Quote from: Haffrung;966957Fifth edition.

When I read your first post, I knew you were talking about fifth edition. I started playing with 1st edition, and this was one of my favorite games, but 5th was the edition where I stopped buying it. The mechanical creep had been getting worse for a couple of editions at that point, but it just became intolerable at that point. The rules aren't bad. They are just unnecessary. Second Edition trust the GM to adjudicate in places, but 5th gives you a rule for everything. It's an edition for people that want to read very thorough rules and appreciate how well they fit together but worry less about how they are going to flow at the table.

First and Second Edition were both fast and approachable games with what would be considered a thin core rulebook today. While it had some great supplements, the only essential one would be Covenants. The "clockwork mountain of rules" didn't exist until later.

I think the rules bloat hurts Ars Magica more than it would with many games because it is a game that really depends on the whole group actually knowing the rules. If you are playing a magus, you need to know how magic works and how the lab rules work. In 2nd edition, you could easily take in the rules in one sitting. They didn't weigh it down with frivolous details like differing rules for different kinds of books. To use your term, none of "wankery" was in the lab and magic rules. They just did things that mattered in play.

Quote from: estar;966960You got a point. In terms of generating idea and setting details, I like the fifth edition books. The mechanics are too "fussy" for my taste.

With the first two editions, the game was only concerned with giving medieval flavor more than dealing with historical detail. You'd create a covenant and a lot of the surrounding lands would be more dictated by the covenant creation process than by doing any research. There was easy player buy-in, and not too much work for the GM. The medieval flavor wasn't entirely authentic, but it had a distinct, fun feel that was easy to convey. I don't think any edition after 2nd carried much in the way of a sense of fun.

With third edition, the flavor of the game was tossed out to make it feel a part of the WoD, which never felt right at all. Adding the  Realm of Reason and characters with True Reason showed a fundamental misunderstanding of the game (and reason, for that matter). The magi (especially House Bonisagus) were already the force of reason in a world that played by magical rules. A chemist friend of mine remarked at the time that it was oddly the closest he had come to getting to play a scientist in an RPG. It also misses the concept of reason to have characters with True Reason as people so blind to the nature of the world that they can negate it.

Fourth had a better setting than third, but it had seriously broken combat mechanics which weren't fixed until the book on knights years into its run. It also never got sense of fun back either. There had always been Ars Magica fans that wanted to run it with high historical accuracy, and that was cool. But this was the point where they started running the whole show. This was the first edition I didn't play as it was just too dry to sell people on.

Fifth is a better version of fourth mechanically, and it is very good at what it does. It just isn't the version of Ars Magica I want to play.

Quote from: CRKrueger;966961While we're on the subject of Ars Magica...

Rank the Editions 1-5 in order for what you thought was the best
1. Setting presentation and info

It's a tricky question because the game has three different settings. The original Tweet/Rein-Hagen one of first and second edition, the World of Darkness of third edition, and the more heavily detailed one of fourth and fifth.

It's pretty easy to rank third edition last, as that was just a poor attempt at corporate synergy rather than a coherent design.

First and fourth are both editions that aren't bad, but they are early drafts of the edition that comes after them, so I will rank them next highest.

Fifth edition is a really impressive work, but I am going to put it at number two, as I just don't feel its presentation immediately invited use in the game.

Second edition has what would be considered an old school approach to supplements today. While later books went down the road of supplements covering vast geographical areas, second edition generally gave you bite-sized pieces that you could drop right into your sandbox. Covenants was a book with mechanics for players to design their covenant, but it also included four pre-made covenants that that conveyed a lot about the setting while also being easy to drop right into your own campaign, complete with a number of plot hooks for each. The Mythic Places books also gave you a number of interesting magical places that PCs could travel along with multiple reasons to go. The Broken Covenant of Calebais was a great dungeon crawl into a ruined covenant.  The setting was described on the level of PC interaction.

Quote2. System Mechanics

This really comes down to contest between 2nd and 5th. I'm just going to say it depends on the group. I like the looseness of 2nd, but I can see some people might want to mechanical detail of 5th. They both do what they do well.

Quote3. Supplements coverage and quality

Well, 5th has the most coverage. No real question there. Quality is tougher to define. I found that 2nd had books that more readily engaged me to run the thing, but I will admit that there were some adventures for 2nd that were abysmal (Winter's Tale comes to mind). I'm just going to pass on this one.

Quote from: Dumarest;967162Can anyone verify whether this is true re: "troupe play"? I know we had troupes for FASA Star Trek, but I don't think it was ever discussed in the rulebooks.

The term troupe play was definitely coined by Ars Magica, but it wasn't the first time people ever had multiple characters in a campaign.

Quote from: Baulderstone;967206I think the rules bloat hurts Ars Magica more than it would with many games because it is a game that really depends on the whole group actually knowing the rules.

Absolutely. Reading the Ars 5th edition rules, I knew I could grapple with them enough to use them at the table. But there was no fucking way the rest of my group could. None.

Quote from: Haffrung;967209Absolutely. Reading the Ars 5th edition rules, I knew I could grapple with them enough to use them at the table. But there was no fucking way the rest of my group could. None.

And yet, 5th edition is what sold me on Ars Magica, because I only hate pointless crunch;).

Quote from: Baulderstone;967206When I read your first post, (snip)

I concur with this except that the 4th edition and 5th edition Ars Magica supplements are much like GURPS supplements that can be mined for stuff to use in other campaigns using other rules. But now that you mentioned it all of the adventures I adapted for my own use stem from the 2nd edition era. So yeah 2nd edition has more of a PC focus than the later stuff.

So it sounds like 4th isn't bad to pick up since it's free, but the best entry point to the setting and rules would be 2nd, kind of a "Classic Ars Magica", and then see if ramping up the mechanical complexity and setting detail into Harn-like levels suits you, start investigating 5th, possibly for supplements if not rules.  Sound about right?

I've only ever played second.  Thanks for the input all, and the free 4th, Voros.

Or just take the 5th and learn it, paring down stuff you don't need;).

Quote from: CRKrueger;967214So it sounds like 4th isn't bad to pick up since it's free, but the best entry point to the setting and rules would be 2nd, kind of a "Classic Ars Magica", and then see if ramping up the mechanical complexity and setting detail into Harn-like levels suits you, start investigating 5th, possibly for supplements if not rules.  Sound about right?

So, basically do that D&D thing where you use B/X as a base and then season with bits of other D&D rule sets? I think that might work, although having not tried it, I'm not sure if there would be issues with mechanics. The stats at the core of the system have largely stayed the same, so transplants might be simple enough.

As an aside, during second edition, there was a supplement announced for a new setting for Ars Magica (I think it may have been a third party product from Atlas Games. It was going to be a fantasy world. It would have no Dominion with magi being major powers. While I quite like Mythic Europe, it seemed like not having the stigma of a historical setting might be the thing that Ars Magica needed to widen its popularity.

It never happened. Maybe it simply never got finished. Maybe the switch from 2nd to 3rd killed it. Maybe the desire to tie it to the WoD made another setting for the game unappealing to WW. Anyway, this is high on my list of unreleased products that still show up in the FLGS of my dreams only to leave me with an empty yearning when I wake up.

Quote from: estar;967175When a term is defined doesn't mean the idea behind it was new or novel at the time.

Did I say that? No, I didn't. Indeed, I actually pointed out that the idea couldn't be formed in a vacuum, so the notion of it not being used before is not the claim here. However, Ars Magica made it a core aspect of their game, and put the idea into print. AD&D did not - especially in reference to NPC Hirelings and Henchmen (which was an entirely different idea).

I will say that Ars Magica had great advice on grogs that I used afterwards with both hirelings in D&D and extras in Savage Worlds. As grogs are frequently controlled by different players from one session to another, and are sometimes run by a player who is also running a companion or magus, you really need to give each grog a simple but outsized personality like the characters in a WWII movie. It meant no matter who was controlling them, everyone had a handle on it, and if they died, they had just enough personality for players mourn them more than they would retainer #4.

It wasn't revolutionary advice, but I was young enough when I was playing Ars Magica that it helped me out.

Quote from: AsenRG;967248Or just take the 5th and learn it, paring down stuff you don't need;).

This right here. Same goes for the free PDF of 4th edition. I'm apparently one of those rare Ars Magica enthusiasts who has actually played the game a number of times, and in my experience, most of the mechanics and formulae (yes there are lots of them) are fairly well organized into modular subsystems. It's not hard to "unplug" the ones you don't feel like using. While none of them (IIRC) are labelled "optional" in the text of the game, many of them can be treated as such.

Best fantasy RPG I've ever played.

Quote from: Baulderstone;967298I will say that Ars Magica had great advice on grogs that I used afterwards with both hirelings in D&D and extras in Savage Worlds. As grogs are frequently controlled by different players from one session to another, and are sometimes run by a player who is also running a companion or magus, you really need to give each grog a simple but outsized personality like the characters in a WWII movie. It meant no matter who was controlling them, everyone had a handle on it, and if they died, they had just enough personality for players mourn them more than they would retainer #4.

It wasn't revolutionary advice, but I was young enough when I was playing Ars Magica that it helped me out.

I think this is one of several good ways to look at it. Basically, I don't understand what the big deal is here: AM has some great concepts that were developed from ideas already bubbling around in the hobby. They didn't invent the concept of gaming in a fantasy version of the european middle ages, but they did something interesting with the idea. They obviously didn't invent the idea that a player would have a stable of characters with diverse abilities and roles - I can't count how many games I've played or run where this is the case. But they focus on, codify and do something interesting with the idea. You can think that's cool without planting your flag on the idea that they invented the concept.

Quote from: Larsdangly;967378I think this is one of several good ways to look at it. Basically, I don't understand what the big deal is here: AM has some great concepts that were developed from ideas already bubbling around in the hobby. They didn't invent the concept of gaming in a fantasy version of the european middle ages, but they did something interesting with the idea. They obviously didn't invent the idea that a player would have a stable of characters with diverse abilities and roles - I can't count how many games I've played or run where this is the case. But they focus on, codify and do something interesting with the idea. You can think that's cool without planting your flag on the idea that they invented the concept.

I don't think your account on what gaming groups across the world were finding innovative 30 years ago is authoritative. Heck, most gaming groups today don't play in a troupe style and very few games make it a design feature. One of the very few games today that makes this style explicitly part of their gameplay is still Ars Magica. Basically, I don't know what your big deal is here.