I know the current trend is for role-playing games to be more & more simple but I don't think Ars Magica needs to be like that. If nothing else, I would very much love to see a more complete combat system with the elements of reach/space, line of sight & combat maneuvers integrated into it. It doesn't need to be as complicated as D&D 3.5 Ed. or similar but I would like to see an improvement there as well.
The second thing that matters a lot is presentation. I cannot stretch that enough but good artwork can set the tone more than anything else in a book, at least at first glance. Good, appropriate artwork, will make anyone want to read that book or at least explore it more.
The third thing that I would like to see is a couple of pages devoted to "a combat example". A proper high-level combat sequence running as an example with the GM & the players adding their reactions, etc. I know there is one made for 4th Ed. if I'm not mistaken but this needs to be in the core rulebook & if possible cover more things such as fast-casting for defense, etc. Ars Magica offers you a ton of power for your magi & then some, ergo let us see how all this plays out.
And this brings me on the last piece of my advice for now. We need a proper, fantasy book, with monsters. Not just animals & their derivatives & the occasional dragon/demon but a tome filled with mythical creatures, that inspire awe to you as you read them. And they need to be all within one book, not stretched out to four-plus books. Fewer books with more content are what I would like to see.
If all these have a cost, then so be it. I am willing to pay more for quality content & so are many of my fellow GM's that are running quite a few other systems.
YES please!!! This is where ArM5 can get A LOT of improvement
And for the love of God, DO NOT use the French/Spanish Ars Magica artwork! it is out of period by several centuries and sets a tone of "here, a new edition of generic fantasy for you". it is as spectacular as it is wrong. 1200-1250 armor and clothing, please.
A lot if this seems to detract the game away from the central premise of playing wizards, to be honest, and seems to push the game more in the direction of a more general fantasy system.
If the game becomes more complex in things like combat, I wouldnāt buy it and Iām not sure there really is a market for it today.
Moreover, there is another ārootā idea in the game that actually flies in the face of having more detailed combat simulations, and that is the notion that it is a āstorytellingā game. While I donāt support shifting the game towards Fate, per se, I donāt also want to see it drift away from the so called ānarrativeā movement in gaming that it actually pioneered. The focus on the game system should be about crafting stories, first and foremost.
I know a lot of people who would like a more general fantasy game with an improved magical system such as ars magica, so yes there is definitely a market for that.
100% agree, a more general fantasy game using some of the concepts/design elements of Ars Magica (flexible magic systems, long term progression, troupe style play etc.) could be pretty cool.
I love Mythic Europe as a setting, but I'm on the side of not really seeing what a 6th edition could do over 5th edition in that context. If you take Mythic Europe out of the equation a lot of new options would open up.
Yes there is, I think, and it ought to be noted that this was actually how 1st Edition Ars Magica was.
The Mythic Europe setting was actually introduced in the 2nd edition. I think Mythic Europe is an interesting setting, because of the real world research, but I also think other games also do similar things anyway.
Ars Magica could be done as core game book, without any ties to any setting, with a setting book released separately for Mythic Europe. In fact, you could use it to do something akin to a Harry Potter setting - maybe in a more modern setting, but still utilizing the same magic system. The magic in Harry Potter actually sounds like the verb & noun system introduced in Ars Magica anyway.
Addressing the problem of magic transformed things hitting Parma and suddenly going from "harmless" to "deadly" (e.g. transformed blades, poisons, fire).
Adjusting the Criamon so they are not automatically canonically wrong about everything, because that doesn't particularly feel engaging as a player who's playing a character trying to wrestle with deep secrets of the world.
Tweaking the Divine/Faerie/Magic system so that pagan gods and faerie beings have ability to operate in the world as independent sources of power that have a connection to humanity but are not automatically trumped by the Divine in all cases and considered little more than figments of the imagination.
Streamlining the list of skills to about a dozen (maybe slightly more, maybe slightly less). Specializations can cover a lot of branches. Allow characters to have multiple specialties if they decide to spend XP on doing so instead of increasing the base skill.
Streamline combat system, make it simpler and (as mentioned way upthread) more cinematic.
When it comes to Ars Magica the thing that I LOVE the most is the magic system, the Noun Verb system, the way that Hermetic Magi are very very powerful and that there is nothing intrinsically stopping one of them using their powers. I like the complexity of the magic system, in that there are plenty of space for additions and modifications and such.
There are many times when I look at Ars Magica I think to myself - how can I use the, or a, version of the magic system in other settings, usually a fantasy world setting.
What I don't super focus on is the combat system, the characteristic system, the Virtue and flaw system. These elements are stuff I would easily change without blinking.
The same with the Faerie, Infernal, and Divine realms, I could care less about them. In fact I hate the fact that the Divine is automatically given an "I win" button. The same with how Hermetic magic is restricted when fighting the Infernal. Big nope to me.
I also don't entirely need it to be set in Mythic Europe, at least not for a new edition. NOW, that said, I have to say I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE the fifth edition Mythic Europe books. I know they aren't history as history but they are perfect for when I am looking for mythic elements for say a personal fanfiction I was writing. They have helpful advice, suggestions, and information on medieval places, people, myths and legends. For that I will always say thank you thank you thank you for said books.
All comments aside. What I really want is two things.
I want more fifth edition Ars Magica stuff. I want the tribunals that weren't covered to have fifth edition stuff. I want to have Atlas Games provide more books so I can give them more of my money.
I want the Ars Magica magic system, the noun and verbs, with some enhancement and modifications and advancements, to be written up as something for a generic non-generic fantasy world setting. I want said world to have magic users who are very very powerful and are given a placement where said power is easily used and manifested. I want books about this, and if they wrote it then Atlas Games would have my money.
But what is a generic non-generic fantasy world? You find the noun-verb system in WorldTree, which is a very alien fantasy world, with no human races. Eight species, four of whom are more or less humanoid. It is definitely a game to try if the magic system is what makes you like Ars Magica.
I would like to add a third item to your list. A simpler mechanics, with balanced magic users and non-users, set in Mythic Europe. I believe all three directions are worth-while.
Maybe, Ars Magica would have been better as a modular game. It is semi-modular in that each supplement gives rules for one particular community (a RoP, city life with crafts and trade, academic life, hedge traditions, etc.), but the Hermetic magic system and the world of Mythic Europe are so heavily interwoven that it is very difficult to step out of it. A companion-only mercantile saga could be fun, and all the mechanics is there, it is just hard to extract it. Ars Magica has the mechanics to support so many different styles of games, but a presentation to deter most players. Making Hermetic Magic an optional module, would open up the game to play Mythic Europe with hedge wizards, knights and rogues as balanced PCs.
Maybe GURPS with noun-verb magic and logn-term season-wise advancement
@JesseHeinig I think that in 5th only Miracles actually trump the other realms, except in small regards - for example, if a Magic Aura of 3 and a Divine Aura of 3 are in the same location, it's treated as Divine Aura 3. It would be nice to have Auras actually overlap, so in that particular situation you'd have BOTH Magic 3 and Divine 3 auras acting on the environment.
But as it stands, Magic 4 overwhelms Divine 3, so the Divine doesn't really 'trump' anything in that regard. If it did, a Divine Aura of 1 would dominate Magic Aura of 8.
It would be nice if we actually had the chance to get in our hands some earlier editions products, but updated & fully revamped to 5th/6th Ed. Just like some of the adventures were re-produced in the past. As an example, I would like to see an updated/expanded Mistridge at some point, without the over-the-top grimdark & with proper art & new plots/hooks, etc. Of course, that can be said for a lot of books, Mistridge was just an example out of many I could think of.
And perhaps Ars Magica should use Kickstarter as well, so many other publishers have done it with great results. This could give that little extra cash flow for a higher quality product line.
An idea that I've had for a while and occasionally touch on when writing Ars stuff is that there ought to be overlap between the realms. We already sort of have this in one regard - dark faerie sits sort of at the intersection of the faerie and infernal realms, but other overlaps could exist and can fill in some of the weird grey areas.
Magic and the Divine overlapping is the "sacred wilderness", unspoiled wildernesses touched by the divine in the vein of Eden or the Judean desert.
Magic and the Infernal is dark magic, sorcery, etc. Stuff that is tinged by evil (like cthonic magic) but isn't 100% infernal. This already kind of exists in 5e from RoP:tI.
Magic and Faerie overlapping already sort of exists tacitly in 5e with certain fae like the Tuatha in Hibernia, "gods" who don't scorn worship but don't seem to especially need it either, and unusually self-motivated.
Faerie and the Divine could be sort of "good faeries" and might cover for example some of the noble jinn in the east. Also taking local gods and making them into saints was fairly common in early Christianity, so this sub-realm would cover those "imaginary saints" and similar things.
Faerie and the Infernal are the dark fae.
These are just vague ideas, but in general I think if you allowed for realms to overlap not constantly but here and there it can fill some gaps and allows for more creative freedom overall.
On a related vein. perhaps a delving into different forms of auras can also be done. Divine Auras are divided into Dominion and Empyreal. Perhaps the same could be done for the Magic Auras? When the Cult of Mercury encountered the Hercynian Forest there as a battle of two types of Magic Auras, the Roman auras brought about by exemplar architecture and the more primeval auras. Then there are the chthonic auras associated with the Kosmokrators and Protogonoi.
Well, I have always seen the order of mercury as being faerie-related, using faerie trods for their big stuff, so maybe it is another type of interaction.
I would reduce realms to 3. The treatment of faeries and magic in ArM as separate things has never struck me as right
Really. I never saw the point in 3/4ed, but in 5ed the faeries are described as very dependent on human interaction while magic has its own and ancient, independent existence. If the two are not separate, faeries become something entirely different from what 5ed wants them to be. So, if you merge them, where are you heading?
To blur the line between faerie and magic. They are the same to me. ArM5's division is just artificial to solve a problem created by the division of stuff between faerie and magical AND trying to define them concretely. That was a loss for me, not a boon. Magical beings can ignore humankind or be interested the same without faeries having to be separate. The division is theoretical and comes from a bunch of crazy people in house merinita. It is not a real one.
The difference between faerie and magic is one that was considered obvious in earlier editions, and thus didn't need to be written down. the execution of defining that difference in 5th is ackward in large part because instead of trying to define the "obvious" difference threw it out the window in favor of a definition based on the concept of faerie tales rather than understanding of what faerie had been. personally I am a bit divided- I think there should be a lot more realms rather than fewer, but unless you want to add rules for adding realms the game could easily get burdensome with the interaction of so many realms. personally I would like to see a realm for pagan gods, a realm for titans, a realm for dragons, a realm for seelie, a realm for unseelie...
