We had that topic last in November: Evading Crusades . I don't think we need to take it up again here for "13th century Catholic Fucking Church" Daniel.
Cheers
You don't understand, ALL RPG writers offend him. Look at for further rants.
tgdmb.com/viewtopic.php?t=53716
In actual fact, he is nicer to Ars Magica than many other systems he's reviewed.. NWOD being his particular object of hate.
Hi,
After eliding his confrontational tone, I agree that a lot of what he says is true. I also think he doesn't understand all the rules, and this shows up in his examples; a more careful perusal might have gotten in the way of his epic rant. I also don't believe that AM5 is intended to be a full and modern redesign; describing the authors/editors as keepers of the old ways is a shrugworthy indictment. So is calling AM a fantasy heartbreaker: How many fantasy games published since the original D&D aren't? (There are a few, of course: Polaris, Nobilis, V:tM, maybe GURPS...) I also find it strange that he considers AM5 to be the most mythic of all AM editions, since this edition spends the most effort trying to embed the Order in a low fantasy "realistic" medieval Europe.
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The organization of the core book is wanting. Even now, I often find myself looking in the wrong place.
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The "solution" to the Dominion is wretched. The rules do not model the period and actually run contrary to all expectations. I've talked about this before, but maybe I should have ranted.
/2 After all, for all the attempts at political correctness, every now and then I find the treatment of the Divine to be mildly offensive, and I imagine that some readers more deeply invested (and less politically correct) will be truly offended. Frank's calling the designers/editors of AM5 cowardly is way out of line, yet I think the game would have benefited from a different treatment. -
The current state of relations between the Order and Church/Nobility is utterly unbelievable. This isn't something that AM5 made up.
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I don't agree with him about the blurred confusion of Forms and Techniques. AM5 has gone a long way to improve this, though not completely. But spell guidelines are quite messy. The level of player skill needed to convince a GM/troupe of a spell's level has improved only a little since AM2, although the kind of arguments have changed. Worse, a succession of AM supplements have presented spells that break Hermetic Limits, that use interesting and inconsistent interpretations of spell guidelines, and that finally don't do much better than the old-fashioned AM2 (and D&D even now) method of meditating over existing spells, reaching out with your feelings and letting The Force provide a suitable spell level.
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AM5 is written for fans, by fans. It is not a great introduction to roleplaying. It is not even that great an introduction to AM.
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The core book does cover covenants poorly, but this is consistent with the way concepts and resources useful for getting a campaign launched are wanting. This issue isn't new, and we've even discussed it in these forums. I don't remember an edition that made it easy to create a stable of NPCs, equip them, build the covenant (AM5 is far better than AM2 core at this, for example), create monsters that are suitably challenging, and stat your pet cat. (Speaking of fantasy heartbreakers, one game that did all this surprisingly well was Palladium Fantasy 1ed, despite authorial rants that broke the 4th wall, English Grammar from Beyond, rules both baroque and broken, an assortment of silly tables and an adventure not suitable for starting players.)
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FWIW, I like the 4 AM5 wolves very much.
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Balancing Flaws and Virtues matters, as does a certain amount of "fairness" within a character type, because not everyone plays every session with one magus and a coterie of grogs. Since all the way back, the game gently encouraged a certain amount of tension among PC magi, so balance matters a bit there. Even in a classic "four players with one grog each, one with a companion and one with a magus" situation, if one grog is designed better than the others, there will be 3 players feeling useless.
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When all is said and done, the author's chosen name, Trollman, represents truth in advertising. Because he makes quite a few good points, his hook is better baited than most, but he's still a nasty troll. Fun to read though.
Anyway,
Ken
1 Like
I think I do understand and it is why I called him a chronic complainer. If every RPG offends him and he can't get past any of their inherent problems then the problem is with him, not every RPG. Putting it another way, he knows how all the other products fail to live up to (his) expectations but hasn't produced a system that addresses his issues and published it. He never will.
I missed that thread One Shot, thanks for showing me.
One tgdmb, he says that he is a doctor and has better uses of his time than to make an RPG himself, if I am recalling correctly.
I think his name really is Frank Trollman - it's a Norwegian last name. I think you can find that name on some Shadowrun supplements that he wrote for in 3rd Edition.
And for what it's worth, I'm a big fan of the ars magica 5th edition line. Yes, there are issues here and there, but overall the choice of supplement design has been really creative and very interesting. And now, 5th Edition is 10 or 11 years old. I expect a 6th ed to come out in about 2-3 years, hopefully with a lot of fan feedback input in.
That was fun to read, and he made some very valid points. But I think he gets why we are all hooked on this game. I am hooked. But some of his harshest criticisms are things I have thought (and some said) all along.
Oh, it was him. That explains a lot. (I believe that it is his real name, in a truly beautiful example of nominative determinism.)
(Boys and girls, this is a good example of how getting a reputation for ranting lunacy can make people reject what you say wholesale, even if there might be good points in there, because it is almost certainly not worth the stress of getting them out.)
It's based on an extremely simplistic view of the medieval Latin church, and projects 15th century and later attitudes to magic back a few centuries. I think a bit too much of his picture of the middle ages is based on Wikipedia. (Also, he appears to be a bit amnesiac about the state of Wikipedia in 2004.)
Thanks for chiming in David - Frank unfortunately makes far too many personal attacks for my taste, yet, he does this in any RPG he reviews. As I've said before, he reserves particular hate for NWoD, Exalted 2E and Shadowrun 5E. By his standards, this was actually a nice article about Ars 5E.
That said, it does seem the corebook doesn't fully address lay people's perceptions of what the medieval church thought of "Magic" and the different forms of it. From what I've read, for example, astrology was frowned upon but not persecuted to nearly the same extent as people who threatened curses or communing with dark spirits.
As Thunder Hammer also said; several of us from that forum have met the man in person. His last name really is Trollman, and works as a medical doctor in Prague (last I heard). He does have some history of work in the industry, specifically in Shadowrun 4th edition and some stuff with L5R. He has written at least one entire RPG on that forum, After Sundown; but he doesn't have the desire/time to get involved in publishing, since the whole thing is just a hobby to him.
When it comes to complaints, I don't see it as him being unable to get past the problems, but readers being unable to get past his complaints or think that's all there is. Enjoying a game and describing its flaws are not mutually exclusive states; as he certainly has played and enjoyed games of Rifts & D&D while also having written small books on what's wrong with them. Subjective things like "I had fun during that session" don't really say much about the game's rules but that group, so he usually opts out of that. One thing I have seen is that while he's knowingly abrasive, using honey when bringing up flaws with a system has predominantly not actually done any better (whether by him or others); all that happens is either the usual dissenters passive-aggressively dismiss the complaint, or the complaint goes completely unremarked upon and ultimately ignored.
It's neither abrasiveness nor 'honey' which makes one's arguments be respected, but precision and sobriety. Just pointing to "13th century Catholic Fucking Church" and screaming doesn't help a bit.
Cheers
Many may find him abrasive. But I msut admit that I found his caustic style entertaint and quite amusing. The church rant goes off the end, agreed. And he did have sympathy for the crunch that hooks us all in.
But he has a valid criticism about the layout of the core rules. Things I didn't notice because I already knew the game.
And I really do think it is time to push for a new edition...
But fun to read. 
/2 Catholic Fucking Church, Nikolai Fucking Tesla, all good.
Getting back to the Wishlist... Another thing I'd really like to see:
1.)A better indication of how to use, or not use the Troupe Play Style.
2.) Advice for new SGs on how to ease into the game. The start up time to set up an ars magica game is definitely on the higher end compared to many other games out there. How to pick a covenant (group participation vs SG giving out some options), which type of PCs to make first (hint, not a magus).
3.) A different way of "balancing" virtues and flaws. Maybe just suggest a personality flaw, a story flaw, maybe a general or hermetic flaw, and then take some number of virtues, depending on how high powered the SG wants to make the game.
So,
Speaking of AM6, I'll talk about AM1. I have no real knowledge regarding what I am about to say, but [strike]what else is new[/strike] I feel comrortable speculating.
Calling AM a fantasy heartbreaker is fair; pretty much all fantasy rpgs start off that way. But D&D is not the most interesting source material for me; my guess is that someone read "The Name of the Rose," all the rage back in the 80s, and just ran with it.
TNotR is centered around a closed community of scholars, so AM did this too. TNotR is centered around a library that is the community's most precious resource, so AM did this too. TNotR gleefully combines anachronism and extensive historical reseach, so AM did this too. The monks in TNotR are isolated from and try to isolate themselves from the real world, so magi are also supposed to do that. TNotR even has Quaesitori showing up at the covenant...
We often hear descriptions of AM involving "It's like D&D, but it's based on real Europe and wizards rule."
For years (decades? shudder I'm gonna die), I've also seen it as "It's The Name of the Rose, starring wizards instead monks."
But TNotR is no longer the rage. The medieval tropes of the 80s are no longer ours. The tropes about what knowledge is, where it is found and how it is obtained have changed. Even our wizards have changed (ask a 10 year old to name a wizard in 1985 and you'd get Merlin or maybe Gandalf; today it'll be Gandalf or someone from Harry Potter.)
So maybe it would serve us to refresh things a bit, to keep "wizards in mythic medieval Europe," but update that shag carpet from the 80s.
Anyway,
Ken
Having actually talked with Lisa Stevens about the matter in Sub Rosa #8, I can tell you the answer is "no." As she put it, MRH was running Harn with Runequest, Jonathan Tweet was running Call of Cthulhu, and they had been both running Pendragon. They wanted to make a game where magic was done right. They hated the Vancian system.
If I were to ask for anything, it would be more guidance on long-term play, and for troupe style play. I think collecting creature creation into the core book would be essential, too. Streamlining that process to match character, grog, even the covenant process, just to reinforce it.
As ArM5 has continued, there have been more and more story seeds in every book. I think Ars would greatly benefit from more adventures, an anthology of adventures, starting off with Spring and going into Winter, but they need to be modular, in that they need to allow for the power variations which can very easily occur between troupes, and that's a tough nut to crack. This may take a form that's more like a highly detailed arc of seeds and situations, like Antagonists, but along those lines. More books like Antagonists would be a big help for Ars, giving people more foundation for how to create troupe sagas.
-Ben.
But what did they reach for when they decided to do a game that wasn't wrong?
I agree that your "asks" are essential. I don't think Antagonists is any more or less of a foundation for creating troupe sagas than previous offerings. Ancient Magic works for this too. So would The Tempest: Revised.
They made Ars Magica. That's what they did.
I agree, Antagonists isn't a foundation for troupe sagas, but definitely for sagas. I don't know if Ancient Magic gives enough of a saga progression for each piece of magic, but I love that book, it's a good book of kernels to wrap a saga around. I know I've gotten some great starts from that material.
I think a book like Antagonists, but which shows how to thread a couple of different plotlines, discusses places to shift storyguides, situations where it can enhance play, would be fantastic. I know I went and hunted down the copy of White Wolf Magazine where the style was described in further detail so I would have a better idea. I think embracing that style and giving more guidance on how to improve it would go a long way.
That's because he isn't calling you lazy and ignorant, and accusing you of knowing nothing about something you studied for years. It really is quite difficult to be entertained by someone insulting you, personally, and your work.
I admit that I did find his rant about how Demon: the Descent was a con game to fund Rich Thomas's cocaine habit amusing, so the distance helps.
However, the people in a position to actually do something about the criticisms don't typically have that distance.
That's not just him. However, I think people have misdiagnosed the problem: they say that the rules are badly organised. One example that came up was the rules for spell damage. Where are they?
Page 116, in the general rules for spells, under the heading "Spell Damage".
I would argue that this is a sensible place for them. Indeed, if they weren't there, people would have grounds for complaint. So why are people complaining?
Because the rules aren't in the combat section, or the non-combat damage section. The spell damage rules should also be on pages 172 and 180.
The problem is, I think, not that the rules are badly organised. It's that the rules are non-redundant, while the same rule should actually be stated in several locations, so that readers can find it no matter how they think about the question. (That's impossible, of course, but you can get a lot closer than ArM5 manages.) If I were doing ArM5 again, the book would be thicker, and more redundant. Mr Trollman would doubtless accuse me of stroking my boner for those rules, but there we go.
Another problem is that ArM has several sets of interdependent concepts. When that happens, it is simply impossible to explain everything before you introduce it, because you need to mention A to explain B, and B to explain A. I'm not at all sure that this problem has a solution. Even on a hyperlinked electronic document, human beings still need to read the explanations one at a time. It might be possible to redesign the game to not do this, but that would be a major rewrite, and might not count as Ars Magica.
Over ten years since the last one.
Don't forget that we have Magic Shoe coming. If you want a Mythic Europe game that follows all the trends of RPG design for the last twenty years, you should be looking there. Ars Magica was designed in the 80s, and I think a new edition of Ars Magica should still be a recognisable version of the same game; that will mean that the basic structure is 25 years old. I think Magic Shoe is a great idea, because there are a lot of new ideas in game design, not all of which fit into Ars Magica. I also think that there should be more games like Magic Shoe, because there are lots of mutually-incompatible approaches to RPGs to play with, but that will depend on commercial realities.
Well, yes, they did, but they didn't just do that. They decided that medieval Europe suited them better than rebranded Tolkien, Lieber, Lovecraft, Xanth, etc. They did some reading about medieval Europe, or referred to things they had already read. They read fiction; they read history books: If they had read extensively they would have had to cull their sources to come up with something vaguely coherent, because historians don't always agree, especially when they are writing in different times and places, and if they had not read extensively, then they were probably limited to the most popular books.
So what were their influences?
Some people think it is better not to be influenced but I think that's just plain weird. A writer of science fiction who has been influeneced by Star Wars, well, of course; to not have been influenced is to have lived under a rock (or to have AT&T.)
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Hmm. I think a bunch of old-school-ish adventure "modules" designed to take a covenant from Spring through the seasons all the way through Winter would be best. Sure, it doesn't tell you how. It does let you get started quickly. It serves as an example for all those SGs who know they can do it so much better.
Hi,
sigh Yeah. I remember when AM4 came out. I had problems with it. I said so, not thinking about whether I was talking to anyone, but just to say what I wanted to say. Of course, I was talking to people, David being one of those people, and I had just called his baby ugly.
lol OTOH, there's something to be said for pre-natal care.
Anyway,
Ken