I think I am going to respectfully disagree.
People don't say " come play ArM, it's got this wonderfully authentic vision of the Middle Ages."
People say "it got the single best system for magic."
If a person wants to play in the Middle Ages they can choose Pendragon, or one of the World of Darkness games. Or Gurps.
Once you strip out the mechanics you will left with a shell of a game.
I think you can keep the magic system and not have, say, "design every book in the library" or "track progress in every ability and art independently" or "there are now more Virtues than magi. Pick four, but one has to be Magus and one needs to be your House virtue." There are -how many- experience and training systems now? I can see five for Hermetic magi, and if you include other traditions it gets up toward a dozen.
You could simplify a lot without changing the magic system at all, IMO.
Like many players, I have 20 or so Ars Magica 5th edition books and it's a wonderful game. I am happy to keep playing it as it is for the next decade or two. The few things I don't like can easily be addressed in house rules.
It is also very complex and rather inaccessible to newcomers.
There are two things that to me make Ars Magica special:
1.) The close to history setting
2.) The magic system (verb + object combinations like "Intellego herbam")
The trend in rpgs in recent years seems to be using words instaed of numbers (see, for example, FATE, the One Ring). Ars Magica seems predestined for that.
It is certainly possible to reduce the number of skills. It may also be possible to use the existing magic system - which was the first system I know using words as well as numbers - and rely more on words and common sense.
For me its the magic system, always has been.
The setting could be any number of radical places, themes, and such and I'd still be interested.
In fact I've had players quit my games because the "history setting" + earth shatteringly powerful wizards just does not make sense. I openly accept and love the game, but concede that their dislike of the setting due to how incongruent it is, is very reasonable. A 6e should test the assumptions and sacred cows again, and I'd like to know what came of the test of the european history + magic "cow". To appeal to a wider audience I think that question needs to be asked.
Maybe I am being Eurocentric. If I amit is because I am European, and because I like the ide of being able to use history books as inspiration for the game.
I think this is easily solved though by divorcing the system from the setting. 6th edition could have one book that deals with the system, and a number supplements detailing different settings from the schism war to Victorian London to the fantasy wold of "insert-clever-fantasy-world-name" here.
Fair point. You're walking on inspiration every day on the way to work, or that's how I picture it from down here (.au).
A proposal for sixth- keep the core mechanics, but leave Mythic Europe behind. Design a new high fantasy setting, rewrite the divine (and infernal) to avoid real world religions.
Those who like the Mythic Europe setting will continue to play 5th, those who like high fantasy will have a new possible way to play that includes the best magic system ever without it being tied specifically to a setting they find too constrictive.
You might even find people who enjoy both.
Possibly even a rules set that allows for multiple possible worlds, and ways to adapt virtues and flaws between them, or with rules (or guidelines) for creating new virtues and flaws for troupe-created (or adapted from fiction) worlds.
Oh, the places this could go... if a line editor is needed for this...(raises hand)
Both and system and the setting are the draw, if you ask me. However, the system can be a lure that intrigues a player, who later does not forge on due to the denseness of rules.
The setting is also valuable and attractive - my players in my last few sagas got seriously engaged with Hermetic politics, the Mythic elements of Mythic Europe, etc. The setting and the rules do a great job generating stories.
That said, though I adore the rules of 5th edition, hitching the future success of Ars Magica on acquiring a new generation of rules technicians seems like a guarantee of Ars Magica fading away. The folks on this forum are the exception, not the rule, in my experience. I bought rulebooks and the Alter Ego software for my entire group, and of them, only 1 seemed to enjoy inventing spells. The rest described what they hoped to create, and hoped that I could create it within the rules.
These are not idiots. These are PhD mathematicians working for Google, Medical Journal Editors, and the guy who makes internal staff training manuals for IBM. And a poet. And a guy working for an Arts non-profit, who was the guy that actually got into the rules meat.
When I would bring a new book to the table, the story stuff was the main bit that people would skim and go "ooooh!" over, with the occasional Mystery Cult of interest as well.
My experience may be an isolated instance, but my feeling is that the extent of the rules is a blessing and a curse, and a barrier to new player buy in - they may come to check out the best magic system in gaming, but in general it was myself who worked with the rules after they got the basics down for at-the-table play, but actual creation of items/spells/etc. was outsourced.
I like the idea of a bigger audience. For example we could reduce the scale of the arts & spells. So Creo 1 + Ignem 2 let's you cast magnitude 3 Creo Ignem spells. Less adding is better. The study system could easily be revamped.
I can't really say that's the case for me and my players. At least two of us love the medieval history the setting has encouraged us to get into. None of us are all that impressed with the magic system; though we enjoy the planning and time management part. It's a robust system that encourages us to play Logistics & Dragons, which has been Ars Magica's biggest draw for us.
Ewwww.
There's a trend to 'simplify simplify simplify' in RPGs, and I rather think it's very much overrated.
I agree with the idea that we should not be blindly follow the 'simplify, simplify, simplify' trend.
ArM has always been a niche game. It is a crunchy game and appeals to those kinds of players. We should not be pushing to try and make this game easily accessible to new gamers. So matter what form 6th takes it is never going to compete with D&D or Pathfinder.
While I love the rules I think divorcing them from the setting would be a mistake. I am very much a come for the magic system, stay for the historical setting.
The question, however, is not simply "what worked for 5th edition" but where 6th will go from there. System+setting may have been great for 5th- I certainly preferred the system to the setting, but aside from a few minor details there is not a lot of improvement that a 6th edition could make on that combination. So unless we want a 6th edition that is a reprint of the fifth edition it needs to do something different.
GURPS simplified from 3rd edition to 4th edition, and a lot of those who played 3rd thought that was a mistake. You don't get much more complex than GURPS 3rd edition, but it had a very large following, as does Ars Magica. Roleplayers in general are not dumb, and the only reason TSR maintains any kind of industry lead is momentum from being the first game everybody played back when it was the only game in town. The games selling simple are the ones that have a single setting- single module approach where you can pick up the game, make a character and play it the same evening having never looked at the rules before. These games are flooding the market, none of them have much in staying power, and trying to compete directly with them when you already have a solid product is an exercise in futility. Yes in any group there will likely be the one person who 'gets' the system that the rest turn to for making spells, etc. and in most groups the storyteller system is DOA, with one or two people being primary storytellers and others might decide they want to run a game once in a while, but having it in there encourages more involvement in creating the setting, so it's still a good point and helps with maintaining the product...
Right now the direction seems to be niche presentation and 'focused simplicity' of creating versions of AM5 that fit into other systems. I'm not personally a fan but it is an oblique way of competing with the fly by night single-shot systems, so we'll see where that goes. Honestly where it goes will probably have a lo to do with what ends up happening with an aM6, or even if there is an AM6... not the sole influence I would imagine, they will probably keep an eye on this board, and on sub Rosa, and see what people are doing, not just suggesting, before they make a decision...
Well, let me take an obvious example: why is there a division is the basic use of magic?
If you accept the basic use of magic is formulaic, then, sure, there's no division: but the thing is, in my games, most spells are either spontaneous or fastcast, and that means most of the time, the player is going "and now I divide by two".
So, you could make the numbers far smaller for Arts, and have a pure addition for sponts, with halving for fastcasting and doubling for formulaic.
Of course for my money the major focus of any 6th edition should be based on the Ars Ratica article from Sub Rosa.
Meh, fantasy settings are dime a dozen. Real world History offers so much more. You can dig into Victorian or Roman without having to wait. And which RPG offers a "Barcelona through the ages" splat book?
Yep, meh fantasy settings are a dime a dozen - so they're "make your own and don't ask others".
Good, competitive fantasy settings are far more rare and require a real author (somebody like fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agone_%28j ... C3%B4le%29). If made to order for a specific background feature like Hermetic magic, they will at the very least cost a lot of money.
Would somebody - perhaps the one who has already inappropriately volunteered for line editor (Losing Mythic Europe), he will never get it back.
Cheers
Probably gurps, somewhere,
I'm sorry, I didn't realize you had to be French to be a real author for a roleplaying game which is headquartered in Minnesota.
Now if it is okay with you, can we discuss the ideas without the personal pot shots?
TSR and GURPs both have huge audiences in part because they do cover multiple worlds, and allow people to have their own settings. Personally I consider the ability to write my own world to be a feature in a RPG, and if it bothers you, you do not have to play in the world I write. If AM6 is going to be something other than a reprint of AM5 it will need to be either simplified rules or multiple settings. Which do you prefer? I clearly like multiple settings. I can understand that some would like simplified rules- for me the complexity and 'arcane-ness' of the current rules is part of what resonates with me for them, and makes it a significantly different (and better) magic system than, for example GURPs syntactic magic.