I am new here, but I have been meaning to find a game of Ars Magica in over a year but literally nobody plays it where I am from, I tried getting my friends into it with no success. But now that I have a bit more time due to vacation I was aiming to find an online voiced Saga or even just a Living Community/West Marches style group where everyone takes turns gming and playing.
But the usual places I go for that have not been successful yet, namely the discord Ars Magica community server. So I was wondering if anybody has any advice for places to find games.
I am too new to invest $100 into a paid game, but I do have years of experience with complex TTRPG systems (Shadowrun), and over a decade of experience with roleplaying in general.
What you describe is probably a common problem. There are many people who want to play, and not enough story guides. If you have experience in running other games, my advice would be to be the SG.
I have found the AM discord to be rather disappointing. I was part of two groups that ran for a few weeks, but both times the campaign died during the first adventure. I believe that this is a flaw in online games, where people usually are much less committed than when you know them personally. People seem to enjoy building their character and in the beginning, excitement is great, but then something happens, someone has less time to play due to their real life, the campaign slows down, engagement diminishes and the campaign dies. I would not run an online campaign without having a solution to this problem first.
The bet way IMO is to motivate people from your area. I wrote a one-shot with only mundane companions to introduce the system and the setting, then ran it a few times at conventions in my area, which worked really well. Some people were interested, so I ran the Nigrasaxa adventure for them to familiarize them with the magic system. Now they want to make their own characters. Unfortunately, I don't have the time to run a campaign, but we will be playing adventures every now and then.
Great advice for wanting to play any TT RPG - you have to run it. At least with Ars there's a decent chance of getting a troupe-system rotation going.
And about keeping a saga going, I think a problem that Ars can have, compared to other games, is that the most interesting characters - the mage characters - generally don't need each other at all. Not like the specialists of most RPG parties. And the mages don't need to do much, either.
"What are you up to?"
"Oh, I'm reading in my lab for the next two years. You?"
"Same."
The group as a whole, or the founding SG at least, should put some extra effort into Session Zero planning and discussion: Both to bind the characters together, and also coming up with longer term goals or projects.
My best Ars games had the mage PCs either arguing a lot, or the situation was such that mage-companion or mage-mage sets had stuff they had to do together.
(Curiously the best game for the latter dynamic was an "Ars 2500" Ars-GURPS Cyberpunk* mash-up. I think the complexity of a technological society had mages naturally falling into narrower specialties, and more often needing the help of a specialist mage, companion, or grog.)
*Classic cyberpunk hacking makes so much more sense when magic is part of IT and each system is a VR-regio.
I think one key to realize for anyone playing AM for a long haul is that the most powerful characters (magi) are not necessarily the most interesting. Sure when a Magus is in a party they can overwhelm everyone else in terms of power, but as noted they will (or should) also be spending a lot of their time reading or in the lab, while the companions whom they task with errands tend to live much more interesting lives.
A lot of games, from my perspective as a SG, seem to fall to the idea that you have Avenger's assembling every time you go to the store for milk.
This sounds to me like the library is too well stocked, to the point of disincentivising doing stuff.
I am running the Rhine gorge again, and that was never a problem, neither in the previous nor the current game. The party has plenty to do, mages are out and about swcuring their seasonal 10 adventure xp, by dungeon crawling, going on journeys, meeting the other Covenants of the Tribunal and doing quests on their behalf to secure their approval...
But then again, the Covenant has clear goals, a to do list, and the labwork comes in support of the adventures, rather than planning 20 years in advamce the breakthroughs they want, and we start playing from then on, everything else being a distraction.
This is very much a question of playstyle and experince with the system, butbinalso feel like the book Covenants in particular skews the expectations of the library and in turn, of the game.
To me it's the opposite. Magi can take 10 days a season off to do stuff without disrupting study. Any "here's a problem the magi need to deal with" is likely to be close to home, as otherwise, why is it a problem?
If they don't have much to do with their study, the game time can get bogged down with what do we study?; What lab activity do we do?; I'll write a tractatus you can read, you write one for me; let's ask a redcap to offer book swaps with a nearby covenant, etc.
The time spent working out the down time can slow game flow. If the covenant have a decent library so the magi can just say I study this and 10 minutes later, all companions, written up grogs, etc, know what they are doing in the season, that is really useful. Compare that with "There's no summae or tractatus in the library I care for. Maybe I could invent a spell, but I really don't have the score for it. Hand over the library again, maybe we have a spell I might want. {5 minutes later}. Nothing there really grabs my attention. I could maybe practice finesse, penetration or maybe my Parma?
For magi, XP under 8 a season feels a bit underwhelming. There are exceptions. My magi mastered 7 league stride. A season for only 5 XP well spent, as one does not want to botch 7 league stride. Generally though, because magi can often get good XP, when they cannot analysis paralysis can set in, and delay the game.
To summarise, give the magi good stuff to study so down time is minimised, maximising actual game play time.
Litterally never happened in either of the sagas that I ran, nor in the one that I played as a mage.
If they do not have much to study, they follow some of the plot hooks that have been dangled in front of them or something from the open to do list.
Writing a tractatus for the Covenant is rarely worth it compared to teaching one another, so it is as fast as "you teach me Imaginem this season and in Winter, I teach you Ignem", simply beacuse teaching takes a little XP rather than avirtue to bring up.
And the 10 days are very quickly gone. Wanna go to Fengheld, Triamore or Durenmar? That's more than 10 days each way.
Also, suffering an injury during the adventure is not penalising for xp the way it is for lab/study. If anythjng, taking a light and a medium wound during the opening 10 days is a good reason to switch from reading a book to adventuring.
Promises, Promises and Nigrasaxa were both written for 4th edition. Would you still recommend them? Or is there something better for starting 5th edition? Will there be a new jumpstart for DefEd?
Don
I would definitely recommend Nigrasaxa. I think it is the only supplement ever to give any coherent and comprehensive insight into how to make a saga, as opposed to an individual story. Even just reading Nigrasaxa is useful as a new storyguide, even if you want to play something else.
I don't think it is a big deal to use it with 5ed. There was some posts some time ago discussing it; somebody may even have posted a conversion. It is worth looking.
I find the final chapter of the Guardians of the Forest to be great as a framework to start a saga. If anything, i think that it's a shame that there isn't one such at the end of each of the Tribunal books.
Sorry for derailing a little. Back to the original request. Some people have mentioned online sagas are hard to find and tend not to last. I also think sitting across a table from friends is better. Online is done when the tabletop option is not there, for most people. Online is still better than not gaming.
It seems you are clearly willing to play with strangers. A friend about 20 years ago posted a {flyer, poster, advert, don't know what people would call it} in their local gaming store requesting players. The group played RPGs for decades, becoming great friends, with the only thing stopping them the intervention of outside real life factors. You may want to post something in your local gaming store.
Back when i moved to Sweden, I went to the local game store to do that/look for such flyers. The staff pointed me to the shop's online forum, which is how I found my gaming group and circle of non-work friends for the years that I was there.