Not that kind of obscure. Not obscure as in 'this game is hard to get into', but obscure as in 'why have (almost) nobody even heard of this game let alone play it?'
I went to a gaming convention for the first time since Covid-19 struck last weekend, and there was a lot of D&D and Pathfinder on offer, and those games had no trouble filling up. Call of Cthulhu games filled up well. Across the rest, there was a lot of Powered by the Apocalypse (some published, some homebrews). Of what remained, the science fiction and horror games I like found it hard to get enough players to run.
If this is typical of UK gaming conventions these days, then any fantasy which isn't D&D is going to struggle, and if your system isn't as well-known as PbtA or FATE you are automatically in a minority group.
Fair enough, but those two are not entirely unrelated.
If a gaming group is curious about one of those other games, it only takes a GM familiar with the game, to get a game together and run a one-shot or a few sessions. Therefore, a lot more people have played them.
I don't spin up an Ars Magica saga without an expectation that the group will stick together for a year at least. It isn't worth it.
OK. Maybe the world is less diverse and open-minded than it was in my heyday, and lots of games that were not obscure twenty years ago now are. Ars Magica has been obscure all the time.
I think that is typical of RPG gaming everywhere these days.
On the top you have D&D.
Then you have nothing.
Then you have nothing.
Then you have a small handful of well-known and popular games (Call of Cthulu appears to be one of them. Others seem to vary a bit over time.)
Then we have a huge bunch of games that people may have heard of but typically not player - Ars Magica belongs here, as does most other RPGs you or I have heard of.
And then we have the truly obscure games. The ones even dedicated players barely know exist.
I'm afraid so. Here is a recent table for online games played on roll20, a very large venue that I used a bit too:
Ars Magica has 0.02% of the campaigns there. Call of Cthulhu has 11.87% (the second-largest!), Shadowrun 0.29%, Runequest 0.04%, Traveller 0.09%; Paranoia I did not find. The big ones of course are D&D5e (53.19%), and... uncategorized (14.65%), but I somewhat doubt a lot of the latter is Ars Magica 
Granted, this is not a representative sample of the gaming community, and probably biased towards tactical-games so against Ars Magica. But I do think the real numbers wouldn't be that far off. I'm afraid the Ars Magica community is rather small, even in comparison with many other RPGs.
While interesting, that list could use a few more pass-throughs.
There are lots of duplicates on the list that would be better served merged together. It would make the list shorter and more accurate for actual numbers. WoD has two entries (one with and one without breakout of subgames), A Song of Ice & Fire has two, one with RPG at the end and one without, Warhammer has a combined all systems as well as specifically for Fantasy 4e and all 40k. Even D&D 5e has two entries, one written out and one abbreviation.
As for actual accuracy, there are big errors like the number for Uncategorized is 19.8% on the pie chart and 14.65% on the breakout. Much of the comments are about how inaccurate the numbers are.
I think there are a couple of reasons to think that they are far off.
- Roll20 has a lot of professional GMs, who are likely to favour popular games to a greater extent than amateur GMs.
- It is self-reinforcing. Games below 1% are too rare reliably to recruit, and people may give up proposing.
- There are competing single-system servers. For DnD there are a lot, I think, which may mean that DnD numbers are too low. OTOH, if people play the rarer games, they are forced towards dedicated fora, so their numbers may be too low too. There is no telling how this affects the total numbers.
The numbers do tell us, I think, that DnD and C&C are viable, but I am not sure what else.
Well, I think the reason that this forum doesn't get a lot of new people is because it can come across as... the word forbidding comes to mind?
Like, if I hadn't started a game independently (thanks mostly to T. Ferguson's amazing podcast) and then come here to get answers to play questions, I wouldn't have started my game.
Because the last time, for example, the issue of trans people came up here, the forum hounded the person who made the thread until they left the forum.
Anytime I mention this game, it's always something like, "Well, the mechanics are pretty novel in this one area, and the game lends itself well to a particular kind of story. I have a really fun game and there's this really interesting and informative podcast, but I wouldn't recommend getting involved with the main online community."
I think some people in the community enjoy using historicity as an excuse to "correct" attempts to include people in the game.
Hell, one of my games has a trans maga. When her apprentice took the oath, she rededicated herself by doing the oath again and announcing her new feminine name. The response of the tribunal was mostly confusion, because there is no unified response to trans things in the culture of the time or in the hermetic order. Some wizards were vaguely against it because they don't like change, but no one had any idea what this really meant.
They just added to the pile of "My sodales are all incredibly weird," and kind of continued on. The order has a lot of that- there are pagans in the order, and completely secular people, and every variant of Christianity, Judaism and Islam. There are actual heretics amongst the order!
Yet, when these issues come up, suddenly, where that is okay, LGBTQ stuff has to face the wheel of Complete Historical Accuracy (tm)- even if that isn't actually based on any research.
So.
Online communities can be really important for smaller games, because they provide word of mouth and promote discussion that draws other people into the game. They provide ideas and answers that make running games easier and more newbie friendly.
I think the board culture is deeply discouraging and this contributes to a smaller player base.
Very interesting stats. Of course, I would dare say, that roll20 is a lot more useful for games that are built arround the hex (d&d) than story-centered games where the map is normally optional.
The problem with LGBTQ and other such communities is that they are so combative. They attack everyone, including members of their own group and people who are actually sided with their overall objective. This type of organization fosters an "Us vs Them" mentality, often grouping everyone who does not fall within their type as an enemy. The fastest way to make enemies is to treat people as if they already are your enemy.
This is all part of tribalism. When you separate large inclusive groups into smaller secular groups, people who were friendly in the larger group become combative in the smaller groups. This is something I had to spend a decade and a half dealing with in the middle east. The internet is actually making things worse, since it allows the forming of these smaller groups much easier than in the past. The problem comes about when people stop placing their emotional loyalty in the larger group and focus it in the smaller groups. Humans can't even help themselves, since we are tribal by nature. All we can hope for is that people make a concentrated effort to be more inclusive rather than letting themselves be balkanized.
Do you hear yourself Troy? The problem with those people… how do you expect someone to respond to that other than combatively or defensively? And the verbal disagreements with language that you view as an attack is nothing compared with the literal, physical attacks queer and trans folks encounter in their daily lives.
Could you please explain, specifically, what queer people should be doing?
Because I did not start the Queer People v Society conflict.
I do not want to even have that conflict. You know, I just want to enjoy my silly wizard game where I have NPCs who build walking gargoyles while someone frets about the implications of Mentem magic.
I am not allowed to do this, because my existence is a highly polarized political issue.
What I want is to exist in peace and not have large groups of people devoting time to expressing their contempt at my existence.
What do you, specifically, want me to do?
Well, there you have it, folks. Someone says "I think the board culture is discouraging for queer people" and then the first response waddled out is this tired "but the violently oppressed are too whiny", proving the point very well.
The queers desiring equality is not an attack on you. Someone pointing out that a small rpg isn't going to get widespread traction when a vocal section of its community uses the exploration of history as a shield for the applauding of its brutality is not an attack on you unless you are one of those people.
Nicely done, ignoring that I was speaking out against all such tribal factions in favor of a more inclusive mindset. The only reason I used any specific group was that a particular one was just used as an example in a post shortly before mine. My issue is with tribalism rather than any single group.
Be yourself and try to be happy. Who you love and want to be with should only matter to you. That people make it an issue and but into others private lives is something I disagree with.
Be as whiny as you want, that is your right. My issue is with the increasing tribalization of the world population in all its forms and the increasing violence caused by it.
Do not confuse my dislike of tribal groups with my feelings about most individuals who follow a lifestyle outside the norm (I do dislike people who promote racial superiority or racial inferiority). I have friends and family who are the demographic that is covered by LGBTQ. I love them dearly and am wholly supportive of their lifestyle.
Cool, so while you're loving and supporting us, does that mean you'll take the time to listen to a queer person say that the board culture is discouraging for queer people and believe them? And, because you'd like us all to be one big happy family, unbroken by tribalism, you'll agree that it would be better if we weren't excluded by the board's behavior in threads like that aforementioned one about trans issues?
Since we don't want factionalism and what-not.
So, what if Atlas took the core mechanics of ArM, the Techniques and Forms of Hermetic Magic (with new plain English names), and put a new label on them, making a "game engine" of sorts? And then published various (unrelated) settings for it?
Or chop it up even further, into a line of books mentioning in the foreword that they are all based on the Ars Magica ruleset:
Core Mechanics, one small book with many sample Abilities and character Templates.
Magic: yet another small book, with the Techs and Forms renamed and oodles of spells, none dependent on Medieval Paradigm.
Supplemental Settings: Vikings, Space Marines (or Colonial Exterminators), etc. One small book for each, of course.
By "small book" I mean circa 250 pages or so, not like a 400+ page core rulebook. And please, softcover to keep costs down.
Any experimentation along these lines would, IMO, stand a chance of expanding both Atlas's market share and Ars Magica's visibility.
So significantly bigger than the current Ars Magica books then?
(The core rulebook is a bit under 250 pages. Most of the other books clock in at less than 150 pages.)
The thing you're asking me is something that I already do.
I already lie about who I am in most public contexts. I pretend to be a straight guy to anyone who I am not very close to.
I ration the knowledge of my real self very carefully, and dole it out strategically. I don't let anyone who I don't completely trust know.
I do this because I'm terrified of being isolated, verbally abused and mistreated, and possibly attacked.
And doing that? Pretending to be someone, hiding my genuine self and only really being me when I'm at home?
It's so exhausting. It hurts.
It disconnects me from people, because I have to be vigilant with what I say and do, lest I reveal who I am.
It's part of what I like about Ars Magica. Magi are arbitrarily hated for something they have no control over, but they can be themselves because they have the power to do so without facing overwhelming consequences.
So, I guess, this thing you're asking- who is it for? Who does it benefit? Why is it necessary?
I can censor myself, but I want to know why it's the only thing I can do.
Another log on the fire of reasons people don't play Ars is simply that the rules are confusing amd mostly, to paraphrase PotC, more guidelines. I have never seen a game of ars Magica played that didn't have a host of house rules, whether declared as such or simply being of the SG understood the rules, and I don't think the game is playable without them. When you have to wade through that level of in depth understanding just to make it playable it is quite the barrier to attracting new players.
You shouldn't have to hide who you are. I am sorry that you have to lie about that to get by and it was not my intention to hurt you. Your first comment brushed up on a sore spot for me and it seems my comment pushed a sore spot for you.
I would be happy to continue this conversation, but ask if we could take it to another thread or private. It seems that the thread is already threatening to be derailed.