I ran an Ars Magica saga about ten years ago that covered the origins of Hogwarts as a covenant. I changed just enough details that my players didn't figure it out for about a year. It was a great game !
Great Video Matt. The 90’s were a special time for gaming especially in our area of north central Maine. Ars Magica definitely became one of my favorite games thanks to your influence back in the day. I highly recommend it to anyone. Matt hope you have gotten a chance to run it recently. I know this is an older video.
Good overview of Ars Magica, I have been very fond of this game system for a number of years (since 2nd edition). I thought it interesting that you mentioned J.K. Rowlings' "World of Harry Potter" as a potential genre in the future. While I've never done that specifically, our group did use the system to emulate David Eddings' Belgariad/Malorian series quite well. We did have to do a few tweaks to the magic system and set up some initial racial virtues and flaws tables that players could select from before they would go into the rest of their character creation. The band of players were so flavored by the time they were created, they could have been pulled right from the books, the deft and sneaky Drasnians, the overly confident and honor bound Mimbrates, the plotting and politicking Nyissians with their poisons and assassinations, the towering burly Cheeraks, etc.
Definitely have to do a covenant vid, to go over how things are set-up and how the Magi, Companions, and Grogs interact with each other and the outside world.
I would love to see you do a video on the Covenant. Both because I think you described the game in general well, and because there aren't enough youtube videos about Ars Magica in general.
Yeah, giving some basics on covenants will make the whole troupe-style play more appealing to new players. Without understanding the whole "stronghold" aspect of the campaign companions and grogs probably look kind of shallow compared to the magi.
This was good. Thanks. I do like the idea of having one person focus on a specific niche thing (faerie, church etc). That would really break up some of the heavy lifting. Plus we have people in our group that are interested in specific aspects of the game, so that would work nicely. We've found it's good to ease into Ars Magica. The jumpstart scenarios that are available are a great place to start. I'm currently running a scenario where we just let the players focus on character creation, virtues and flaws, and spells and absolutely nothing else. I picked a ready-made covenant and barely refer to it in the story. It's just another setting to the players - all of the layers of what can be done in and with a covenant have not even been mentioned. So they just get to focus on their characters and the story. And already they are asking about more and reading into the system with more depth. Yes, they miss out on character growth, but hopefully we'll get them to commit to a full saga and we'll reboot with their characters from scratch. The hope is, obviously, to get them interested enough to want to commit to the full experience of playing a saga, but if you strip the game down to its bare bones and just play some one-shots folks get a sense of how wildly entertaining and fun Ars Magica is. And it's so much fun. I had watched some very dry, serious and mathy playthroughs, but the game is so much fun with the right group. I'm relieved to hear it's difficult, as it's the first RPG I've run in about 40 years, and I'm managing pretty well. If I can run Ars Magica anyone can.
Glad to hear you've found folks who are interested! I realized after I posted this that I'd forgotten entirely to talk about covenants, that's another place where I think having someone to help lift the load can be handy. There's so much to manage. I like your idea of starting things off easy. I've had plans for some time to run a game based around a Winter covenant, where the PCs are fresh out of apprenticeship when they are called there. But I'd thought about running a few "prequel" stories, first around grogs, then maybe pre-gen companions, and if all that went well, have them create magi. Not sure if that's how I'd do it, but I've been kicking it around.
@@matthewconstantine5015 I got the rules the other day, purely on the promise of a robust magic system in a game where everyone gets to be an awesome wizard. About an hour into reading I was like, "Oh wait, why don't I pull up a high level overview on YT to get the basics? That way I can get to character making sooner." I was (almost) sorely disappointed. :D
Hi Matt, I'm in the UK and would love to play again, happy to do so over Zoom. I agree with your breakdown and especially remember the combat being weak, but absolutely love the Game idea and the magic system. I'm definitely partial to playing Bjornaer Mage, the last one had 2 non-combat forms of swift and snow rabbit.
Cool. Unfortunately, I won't be running Ars Magica anytime soon. My RPG time is extremely limited and I've got a Dungeon Crawl Classics game going right now. Not sure what the future will bring. But it's good to know there's some interest out there.
Ars Magica remains one of my favorite RPG systems out there and I love the flexibility of it, however, I'm not convinced that it is the right system, as it is written, for J.K. Rowling's World of Harry Potter without a major overhaul and a lot of core changes to the magic system itself. The Key problem is that the wand is an integral and highly personalized focus tools that is not strictly needed in most of the spells in the Ars Magica system, and although there is a house that requires an outside magical focus to cast spells, this is still not true of all magic cast in the world of Harry Potter, some wizards and witches can still do a lot of feats without a wand to focus their efforts as Dumbledore has proven on more than one occasion. Potions and alchemy are also huge focus in the world of Harry Potter, but they are more of a background afterthought in much of Ars Magica with the exception of the Longevity potions to extend one's lifespan. The magical arts also seems to be segregated differently than as the strict Forms and Techniques of the Ars Magica Arts. Occlumency, Potions, Dark Arts, Astronomy, Charms, etc. and while some subjects may have direct correlations such as Divination to Intelligo, and Transmutation to Muto, other's do not fit into these Form/Technique molds as well. I fear that almost a complete overhaul of the Magic System might be required to make it fit better into the world of Harry Potter. However, I have used it to run a campaign set in David Edgings Belgariad/Malorian setting with only minor tweaks to the magic rule system (getting rid of Vis and most of the potion/artefact creation rules, but allowing for more lasting spell potency (as if Vis was always used at a higher level cost) and to the basic character creation where you first selected your race, and then you selected from your racially favored virtues and flaws first, and then supplemented any additional virtues and flaws later.
The wands are obviously one or several Hermetic break-through(s), possibly by (a) Verditius mage(s), which allows even untrained (first-year students at Hogwarts) wizards and witches to bypass the "traditional" method of needing to spend seasons inventing or learning Formulaic spells. This proved useful enough that "real" formulaic spells were gradually phased out and forgotten about, at least in Europe, leaving wand-empowered formulaic casting and Spontaneous magic, generally referred to as "wandless" magic. The different subjects appear to be other magic lineages integrated into modern-day Magic Theory, such as Hermetic Alchemy from The Mysteries, Revised.
Great video! With your thoughts on Harry Potter, I don't think the humour would be out of place. There's literally an NPC in Ars Magica with magical semen (in Guardians of the Rhine, one of the Durenmar magi). This is not a game that takes itself too seriously!
#1 lesson I learned from playing Ars Magica: An irresponsible player whose mage specializes in Muto + Animal magic should not be left unattended in a stable, barn, or aviary. Terrible things will happen. #2 lesson: I am sometimes an irresponsible player.
The last time I played...a LONG time ago, I was working on playing a really, really nice guy, who was also a Verditius necromancer. He was trying to find away around/break Hermetic theory by reuniting the soul of his lost love with a body, even if it wasn't hers. We only got a few sessions in before things fell apart, but my guy made things weird real quick.
I've always kind of assumed that R.K. Rowling got her ideas from Ars Magica since the game came out first and so many elements such as having different houses with associated goals and philosophies wasn't really a thing before that.
I really wonder. Was it direct? Was it filtered through several places, kinda like the Lovecraft to the two French guys I can't remember the name of, to Erich Von Daniken, to Graham Handcock thing with Ancient Aliens? Or was it a just a matter of parallel creation. I know the latter can happen, as I wrote a (terrible) first draft of a novel in high school back in the early 90s that was echoed in many ways by The Walking Dead, but there's no way what I wrote had any part in that comic's origin.
Harry Potter world using Ars Magica rules. Huhh. I wouldn't have thought it. Have you ever heard of Mage the Ascension? Or any of the other Mage games by White Wolf? Those are the modern concept worlds that borrowed from Ars Magica. This is because White Wolf had the Ars Magica licence before their Vampire and Mage games.
I never played any of the World of Darkness games. I was among the first people in my (admittedly remote) region to own Vampire the Masquerade, but never ended up playing it. My girlfriend at the time really got into it, but for various reasons, I didn't. They all got hugely popular while I was working in a game store, but none of the groups I was involved with got into them. I knew several people who swore by Mage. I had a bunch of the material, but unloaded it during my decade or so out of the hobby. I know there's stuff in the 3rd Ed. Ars Magica that was put in place specifically to connect it to WOD, including house Tremere's flirtation with dark forces (which would lead them to becoming a clan in Vampire).
5:17 Sigh. And now I miss Everway all over again. Darn you WotC, acting like an actual business that doesn't like losing money hand over fist. :) Not that Over the Edge probably earned a ton of profits either. Wish they'd crowdfund some more adventure seed books for the new edition.
I ran an Ars Magica saga about ten years ago that covered the origins of Hogwarts as a covenant. I changed just enough details that my players didn't figure it out for about a year. It was a great game !
That's awesome!
Great Video Matt. The 90’s were a special time for gaming especially in our area of north central Maine. Ars Magica definitely became one of my favorite games thanks to your influence back in the day. I highly recommend it to anyone. Matt hope you have gotten a chance to run it recently. I know this is an older video.
Good overview of Ars Magica, I have been very fond of this game system for a number of years (since 2nd edition). I thought it interesting that you mentioned J.K. Rowlings' "World of Harry Potter" as a potential genre in the future. While I've never done that specifically, our group did use the system to emulate David Eddings' Belgariad/Malorian series quite well. We did have to do a few tweaks to the magic system and set up some initial racial virtues and flaws tables that players could select from before they would go into the rest of their character creation. The band of players were so flavored by the time they were created, they could have been pulled right from the books, the deft and sneaky Drasnians, the overly confident and honor bound Mimbrates, the plotting and politicking Nyissians with their poisons and assassinations, the towering burly Cheeraks, etc.
I didn't even get into the Covenant concept in this. So important to the game.
Definitely have to do a covenant vid, to go over how things are set-up and how the Magi, Companions, and Grogs interact with each other and the outside world.
MarsKng I probably should.
I would love to see you do a video on the Covenant. Both because I think you described the game in general well, and because there aren't enough youtube videos about Ars Magica in general.
@@NorninTGK Thanks! I'm giving it some serious thought. May try to record something coming up.
Yeah, giving some basics on covenants will make the whole troupe-style play more appealing to new players. Without understanding the whole "stronghold" aspect of the campaign companions and grogs probably look kind of shallow compared to the magi.
This was good. Thanks. I do like the idea of having one person focus on a specific niche thing (faerie, church etc). That would really break up some of the heavy lifting. Plus we have people in our group that are interested in specific aspects of the game, so that would work nicely.
We've found it's good to ease into Ars Magica. The jumpstart scenarios that are available are a great place to start. I'm currently running a scenario where we just let the players focus on character creation, virtues and flaws, and spells and absolutely nothing else. I picked a ready-made covenant and barely refer to it in the story. It's just another setting to the players - all of the layers of what can be done in and with a covenant have not even been mentioned. So they just get to focus on their characters and the story. And already they are asking about more and reading into the system with more depth.
Yes, they miss out on character growth, but hopefully we'll get them to commit to a full saga and we'll reboot with their characters from scratch.
The hope is, obviously, to get them interested enough to want to commit to the full experience of playing a saga, but if you strip the game down to its bare bones and just play some one-shots folks get a sense of how wildly entertaining and fun Ars Magica is. And it's so much fun. I had watched some very dry, serious and mathy playthroughs, but the game is so much fun with the right group.
I'm relieved to hear it's difficult, as it's the first RPG I've run in about 40 years, and I'm managing pretty well. If I can run Ars Magica anyone can.
Glad to hear you've found folks who are interested!
I realized after I posted this that I'd forgotten entirely to talk about covenants, that's another place where I think having someone to help lift the load can be handy. There's so much to manage.
I like your idea of starting things off easy. I've had plans for some time to run a game based around a Winter covenant, where the PCs are fresh out of apprenticeship when they are called there. But I'd thought about running a few "prequel" stories, first around grogs, then maybe pre-gen companions, and if all that went well, have them create magi. Not sure if that's how I'd do it, but I've been kicking it around.
Commenting for the algo. One of the only good videos on this remarkable game on UA-cam
Thanks!
A great review Matthew! Kepp it up!
Best RPG ever.
Helpful discussion as an overview, thank you
Thanks for the review. A fascinating system 😍
Finally recorded a new video. Hope to upload it in the next couple days.
Thanks for making this! It's really hard to find useful videos about this game.
I'm glad you found it useful.
That was my main reason for making the video. There was so little out there for such a great game.
@@matthewconstantine5015 I got the rules the other day, purely on the promise of a robust magic system in a game where everyone gets to be an awesome wizard. About an hour into reading I was like, "Oh wait, why don't I pull up a high level overview on YT to get the basics? That way I can get to character making sooner." I was (almost) sorely disappointed. :D
Me and my 20yo son are getting into this game. It's sooo rich. Thanks for the video.
That's great! I hope it goes well. It really is a heck of a game.
Hi Matt,
I'm in the UK and would love to play again, happy to do so over Zoom. I agree with your breakdown and especially remember the combat being weak, but absolutely love the Game idea and the magic system. I'm definitely partial to playing Bjornaer Mage, the last one had 2 non-combat forms of swift and snow rabbit.
Cool.
Unfortunately, I won't be running Ars Magica anytime soon. My RPG time is extremely limited and I've got a Dungeon Crawl Classics game going right now.
Not sure what the future will bring. But it's good to know there's some interest out there.
We are a group who are going to run this soon.
We will run it will shifting GMs where everyone can take over GMing from time to time ^^
That's awesome!
Ars Magica remains one of my favorite RPG systems out there and I love the flexibility of it, however, I'm not convinced that it is the right system, as it is written, for J.K. Rowling's World of Harry Potter without a major overhaul and a lot of core changes to the magic system itself. The Key problem is that the wand is an integral and highly personalized focus tools that is not strictly needed in most of the spells in the Ars Magica system, and although there is a house that requires an outside magical focus to cast spells, this is still not true of all magic cast in the world of Harry Potter, some wizards and witches can still do a lot of feats without a wand to focus their efforts as Dumbledore has proven on more than one occasion. Potions and alchemy are also huge focus in the world of Harry Potter, but they are more of a background afterthought in much of Ars Magica with the exception of the Longevity potions to extend one's lifespan. The magical arts also seems to be segregated differently than as the strict Forms and Techniques of the Ars Magica Arts. Occlumency, Potions, Dark Arts, Astronomy, Charms, etc. and while some subjects may have direct correlations such as Divination to Intelligo, and Transmutation to Muto, other's do not fit into these Form/Technique molds as well. I fear that almost a complete overhaul of the Magic System might be required to make it fit better into the world of Harry Potter.
However, I have used it to run a campaign set in David Edgings Belgariad/Malorian setting with only minor tweaks to the magic rule system (getting rid of Vis and most of the potion/artefact creation rules, but allowing for more lasting spell potency (as if Vis was always used at a higher level cost) and to the basic character creation where you first selected your race, and then you selected from your racially favored virtues and flaws first, and then supplemented any additional virtues and flaws later.
The wands are obviously one or several Hermetic break-through(s), possibly by (a) Verditius mage(s), which allows even untrained (first-year students at Hogwarts) wizards and witches to bypass the "traditional" method of needing to spend seasons inventing or learning Formulaic spells.
This proved useful enough that "real" formulaic spells were gradually phased out and forgotten about, at least in Europe, leaving wand-empowered formulaic casting and Spontaneous magic, generally referred to as "wandless" magic.
The different subjects appear to be other magic lineages integrated into modern-day Magic Theory, such as Hermetic Alchemy from The Mysteries, Revised.
Great video! With your thoughts on Harry Potter, I don't think the humour would be out of place. There's literally an NPC in Ars Magica with magical semen (in Guardians of the Rhine, one of the Durenmar magi). This is not a game that takes itself too seriously!
#1 lesson I learned from playing Ars Magica: An irresponsible player whose mage specializes in Muto + Animal magic should not be left unattended in a stable, barn, or aviary. Terrible things will happen.
#2 lesson: I am sometimes an irresponsible player.
The last time I played...a LONG time ago, I was working on playing a really, really nice guy, who was also a Verditius necromancer. He was trying to find away around/break Hermetic theory by reuniting the soul of his lost love with a body, even if it wasn't hers. We only got a few sessions in before things fell apart, but my guy made things weird real quick.
I've always kind of assumed that R.K. Rowling got her ideas from Ars Magica since the game came out first and so many elements such as having different houses with associated goals and philosophies wasn't really a thing before that.
I really wonder.
Was it direct? Was it filtered through several places, kinda like the Lovecraft to the two French guys I can't remember the name of, to Erich Von Daniken, to Graham Handcock thing with Ancient Aliens? Or was it a just a matter of parallel creation. I know the latter can happen, as I wrote a (terrible) first draft of a novel in high school back in the early 90s that was echoed in many ways by The Walking Dead, but there's no way what I wrote had any part in that comic's origin.
Harry Potter world using Ars Magica rules. Huhh. I wouldn't have thought it.
Have you ever heard of Mage the Ascension? Or any of the other Mage games by White Wolf? Those are the modern concept worlds that borrowed from Ars Magica. This is because White Wolf had the Ars Magica licence before their Vampire and Mage games.
I never played any of the World of Darkness games. I was among the first people in my (admittedly remote) region to own Vampire the Masquerade, but never ended up playing it. My girlfriend at the time really got into it, but for various reasons, I didn't. They all got hugely popular while I was working in a game store, but none of the groups I was involved with got into them. I knew several people who swore by Mage. I had a bunch of the material, but unloaded it during my decade or so out of the hobby.
I know there's stuff in the 3rd Ed. Ars Magica that was put in place specifically to connect it to WOD, including house Tremere's flirtation with dark forces (which would lead them to becoming a clan in Vampire).
Join the ars magica discord!
I love this game to!! its just me so to speak :)
5:17 Sigh. And now I miss Everway all over again. Darn you WotC, acting like an actual business that doesn't like losing money hand over fist. :)
Not that Over the Edge probably earned a ton of profits either. Wish they'd crowdfund some more adventure seed books for the new edition.
Apparently, there's a new edition of Everway in the works. Fingers crossed.