A few people asked to see what I’ve got so far on my Ars Magica hack, so here it is.

12 thoughts on “A few people asked to see what I’ve got so far on my Ars Magica hack, so here it is.”

1. Oh, and here’s a link to the character and reference sheets. These are also a work in progress but they should be helpful if you actually plan to do some playtesting.

   https://www.dropbox.com/s/z1u06if743ga96i/ArM%20World%20Character%20Sheets.pdf

2. I just rechecked the PDF and realized the TOC is not hyperlinked. Imagine my embarrassment.

   I’ll figure out what I did wrong and fix it for the next version.

3. Quick question (which you may have answered elsewhere) – why no Mercere or Tremere?

4. Accidentally posted this to the other thread. Here it is again:

   Tremere is in the works.

   I had trouble fitting Mercere in. Ungifted Mercere could be companions, but their role in the covenant was unclear. Gifted Mercere who stick around the covenant are pretty generic in flavor… I’m open to suggestions if anyone has ideas for iconic Mercere moves and abilities that fit the covenant focus of the hack.

5. That’s cool. I’ll have a proper look through and have a think about Mercere in case that helps. If nothing else, you could always have them as a Companion with the Moves allowing them to take part in tribunal councils etc. 

6. Hmm. My gut reaction is that the magic system has been over simplified as compared to the original game. It seems to have lost the question of can this particular wizard achieve this particular effect.

   I would be inclined to drop the casting attribute entirely and instead give ranks to individual Arts. Techniques and Forms should be assigned from separate pools so that every wizards has some combinations where they are really strong and others where they are really weak.

7. You make a very good point Konrad Zielinski. In fact, one of my first drafts was based on almost exactly what you describe. In the end I I decided to lean more toward the Apocalypse World model even though it cost a bit in terms of flavour. Tracking techniques and forms separately meant effectively adding 15 more stats to a system that is already much more rules-dense than a typical AW hack.

   Ultimately the question of “can this particular wizard achieve this particular effect?” was not what I wanted to focus on with this hack. If it doesn’t break the limitations of magic I want every wizard to be able to achieve every effect. This hack is focused on the consequences of great power, not on the limitations hermetic magic might impose.

   Does that make sense?

8. The limitations of hermetic magic just seem too fundamental to the setting for them to be simplified out.

9. /sub

10. Well, Konrad Zielinski it seems my playtest group agrees with you 🙂

    I did some revising over the last few days and went back to some of the ideas from an earlier draft.

    The key piece that fell into place was how to allow two or more arts to factor into a spell without breaking the 2d6+modifier framework. For now at least, I’m going with the “rule of limitations”. Whenever a move calls for a modifier from more than one source, always add only the lowest modifier.

    For example, a magus with Creo +2 and Ignem +1 would roll+1 to create a fireball.

    Any thoughts?

11. I don’t think 2d6+modifier will quite fly for this. Again what we have here is a clash between the philosophy used by *World games and Ars Magica.  to me the most obvious thing to do is include a difficulty ranking for spells as well.  divide the spell levels in the book by 10 and round down. so ball of Ball of Abysmal flame (creo ignem 35) would be -3 to cast and the example wizard would roll at 2d6+0 to fire it.

    you would then adjust the duration, targets and time chart to work in increments of 2 magnitudes as well and end up with s slightly simplified version of Ars Magica spell casting.

    This goes back to the idea that magic is the focus of this game so it deserves more detail then other activities. And also captures the idea that Magic is inherently hard.

12. I get what you mean about focusing on magic, but at that point you’d be much better off just playing Ars Magica 🙂

    While this is about finding a place somewhere between AW and Ars Magica, I’m trying to lean heavily toward AW wherever possible.

    Thanks again for the feedback!

    Would anyone else care to weigh in?

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