No, that's not really it at all.
So you donât call it a realm. That changes nothing from the core book.
I find this question weird. Why dragons need to belong to only one realm? Or any creature for that matter. I find more interesting and challenging for players [unless Intellego Vim] that the same type of creature can exist on all different realms.
Is the dragon a Magical Creature that can be bargained with? Is a faerie with a script that ends in calamity or even salvation? Is a divine dragon putting to test the faith of people? Or is even a demon trying to impersonate someone of the three before?
I think the distinction between Magic and Faerie [and any other realm] don't need to be on "type of creature", and in fact Faerie is fun because it can impersonate other realms flavor [we have faeries that play as angels and demons]. The thing that differientate this realms is their philosophy of existance:
-
Magic Realm is, in this respect, the weakest because their real philsophy is a modern undersntanding of "magic is cool". Magic creatures, for example, are real beings that aren't force to any form of working, they are as variable and have independent though as humans and animals.
-
Faerie Realm is the one of imagination and stories. This is important in the sense that happens on all RPG and any folklore story: People normally don't act as that stories. No one scream "wolf" x times until people don't believe them when a real wolf appear. This realm enforces this stories with powers and a script that let that this stories real on Mythic Europe. Without Faerie Realm -like making the wolf magical- it don't make sense that people eventually don't believe on the kid and no one save him, not make sense that the wolf only kill one kid and have the specific power to make people don't believe him.
-
Divine and Infernal have a very clear design and idea.
So, I really don't understand why the problem is on creature type.
I asked which creatures, primarily, not which types of creatures. I could have been more precise about the dragons; I meant the stereotypical ones, which are magic in 5ed. There may be faerie dragons, sure, but that has no bearing on the question. What characterises a faerie dragon compared to a magic dragon?
To solve the question, you reiterate the 5ed canon, but my question concerned the hypothetical change where faeries are not defined by human stories. What happens then to the distinction between faerie and magic creatures?
Actually, I think that those two extremities is exactly what we do not have. Unfortunately.
What we do have, is the infinite number of shades of grey in between,
No book should be a GM only book. Though that is what Gygax believed, this is not that game.
I would not want any major changes. Maybe rewind some stuff back to ArM4, but few if any new inventions. Simplification in building & maintaining characters and covenants. A return to the ArM4 scale for Virtues and Flaws. Keep the ArM5 magic rules, with some minor refinements. Change the combat system into something functional. That is the only new idea I can really get behind.
Kinda tricky in a game that is designed for troupe play I'd say.
I don't think so: in all the games that I play in or ran, there never was an ST rotation. While player might switch from mages to grogs (rarely, everyone wants to play their mage, in my experience), the closest we ever came was someone running a largely unrelated grog only adventure when the normal ST couldn't make it.
Yes, I know 
But that's the only solution I can think of for all those people who are dissatisfied with 5th Faeries.
It's a great book (probably one of my favourites), that is designed to create exactly the kind of stories and feelings they want, but it seems they can't dissociate their knowledge of the book with what it does.
=>
I believe that, if they hadn't read it, they would be much happier
Oh. That's sad. I am sorry to hear it.
I can very much relate to that!
Don't be. As an ST, I prefer to stay in the ST-seat and keep everything to the themes and overarching plot of the saga over jumping back and forth. Some of my former players started their own round robin everyone runs an adventure in turn, but it's all over the place from what I've gotten from them. I like the coherence that comes from the unity of the vision guiding play.
My group is a mixed approach which I really like. We have a Primary SG who is responsible for the overarching plot of the saga and runs a little over half the games. Three of us are serving as SG for plot lines and so run games when those plots come up. While not part of the main overarching plot, they they are still coherent story lines in the same location with the same cast. And maybe one in ten sessions, someone has dug a suggestion out of the 'Good Ideas Pot'(tm) and runs a session on it for a change of pace.
While we played our Magi a lot in the beginning, they have reached a power level where things have to be a (magus specific) social situation or really dire for them all to be involved. It is hard to design sessions in which seven Magi of archmagus power level (two actually with that rank) and an eighth Magus not much weaker (Primary SG's character) are all needed. It helps that all familiars, apprentices, Companions, and specific Grogs (shield grog, forge companion, etc) associated with one Magus are run by other players.
If our saga was a collection of writings, the whole would be a series of novels by the Primary SG, with three novels in the same timeline describing related adventures by guest authors, and an anthology of short stories about the "bit players" in the same setting by those four authors and four more guest authors.
The big difference, I think, is if the beta-SGs make longitudinal plot lines or disconnected one-shots.
As alpha-SG I can only manage one plot line to my satisfaction, and just one plot line does not really realise the potential of the long game of Ars Magica. Some one-shots to have a break is nice, but mostly one-shots is not what makes Ars Magica worth playing.
In my experience this is the most common way of things with Ars Sagas. Quite a few stories should be disconnected from the main plot and of serious interest to a limited number of the PCs and itâs pretty natural for someone else step in to run these stories. For instance: searching for a familiar, initiations, many story flaw stories, Covenant slice-of-life stories, etc.
Medusaâs focused arc storyline doesnât seem to me to allow for individual goals and that seems an unfortunate way in which to play Ars to me.
Yes, the beta-SGs having longitudinal plots which carry over many sessions and might (but not always) interact with the main plot is important. This adds a great deal of branching depth to the story which is very hard for a single SG to achieve alone. And for the rare one-shots that serve as a "change of pace", anyone can run them.
That 'Good Ideas Pot' I mentioned actually has many potential one-shot story ideas which can tie into or flesh out a larger plot. People submit things they would be interested in or they wish were filled out better to a collection point (a folder for table top, a spread sheet for online). The Primary and Beta SG can pull out anything that appears which will be covered by their plot-lines that they intend to run (and it helps them see what others want to play) while what is left anyone can grab and run a one-shot based off of.
I am the Beta who has been handling all things related to our shipping and trade business. Pirates are a natural extension of that, so when a player submitted a pirate hunting idea to the pot I grabbed it and it blew up into a large many session series in which our Covenant actually went to war with several of the pirate nation states of north Africa. One of the few times all of the Magi actually got involved and it was glorious destruction.
Strongly recommend any group which does not have a "submit an idea" collection to add one. It gives you one shots and stories that people want to play.
Like the issue trackers used in software development?
Yes. Some things are only a single line ("I want to fight pirates!") while others are more detailed ("Pirates were a common raiding issue in the Med. They have a strong potential of interfering with our shipping company.") and a few are actually a researched story plot (no example for space reasons).
How does it not allow for individual goals?