For beginners, one possibility, assuming 4 players here, might be 5 short scenarios:
Grogs only, securing the site or whatever. This helps them figure out Abilities and combat.
Pre-made Mage A, who has Weak Spontaneous Magic or Ceremonial Spontaneous Magic or similar, accompanied by a few grogs. Players get used to rotating grog control. They get their first introduction to casting spells, but there isn't much need to worry about the on-the-fly calculations with spontaneous magic.
Pre-made Mage B, who needs to go on a political mission accompanied by a few grogs. More getting used to grog control. Some more spell casting, but probably not much spontaneously due to a Divine aura. Meanwhile, the players get used to the Gift's penalties.
Pre-made Mage C, who is very focused, accompanied by a few grogs. Now the players will see some spontaneous magic. But due to the character's narrow focus, these will be mostly using only the favorite Technique and/or Form. That makes the variety of possibilities smaller and some values can be calculated ahead of time more easily, especially if the Technique and Form have equal values and maybe all other Techniques and Forms have matching values within their types.
Pre-made Mage D, who is able to manage more variety, accompanied by a few grogs. Now the players will be expected to come up with some clever spontaneous magic to handle some situations where they are not rushed.
As there is only one mage at a time, the players can be encouraged to help provide ideas about how to use the given mage, too. That way they all get some experience with it and they're all working together. Afterward, they may end up swapping magi to play in the future, too.
I would also recommend making magi with only about 7 points of Virtues or so defined so that players might choose some customization options once they've settled on the magi they want to use.
Ah. I think you said a dozen sessions in a different place, which is why I came up with the numbers.
Actually, I think this is a consideration. A starter set should demonstrate that the default rules work as they are, not give reasons for deviating from it.
Secondly, I think blind spots is a good thing, because it makes the party depend on each other.
Thirdly, learning to take advantage of the gauntlet-level powers is enough for a novice.
True, but every deal struck ahead of game makes the background more complex, and the players have more background to read up on. Playing the foundation makes a blank slate, where NPC can be introduced IC and sites explored in game to make them more alive. Often, the motivation for playing out a story is to portray the character, such as the local lord.
I think these two positions go together in any event.
Option A makes a prestory where the covenant is founded and the magi advance five years (or so).
Option B play out those five years, from gauntlets and from the ruins of the old covenant.
Both are workable, and both are fairly plausible. There is a little bit of shoehorning to get four magi gauntletting at the exact same time, but we avoid the old magus conveniently twilighting to leave the stage to players.
If it's not too late to join the effort, I'de be willing to pitch in. I'm good at digging up information about interesting locations for stories and building up interesting characters (grogs, npcs, and magi alike).
I like this! My one quibble is with how spontaneous magic is introduced. It's complex enough as it is, and I'm not sure that introducing another step in the process (including the Weak Ceremonial Magic flaw, or similar) is actually going to be helpful. But that's something that playtesting will answer.
But the general idea of a few "tutorial" type scenarios, and playing to different magi's strengths, is a good one.
Here, I'll dig my heels in. In the all-newbie game I'm in that recently started, everyone stopped dead at this point. It was very close to abandoning the whole game.
Instead, we provide fully-defined characters with no player intervention needed. Customisation options are good to offer, but they're shown as changes to the fully-defined playable character. For instance, "Here's a playable Jerbiton mage. They influence people by trading beautiful objects for favours. If you want someone who operates more by blackmail and secrets, swap virtues X, Y, and Z for A, B, and C".
As for starting character level...
A lot of 80s and 90s games start with characters that are underpowered and make players "earn their fun" to get competent characters after a good few sessions. It's like how earlier versions of D&D made you start at level 1 but the game only really got fun about level 3.
I'm sympathetic to the tutorial notion, where starting characters have only a few moving parts so you don't overwhelm new players. But for ArsM, I think that argument applies more to numbers of Virtues and Flaws than Abilities and Arts. Hence the idea of a grog-only first adventure is great.
Thinking about it, there's no reason why these scenarios have to be close in time. The first scenario could be a group of grogs exploring the ruins of Banelore before any decision is made about re-founding it. The second could be a year or so later, dealing with something on the covenant site or the neighbours. The third, a couple of seasons later as the covenant gets the local tin mine back into operation. And so on.
I certainly enjoyed 1980s systems with starting characters, but it may take a special kind of story and playstyle.
1980s standard was starting with John average. That's not the case for ArM. Magi are far beyond that at gauntlet.
But this is not really the point. The point is what the canon default position is. Using a starter set to say that the default rules are not playable is a harsh message.
However, you do have point about covenant, as a character, which has to be designed with a plausible starting situation and backstory. Magi need to be designed to fit that situation, and sometimes making them older is the easiest solution.
F&F p.11 states that the covenant of Bentalone existed from 1106 to 1207 and that it was destroyed during the crusade by the armies of Simon de Montfort.
Except that the murder of the papal legate Pierre de Castelnau, which led to the pope to declare the crusade, occured in january 1208. The crusade declaration was in march 1208. The crusader armies were gathered in Lyons on spring 1209. So there seems to be a discrepency in the timeline here,as there is no way those armies could have destroyed the covenant in 1207.
Do we want to integrate this oddity into the background, as a source for stories? Could it be that the official story about the destruction of the covenant is in fact false?
I might disagree but I'm not sure how focused you mean when you say designed to fit the situation. I like the idea of the magi, companions, and covenant being a group of individuals (broadly speaking) that are working together (broadly speaking might apply here also) as opposed to a perfectly fit together team. If the magi are too perfectly connected to the covenant and its situation it feel off to me.
Shrug, that probably says more about me than about a starter saga though.
Let's get some pregen characters set up, maybe see what they look like with and without post-Gauntlet experience, and see if we can reach a consensus at that point.
Excellent bit of research! Yes, that discrepancy has to be a source of stories. What was Simon de Montfort really up to, and why did he have to destroy an hermetic covenant to do it? What secret is now lurking in the ruins of Bentalone?
Yes, all the mages and companions should have their individual goals, which won't necessarily mesh. But if we can fit in connections between characters, and characters and the setting, we should do so to make the game more grounded. Which characters have family in the area? Which have a visions of a particular nearby shrine to St Anthony the Hermit? And so on.
It wasn't that I was suggesting another step. The idea was that I was trying to have them focus on just Formulaic spells so they get the ideas of the casting roll, aiming, penetration, concentration, etc. down without having to also try to figure out building spells. That way they get an understanding of how spell casting works before building spells themselves. I was trying to find ways of easing them into building spells.
I think a way to achieve this would be to craft the stories so that, initially, the spells that the magi know will be good fits to the challenges they meet. And then, as the story progresses, they may face situations where a spontaneous spell or two will make a difference.
Having a "cheat sheet" demonstrating a few of the spontaneous effects each character is able to achieve (with or without fatigue), would go a long way toward achieving those goals.
And then, to introduce spell research, have the covenant face problems where learning a spell from the library, or inventing a new spell, will allow the characters to resolve the problems. Same with enchantments and other lab activities.
That makes sense. I've become a little gun shy over the years from games, not ArM, tending to take designed to fit the situation as meaning every character must be equally efficient and all planned out to work as a team.
I was thinking mostly in terms of plausible premises. A Spring covenant already established for five or ten years with only newly gauntletted magi makes little sense. Who founded the covenant? And how were the PCs recruited? You could make an old magus who recruits them all at the same time and then conveniently twilights within the season, but it feels like a big shoehorn.
P/G years is one of the things which may have to be added to make a plausible backstory for the covenant as a whole.
I certainly do not argue, or even want, design for in-game efficiency.
It seems OYOH that you raise another disagreement, which has nothing to do with designing characters to fit. The story could be about misfits, but the premise of ArM is that the covenant is the most important character, and to me, that means that that character has to be played. A starter pack true to that premise has to devise stories forcing the magi to show that they care about the covfenant. If you view the covenant just as infrastructure to take for granted, we should go separate ways.
That does not mean that everything has to be about the covenant, but the other bits tend to happen anyway, driven by individual players. It is covenant's plotline that takes some planning and storyguiding to work, and hence, what I always needed to see in a starter pack ... and I only want to spend time contributing to the kind of starter pack that I would wish I had when I started.
If your vision for a starter pack is a different one, I can only wish you good luck.
A couple of covenants in Provence have now decided the time is right to re-found the destroyed covenant of Bentalone. (Why now? A combination of astrological signs that this is the time, experienced magi that want to do it, an alliance between covenants so that the re-founding doesn't cause problems in the tribunal.)
Experienced magi turn up, poke at the ruins, and take what's immediately useful to them. But the site isn't as goood as they hoped, so they decide their time is better spent back in their own labs.
Some astrological alignment meant that both covenants put apprentices through the Gauntlet at the same time; these new magi need their own space and will just get underfoot near their parens. They decide to kill two birds with one stone: let the new magi do the hard work of re-founding the covenant, while the sponsors will bask in the reflected glory.
The sponsoring covenants donate a few resources to help things along: a few useful grogs and companions, the start of a library, help offstage to set up labs and the like. Distance, pride, and reputation combine to make the Bentalone personnel not want to call on the offstage support too often.
I think that addresses most of the questions people have raised. It gives a justification for why some things in the covenant are already done, if we think they're not interesting stories. It sets up a couple of plot hooks when the sponsors want payback for their investment while the covenant wants to assert its independence.
It is good. The Devil's advocate would ask why the senior magi did not loot the sparse resources that were there, leaving the place less than marginally interesting, but I suppose they could not take the aura away, and they may just gift the minor vis sources to their filii.
Now, I realise that if you want to tell sparse stories, you can start with characters at gauntlet and still have the benefits of playing «rounded» characters. You can tell one story at arrival, and then fast forward two years. If labs had been left by the seniors, this rounds out the characters quickly enough, and faster than you would with chargen rules. The challenge is to adjudicate and narrate the downtime activities fairly and interestingly.
One possible first story to emphasise the covenant is, assuming that the magi are not able to raise the Aegis in the first season or two, an infestation of lesser faeries playing pranks.
Do you want to design the covenant with Build Point rules? Personally, I hate the build points system, because it values are imbalanced compared to in-game costs, but there is always a point in sticking to canon for a starter pack.
Good catch. I agree with you that the covenant is a character. I wouldn't go so far as to say it has to be the most important but it certainly could be. In this particular case, a starter saga proposal, it does seem like it should be.
You have somewhat misscategorized my thoughts on a perfectly fit together team when you used the term misfits. What I am suggesting is that not everything should be neatly tied together. Again this might only be me but I find it off putting when you get something like 4 magi and a covenant with 4 hooks/interesting bits that just happens to match up with the interests of the 4 magi.
I'll bow out now as I'm still looking at what a starter saga pack should look like in general and you guys have moved on to more specifics.
I'm not a great fan of the build points system, but this may be a good opportunity to display how it can be used well. And since it is a starter set, we can apply a bit of experienced creativity to it in order to create a balanced covenant without falling into the pitfall of optimization.
Basically, we want a budding library covering half the Arts with a dozen lab texts, a few vis sources, maybe an enchanted item or two and a couple of specialists. No biggie.
I think we can work with that. Do we want all the new magi to have been apprenticed at those two covenants?
On a different topic, where would we want to locate Bentalone? F&F does not say, but looking at the map I was thinking that an interesting location would be somewhere between Albi and Carcassone, somewhere along the Via Tolosa.
That would be far enough from other covenants in the Tribunal that the magi wouldn't keep running back to their parens' home whenever they have a problem, and the equilibrium between the proximity of the Via Tolosa and the surrounding Massif Central would give a decent balance between isolation and potential mundane stories.