The rumour mill :)

[Ferretz]

Well, this might have been asked before, but I'd like to check for any updated rumours. Will there be any new tribunal books in the near future? I loved Guardians of the Forests, but I feel there are some very interesting areas in Mythic Europe that hasn't been explored yet, in any edition, as far as I know.
So let's share what tribunal book we hope is next, and why we sould like to see it

My vote goes to Tribunal of Thebes. Would really love to explore the Greek myths and such in Ars Magica.
Oh, who am I kidding? I would love to see all the tribunals made into books similar to Guardians of the Forests.

E.

[Emre]

@Ferretz

My vote goes to Tribunal of Thebes. Would really love to explore the Greek myths and such in Ars Magica.

My vote also goes to Thebes. And surprisingly, it seems like interest in Thebes is on the rise. Many people place their sagas in Thebes. IMHO as Greek lands are the early source of Hermetic occult, it makes it even more attractive for troupes. I think a book about the Tribunal of Thebes would be a very fitting addition to the ArM line. May Holy Line Editor hear our humble pleas and make just and favorable decisions in his infallible wisdom

[Erik_Tyrrell]

John posted this back in November

David and I have talked about doing another Tribunal sourcebook. The truth is, Guardians of the Forests will be selling out in the not too distant future. It probably does not make economic sense to reprint it (we'll make it available as a pay-download PDF, just as we have with True Lineages, so the material will still be available to those who want it, of course), but we think it's good for the product line to have a Tribunal book available. Normandy is the most likely subject. However, there are a lot of other books that need to be done first, so we're looking at 2 or more years in the future.

[Ferretz]

All right, so it's coming.. eventually. But my campaign is set in the Rhine, so no rush.
Also, there are rumours about another book this year, not yet announced? Any thoughts?

E.

[Erik_Tyrrell]

@Ferretz

All right, so it's coming.. eventually. But my campaign is set in the Rhine, so no rush.
Also, there are rumours about another book this year, not yet announced? Any thoughts?

E.

My understanding is that the four scheduled books for 2006 were/are Covenants, HoH: Mystery Cults, RoP: Infernal, and City and Guild. (TMRE is one of last years books that is just comming out late). I'm pretty confident that we won't see anything else out of Atlas for Ars until 2007. The anounced books for 2007 are RoP: Magic and HoH Societas they'll be two more as well but I don't think that we've been officially told what they'll be.

[Ed_C]

Thebes would be very interesting.
I remember playing in a campaign a few years back where the covenant was in Greece, and we had some trouble in the tribunal with some seekers who had discovered a font of Mana within a regio on Mount Olympus. Drinking the Mana had some interesting effects on the magi that had drunk from it, and we had to go find the river Styx so that we could get rid of them, as they were playing at being the Greek Gods.

Ed

[Tuura]

On any other day I would say I would like a Tribunal book that covers the edges of Mythic Europe because I find those regions most interesting. However I'm a Tytalus at heart and want the Normandy book because House Tytalus and Fudarus are the best house/covenant on the block

[Jarkman]

@Emre

My vote also goes to Thebes. And surprisingly, it seems like interest in Thebes is on the rise. Many people place their sagas in Thebes. IMHO as Greek lands are the early source of Hermetic occult, it makes it even more attractive for troupes.

I'd also like to see Thebes developed, perhaps combined with Transylvania (although that would potentially be a huge book) - the Byzantine side of the Order is somethign I'd like to see someone take a good hard look at as it's basically been neglected in canon but is amazingly rich in terms of Saga options. It's probably the most interesting region IMO and sufficiently different in folklore etc from the Western European default setting of many Sagas to make it interesting.

Till then you can always try the Jeremiah Genest's excellent take on the Thebes Tribunal at:

geocities.com/leucretia/oocinfo/oocinfo.html.

It would be hard to top this, even if updated to ArM5.

Normandy/Provencal could almost be one Tribunal Book - I can't see how you deal with one without dealing with the other, but I can't really see how this would provide anything very different from the Rhine Tribunal - it's fairly "vanilla" Hermetic unless you include the Domus Magnae of Flambeau and Tytalus (which may well egt developed in the Societas book to a limited extent).

Hibernia is the only other Tribunal that might be interesting as we haven't seen anything much about it before and it would be a logical supplement to hide anything about Diedne in, which might be interesting. However, a lot of the ideas etc could probably be incorporated into the Realms of Power:Faerie book and it's a peripheral tribunal and likely to be less commercially successful than a book targeted more to a mainstream Ars Saga. I mean, Land of Fire and Ice was a great book but it doesn't seem like there were ever many Sagas set in Iceland.

All the other Tribunals have had an official take in earlier editions and revising one of these just for the sake of ArM5 is likely to lead to flooding with splatbooks that the line doesn't really need IMO. It's probably easier and makes better sense for the line to convert most of the previous ideas etc. in the old Tribunal Books using the core rules and probably the HoH books, TMRE and perhaps some of the Realm books without "wasting" one of the four books a year.

Regards,

Jarkman

There the only two Tribunals that haven't had a

[Cornelius (Simon Cornelius)]

Normandy may be "mainstream", whatever that means, but I'd still like it. Anything up to the quality of GotF would be welcome.

[Ferretz]

I'm somewhat divided on this, actually. In one way, I would like to see a Tribunal with less "traditional" style, like Thebes. It would be great to learn more about the ancient history of Ars Magica. On the other side, I would like to see one of the Tribunals bordering the Rhine Tribunal, as then I could expand my current campaign easier, which is set in the Rhine.
Something that also would be cool is a book about alternate time periods for Ars Magica, which rules for linking them up with the main time period. For example, a book about 500 AD or something. Or a history book in general, going through the Order in detail from it's beginning and rule for playing in the different eras. That would be cool

E.

[Tuura]

I agree with Ferretz. The heart of the Order is important and need not be 'vanilla' as Guardians of the Forest expresses by introducing the importance of senority and the Guilds. There has been some suggestion in the books that Normandy engages in illusions and covert work because of the large number of mundanes in the region. Exploiting that idea, one could easily make the Hermetic Normandy world very different than the Rhine and not 'vanilla'.

I have always wanted weird books myself. A history book, or an alternate setting book, even if they occured on "Mythic Earth". Mythia Asia or Mythic Araby in particular, but I'm not sure if these are marketable products.

I love the Tytalus and yes I want Fudarus to get it's day in the sun. But I would be happy with anything that is up to Guardians of the Forests quality. If that kind of feel and quality can be maintained, I'll be happy with the book regardless of what the setting is.

On old books, observations suggests that when the old tribunal books go out of print they'll become available as PDF's. But do old Tribunal books merit a reprint or rewrite?

I don't think any one Tribunal book is strong enough to merit an update or reboot. As an example, over the years the Rome book has slowly grown on me, but what do you do with that book? Update it? There's not much to do in terms of updateing it. Rewrite it all together? Having rewritten it, what is the return on the investment? Certainly the diehards (that includes me) would get it, but I can see the existance of two Tribunals book "Old Rome" and "Rome 2.0" hurting each other. Even if one is out of print, a person who owns "Old Rome" may not feel a need to buy Rome 2.0. Beyond that, my guess is Tribunal books are good sellers, but they aren't as good as Realms books, or anything that involves magic and wizard stats.

Again, Rome was just an example. My point is, while I have no part in decideing anything about the Ars line, what makes sense to me is the production of new Tribunal books over rewriting/rebooting an old one.

On a side note, I just picked up Sanctuary of Ice. Yes it's been out forever. It wasn't a region I was interested in and in terms of saving cash it was something I didn't need to get. I've always passed it up for something else. Recently I've had a little cash to burn so I picked it up. I like it a lot.

What I disliked about the very old Tribunal books was they were heavy on mundane information and low on insights into the Hermetic World. I always felt like the Hermetic information provided was thrown in at the end and that always frustrated me. Sanctuary of Ice does a great job of detailing the world of wizards. Had all the old Tribunals books shed insight into the world of wizards like Sanctuary of Ice did, the world of Ars would be so much richer than it already it is.

That sort of insight was maintained in GoF. If the Tribunal book, where ever it is set, can maintain a focus on the world of wizards over a historic listing of mundane facts I'll continue to be a happy consumer.

[Michael_Tree]

I would also like to see a combined Normandy / Provencal book. The two regions are closely related, and combined are comperable in size to all the territories covered in the GotF book.

That said, a Thebes tribunal book would be fantastic. There's a definite lack of Byazntine information in the setting.

[marklawford]

@Michael Tree

I would also like to see a combined Normandy / Provencal book. The two regions are closely related, and combined are comperable in size to all the territories covered in the GotF book.

That said, a Thebes tribunal book would be fantastic. There's a definite lack of Byazntine information in the setting.

Given that we're talking about Provencal and Normandy in the same breath, do we know whether there is any backstory about the two Tribunals? It's just got me thinking that perhaps there may have been a little conflict within a larger original Tribunal that led to a split.

It would certainly mirror the divisions in the region at that time and would give the area a flavour that, as yet, the other Tribunals just don't provide.

It would also provide some nice examples of the kinds of things that Magi fall out over and how things can escalate personally and politically.

That said, I do fancy Thebes.

[Berengar]

@marklawford

Given that we're talking about Provencal and Normandy in the same breath, do we know whether there is any backstory about the two Tribunals? It's just got me thinking that perhaps there may have been a little conflict within a larger original Tribunal that led to a split..

Ahm ... to put it bluntly, the 'close relation' between Occitania and Provence on one side, and Norman-dominated northern France and the Frankish heartland around Paris on the other, started with the Albigensian crusade 1209. There is really no reason from the history of the 8th or 9th century for a Tribunal spanning both areas.

Kind regards,

Berengar