I just got a call from my FLGS. My copy is waiting there for me. I'll pick it up this afternoon.
I'll take any questions tat you've got
This is going to be a tough one to ask questions about, given the nature of the content. But without giving anything away, can you see anything there that you can/will use in your saga?
Hrm... do I dare trek to NYC to get a copy, or order it online?
Whawha-wha!
I will claim it in the name of me with the coming of the dawn!
-Ben.
My lovely fiancee went to get the book for me as I ran my "Descent into Hell" session.
Reading over it, and flipping about, it seems like a very fun and interesting collection. I'll try and dig a little deeper and give some more thoughts...
I'm a busy enough man that any story that could easily fit into my saga might well get a go. At the moment I see a story about an attack against a village by things that look like the ghosts of ancient vikings could be tweaked to be the result of meddling by the Ars goetia antagonists in my saga. I can wrap all sorts of deception and cross purposes to make the players wonder about the plot and I can give the players a fun adventure with very little work on my part.
I don't think that I'd ever use an adventure without altering it to fit my saga and many of these stories can be made to fit. I think that I'll get my money's worth.
That's great! I hope they work out for you.
My copies arrived today. It looks fantastic. There's some really atmospheric artwork in there.
You're all probably sick of my prompting, but there really is loads in there. Every troupe should get a copy.
If only game stores where I am carried Ars! grrr. Definitly picking this up asap.
In my eyes Tales of Mythic Europe is a good collection of adventures. The stories are up-to-date-scenarios (open course of events, strictly no railroading), they breath the specific Ars-Magica-Feeling, most of them can be adapted easily, they show the storyguide (maybe slightly disoriented by fifteen sourcebooks...) some of the multitudinous new rules and ideas at work. With this book you don´t get an epic saga, but some helpful building blocks to work with.
Chiarina
I preordered mine, which means that it's already on its way and will arrive on ... July 8. Arrg.
The book seems interesting but... I just hate soft covers for roleplaying games books. 
(I acknowledge this is a purely personal taste, nothing logical in it.)
Never judge a book by its (soft) cover...
1 Like
REGO THREAD!!!! THREADOMANCIUS MAXIMUS!!!!
Hi,
Matt Ryan asked my opinion on the diverse adventures of TOME, so here it comes. 
Keep in mind that I read this in 2 days, so details have generally been skipped, and I have not looked at any particular stats in the book.
THE CHAMPIONS PORTION
A magical conflict superimposed with a mundane conflict. Magical and mundane conflicts intertwined have the potential to be just GREAT. In this escenario both conflicts are mixed but not totally mirrored. I found that the mundane complict is somewhat sketchy in the end, but it is still dangerous to be there when dozens of mundanes decide to chop each other to bits. The hermetic confict is much more interesting, and has the elements that make the OoH great and peety at once. Nice one. I liked the exmiscellanea/witch tradition described in the appendix.
I also liked the existance of magi without a +3 intelligence. That is something of a novelty. Both hermetic characters that appear there are interesting concepts. Far from the most powerful wizards around, but with a good twist that shows how diverse traditions in the order coexist (or not) and how the ooH can include disparate traditions in its womb. One of the magus is specialized as a warrior, and shows how a "do it yourself" flambeau can be built around a couple of spells to take on all comers on a dueling approach (1 on 1 combat). He fails slightly there (Basically because he lacks much penetration), but is still a fairly nasty character.
An adventure for those that do not fear shedding blood. And having their blood shed in return. Special mention to the Magic realm and the Twilight Void. Their appearance in this scenario made the descriptions in Realms of Power: Magic much more concrete.
THE SHIP OF DESIRE
Here we find our first "rather weird" adventure. It can be played almost anywhere in ME. The whole adventure has a slightly dark sense of humor to it that I found amusing, but I found the preposition of the papal legate there a little bit over the top for an introductory adventure. Still, it makes the adventure work, so no biggie at all here. The proposition is so out of my usual league of thought that it made me blink quite heavily when first reading it. After that, I liked it. It is an adventure heavy on the roleplaying and low on the die rolling. Hack n' slashers stay away. If you play "grand style", the consequences of this adventure can be saga arc-reaching. If you don't it can be a triffle. Somewhere in between is were we all tend to fall. This adventure can be played with grogs and companions only. In fact, it is better if this is the case.
FALL AND RISE
This one is GOOD. Like the rest of the book it tends to be medium-powered when it comes to assumed power levels for the magi of your covenant. I liked the introduction of a version of Tytalus (Hippian) that I can look at and not think of 14 year old jerks. I gained some respect for tytalii back due to this adventure. The start of the adventure, with Severin's attack is just hilarious due to the "WTF is he doing!!?!" Factor 
. If you take some of the hooks seriously, you can build a whole saga out of them, but do not need to. I like it. For a starting covenant it would give them a share of enemies and allies as well as a sensible leader to act as their spokesman in the early spring periods. Severin also has some rather ingenious spells for inspiration or plain copy (I loved the acorns for fun spell).
THE HOSPITAL'S DUE
My problem with this adventure might come from a lack of knowledge on how Hospitalliers operated. What they do to trigger the adventure left me with my jaw dropping and thinking "this can't be normal...". If you leave that aside the adventure is not bad, and can be solved by any level of skill on the part of the characters. Better if they are not the hack & slash kind, though. However, the city is a little bit problematic. Most of us have our cities fairly defined in our sagas, and the setting makes quite a few claims in that area that are not that common: if a hospitallier priory of that size was near them, the characters of any covenant would have heard of it. So integrating this adventure with a settled saga is more difficult than with a lot of other adventures in the book. This is the main concern. If you can place the hospitralliers in your setting without causing a major fuss, it is a fairly good adventure. Those Hospitalliers can be quite similar to robber barons!
EDIT: Alex White (much more versed in everything Hospitallier than myself) confirmed that Hospitalliers and other crusading orders did just that all the time. Scary... and story seedy 
LOYALTY AND LAW
This adventure is just GREAT. Or it might be that this is the kind of adventures that I enjoy the most 
Works well for Spring magi, but can be played as well with more powerful ones or even with grogs and companions. if you want to develop a saga site, this is your adventure. Shows the complications of nobility like nothing I had seen since Ordo Nobilis. It is a mundane-oriented adventure, so you'd better do not expect dragons around this time. The limit on the magic usage in the escenario shows quite some forethought on part of the authors to prevent magi just Rego Mentem-ing the adventure to an easy conclusion.
A MUSICAL MYSTERY
This is one of the weird ones, along with the ship one. I found it rather easy to solve, if you pay attention to the music thingy, but apart from that a nice scenario. It can spell doom for a saga if the characters do not solve the mystery, though, especially if their covenant is near and they do not have a very powerufl Aegis. The music spirit is just... strange. Not bad, but strange.
RETURN OF THE RIDERS
This is werd-ish but quite a laugh. I found that for a lot of the magi we tend to play I would have to tone down the raiders quite a bit in order for my players to SURVIVE (let alone win) the escenario. this is a high powered escenario to all aspects, and it is DESIGNED to be so. All those archmages: step forward. Apart from the power level (excessive for my troupe) and also because of it, the escenario is exactly claims to be. Did you invent a spell of mass murder that you are craving to use? Here you have it. Do you think you could win Poitiers all by yourself, even being French? Step forward and prove it. This is where you can cast the Ultimate Spells of Doom laughing and not fearing the code. If you want to use it more regularly make the raiders appear every 10 years.
WARRING FAMILIES
Low power level adventure. A weak magus is the most powerful spellcaster required. Still, some magical trinkets and investigative spells would help A LOT here. the opposition is not that great (if the players succeed), so this should be a fairly easy conclusion once they solve the knot of the adventure. Requires quite some investigative and social skills. Blatant gifted weirdos stay away.
WHAT LIES BENEATH
Another political one. It is a long running story arc, more than an adventure. This is medium up in required power levels if you allow the "regular" development of the adventure to its final conclusion, so the characters should be aiming to twart the opposition ASAP if they do not want a BIG PROBLEM in their hands. I liked the crows, specially. More political than brute force-ish for most of the time, but you can put a few fights in if your players fancy that.
In general the impression that the book left on me was that the adventures that required magi were fairly high powered, while those that did not (could be solved by companions) can be played at any stage of a saga. Overall I rate this book as a fairly good one. As with any adventure book, it has things that will clash with your saga, and that will not be usable, but in general it is well thought and in line with other ars supplements, and quite a few of the escenarios can be used in a given saga, either directly (wirth the usual adaptation that an escenario always requires to suit the power level and feeling of a saga) or as inspiration for what Mythic Europe can offer as adventure potential
Another welcome insight into the Ars Magica system was the eternal debate (at least in my group) on "how much vis should a magus get? How much XP for what? And what about confidence points?". Rewards, in general. The diverse adventures give you a fairly accurate idea on the diverse "reward"/XP levels that a given challenge level is supposed to yield the player characters. Incidentally I noticed that I (as alpha SG) have been fairly tight fisted when it comes to the amount of vis and confidence points in the saga. Seems that the current cannon suggest a fairly high level of both in a saga.
Cheers,
Xavi
Wow. Thanks for that! You could port that right over to the rpg.net reviews, it's so well done.
(The review, not necessarily the reviewed. That, too, is well done, I think.)
Matt Ryan
LOL. I hope your adventures didn't get much flak there :mrgreen: I tried to be as fair as I could. Keep in mind that I have not read a lot of the info in detail, so those are visceral readings of the adventures. Looking at some detail I noticed (for example) that there are some minor erratas are around with calculations (the bonus of the seacat is not exactly the +28 written in the text if you run the numbers, for example) but nothing really big.
I am reading the first adventure closely now. As I had already said in the previous post( and in this case it is explicit in the text) it requires quite some powerful magi, since starting magi would be crushed by the opposition. Still some starting magi with a fast tongue and a creative use of flashy magics can succeed, even if blood is bound to flow here. The setting is REALLY cool for this adventure even if my players would side with one of the parties without thinking twice.
Today I have had to explain my obvious deprivation of sleep at work (my boss has suspected for a while that I go partying every Monday night for a while...). Mentioning medieval escolasticism, how aristotile's theory did not explain well the motion of items and the invasion of Ulster by De Lacy in 1223 has left him quite puzzled....
Xavi
It may seem amazing, but the crusading orders were out of control. The Hospitallers (and Templars and Teutons) would not hesitate to use brute force and threats to get their way. There are records of them bashing bishops, leaving daggers buried in cathedral doors, sabotage mills and weirs, and more. They were a law unto themselves.
Cheers
Alex
As said, I read the whole book (most of it) in 2 days, so the details and background info were most of the time left to the side in order to get to the meat of the adventure. The above impression was a viceral feeling after fast-reading (is there a word for that?) the adventures. Detail is fuzzy at best in most adventures. Will have to read the description of the hospitalliers more closely Thx for the info Alex.
Cheers,
Xavi
Updated the description for THE CHAMPIONS PORTION
Updated my general conclusion of the rewards.
Xavi