I think covenant creation is a major rules and concept barrier to a lot of newer players. I think that is something which should be left for more experienced players. However, it is really good to have those rules around for covenant modification and development. In my first ever game I played and intro to Ars Magica, we (the players) took over the site of a previously failed covenant, which while there were some structures - notably a tower - there was not a great deal in resources. We had a small, but useful vis source. We had a few books we brought with us, and there happened to be a few damaged copies we turned up. As it happens, the covenant was located on an Atlantic isle, someway off the coast of Cornwall - so not a million miles from the Bay of Biscay. The covenant quickly became the driving force of all the stories, as pretty much anything which did not impact strongly on the covenant was ignored or dealt with in as cursory form as possible. Yet dealing with threats, challenges, exploring the mysteries of the isle and uncovering its secrets, and then establishing its position in the Order all became major story hooks. There was conflict between the magi at times - but due to the nature of the covenant - it played out in very formal and ritualized ways for the most part via political moves and one-upsmanship. My character threw himself into defending the isle and his research followed that path, which while not actually giving me a great deal of personal handy spells for adventures in a lot of traditional senses, did bring me increasing influence in the covenant, my House, the Tribunal, and the Order. The creation of a high level ritual spell which would displace the image of the isle in a mirage-like fashion and make it difficult for uninvited guests to approach gained the character a lot of renown, and this was in fact simply a stepping stone in his research to the make the island invisible entirely, and later allow it sail and move across the seas bring our covenant to far flung lands for different adventures - with the end goal being to be able to shift the entire island into a different regio. Sadly, I had to move before the game reached such a point, but I like to think that if I had not ended up succumbing to final twilight at some point the entire covenant would have just weirded off into another dimension and become the stuff of myth and legend... something for other players to explore at some time. In that game, the covenant was undoubtedly the most important character - but it was one which arose organically, and we still found it fascinating. Finally, in relation to your point on grogs; several of our players had a lot of fun playing grogs and would often prefer the grogs to magi or companions for the relaxed atmosphere they could bring to a game and often had favoured grogs they seemed to care more about than the magi, even though they were playing two or three at a time. It was always a sad event when one of the long time grogs bit the dust, often because we had all played them at one time or another, and caring about them and getting them training and ensuring their health and happiness became one of the main goals of another magi.
I want to snag that, but between the 5th ed. books being a touch pricy and my almost 0% chance of getting a group together anytime in the foreseeable future...I just haven't done it yet. I'll probably be looking at 6th or 7th edition before I get a chance to dip into Ars Magica again.
Thank you for your videos about this game which has almost no coverage. A question I am curious about before I spend time learning the rules is how does the timescale of this game work in terms of playing it. Even "slow" timescale sessions supposedly cover multiple months in a single session, and quick sessions supposedly can cover years in a session. How do you handle multiple months or even years of in game events over the course of a couple of hours without only covering them in the most superficial manner possible?
I can only go with my experience here, so other games may vary. Most of the time, individual sessions, or sometimes clumps of sessions, depending on what was going on, felt much like any other game. I think this is especially true in earlier segments of play, when you're learning characters, relationships, local geography, and politics. Especially if you're playing a "Spring Covenant," the sort of default for players new to the game. You're all establishing a covenant, so you're playing through a lot of chronologically close events as you build the place, your community, alliances and enemies, etc. Your magi will have to get their labs set up, then make sure they're safe, before they can even get started doing what they really want to do...spend as much time as possible in their labs, without getting dragged out to go on adventures. So, we might have a session where a mage and some grogs (peasants/guards/etc) spend much of the session trying to find a magic spring in the woods, only to discover a fairy glen, where patience and cleverness is tested. Things go wrong and some grogs get turned into rabbits. Or things go right and the mage wins a new ally for the covenant (in as much as you can bank on fairies as allies). Or, we might spend several game sessions on a journey from the covenant to a Grand Tribunal, where a lot of political machinations among magi happen. Along the way, there might be trouble with bandits, or a town that needs saving, or what have you. This would play out much like any other traditional fantasy game. Either of the previous examples might be the only adventure had in a season. The difference usually comes between "adventures." That's where seasons come into play. A magi is very jealous of their time and energy, so they're usually only willing to leave their lab for a season, so they can spend the other three seasons doing all their mage stuff, like learning spells, making magic items, etc. Being out of their lab for a couple weeks is enough to mean they don't get the benefits of spending a season on study, so they want to be compensated. Their season of adventuring is often seen as, so long as it can be justified as such, "service" owed to the covenant. This facilitates a kind of rotation in play, where you might actively play your magi in session every few sessions (other than maybe some social/roleplaying scenes), which is why you've also got the "companion" character, or grogs if you're just in the mood for tomfoolery. When time starts moving faster, you might skip from an adventure in Winter of 1160 to an adventure in the summer of 1171. This is when some book keeping must be taken care of. What have the magi been doing? What have they accomplished? What have they paid and what have they gained in that time? Have any grogs or companions retired or died of old age? Much of this will either be covered by certain mechanics in the game or decided between players & GM. By the time you're skipping lengths of time like that, however, everyone should probably be on board and know what's going on with their characters. The longest game I was in took a bit over a year of real time, and I was only in it for the last six months of weekly sessions. I don't think we ever skipped more than a season or two. Before he had to move, our primary GM did say that we were almost to a point where time might start moving a bit faster (I think we were transitioning from a Spring into a Summer covenant). The other couple of games I had a chance to play in barely had any time jumps at all. I think in-game time starts to move a bit faster, with more time jumps, as your covenant grows older and more powerful, so challenges become more rare. When you're just starting out as a Spring covenant, you're surrounded by challenges, physical and political. By the time you're an Autumn covenant, you're probably fairly insulated from most stuff, or it can be assumed you have mundane humans who take care of things so you don't have to micromanage. So, reasons for you to adventure must be much greater, so might not come around but once a decade. I've never reached that point in a game, however. I hope that helps. I love this game, but it's been almost 30 years of time between when I last sat around a table playing it, so not everything is crisp in my head.
@@matthewconstantine5015 Thanks. That's a lot better fitting than some of the other descriptions of how the timescale works that I have seen, though they were likely trying to keep it short.
@@jimmydesouza4375 it can be a hard game to describe. Doesn't really lend itself well to the classic "elevator pitch." Honestly, the learning curve & "onboarding" for the game is a definite and real challenge. I love the game, and would love more people to get into it, but I don't want to sugar coat it, either. While you can have some casual players in the group, it's best if you've got at least a few players who are really into it, and willing to invest some genuine time and effort. In some ways, it's like some Powered by the Apocalypse games, where the players have a lot of input and investment in the creation of the campaign. But there's no two ways about it, the game has a lot of crunch. You may not need to have a firm grasp on all of it right from the start, but there's a lot to learn. I 100% believe it's worth it, though.
Is the medieval part essential? My group of players are into urban fantasy. We tried mage: the awakening but it wasn‘t what we where looking for. Maybe we have to throw the idea of urban fantasy away and check ars Magica out.
I never did check out Mage. You may already know this (or I may have said it in the video, but don't remember), but White Wolf owned Ars Magica at the time the World of Darkness was first coming out, and Mage was essentially the "future" of Ars Magica (3rd Edition). I don't know how similar it is, though. I think that Ars Magica's magic system could be divorced from the Medieval setting, but I think it would take some work. I started some early work on doing so back in the 90s when I still contemplated designing my own RPG, but it was more effort than I was interested in at the time. It's pretty integrated in, not only with its use of Latin, but with its whole world-view, which echoes Medieval European thought & cosmology. They've done a few books that have alternate and expanded magic, moving away from the Hermetic Order that forms the backbone of the game. But unfortunately, I haven't really read any of that yet to know how versatile it is.
I think covenant creation is a major rules and concept barrier to a lot of newer players. I think that is something which should be left for more experienced players. However, it is really good to have those rules around for covenant modification and development. In my first ever game I played and intro to Ars Magica, we (the players) took over the site of a previously failed covenant, which while there were some structures - notably a tower - there was not a great deal in resources. We had a small, but useful vis source. We had a few books we brought with us, and there happened to be a few damaged copies we turned up. As it happens, the covenant was located on an Atlantic isle, someway off the coast of Cornwall - so not a million miles from the Bay of Biscay. The covenant quickly became the driving force of all the stories, as pretty much anything which did not impact strongly on the covenant was ignored or dealt with in as cursory form as possible. Yet dealing with threats, challenges, exploring the mysteries of the isle and uncovering its secrets, and then establishing its position in the Order all became major story hooks. There was conflict between the magi at times - but due to the nature of the covenant - it played out in very formal and ritualized ways for the most part via political moves and one-upsmanship. My character threw himself into defending the isle and his research followed that path, which while not actually giving me a great deal of personal handy spells for adventures in a lot of traditional senses, did bring me increasing influence in the covenant, my House, the Tribunal, and the Order. The creation of a high level ritual spell which would displace the image of the isle in a mirage-like fashion and make it difficult for uninvited guests to approach gained the character a lot of renown, and this was in fact simply a stepping stone in his research to the make the island invisible entirely, and later allow it sail and move across the seas bring our covenant to far flung lands for different adventures - with the end goal being to be able to shift the entire island into a different regio. Sadly, I had to move before the game reached such a point, but I like to think that if I had not ended up succumbing to final twilight at some point the entire covenant would have just weirded off into another dimension and become the stuff of myth and legend... something for other players to explore at some time. In that game, the covenant was undoubtedly the most important character - but it was one which arose organically, and we still found it fascinating. Finally, in relation to your point on grogs; several of our players had a lot of fun playing grogs and would often prefer the grogs to magi or companions for the relaxed atmosphere they could bring to a game and often had favoured grogs they seemed to care more about than the magi, even though they were playing two or three at a time. It was always a sad event when one of the long time grogs bit the dust, often because we had all played them at one time or another, and caring about them and getting them training and ensuring their health and happiness became one of the main goals of another magi.
Obviously another person who loves this game
Great summation of a game that often gets forgotten.
Hopefully more folks will discover it.
This was nice, thanks.
If you're looking at the Bay of Biscay, that's talked about in Faith & Flame, if you're looking for canon sources for it.
I want to snag that, but between the 5th ed. books being a touch pricy and my almost 0% chance of getting a group together anytime in the foreseeable future...I just haven't done it yet. I'll probably be looking at 6th or 7th edition before I get a chance to dip into Ars Magica again.
Ben whats Faith & Flame?
I am happy that you made these videos for english :D
I'm just glad someone's out there and interested in Ars Magica. Thanks for watching.
Thank you for your videos about this game which has almost no coverage. A question I am curious about before I spend time learning the rules is how does the timescale of this game work in terms of playing it. Even "slow" timescale sessions supposedly cover multiple months in a single session, and quick sessions supposedly can cover years in a session. How do you handle multiple months or even years of in game events over the course of a couple of hours without only covering them in the most superficial manner possible?
I can only go with my experience here, so other games may vary. Most of the time, individual sessions, or sometimes clumps of sessions, depending on what was going on, felt much like any other game. I think this is especially true in earlier segments of play, when you're learning characters, relationships, local geography, and politics. Especially if you're playing a "Spring Covenant," the sort of default for players new to the game. You're all establishing a covenant, so you're playing through a lot of chronologically close events as you build the place, your community, alliances and enemies, etc. Your magi will have to get their labs set up, then make sure they're safe, before they can even get started doing what they really want to do...spend as much time as possible in their labs, without getting dragged out to go on adventures.
So, we might have a session where a mage and some grogs (peasants/guards/etc) spend much of the session trying to find a magic spring in the woods, only to discover a fairy glen, where patience and cleverness is tested. Things go wrong and some grogs get turned into rabbits. Or things go right and the mage wins a new ally for the covenant (in as much as you can bank on fairies as allies).
Or, we might spend several game sessions on a journey from the covenant to a Grand Tribunal, where a lot of political machinations among magi happen. Along the way, there might be trouble with bandits, or a town that needs saving, or what have you. This would play out much like any other traditional fantasy game.
Either of the previous examples might be the only adventure had in a season.
The difference usually comes between "adventures." That's where seasons come into play. A magi is very jealous of their time and energy, so they're usually only willing to leave their lab for a season, so they can spend the other three seasons doing all their mage stuff, like learning spells, making magic items, etc. Being out of their lab for a couple weeks is enough to mean they don't get the benefits of spending a season on study, so they want to be compensated. Their season of adventuring is often seen as, so long as it can be justified as such, "service" owed to the covenant. This facilitates a kind of rotation in play, where you might actively play your magi in session every few sessions (other than maybe some social/roleplaying scenes), which is why you've also got the "companion" character, or grogs if you're just in the mood for tomfoolery.
When time starts moving faster, you might skip from an adventure in Winter of 1160 to an adventure in the summer of 1171. This is when some book keeping must be taken care of. What have the magi been doing? What have they accomplished? What have they paid and what have they gained in that time? Have any grogs or companions retired or died of old age? Much of this will either be covered by certain mechanics in the game or decided between players & GM. By the time you're skipping lengths of time like that, however, everyone should probably be on board and know what's going on with their characters.
The longest game I was in took a bit over a year of real time, and I was only in it for the last six months of weekly sessions. I don't think we ever skipped more than a season or two. Before he had to move, our primary GM did say that we were almost to a point where time might start moving a bit faster (I think we were transitioning from a Spring into a Summer covenant). The other couple of games I had a chance to play in barely had any time jumps at all. I think in-game time starts to move a bit faster, with more time jumps, as your covenant grows older and more powerful, so challenges become more rare. When you're just starting out as a Spring covenant, you're surrounded by challenges, physical and political. By the time you're an Autumn covenant, you're probably fairly insulated from most stuff, or it can be assumed you have mundane humans who take care of things so you don't have to micromanage. So, reasons for you to adventure must be much greater, so might not come around but once a decade. I've never reached that point in a game, however.
I hope that helps. I love this game, but it's been almost 30 years of time between when I last sat around a table playing it, so not everything is crisp in my head.
@@matthewconstantine5015 Thanks. That's a lot better fitting than some of the other descriptions of how the timescale works that I have seen, though they were likely trying to keep it short.
@@jimmydesouza4375 it can be a hard game to describe. Doesn't really lend itself well to the classic "elevator pitch." Honestly, the learning curve & "onboarding" for the game is a definite and real challenge. I love the game, and would love more people to get into it, but I don't want to sugar coat it, either. While you can have some casual players in the group, it's best if you've got at least a few players who are really into it, and willing to invest some genuine time and effort. In some ways, it's like some Powered by the Apocalypse games, where the players have a lot of input and investment in the creation of the campaign. But there's no two ways about it, the game has a lot of crunch. You may not need to have a firm grasp on all of it right from the start, but there's a lot to learn. I 100% believe it's worth it, though.
Is the medieval part essential? My group of players are into urban fantasy. We tried mage: the awakening but it wasn‘t what we where looking for. Maybe we have to throw the idea of urban fantasy away and check ars Magica out.
I never did check out Mage. You may already know this (or I may have said it in the video, but don't remember), but White Wolf owned Ars Magica at the time the World of Darkness was first coming out, and Mage was essentially the "future" of Ars Magica (3rd Edition). I don't know how similar it is, though.
I think that Ars Magica's magic system could be divorced from the Medieval setting, but I think it would take some work. I started some early work on doing so back in the 90s when I still contemplated designing my own RPG, but it was more effort than I was interested in at the time. It's pretty integrated in, not only with its use of Latin, but with its whole world-view, which echoes Medieval European thought & cosmology. They've done a few books that have alternate and expanded magic, moving away from the Hermetic Order that forms the backbone of the game. But unfortunately, I haven't really read any of that yet to know how versatile it is.
Got books?
The forth edition rules are free online
@@Imagicka But also not (In my opinion) as good as 5th edition
@@natanoj16although the introductory fiction was excellent!!