What would you change in a 6th edition?

Games Discussion Ars Magica
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Since the efforts to "raze the game to its foundation and build it anew" between 3rd and 4th editions of Dungeons and Dragons not only created a famously unsuccessful and controversial game, but unnecessarily angered a significant portion of the existing fan base¹, it's probably not an example to be emulated for future versions of Ars Magica except negatively. C+ for effort, solid F on execution.

(4e D&D was actually a decent small squad wargame. But it was a terrible tabletop RPG, and it wasn't D&D.)

A willingness to re-examine old assumptions is healthy. A failure to recognize that a system can only change so much before it is no longer recognizably the same game is not. The attraction a new Ars would have to existing players is the setting and their learned familiarity with the basic game mechanics. Break either one and the old players have no reason to switch, and new players have no-one to play with. Backwards compatibility is critical.

If the underlying mechanics change too much, such as moving to the Fate system, a large chunk of the existing fans will stay with the fairly complete and familiar 5th edition - possibly with some fan created house rules - and not buy new 6e books from Atlas. And buying books from Atlas is what keeps the lights on and the pets fed. Stray too far from the current game and you might as well convert the lot to system-neutral setting books and hope to draw sales from the 5e, OSR, and PbtA fans. (The game already uses MetaCreator, so how tough could GURPS Ars Magica be? I'm sure that would be marketing gold. :roll_eyes:)

By all means try to make the systems better, but remember to still make them Ars.

¹ The Hasbros at WotC not only killed off Living Greyhawk for no adequately explained reason (they weren't providing anything much other than permission by that point), they altered the favored Forgotten Realms setting so much that they formally advised existing groups that they'd not only need to create new characters, they should consider creating a new campaign.

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103

believe me, GURPs Ars Magica is hard. the additive system of ars magica simply does not translate well to the GURPs "roll under" system, and the multi-base numeric system of Ars magica (base 5 and 10, with a reminiscence of the Babylonian 6 and 10 system but with greater elegance) does not mesh well into the GURPs d6 system. If it were easy I would have done it by now, and I have a fairly expansive concept of "easy".
That being said, I agree with the rest of what bittergeek is saying here- though history suggests that fans will remain with certain philosophical shifts that are far more significant than the mechanical ones, and I believe it could well be modified towards greater flexibility that allows for multi-world construction without significant alteration to the fundamental system. one significant advantage it has over GURPs in this way is the fact that it does not embrace the idea of a universal system, but focuses more on a "no preferred frames" system where magical traditions with different background simply follow different rules.

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104

Um, the eyeroll emoji - :roll_eyes: - was meant to indicate sarcasm. I was not in any way indicating that a) a conversion to GURPS was actually simple or b) such a conversion was desirable. Hard pass. Like many long term gamers (I've been playing since I picked up the redbox Basic set back in '81) I own more GURPS supplements than I've ever played sessions of the game - while some of the books have some great ideas, I don't like them enough to use that particular system.

(In particular, I feel that Steve Jackson did himself a grave disservice by using d6s as his core mechanic. Gamers like weird dice, using cubes we could have scavenged from the family parcheesi set never felt right. I think using d10s or even d12s would have made the system more attractive to me. If I want to feel like I'm playing something from Cheapass Games, I'll play something actually from Cheapass Games.)

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Hi,

Quite a few people really liked 4e. A lot of folks did not.

Regardless, I notice that you do not say anything about 2->3, or 4->5.

As for remembering 'to still make them Ars', that's the whole point, deciding what really matters and what does not.

It's certainly easy enough to botch a redesign, as with 7th Sea 2e... but it's not like I'm suggesting that happen.

As for 'straying too far', that's a bit of straw man, yes? I don't think anyone suggested that we should go too far or change too much.

Anyway,

Ken

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I would separate the system into a QuickStarter box and an expert/expansion curriculum. The 5th edition is a fine system with myriad options for experienced role players and history buffs, but in these modern times it is bad in drawing new players.
E.g. I've seen so many quickly capitulating before the easiest spontaneous spells, asking the GM "Please, tell me what to roll." .

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107

I agree that a 6th edition of Ars Magica should be a new edition of the same game, not a ground-up rewrite. On the other hand, it might be a better idea for Atlas to not do a 6th edition, but rather to produce a new game set in Mythic Europe. ArM was very well designed, thirty years ago. It doesn't follow modern trends in game design at all, and there is a limit to how much you can draw in without making it into a different game.

Hmm. Maybe this should be a different thread.

(Just as a side note, I am quite happy with the notion that ArM5 was so good that it is an impossible act to follow. :wink: )

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108

My main suggestion would be to make magi weaker. Make Magic Resistance much harder, so that magi actually find it difficult to affect creatures with great Might. Tie it up strongly to sympathetic magic to let Story Thingies needed to penetrate that dragon's scales. Indeed, get magi to be much more like hedge wizards, exploiting the natural tendencies of vis-invested items and invoking True Names and undergoing Initiations and whatnot to invoke their magic rather than simply exploiting the more bland, number-crunchy, Arts. They key is to make the setting feel more Mythic by requiring the characters to interact with its Mythic elements in order to pull off their magic, rather than just relying on their Arts to carry the day.

I'd get rid of the Houses as-such, and suggest instead a somewhat ill-defined assortment of magical traditions, with only some SUGGESTIONS (based on the Houses and on common player favorites as well as myths and legends), which I think works much more reasonably with the Order's size.

A major headache for me is the Divine, I think it needs to be re-thought so as to provide a more self-consistent and adventure-full setting. I'd re-conceptualise the Divine as the realm of the Transcendent, pulling the mundane impossibly into the perfection of God in transcendence of its true nature. It will have essentially no contact with earthly things aside from the Dominion, its holy men NOT being able to converse with Heaven or directly divine its will in any way. Angels would not be easy-to-understand NPCs that can speak to characters, for example, but rather unfathomable transcendant beings that can only appear in confusing visions which are wildly open to interpretation. And, crucially, there would be no detect-evil, at all. Infernal effects and corruption must be allowed to occur without Holy Men wielding Divine magic being able to ascertain magically that they are such.

All this can be done with a 5.5 version, keeping the core game much as it with only minor tweaking (e.g. Arts as Abilities mentioned above). No need for a "true" 6th edition.

For a true 6th edition, I'd consider going all Story-mode. Ditching the entire XP system and instead returning to the change-to-earn-a-point system but relegating even this to matter only for a few skills, for magi. Going for a cinematic combat mechanic and action resolution system, where your virtues, initiations, gizmos, etc. determine your prowess much more than your Abilities. You don't just study Arts from a book, you undergo initiations into higher levels of the Art, requiring game-stuff such as a patron/initiator, quests, sacrifices, and so on. Magi don't even start with all Arts, each tradition only gets a few Opened, and a magus can initiate into more. Books would still be needed to learn stuff like Magic Theory, Arcane Lore (very important in such a system) and True Names, and so on. Enchanted works could be made to help self-initiate the "reader" instead of books, but these should be rare. Perhaps going in a more FUDGE direction of a few grades instead of the fine division into numerous Art levels, and maybe even changing the dice to FUDGE dice. And so on, major changes.

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109

Keep the Houses intact. They are a major part of the charm of the setting.
I have come around to the idea of using pyramid x 5for both Arts and Abilities, but not at all with the intent to weaken magic. Weaker magic should be an option perhaps, but not the default. I just think a universal system for Arts & Abilities makes things easier. Having no division form Spontaneous magic makes things much much easier.
My worry is that this makes Formulaic magic not as strong by comparison. The simple solution I have is that Sponts have to double the level and Forms just have to equal it. But that is unsatisfying, so I thought more. Not accounting for Stamina or Aura, a x5 scale for Arts puts you at around 2/5th normal. With the modifiers and roll, just over half. decent range.
So, if Formulaics get to add three Abilities, they come out even. I would go further, add one Ability per level of Mastery. What they can be is not predefined. Pick which ones as Mastery increases as per whatever aesthetically fits your concept. Latin, Artes Liberales, Philosophiae, Hermes Lore, a Craft, Guile even.

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You lost me here what's pyramid ?

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My bad. It is personal shorthand for the way xp costs build (1xp for one, 2 more for two, 3 more for three which makes a total of six, and so forth). In the current RAW, Arts progress on a pyramid scale, Abilities on a scale of pyramid x 5.

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Just throwing ideas... I really do like the idea of making arts and abilities on the same scale - it can clean up a lot. Make everything magnitude-based, shift the scale of magnitudes into negatives.(level 5 becomes magnitude 1... 4 becomes 0, 3 becomes -1.... so on). Let people spontaneously cast any spell with a magnitude less than their form Art, with penetration equal to the roll + penetration skill only, or no roll. Formulaic spells become Tech + Form + Sta(if we keep sta). Or perhaps penetration just ignores a number of Mags of resistance. Lab total is roughly the same, I suppose. It may shift the scale of how long it takes to design spells, but by reducing everything to magnitudes, it just means you need to be more careful when adding small bonuses (I already think there are too many fiddly bits).
I admit it would completely wreck the current scale of MR and might scores, but it may streamline play a lot.

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And dragging this in from another thread, I would like to see less ways to avoid warping. I think it would be cool if Warping was not avoidable at all... and also gave you some mechanical advantage to wizardly things.

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Hi, Tjenner! I think that you make a great point. Your thoughts also illustrate a place where my metaphor breaks down, in that physics is physics. There's no "editing" physics. :slight_smile:

On the other hand, the rules for ArM could be updated in order to make the game more inviting. It would be a shame to make the game worse in the process, obviously. So, I guess, for me, part of the interesting part of this question involves a thought experiment that's something like the question, "What would the ideal introduction to physics look like if you were also free to change the laws of physics?"

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115

hmm... following in the footsteps of philosophae in ars magica, there would be room for crystal spheres of the heavens, aether, Lamarkian evolution, orogone energy- history is littered with theories that didn't work out. It would make for something of a steampunk ars magica...

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Keep the Houses intact. They are a major part of the charm of the setting.

I like most 5e Houses, or something close to them. But I don't think the Houses, especially with their sub-lineages, work with a 1000-member-strong Order. There are just too few magi for all these traditions to make sense IMO. It's better to leave things more flexible and loose, IMO.

I have come around to the idea of using pyramid x 5for both Arts and Abilities, but not at all with the intent to weaken magic. Weaker magic should be an option perhaps, but not the default.

I like how in-setting dragons are virtually untouchable by Hermetic magic and magi fear armies and pitchfork-wielding mobs rather than just seeing them as a political nuisance. I think weaker magi much more more sense in-setting and greatly enhance the Mythic elements of the setting - encouraging bargaining and allying with spirits, using things like shape and material bonuses, and so on. At the far end, archmagi can still be immensely powerful so that all that Transforming Mythic Europe / Kill the Dragon King stuff can still happen and all, but is relegated to archmagi level rather than "Just give me year to brush up on my Perdo" stuff.

I just think a universal system for Arts & Abilities makes things easier. Having no division form Spontaneous magic makes things much much easier.

Absolutely.

So, if Formulaics get to add three Abilities, they come out even. I would go further, add one Ability per level of Mastery. What they can be is not predefined. Pick which ones as Mastery increases as per whatever aesthetically fits your concept. Latin, Artes Liberales, Philosophiae, Hermes Lore, a Craft, Guile even.

I like the idea, but I don't get the maths. Let's say Arts for experts are 10, 25, or 40 (Gauntlet, Master, Archmagus levels) for 55, 325, 820 XP. This translates to Ability levels of approximately 4, 11, 18. Two-Art total is thus 20, 50, or 80, whereas two-Ability total is 8, 22, and 36. Three-Ability total would be 12, 33, and 54, which is still far less than two-Arts. Still not like two-Arts, and you need to invest in Mastery 1 and another Ability (more XP!) to achieve this.

I'd suggest instead doubling Art scores. Doubling is easy to do (unlike dividing by 2, which is hard). The totals still come out a bit less than two-Arts, but not by much and with the bonuses and die, the difference shouldn't be too large.

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No editing physics? Doesn't anyone remember the cold fusion patch?

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I think a step towards streamlining combat could be not rolling defense - just take a 5 for an assumed roll. if you feel you need to do better, you can spend your action to roll for more if you really need. The less things needing to be rolled, the faster things go.
For monster-manual type things, I'd enjoy seeing a grimoire of mundanes too - typical bandit has these stats... these abiliities... and this many unspent abilities to customize. hey, he has music now! That one used to be a fisherman!

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You should probably take a 6 instead of a 5. A simple die averages 5.5.

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121

They recalled it, years ago actually. turned out that it was buggy.

Can I just point out that vector algebra is tricky, quantum field theory is hard.
Dividing a number (smaller than 100) by 2 is not hard, and should not be considered to hard by adult (or even adolescent individuals. If it is, it's time to improve the educational system.

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