established covenants are immune or resistant to this loop by virtue of having huge libraries established that they can live off of.

The message of the mechanics here seems to be that the isolationist road to success is shut off for younger covenants and they will have to pursue closer relations with the mundane world in order to be successful.

97

Isn't that the case even without the library?
You need food, lab gear, and some luxuries, both for your own comfort and to keep your grogs happy. It is awfully hard to be self-sufficient in an isolated spot.

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98

It is the case that magi need some sort of economy around them but I think a covenant can exist almost entirely separately from the mundane economy in terms of taking care of its living conditions with magic items, and maybe a few magical servants. Look a covenants like Durenmar or Val negra (when it existed) for examples of covenant with almost no contact with the mundane world and economy.

What I am getting at is that since the current edition of Ars magica has established a loop between magical power and silver income it means that connectivity with the mundane world is itself a source of magical power.

99

Secluded or not, canon Durenmar has mundane, albeit warped, covenfolk, and that seems to include scribes too.
There is absolutely no reason why you need silver as such for your library. You need specialists and certain raw materials, which may be more or less hard to keep, but the challenges you face maintaining the library are very similar to the challenges of maintaining labs.

100

Covenants can get by with very little mundane integration, though they may have to spend time and vis instead of silver. It's only specialists that really make things problematic. A covenant with a good sized allod could have its own villages and income cycles almost entirely divorced from mundane society.

101

I cannot quite see the magi keeping their labs stocked with ingredients by personally travelling all over the known world to collect the wide range of weird substances they need without stopping to talk to people and ask for directions and clues, but I agree it is just possible.

Specialists, however, for an established covenant, needn't be that much of a hassle, since they can train their own, drawing apprentices from their own village populations.