interesting, sure. I mean this is when the roots of many modern religious groups were being established and running arround accusing each other of being in league with the devil and hey lets introduce some "real" infernal influence and arbitrary decisions by writers and GM's as to whose traditions we refer to as infernal. What could possibly go wrong?
OK, this sounds completely awesome.
Thanks! I would love to write it. I'd need a lot of help. Atlas! PM me! 
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I am sure you can have a lot of social adventures in D&D but most other RPGs would be better suited for that, IMHO. Hit points are hit points, luck and fortune should be and are covered in other rules. In D&D hit points are regained with resting, healing, healing potions and Cure Wound spells – not with fortune cookies and four-leaf clovers .
IRL charismatic orators may be good at avoiding battles. This skill, however, does not give them more luck, fortune and hit points but they may become even better at talking through experience. A RPG made for social encounters and real life rather than clearing dungeons full of monsters should reflect that.
I imagine expenses would be minimal since there is no printing cost. I can look more into what Storyteller's vault is doing and report back.
But (again working from imagination and reasoning) I figure Atlas would just need a website for PoS. Which we have right here. I don't think drive thru RPG charges a fee, I imagine they just take a cut. Then write a style guide, some trade dress and pic files people can use, and let the dice roll.
I will admit it cam be complex from the contributor end.I am tinkering with writing something for Mage, and figuring out how to put all these things together is over my head at the moment. But other people seem to have it figures out, and they have generated some beautiful content (reusing the same stock picks over and over again though).
I would love to see this concept applied to Ars Magica.
Atlas's expenses would be staff time. Since, realistically, Atlas's income from a Community Content site is unlikely to reach $100/month, they really can't afford to put much time into it at all. Preparing the resources would likely take up all the time they have available, and it would need promotion after the launch to make it self-sustaining, if that was ever possible.
I've published on a couple of community content programs, and kept a close eye on the Torg Eternity program, which is probably similar in scale to a potential Ars Magica one. I do think it's a good idea, but the economics are not encouraging.
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I don't give up so easily. Though I do get distracted easily.
I would be willing to volunteer my time just to get this idea rolling. There has gotta be a way to make it work. Others seem to make it work. That means there has got to be a way.
On a related topic, since I have your attention, would you happen to know the status of Trademarks on "Order of Hermes", "Tremere", etc? Onyx Path prints no notifications of that sort. They don't even mention Atlas Games like WW used to do (for their use of names such as Flambeau, Tytalus, etc). It cause me some confusion. I am working on an idea for a Mage book, involving what might happen if Tytalus emerged in the modern day (in their game setting, not ours). I didn't feel it was right for me to be able to publish such a book without mentioning Atlas. So I wrote to them about it, and they don't seem to care so long as I don't try to turn it into an Ars Magica book.
Why do I keep bringing this up? Because I would rather write an Ars Magica book about House Flambeau .
I have other ideas. And I see Doctor Comics has a very interesting idea. I want to see it published. I want to buy it. A fanzine treatment would not do it justice.
There has got to be a way. I am not a believer in the no-win situation.
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Maybe you would do a rewrite on Iberia for 5th edition???
You probably already have a style guide and some similar stuff you provided to writers over the years. I'm not denying it will take time to set things up. But with so much already at Atlas's disposal, I don't imagine it would take that more than a day or two of time split over a few people to get it started (couple hours to gather existing resources, couple hours to write whatever needs to be said specific to this, couple hours for a website guru to set it up, etc.). Even with just the automatic promotion on this site, if that were to pull in $80ish/month for only 1 year (year 2, specifically, expecting no income year 1), I would think Atlas would make a profit, even if only a small one. And besides the meager direct income, it keeps things more alive for more sales of existing sales of 5th edition books as well as for advertising for a potential 6th edition or whatever. I doubt it would be highly profitable, but I could see it being profitable, costing several hundred dollars the first year, maybe a hundred or two the next, and pulling in a thousand or so that next year.
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I would jump at such an opportunity!
You're missing my point. I'm providing an example of a game company that uses the rules of D&D 5e to describe a setting that isn't very "Dungeons & Dragon-like" (Middle-Earth). Cubicle 7 provided mechanics and rules for journeys (exploration); rules for audiences with influential NPCs (social interaction), and an alternative advancement system that doesn't concern itself with earning XP (the Fellowship Phase) among other changes.
As far as your digression into monstrous races, I think this is a staple of the heroic fantasy genre. Calling a game "racist" because it uses established tropes is a stretch.
My point is that the D&D 5e rules system, itself, is "neutral" with respect to campaign setting and even style of play. Counter-examples I've seen so far are only saying "D&D" isn't right for Mythic Europe, but the "D&D" that's being described is really the typical D&D style of play or the typical D&D campaign settings. And if someone says that the rules system isn't right, then I've provided a few examples of how other game companies have altered, added, and deleted from the rules system to capture the campaign setting and style of play inherent in an established setting or a particular slant of fantasy roleplaying.
I stand by my original statement that I firmly believe that a Mythic Europe campaign setting with an Ars Magica-like style of play can be supported by the D&D 5e rules system.
You're assuming that the style of play remains the same. An Adventures in Middle-Earth player talking their character out of every situation would be a character who doesn't go on Journeys, a character who doesn't engage in Audiences, and a character who does nothing during the Fellowship Phase. In this case, then yes, the character wouldn't advance. But combat need not feature in any of this. However, if a character talks their way out of combat, that would be considered the best possible success and should be rewarded.
Getting more hit points simply means that your character can last longer during "dangerous" parts of the story. Or another way to put it is that the character is more experienced in dealing with dangerous situation (with the most common dangerous situation being combat). Hit points are, of course, derived from the early days of D&D where hit points actually meant physical damage, but this definition became problematic even in early AD&D ("Character Hit Points" PHB, page 34). "Hit points as actual physical damage" hasn't really been a feature for a while.
To use a Star Trek analogy, red shirts don't have a whole lot of hit points but Captain Kirk as a large number of hit points. When a phaser does, let's say, 2d10 points of damage (average 11) and a red shirt gets "hit," then they get disintegrated because they only had seven hit points. When Captain Kirk gets "game hit" for 11 points of damage, it really means that the actual shot missed him (in a real-world sense), but was close enough to "wear him down" (in a story sense) by 11 hit points.
If you're adding all these rules and changing very basic elements of the game what's the benefit to basing something on a D&D ruleset? You can jam any shaped setting into a D&D shaped hole if you try hard enough, but why is that better than having a game fully designed for the setting?
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Well, I think that can only be done by rather extensive changes to the D&D ruleset. Given a strict-enough definition of "Ars Magica-like", which includes fixed HP and advances in Abilities/Skills with time, rather than Classes with adventuring. You could change D&D to be based on these elements, sure, but I fail to see how this would leave much of D&D.
If you mean something less-strict by "Ars Magica-like", then possibly yes, that could be a great fit. From using the Spell Guidelines as a basis for a new wizard class to a Mythic Europe setting for essentially-vanilla D&D 5e (e.g. naming wizards "magi", changing a few spell titles and adding a few more spells - changes of this scale).
Personally, I think having both directions would be nice: a Mythic Europe setting where you would use D&D rules would possibly open up more interest in the setting and I think can work just fine for a heroic, perhaps Mythic, saga; and a Greyhawk/Forgotten Realms -like setting played using Ars Magica rules would offer a more gritty and, in many ways, true-to-fluff gaming experience in these interesting worlds. What I don't see is the mixture of the two - an elegant D&D rules variant that incorporates Ars Magica's grittiness (fixed HP) and character advancement (no classes).
The question is "What new games would you like to see in Mythic Europe?". Mythic Europe is a campaign setting. The new game I would like to see for this campaign setting is D&D 5e. And I've provided examples of other settings that have been adapted to D&D 5e that are significantly different than the typical D&D settings (Middle-Earth, Cthulhu Mythos Earth, Ninth World).
Yes, the Ars Magica (Fifth Edition!) game is the best suited for Mythic Europe, by any definition of "best suited."
I think another setting would be great as well. Using the Ars Magica rule set in a more typical heroic fantasy setting would be very interesting. If we need to keep it in Mythic Europe then perhaps it could be located somewhere in Arcadia or in an Arcadia-like parallel in the Magic Realm.
And yeah, there's no way to use D&D 5e to fully capture the Ars Magica-like experience. You would add elements from the setting (the four Realms, Order of Hermes, certamen, flexible spell guidelines, new backgrounds that reflect the setting, Warping and Twilight, etc.). The "home base" rules in the DMG could be expanded to provide mechanics for covenants. You'd have a short section saying what equipment is available (given that it's the 13th century). All PCs would start as human (but you could allow for faerie blooded humans and such by using the demi-human options). You'd have to determine how grogs will be different from companions, both being different from magi.
I just think it would be exciting to see Mythic Europe for D&D and I'm sure that it could be handled correctly even though typical D&D has a very different play style and campaign tone than Ars Magica/Mythic Europe. The most effective argument against it is that it probably wouldn't be commercially viable. That I won't argue.
But man, it would be awesome if it did hit the shelves.
You've given several examples of times something similar has been done, I was trying to give you a prompt to elaborate on why it would be a good idea.
For one, d&d is the game that introduces most people to rpgs at the minute. D&d Ars Magica products could act as a gateway for people who would be hesitant to try a game like Ars. It could be a vehicle to tell a different kind of story in Mythic Europe than Ars does.
Ars is an niche and kind of intimidating game, but even separated from Ars I think Mythic Europe as a setting has a lot to offer.
That said I personally think you could also have more approachable games and make use of the setting without using d&d as a base, so I was hoping you'd expand on your reasons for wanting it.
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I have not read the 5th edition but you are saying that fighters no longer have more HP than magicians as it is not about physical damage anymore? HP are not "healed" with healing potions and cure light wounds?
I think there is a very interesting point here- AM isn't just a complicated game, it is a complicated system within a complicated setting. Some people like the setting but are blandish about the setting, others are blandish about a historical setting but like the system. Either one, separated from the other, could be a simpler system for new players to learn. What would it take to divide the two parts?
Boardgames have gone to simpler and faster games in the recent years. Perhaps the RPGs should go in the same way as far as new editions are concerned?
This is a great point. I love the setting, I love the magic system, I love the way experience is handle (generally), I hate the skill system and how sprawled out subsystems are across the books.
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See for me I would see the future of the order completely differently.
With Faerie and Magic auras being consistently eroded only two forms of traditions would be able to survive:
- Divine Casters who are not penalised by Divine auras thanks to having the "Holy Magic" virtue, but who have to behave in accordance to their religious scriptures.
- Infernal tainted magic, who would seek out infernal auras (or even create them) and while they'd suffer the infernal aura problems, they would be much freer in their actions.
Maybe a few Merinita and Bjornaer could survive in some fringe locations (deep Amazonia, Siberia, arctic Europe, deserts) living off of the last dregs of myths and magic of areas spared from the ravage of "Civilisation".
The other houses would have gradually died out or evolved to fit the Divine/Infernal dichotomy, with the true lineage being the first to disappear. The Divine traditions would have gradually taken over House Flambeau and Tytallus having fallen back to Infernalism, with no Guernicus left to check on them.
This split would rend the order by the time of the Reformation and the "Burning times" in Germany being the result of mundane interference being drawn into the order.
The Thirty years war was used as cover by the Tremere to kill off as many of their rivals, in a second attempt to take over the order but resulting in an over expenditure of stashed magic items. Unfortunately, with all Vis except Divine and Infernal being in low supply in Europe, this show of might leaves them without real reserves, and by the death of Louis XIV (whom they championed) the House falls into oblivion.
The houses having gradually disappeared the Order of Hermes would go into Schism with each of the two Societas (Flambeau and Tytallus) claiming to be the true heirs of the Order and become de facto rival orders.
A status quo settles in, despite an upset during the French revolution (instigated by the Tytallus of course). With the Divine traditions being more and more contemplative and divorcing themselves ever more from mundane affairs they are taken aback by the dimming of the Divine in industrialised society. As the working class gradually abandons religion the Divine areas do not shrink but simply dim down to level 1 by the late 20th century. The divine traditions are very excited to see the influx of refugees post 2015, as many of them are still religious, leading to a current feeling of optimism among the Divine Sahir traditions in Western Europe.
So the game would largely be like the movies Nightwatch/Daywatch. The forces of the Divine and Infernal living on the edge and trying to weaken each other but knowing that they cannot do anything flashy.