The House of the Crescent Sun - on Kickstarter

Games Discussion Ars Magica
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Hell's advance is not proclaimed by clouds of brimstone and floods of blood. Evil creeps close with soft smiles, in respectable raiment and whispering honeyed lies. The darkness offers what you desire. The first murders are subtle, the initial corruptions hidden in the shadows. The brimstone and blood will come later. But they will come. Step by step evil advances, until at last nobility is sundered, the holy altars lie abandoned, and the virtuous cower in silence. Then the land will drown in blood. Unless you can stand against the evil.

I haven't published a focused campaign setting / campaign for Ars Magica since I wrote Mistridge for 3rd edition. But here we have a brand new Saga set at the edge of the Normandy Tribunal...

I've written The House of the Crescent Sun to be system agnostic, but the PCs are founding a new settlement (i.e. independent Covenant, or a Vassal Covenant) in order to claim and investigate two magical sites in a remote valley... so this is a classic new Saga start - although it also works as a spin-off from an existing Saga.

The players do a deal with the local count, start building (or rebuilding), but then uncover an insidious infernal conspiracy. And as the darkness engulfs the nearby city they must battle against the rising power of hell.

The House of the Crescent Sun balances set-piece adventures with a sandbox setting full of strategy an impactful choices. Each story gives the PCs chances to gain friends and enemies amongst their neighbours, and guidelines are included on down-time diplomacy between adventures - a custos could have plenty to do while the magi are studying each season! So when the forces of the infernal make their move then the characters' actions will determine how strong the darkness is, and who will stand with or against them.

Backers get: the main Campaign book; a Players' Guide booklet; system notes on running for Ars Magica (or 5e or Mythras), with stat blocks, new infernal powers, etc.; and digital handouts. The campaign book and players' book feature full-colour pages with all hand-drawn art, in a medieval illuminated manuscript style.

Skirmishes, assassinations, court politics, military strategy, thefts, diplomacy, sieges, and demonic conspiracies, in a campaign where choices matter and where demons are more insidious than any that the players have faced before.

It’s live on Kickstarter now - click this link.

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Mistridge is a great old book. Great to see you writing for Ars again!

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Thanks :slight_smile:

Mistridge was very much a “vanilla” introduction, building on information already in 2nd ed - so I can’t take too much credit (or blame) for it.

This one is in many ways simillar (a covenant near the end of an isolated valley…) but has a much more distinctive direction.

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And... 50% of the way to target in 24 hours :slight_smile:

So a big thank-you to those who have backed the project so far!

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Yesterday was a good day! The project is now fully funded.

First: Thank you!

Thank you to everyone who has backed us.

Thank you to the folks at Atlas Games for their support - Michelle Nephew, John Nephew, and David Chart.

And thank you to everyone who has Liked, Shared, Commented, or forwarded links to the project.

Second: onwards and upwards!

I'll be doing a video showing how the Political Tracker Tool works in the campaign, since we've hit that stretch goal.

And then let's see how far we can get through the other stretch goals! :smiley:

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We've been tinkering with ways to visualise loyalties and allegiances in Ars Magica Sagas.

As The House of the Crescent Sun has hit its Kickstarter target (yay!) and started ticking off stretch goals, this is a good time to explain this tracker, since doing a prettier version of the tool was one of the stretch goals that we've hit.

So, I've done a video that shows how the tracker works, with reference to the campaign arc of The House of the Crescent Sun - the actual tracker is still a nasty mockup in Miro - Marija needs to do an illustrated version for the Kickstarter backers - but it gets the idea across….

I've put it here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/138734670 (Turn audio on for the video - no subtitles. It is a Patreon link, but you shouldn't need a Patreon account to view it.)

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The House of the Crescent Sun has hit its "More Handouts" stretch goal (yay!), and we've started planning out the handouts. And surprisingly, we're suspecting that the single most useful handout we can provide might be a seating plan for a wedding. Why?!

Well, a medieval feast is an opportunity for social exporation - meeting people, picking up rumours, verbally sparring with rivals, discovering clues.... It's like exploring a wilderness. Where do you want to go? What are you going to do there?

And when we throw the PCs into a new geographical area, we might give them a map - a sketch with a general outline of the area, a bunch of intriguing details, visual clues, some areas blank for them to explore... For a feast we can do much the same thing - giving them a kind of map of the social space.

I’ve done a video here that shows how this works in practice: https://www.patreon.com/posts/139253952 (yes it’s a Patreon link - but no you don’t need to subscribe, it is public.)