So, for whatever reason, many of us have a game idea/concept that we'd like to play or SG for, but haven't been able to do so yet. What ideas do you have?
For myself, I've always wanted to try out the scenario from the covenants books where the PCs are high powered "fixers" for the OoH and do battles over scenic vistas that are typically destroyed.
Another concept I've wanted to run is something in the "twilight" of the order circa the early 1400s - magical sites around Europe are receding, there is less vis to find, more magi to fight over it. This is forcing young magi to accept highly unequal terms to join new covenants, which the PCs categorically reject. They've found the location of a dire swamp, full of evil and poorly understood ancient magic. This is "The End of the Road" for making new covenants.
I've always wanted to try one of those politically nightmarish games where the Parma Magica just doesn't exist yet and there needs to be strict order, well-enforced consequences, and plenty of political/social pressure just to keep all the magi from killing each other, much less being amiable with one another.
I also want a chance to explore a society with magic more ingrained into its foundations rather than shoved away from civilization (not that that's illogical, given the Gift, but I like exploring possibilities) but I may yet be able to explore that part of the game's options if I pull through the difficulty of the research for making my 1000 BC Mythic Israel setting.
Lastly (and I may very well incorporate this and/or the 1st thing into the setting) I have a strange urge to play a Warrior Mages sort of game where the magi are some romanticized version of knights and actually do the physical combat thing (which they of course still do better than everyone else because magic can solve almost all deficiencies).
A long running game of hedgies, making the hedgies be the order of hermes and ditching hermetic magicians entirely. We have played a short saga under that premise (war against Davnalleus & formation of the Ordo Miscellanea) and it was a blast, but it is short.
A saga of grogs (well,companions with 5 virtue points max). Probably during the dark ages.
Repeat the war against davnalleus under the reviewed premises in Sub Rosa, with Davnalleus being Tytalus and Ignes Festi being Flambeau. Man, would that be cool.
I've been itching to do a a game where a covenant is transported out of Mythic Europe to a strangeland. Maybe South of the Sun, Mythic America or Asia. Or maybe a more traditional D&D-like pseudo medieval adventure world.
I've always wanted to run the old Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay campaign, The Enemy Within, using the Ars Magica rules.
It would take a fair amount of adaptation. In particular, character advancement would have to be accelerated, especially for magi, though I'd probably also start them at a much lower power level.
Almost except my idea is that the PC's are natives of Mythic Europe relocated to a very different world. Basically one of the points of the campaign would be to highlight all the things characters from M.E. would find weird in D&D style fantasy worlds.
A saga I played in a long time ago (3rd edition!) did exactly that. Or rather, branched that way.
Once the covenant was well-established, and magi had several decades of experience under their belts, to spice things up we had them whisked away to a different world as they were casting the annual Aegis. In that world the stereotypical great evil had conquered all the land except for a last bastion of hope, and the defenders of that bastion had just (re?)enacted an ancient ritual to summon the heros who'd save the world. The ritual had "resonated" with the Aegis, and the heroes had turned out to be the magi. It sounds very cliche' (and it was!) but we had tremendous fun. I found the fact that the magi could unleash their awesome powers (which, besides, nobody else on their side had) without being bound by the "thou shalt not do this, that, and that other" clauses of the Order liberating in the extreme. A lot of fun also came from the "Back in Mythic Europe..." sessions, where the magi's familiars had to keep the covenant running with their rather meager magical powers (in 3rd edition, familiar powers were definitely more limited, but were not restricted to affecting the magus and/or familiar).
When I started my last Ars game a player wanted Warhammer FR with Ars Magic and it was tempting. We'd just had the Enemy Within game grind to a halt and I think many of us wanted a brutal unforgiving setting with a bit more mythic than typical ME provides.
I'm pondering an Ars game with a setting akin to Forgotten Realms, but as dark-ish, like the Joe Abacrombie "Blade" setting. High magic, deep darkness, and plenty of grit.
I've always wanted to run a game that started at the very beginning of the Order. To run the negotiations that lead up to the writing of the Oath. Perhaps mostly because I think the Oath as it exists is a suicide note waiting to happen.
I like mage: Sorcerer's Crusade and I have alwyas wanted to run an Ars Campaign during the renaissance where the Order has met something simillar to the Order of Reason that White Wolf Created. That there is a powerful order that wants a different thing than OoH inside Europe who is starting to gain more power and more connections than the old Order.
I've always wanted to play in medieval York - luckily I persuaded someone else to alpha-storyguide a saga there for three years while I occasionally ran stories.
I want to play a single-house covenant - persuaded SG to run a Bjornaer (well, 5 bjornaer and a visiting bonisagus researcher) covenant for 6 months.
I wanted to play an Amazons campaign - I wrote a scenario to act as an opening scene where our sorceresses get a chance to learn the Gentle Gift. I ran it at Grand Tribunal UK but have never run an actual saga.
I want to play in the Crescent & Cradle setting - I may have to get out my powers of persuasion again.
I'd like to play in Ancient Rome, but I'd probably have to write it all myself and run.
