Starting new 5E Campaign- Input/Ideas Requested

Games Discussion Ars Magica
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SO, I"m FINALLY pulling the trigger and runnning an Ars Magica 5E game for my group.
We'll meet virtually once a month or so.

We haven't done Session 0 yet, but we have started some discussion about Magus ideas and Covenant location.

Most everyone seemed really interested in an Alps-based Covenant, perhaps on a mountainside? Sadly, there's no 5E reference for the Greater Alps Tribunal, but I have the 4E sourcebook, and it seems like an interesting choice to set a Spring covenant there.

Order-wise, we have a good mix of concepts/ houses and potential form/technique combos, though nothing is finalized yet. (SOmeone wanted to play a Verditius Enchanter, which struck me as a really interestig choice. And we have a Tremere, who will definitely be great for causing friction with the Tribunal at large!!)

So, I guess my questions are:

  1. What adventures (published or fan-made) are good for starting 5E characters? (I'm leaning towards "Fesitval of the Damned", though I'd have to tweak a very few of the logistics to fit their covenant once it's fully statted.)
  2. Any good adventures take place in and around the AlpsTribunal? ANyone run Trial by Fire [old adventire from 2E]? ( I like the idea of the Alps being a nesting ground for dragons, and I have the 4E Revised Medevial Bestiary...)
  3. Did some searching, but didn't find any updated/revised Greater Alps updates for 5E? (I know there was no offical book, but was curious if anyone had done some home-brew/unofficial updates?)
    4, What potential pitfalls should I try to avoid in the early going? (Everyone has the core book, whih should be enough to keep us going, but I have the entire line [Thanks, BundleofHolding!!], though I don't want to inundate people with new rules and material too quickly.
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The first season of my HBO Ars Magica saga was set in the Greater Alps. The PCs were apprentices. I converted a number of magi from the old book to ArM5 rules and ran a lot of the plot hooks in that book.

Here’s the link to the campaign. The “Season One” tab is mostly session zero character creation stuff. The covenants and magi of the Greater Alps are under “Setting”.

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Trial by Fire is decent but maybe not the best for young magi. I think you can't go wrong with Broken Covenant of Calebais early on, but I know others think it's too dungeon-crawly. I also recommend flicking through Tales of Mythic Europe and/or Hooks and picking out a story that takes your fancy.

You may also be inspired by the bestiary chapters Realms of Power: Magic, Infernal, or Faerie - because of the way NPCs are built in ArM the sample beasties often have built in plot hooks.

Best of luck!

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OK, that make sense.
Thanks for the honesty; it's appreciated!

Calebais was another contender I was looking at, but seems a bit long initally? I want everyone to experience playing a mage in short order rather than playing a half-dozen sessions as a Grog or Companion. (Overall, I think the group will enjoy the freedom that Grogs and COmpanions bring to play occasionally, but everyone is really excited about their Magi.)

Maybe set Calebais as a second adventure. (I set the chronicle 6 years out of apprenticeship, so though they've sworn the oath, the Magi havent been "officially" welcomed into the Order yet. I wanted a small adventure to start, then a years lapse and then the "Welcome" tribunal.

The Alps Tribunal has some cool extant Covenants, so I'm looking forward to showcasing them!

And alot will be dependent on what the players pick for Merits/Flaws and Covenant Hooks, of course!

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Since you ask about pitfalls.

I think the greatest pitfall is overtelling stories. Telling too much of the story, too many stories, or in too much detail. IMHO Ars Magica works best in the long game, when magi have a chance to advance in the lab, and events from early stories come back to hunt you years later. (For the short game, I would rather play Worldtree, or Call of Cthulhu, or Flashing Blades.) To achieve that long game, you have to tell the stories economically, and playing only once a month, this is particularly important.

For the same reasons, I think Thrice Told Tales is a good story supplement to look at. The Nigrasaxa freebie is also a good starter. The first long-running saga I played used The Tempest, which was a good help to get a long story arch, but TBH there are many issues with porting 2ed material to 5ed.

Another pitfall, I think, is too many rulesets and too much power early on. Magi advance quickly enough, and if you introduce too much too early, it can get out of hand.

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One of the pitfalls built into the system is the assumption of 10 points of flaws to earn 10 points of virtues. If you're playing once per month, I would allow at most 1 story flaw per character. In my games I've largely waived flaws except where appropriate and things have not broken down at all.

I do recommend a hermetic flaw for wizards and all PC's taking a one point personality flaw.

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Maximum one story flaw is RAW, but the pitfall is to make so many SG driven stories, that there is not enough time to tell the ones solicited by players, including honouring their story flaws.

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Also: the Alps has something in common with the Rhine Tribunal, as both are dominated by old and powerful covenants, with seemingly little room for young magi to make an impact. It's also just geographically close! So you may find some good stuff in Guardians of the Forest.

The Alps are also home to the domus magna of houses Criamon and Jerbiton, so may be worth reading the Houses of Hermes books (which, to be honest, are great anyway).

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I will note that Timothy Ferguson, who wrote Sanctuary of Ice, has posted a bunch of stuff cut from the book, including a couple of covenants.

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One of the things I considered in my game in the Greater Alps -- but discarded, because I knew it'd be extremely variant and didn't need the setup -- would be to have Tarragon Vale still be an active covenant at the start of the saga... and one of the few (or only) sympathetic to a new Spring covenant. Showcase a few friendly overtures to the new covenant, contrast with ambivalence or animosity from the other covenants... then have the coven go missing. It'd be a good Hook for Hermetic politics/scheming which the PCs will have more interest in, rather than it just being a background mystery.

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Some good feedback!

I don't want to have the tribunal TOO anti-Spring Covenenant. Most of these players are new to Ars, so I want to be a welcoming Storyguide, at least intially. (Most are D&D-centric players, so I might lean a bit more into the fantastical elements, such as the INfernal and Dragons.)

I also like the idea of Vis being rationed by the tribunal, forcing hte troupe to either negotiate for it, or hunt for new sources. (Especially if we have a Verdititus or potentially Bonisagis im the party.)

I also like the write-up for the virtous Amaranth plant in the Sanctuary of Ice sourcebook; alot of potential storyhooks there for that dealing with the benefits and drawbacks (and possible addiction!!)

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@loke mentioned playing the long game. To add to that, make sure someone takes notes!

We have a wiki for our saga, and it's been the greatest help. So much info. And sometimes, when you're a bit low on ideas, you can go back and look for story seeds you planted literally years ago and look like a genius when you bring them up again.

It also seems to encourage a feeling of community. It's really just all-round awesome.

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Keep in mind, Tribunals books are only here to help you set up your game, not an absolute law.
If you like the location of the Great Alps, take it, and possibly use Guardian of the Forest theme, customs and Peripheral code instead of the proposed setting (Gilds, ranks, forest spirits becoming Mountains spirit). It is just a re-skinning.

Or you might want to draw inspiration from the Contested Island: each valley in the Alps is affiliate to a clan, with abundance of faeries kingdoms, small hedge traditions. Each valley trades with their neighbours for services or magical goods that they don't have.

If your players are coming from D&D and don't mind not sticking to the canon background, cherry pick what you like. Keep the name of the covenants, domus magnus so you don't have to re-invent a whole Tribunal, but reshuffle the local politic and culture borrowing what you liked in some sourcebooks or what would suits your players.

In fact, during your session zero, don't go too much in the details of the Tribunal, just a few broad strokes (domus magnus, and possibly two main current issues, ideally inspired by some background elements from the PCs). The least details you gave, the less preliminary work, the more freedom you have to adapt and the less retcon you will have to do if things don't work.
Because if the players don't ask questions about such or such point of politics, internal affairs or topics, it means they are not so interested in it. Thus you don't have to worry about it.

A mistake I made during my first Saga was to plot the whole Mythic Europe and each Tribunal with the other storyteller. We had fun, but we did not use maybe 80% of the material.

If one mage wants to do trading, then mention that covenants in this Tribunal are used to have trade agreements, regular fairs, etc. If nobody is interested, just hand wave this part and grant their covenant resources according to their boons and storyhooks.

If their mages wants to mostly focus on their personal research, ignore the heavy politic in the Tribunal unless you want to make an adventure out of it. It is always fun to drag unprepared and ill-suited characters into an adventure they are not ready for. Don't do it too often, but once is fun to watch them looking for solution that fits within their realm of expertise.

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I love this advice!

Im definitely a follower of "Rule Zero"'- the rules are just guidelines.

But the Tribunal book has given me some great initial ideas, and the players will have interesting hooks and Covenant ideas.

I dont have an overarching plot, Im gonna let the players/characters drive things initially. (Plus Im just hoping to set up a shared world to play in so others can also Storyguide!)

I think Im set on doing the tribunal after the first adventure, having the PCs formally intriduced to the order. (The first adventure will be small and insular, leaning towards "Festival of the Damned." (Or technically the Ghoul of St Lazare.)

And a newbie-type char-gen question. Im pretty set on a newly formed Spring Covenant. Whats a balanced point value for a new covenant? (I believe the core books lists up to 300 points? But that seems like alot...)

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Also, if you have an idea, don't be afraid to dangle some long form goals that may not be reached for a while yet. Gives the PC's some anchor points to frame their goals around.

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  • It isn't. A sound summa is 30 BP, so you can cover at most ten arts, and then you would have nothing else.
  • The BP system sucks. Even a minimal primer is 20 BP and they are supposed to be readily available at low cost.
  • If trade is widespread, the BP system sucks even more. If you throw everything into vis, you have 1500p, and you can buy what you need in game.

Personally, i would scrap the BP system completely. One alternative is the dowry system which I have adapted from an ancient post on this forum.

If you insist on using the BP system, 300BP is probably fine.

One point to bear in mind is that the stories you run and the trade infrastructure in the setting are part of the balance. Finding vis sources is a good story for beginners, and if you run a few of those, you should start with fewer sources.

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Those dowry rules look great. I will put them in my tool box for my next saga. Thanks!

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By the way, when creating the covenant and players are selecting hooks, emphasize one key thing (that I did not get right the first time I played): hooks are not here to balance boons, they are there to signal the ST that we - the players - are interested to get involved in such type of adventures:

  • Resources hooks means: we want to fight for our basic survival and want to set up trade, business and such.
  • Resident hooks means: we want "soap opera" drama at our doorstep, and are looking forward playing Companions and Grogs
  • External relations hooks: please, toss us some politics & negociations adventures, with the neighbours, the Order, the Church.
  • Structure hooks: we want to play builders!

And conversely, boons means: we don't want to deal so much with these types of issues, that why we selected those easy ways to go around. Abundance of vis ? we want to be able to craft our items without sweating, good books ? please, can't we not have to argue and sell our soul to progress ?

If you present it that way, it will be much easier to get people on board, instead of having discussion like: "Okay, I would like that edge that will make me more powerful, but how can I balance it with something that won't bother me too much."

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I find that to be a very elegant and succint way of putting it.

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If no-one has played the system, I would ask each of them say what they'd like in a covenant, and then build the covenant yourself taking their requests in to account and completely ignore the points, just put in what you want.

I accept that's a fair bit of work, however, I remember in another thread someone mentioned it was session 3 before they started actually playing. after making magi, grog, companion and covenant.The delay affected the enjoyment of the game such that it failed and they stopped playing.

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