Pendragon is a great source for these things!
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I utterly second this. The history of Queen Tamar is awesome, it's one of the first places Mongoles ran through when first getting in contact with Christianity (on their way to the Kievan 'Rus), and Georgia is basically almost in the Renaissance in period (though it sadly lasted for a very short time). Also, the mysterious Urania is based very close to the north, which makes for great story seeds. I've been extensively using Georgia in my most recent games, and it's got a great story potential.
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Yes, I'm in the Georgia-fan group, too. (Never had a problem looking it up online, though, despite living in the US, but I tend to use quite a few terms in my searches.) A book covering east of Novgorod and north of TC&TC would be cool, though linking them together might be difficult. So much cool stuff with Georgia and the rest of that region. And then there are the Cumans/Kipchaks. I don't remember if Novgorod extends to include Volga Bulgaria. There are also the Bashkirs and the Samoyedic tribes.
I have managed to find a good bit on Georgia, despite how useless the common tools are, but that area and the bulk of Asia Minor would be great topics for future Ars Magica products. For example, I only recently found out that many of the deepest cave systems known are in northern Georgia, often fairly recently discovered. That sort of thing would be fabulous for a site for the Terrae cult, cthonic religions, or lost relics from early mankind.
(I was disappointed that the Thebes book mostly skipped Anatolia despite it having been a major percentage of the territory of the Tribunal until fairly recently. Yes, the Turks rule it now, but it was in the Greek sphere for millennia up into the living memory of older magi. I understand the limitations of page count, but if the Order was going to look outside their borders for unclaimed treasures and ancient lore, a place that they were already really familiar with would normally be the first to visit.)
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It's information that's easily available elsewhere, so it didn't need to be in the Stonehenge book. 
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If you can get the Stupor Mundi rpg supplement from Alphetar games, it's totally worth it. 
-Ben.
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Seconding David here a moment--
when you're punching up a Tribunal/region for a book, there's a lot of hard choices on what you're covering and what you've got to leave by the wayside. Part of this goes to the idea of theme that Timothy mentioned ("This is more political, so we need to make sure we have the supports here for that kind of saga. Oh, but this one is on contested vis sites, we need to make sure we cover the tug-of-war on those...") and part of it goes to the idea that you're creating a functional, useful portrait of a region that will provide good game play "out of the box," and hopefully inspire people to go do the extra homework that's a part of Ars Magica.
To me, the books are a starting point, and then it's a dive into whatever I'm trying to do or run to get to the level of detail I feel will let me do the next arc justice. I understand that's not everyone, but it's a consideration.
TL;DR: Writing ArM material is a constant stream of difficult choices of "Do I include this? It's cool, but?" then deciding if the cool thing is easily found otherwise, and then if it's still too cool to omit or if you've got an awesome idea to go with it.
-Ben.
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I was being slightly tongue-in-cheek, but this is absolutely true. Were I writing Heirs to Merlin now, I would include more folklore, but the above problem would still exist. There is too much folklore, and it is easier to research and apply than medieval history. It is a constant balancing act, and while I don't think I got it quite right in Heirs to Merlin, well, it was my first book, and I wrote it more than 20 years ago. I would hope I have learned something since then.
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The balance of what is included in our written works is always one of the hardest parts. Most of us never get it to quite exactly where we feel it is perfect. That is one of the reasons that most authors end up with a huge collection of notes and half finished manuscripts.
While none of you will ever get to read any of my writings or look over any of my maps, to this day I still think about some of the things I could have changed to improve products i produced 20 years ago. Some of the ones with the smallest distribution such as the flip books for the 20th SFG are ones I want to change the most. It is the one I think is my most basic and flawed work, though they liked it enough that they official requested to "borrow" me for their deployment to Afghanistan.
EDIT: Side note, am I actually a published author is all of my published works are classified and unavailable to the general public? No idea there.
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publish means making public doesn't it?
Yes it does and I was just laminating the fact that though several of my works saw international distribution and I have been read by more people than her, my wife gets to hold it over my head that she is a published author and I am not.
(She is a biological research scientist and has a couple of published papers)
Sure. The world never was fair, was it?
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Don't know why, but I found that rather hilarious. I did have to put my foot down that I would not be going back to college to get my doctorate. I don't care how nice Dr & Dr InfinityzeN would sound
Robert Heinlein used to call it a paradox, or pairo'docs, or some such.
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Well Berengar Drexel already did one adventure on Sicilly. (In Sub Rosa)
His work in Sub Rosa was a bit light in detail but he seems to know his mediveal Italy
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Oh, that's interesting... here's hoping it incorporates the hooks out of F&F.
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Would it be bad form to resurrect this and put in my two farthings? For the sake of expressing enthusiasm and support for this idea, I'll risk it.
I concur with the consensus here that a) I would love to see the tribunal books all brought up to 5th edition and that b) it is the 3rd edition ones which need it most, starting with Rome and then the translation/adaptation of the Spanish Iberia book. What I'd like to add to the conversation is the following.
Content aside (which has been pretty thoroughly discussed), 5th edition is so beautifully done and aesthetically pleasing that it is a pleasure to own a bookshelf full of them. I have seen it described as probably the most complete and coherent RPG ever published, and I agree. This issue of the seven missing books is a thorn in the side, though (of an admittedly slightly OCD soul). While the 4th edition books are nice in their own right and not that hard to adapt to 5th edition play, I (and I'm sure I'm not the only one) would still much rather have the set completed. Much worse, though, is the thought of having the ugly little paperbacks from 3e sitting on the shelf beside the lovely 5e ones.
As has been brought up before, I for one would fully support either a subscription or kickstarter format to get these books published.
On the topic of content and what could be added to future books, there was a conversation about adding a listing of library books. While it's too late go back and add them to previously-published books and adding it to new ones would leave the issue unevenly covered, this is a very intriguing idea. How about (slightly off-topic but still apropos new 5e publications) a Liber Librorum, covering the libraries of all the Order in one tome?
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You might be interested in the upcoming Iberia book, written by several natives to Iberia (I think - sorry if I'm mixing this up.) for whom it appears to be a masterpiece work of love. It's coming out or just came out in Spanish. There are hopes for translations because it looks like they've done some really excellent work; my Spanish is just too minimal to evaluate formally.
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Thank you. That is indeed an encouraging development. Here's hoping it will be translated--my Spanish is also minimal, though I find that I am able to read it and Italian sometimes at a low level through my knowledge of French and Latin (neither of which themselves are great). Although to be honest, I'd still rather have the Spanish 5e on my shelf than the English 3e one, lol.
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