Yes, that's what i meant. A score of 0 costs 20 XP.
Hi,
Hmm. Ten skills for the typical grog is too many. A character gets a language, which would no longer count as a normal skill. He gets an Area Lore. Four more skills should cover it, tops, plus a Profession, which probably arises from a status virtue or flaw. A character can do better but this requires more virtues.
Note that I've been excluding combat from consideration here, but probably ought to set down a few thoughts:
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It is traditional to rewrite combat.
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Attack totals should include Str rather than Dex. This includes ranged weapons. The archetypal warrior is Mighty, not Graceful. No rapiers here, no unarmored Yankee in King Arthur's Court evading the clumsy armored stormtroopers, I mean knights. Strength.
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Brawl should work with most weapons, but some weapons take greater skill to use well. That is, a character with just Brawl ought to do better in combat if he holds a sword than if he fights with his fists, since this is Mythic Europe rather than Mythic China.
We end up with the following possibilities for weapons:
a) Weapons that work with Brawl just fine.
b) Weapons that require a virtue to work fully with Brawl; without the virtue, a character accrues penalties and/or does not gain benefits.
c) Weapons that do not work with Brawl and require their own skill.
d) Weapons that do not work with Brawl and require their own virtue and skill.
The default position should be (b): Anyone can use a spear, but a trained pikeman can do better. Anyone can use a dagger, but the dreaded assassins can do more. Anyone can use a sword, but a knight will realize its full potential. Same for a crossbow; it doesn't take much to learn how to use one.
Anyway,
Ken
Hi,
smile Yes. I agree! Get the balance of this right, and the rest mostly falls into place.
Language, Area Lore, four other skills, a profession and perhaps a few other skills that arise from a Status virtue or flaw, with better virtues providing more goodies (the virtue that allows a character the potential to be represent his guild on the city council is different from the one that just lets him be a master which is different from the one that lets him top out as a journeyman). After that, other virtues and flaws modify things.
Some characters are no longer convenient to represent, but no game system adequately represents all possible and reasonable characters.
Let's see. A character with five skills under this system, effectively gains 20xp per year. That's not shabby! Not everyone gets to be a guildmaster and have a larger repertoire of skills. This eminent citizen is obviously a cut or three above a mere peasant, at least in this world. He gains even more xps from this system. On the downside, characters do not get to diversify nearly as much, and have to default. This not only simplifies character sheets, but results in more realistic characters overall, even as a few characters become inconvenient to represent (and that's a good thing too, because I'd rather these guys not be played.)
So we no longer need to track xps, except for magi and a few other weirdos.
The initiation mechanic becomes the primary--and rare--mechanism for breaking the mold. A mundane would not see it this way, of course, but magi understand that all apprenticeships are initiations of a kind; where a mundane might know that "practice makes perfect," a magus understands that the time spent practicing is a Sacrifice, and that the activity has an excellent Correspondence to what is being gained, and so on. Most people never initiate once their apprenticeship is complete; life is too short.
Anyway,
Ken
Since we are starting a saga and most characters are only 3 lines of description right now (even most mages that have been played are less than 20 numbers and 3 V&F overall), I encourage you to develop the system fully and we might give it a go.
EXAMPLE:
SIGURD, A custos:
20 years old (average ability 4)
V&F: Custos (free IMS), puissant single weapon, half taltos, tough // pagan,
Abilities.
Speak old norwegian, speak latin, [speak Irish to be developed]
Area lore x2 or x3
Brawl, single weapon, thrown weapon,
Athletics (sailing), Survival (includes Hunt), Awareness,
Legend Lore (a combo of faerie and magical lore)
Sigurd was a member of Custodes Hiberniarum, a covenant on Hibernia during the first war with Davnalleus (the PROPER latin version of the name, not the weird revisionist spelling seen in current supplements 
). In one of their raids against enemy held territory the snekke that they were using was swalloweed by a rapid forming storm, and he and his companions fought themselves fighting for surival. When they emerged exhausted from the storm they found that 300 years have passed and that they were in Hibernia in 1190. He and his companions have adapted, and serve one of their old masters (severin) that seems to have suffered a similar fate, but obviously he is somewhat weird compared to the current situation and has some problems adapting the the current environment. Mann is proving a better area for adaptation, since the old norse customs are still quite common there.
Far from an uncommon character. Quite a few more skills than what you said, and generally on the LOW side of things when it comes to skill selection and messing together several skills (sailing and athletics, hunt track and survival...). Unless you start introducing catch-all skills like "custos", and that would cover survival, hunt, legend and infernal lore, ....
Cheers,
Xavi
Hi,
Most magi have only 3 VFs? Less than 20 numbers even after 15 Arts?
As for developing this fully, I hesitate since I don't own the material. Sketching things out is fine, but I really don't feel comfortable replacing entire chapters.
I'm not sure how this guy has an average Ability of 4, if you're using AM5 rules. He has a total of 120 + 15*15 = 345xp. 75xp go to his native language, leaving 270xp for 9 (or 10) skills, for an average ability a trifle higher than 3. If we separate Survival and Hunt, as in the canonical rules, the average would go down further. And never mind the free Custos virtue.
So I do not see how Sigurd can represent a typical 20yo grog.
Custos: Your character is trained in fighting, providing Brawl as a developed skill. This allows him to fight unarmed and with most weapons, though he lacks elite training in any. This character also has rudimentary fluency in Latin (effectively Latin 3, which will not go up) through exposure to wizards and their ways. He also begins play unfazed by the Gift of one group of magi (typically your covenant.) As one of his other skills, he may choose Lores that represent his familiarity with wizards and strange things; he may choose one such Lore for free. You are obligated to the magi you serve and may die in their service, but there are definite advantages to being the favored retainers of some of the most powerful people in Mythic Europe.
(I see the typical +1 Status virtue as providing 4 benefits, each of which can be a skill, but that can also be wealth or something else.)
Note: I would not allow sailing as part of athletics. Sailor is its own profession, and skill with sheet and rope is not at all general.
If you want to combine survival and hunt, perhaps a skill called Fieldcraft or something like it that requires a specialization?
Old Norwegian is his free language.
Speak Latin he gets from Custos; he'll never speak it like a native but can get by.
Brawl he gets from Custos. He can fight effectively with common weapons, or unarmed if he must.
Area Lore (wherever) is his free area lore.
Area Lore (2) is taken as one of his 4.
Athletics is the 2nd of 4.
Hunt/Survival is combined into the 3rd of 4.
Awareness is the 4th.
Legend Lore can come from Custos.
He has now overflowed: We don't have room for Profession: Sailor.
He no longer needs Single or Thrown Weapon, but can use Brawl for these.
This is about right, maybe a bit too generous. But maybe it's right. considers ponders That means I have to think about it more: What Abilities should a 20yo Viking grog have?
A more extensive revision would compress skills further, as you have done with Survival/Hunt, but also reduce the number of free skills.
grin
In your saga, perhaps. But he is not legal canonically. He has an extra virtue point, two skills combined into one, a Major Story Flaw, and some homebrew rule that provides him with an average Ability score of 4 when it ought to be at best 3 and a tad, assuming equal division of xps.
Still, the conversion is pretty close, except that this character effectively has 5s. So maybe get rid of either the Taltos thing (which is fine, since Norway is a long way from Hungary....) or Tough in order to grab 3 more skills.
considers In a saga where this character was subject to normal rules, I'd want him to be good at the following, in order, and excluding his native language and one area lore:
- Fighting: He's a warrior
- Sailing: He's a Viking, after all
- Awareness: You want him to notice stuff (this isn't necessary for the archetype, but we all know that you're gonna find a way to take it because it's useful, so it's right up here)
- Speak Latin: He needs a way to communicate with the magi.
- Athletics: This is a catch-all skill, and we don't want so physical a character caught fumbling around.
- Swim: Amazing that this was left out; it's a separate and uncommon skill in AM5, but if he's gonna sail, you probably want this.
===
After this, everything else is not essential. - Survival:
- Hunt:
Another language? Ok. Another Area Lore? Ok. Legend Lore? Ok.
That's 11 skills.
I suspect the best major flaw here is Outsider: Viking from 300 years ago. It covers some paganism, some cultural stuff, and so on.
Hmm. As I'm looking this over, there's something about my system that I'm not happy with. On the one hand, I'd love to simplify this character like this:
Sigurd: Viking, Custos, Tough
That pretty much covers him.
I wouldn't include so much in custos. This character shouldn't have Infernal Lore. Not all custos necessarily receive survival or hunt; both are general skills and not everyone really knows how.
Anyway,
Ken
Hi,
grin If I make it Viking, Custos, Tough, Outsider, he's now ready for OTE.....
Anyway,
Ken
I was using YOUR system A 20 year old get an ability of 4 throughout as per your rules. The character has way more abilities than that and lower levels in general, with a few peak abilities at level 5 as usual. I was just showing that the described system might be a tad low in ability availability. The level 4 in skill in all abilities follows your pattern.
The 3 V&F of the magi was just to say that the characters are generally sketched, but not developed yet in a lot of cases, including characters that have taken a HEAVY activity in the saga (read the first part of Severin's journal: the 3 described mages are just 12 numbers (including arts) and 4 lines of description and spells at most). I mentioned this to show that we have not a big issue in "conversion" to do to adopt alternative systems.
Regarding swim (and ride, FYI) we decided that they are so rarely used that they are included in athletics IMS. That is a house rule of us, though, in the same way that IMS there are only 3 realms, and 2 lores since infernal and divine lores cannot be studied separately (ahd hermetic magic cannot tell the difference) and faeries and magical beings are the same thing IMS. The 4 realm thing is just an OoH academic debate around here 
Extra languages and extra area lores are extremely common. Very few people that were not only peasants talked only one language, 2 being fairly common and 3 not rare at all. Languages varied a great deal from area to area, and the nobility of Enghland talked English French and Latin quite commonly and fluently in at least 2 of them (for example).
I look forward to see what you do with the system.
Cheers,
Xavi
Ovarwa, most of your ideas are pretty good for a simplified Ars Magica system. I personally like the detailed system and its ties to the setting because to me it means the numbers mean more than just, well, numbers, but I do agree that it can be complicated to track at times. That said, I think it's worth the investment.
This is where I really disagree with you. Initiation is explicitly a mystical process of attuning yourself to a new magic, making it a part of yourself. For an Hermetic Magus, this is the ceremony for Opening the Arts, also fairly explicitly. Once you're attudened to it, you can then study it more and practise and progress.
Initiation is a wonderful way of handling nonHermetic magic and an utterly awful way of doing anything else. It takes a purely mechanical way for balancing story investment and setting magic, and then reapplies it as an in-setting idea. Once you make an apprenticeship a Sacrifice, you immediately remove all possibility of academic wizardry, books of magic and magic theory and pretty much the basis for communication within the Order. You make everything mystical, from learning to plough to learning to cast spells, and whilst that's a great basis for a game and world (Glorantha, for instance), it's a massive departure from the canon Ars Magica setting where the Mundane world is just that.
People don't learn new things later in life because that would require a great deal of effort, not because they cannot. The investment of time required to become a competent engineer is massive compared to the effort required in remaining an architect, and the rewards will not be seen for a very long time. The incentive to do so is thus small, and the cost high. For a magus who can look forward to a century of life in great comfort, the incentives are much larger and the cost much smaller.
Hi,
smacks head (my head 
) Oh!!
I'd be curious to see his starting and current character sheets; it might help me calibrate things. This has been very helpful.
Anyway,
Ken
Hi,
In a way it already is. Apprenticeships have set terms, are hedged with oaths and so on. A magus and a mundane might look at things differently too.
I might not have been clear. Academic study remains.
The result of this approach is that most characters get 'free seasons' in which they gain experience in pretty much anything. Grogs can be cross-trained, no problem. I want to get away from "characters strive to gain xps."
Anyway,
Ken
Ahh. In which case, my question must be, "Why?"
One of the things I love about Ars Magica is that XP is gained by doing things and applied to those things, rather than something which is gained and then spent. XP, rather than being a reward, is a natural result of practise and work. Shadowrun has always driven me batty in that my character can play football all he likes and never improve, but if he goes out and robs a bank, he can then, by playing football, become better at it. Admittedly, this is made worse by experience being a tangible, transferable quantity in Shadowrun, but nevertheless. XP in Ars is a measure of how much work you've put into something, whether by mundane effort, study or mystical revelation, and the rating is arguably the secondary, derived characteristic only.
Free seasons are, I agree, a bookkeeping fudge, but one which only matters during downtime. During season-by-season play, it all works out fine in my experience.
Hi,
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I want vastly simplified character sheets for most characters. I don't believe this adds to game play. I do believe it gets in the way. That said, I know that there are some "spreadsheet sagas" that are well-served by the bulkier approach, and these sagas yearn for even bulkier rules. I've been in that kind of saga, and I know that some players enjoy it, and these players are probably important for the health of the game. (I have no idea what your game is like, or style of play; I am speaking in general.)
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I want vastly simplified advancement for most characters. If I have a covenant of 100 people, it's nice to be able to say "five years have passed" without having to think too much about the character sheets, even if I know who all 100 people are. (Or, for that matter, if I don't.) Really, if I need a shield grog and I want him to have a bit of personality, I don't see why I need more than a line or two to describe him.
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Hmm. #2 is merging into #3. I think that sparser character sheets actually can promote realism and good roleplay, and dense character sheets are not needed. (I had a similar discussion as the recent Bay Area Tribunal was running, and as a demonstration of my point, I spent the evening playing a very experienced magus whose character sheet did not exist. I don't think the roleplaying suffered because of it.
) -
I think that regardless of the mechanism, the "xps are the reward" does not make sense for most characters. A real master craftsman did not work two season for exposure and spend two seasons practicing his craft. Real mercenaries did not drill, baby, drill. The whole "wealth means you have a free season you can use to gain xps" puts the focus on xps rather than character. Magi and academics are some of the very few people who get to study for its own sake. Most people fall into a pattern and do what they do. Craftsmen craft; courtiers courtiate. (I worded that.
) I like to promote the idea that an adult character is largely who he is and ought to be played for motivation (which often involves personal advancement) rather than character sheet advancement.
Sure. In a sense, Ars Magica binds experience and development to activities that, in the real world, are more likely to correspond to experience and development, than, say, robbing a bank. The Shadowrun example is particularly apt: A wizard in Shadowrun can't even learn his spells without putting himself in mortal danger.
In another sense, experience points are the very same cookie in both systems. Both games are often about characters' development more than characters. A lot of this stuff ought to be easily abstracted.
My experience varied.
Disclosure: I am biased toward lighter systems for play. But I do love to tinker with the large and cantankerous ones.
Anyway,
Ken
I only have stats for characters who see play; important NPCs who nevertheless aren't called upon to do anything active (the covenant's tanner, for instance, have a rough number indicating their skill level, a one line personality summary and that's about it. I modify them with time every now and then.)
This I totally agree with, but don't experience it. It's true that for someone for whom the numbers are what matter, only the numbers matter. For me, at least, XP is a measure not a goal. It represents the cluttered lab bench, the scorch marks and the terrified apprentice which are the result of my learning yet more about the Art of Ignem.
In Shadowrun, the XP are definitely cookies. In Ars Magica, I don't find them so and reckon they are an abstraction in the character's development. Ars Magica rewards you for doing things to improve yourself, including practise, rather than for showing up. In a saga in which I played, one very enjoyable five year period involved no classical adventures at all. The magi bickered with each other, divided resources, did their own research and the covenant and its surroundings changed. The XP let us measure that, but it didn't drive it. The new library, the oracular heads and the flaming argument between the christian Jerbiton and the decidedly non~christian Welsh elementalist about a solstice celebration on covenant soil drove things forward.
I suspect that we regard, and interact with, system differently.
Really interesting debate
After the last few posts, I do not thing that if you shared both your sagas the results would differ widely Only that some people like more numbers than others. Like ovarwa, in my troupe we are on the "light system" camp. The end result is not different from what Fhtagn (glory to Chtulhu) said.
Cheers,
Xavi
Hi,
I interact with system.... Yeah.
So, I'm temping in Marko's online game, running three drake NPCs he statted up. In playing them, I don't really use any of the stats, just his brief descriptions at the end. I took these, sat in the characters, and then played. Well, I let the stats inform the description a little, but where the description and my fleshing them out disagreed with the stats, I just ignored them on the basis that they were in the way. After all, I can run the characters just fine without the stats, and have a pretty good idea of what they ought to be able to do in combat and out of it; I don't need the stats much for all this, and there are quite a few of them.
Concurrently, I also rewrote the stats to better reflect a) how I've been playing these guys, but more importantly to me, b) to satisfy my system aesthetics about how creatures of this kind can be written within the rules. Yeah, I like crunching systems. I don't need more than two sentences for each of these guys but if I have a bunch of points to spend on kewl powerz, I'm gonna rev it to the max and stay in character.
I interact with systems as an activity in itself. Distinct from roleplaying. Like a sentence in a Palladium rulebook. No. Grammar. (Wait, that's William Shatner. Hmmm. Now there's a parody; a Shatner/Simbieda rulebook collaboration.) 16d6 Megasentence Fragments!!!!!
Anyway,
Ken
Been watching "Final Countdown" or "Zipang" lately? :mrgreen:
Lol, ok i seem to have misread context for what you wrote. And seeing it in isolation, its even obvious...
Simple yes, but i really dont like it. For the simple reason that even characters with the same skills shouldnt improve identically over time.
Realism? 
If you want THAT you need to split both skills and attributes alot more.
But your model doesnt promote that more than the RAW does...
No, really? Who could ever have guessed...
That and a few "generic" characters just in case needed...
Never heard of that zipang or final countdown, really, so no I am just bringing resources to Severin through Peripetheia, as the TOME suggest she will. bringing some resources she had "storeed" from the roughly same time that Severin was captured seemed obvious to me
I look forward to see what ovarwa come sup with, but right now basically it sounds like a catchall ability, really, and going for gut feeling. I do not have problems with it myself (we do thatall the time), but I can see somne serious issues here in its current design: too few abilities, tyoo cloonic characters, a tavern brute (puissant brawl) being able to beat down a trained man at arms if you give him a sword (that he has never used).... The idea is really cool IMO, but needs work
cheers,
Xavi
I can see where you are going with this and it works very well for young characters. For older ones they end up with a series of skills at uncommmonly high levels.
If the motivation is not wanting to track side characters I can't realy see why any mechanic is necessary. I tend to identify them by a a profession (age based skill as per core rules) which may include a few abilities I agree and a few personality traits... what more do you need? Until they come into play they dont even need that... I see no purpose in actually pinnning down advancement for farmers and goat herders... until someone decides to play one... then you need a proper character sheet anyway.
"FC" is a movie where USS "Nimitz" runs into a strange storm and ends up early december 1941...
"Z" is an anime series where JSDFN "Mirai"(fictional, but roughly similar to the current Kongo class) does much the same except ends up in 1943...
What happens next and how they end up differs completely and both are well worth seeing at least once.
My thought as well...