I'm an Ars Magica fan and a few years ago ran a very enjoyable campaign. But after spending a couple of days browsing back through my books I came away thinking, this is really just a great idea for a D&D campaign, where the DM's house rules got totally out of control. I understand its reputation for having the greatest magic casting rules in the universe, blah, blah, etc. But with some significant experience plus a bit of time and perspective, I decided I just don't give a shit about the carefully hand crafted clockwork mountain of rules. That shit is mostly all white-room wankery that doesn't have any impact on things that happen at the gaming table. On the other hand, the campaign world is pure brilliance. And it is actually really well suited to the power balance, class roles and diversity of monsters and spells you can find in 1E. In any event, that's my story and I'm sticking with it.

Go ahead, try and run the same kind of campaign in the Ars Magica world. Use D&D 1e instead of Ars Magica, though:).

Then come back and report, then we'd have something to discuss;).

Well I ran a all mage campaign back in in the 90s using GURPS. Went over well. You can read some of the stuff (roughly edited)
http://www.batintheattic.com/wilderlands/magic.html

While I never got back to run another all-mage campaign with any set of rules. Kept tweaking the background into something a bit more original and wrote it up as part of my Majestic Wilderlands supplement.

One thing to remember is not to shy away from allowing PCs to make magic items and do other forms of magical research. Figure out a balance that right for your setting and stick it with the implications. For me part of the work involved coming up with this.

http://www.batintheattic.com/downloads/Magic_Item_Creation_Rev_2.pdf

Some thing to remember are

• mages are people with their likes and dislikes. Except they happened to be skilled practitioners of magic.
• Magic in D&D is a scholarly profession, this limits it impact a fantasy medieval setting as an individual has spend years of unproductive activity to get the point of casting a single cantrip or spell. The economy of the time can't support that many not doing anything towards clothing, feeding, or housing people. This also make mages a prestige profession. Combined with lack of any type of philosophy behind industrialization means a mage will nearly always find a more valuable use of his time than creating food and water, or chunks of pure metals. And that magic items will remain a high priced luxury item.
• For D&D particularly you need to develop interesting sub-systems or mini games. For example I have something called viz which is pure magic in a physical form. Can be used to offset the cost of a magic item, or used to keep a spell in memory after you cast it. I have some rules on portal magic, stuff on summoning demons, and so forth and so on. Part of what Ars Magica work is all the mini-games they built around their magic system.

If you want to jump start your own setting, just run a campaign where every PC has to make a wizard/magic-user and see what happens. Record the results and write it up. That will be how mages are in your setting from then on.

There has been something of a redressing of ideas found in modern versions of D&D that account for some of the innovations brought forward in games like Ars Magica - Jonathan Tweet was the developer of 3E after all - and 5E actually has some settings that incorporate Harry Potter style institutions and authentically researched medieval settings. Indeed, 5E is close to having ubiquitous options for magic use in most of it's classes, so it's not a stretch to get close to running something like Ars Magica within it's current ruleset. However, I think it's a stretch to suggest that you could get anywhere closet running things like troupe style play, covenant design, improvised magic and personalised styles of magic with 1E AD&D.

It's the opposite, really: Ars Magica 2e is the perfect ruleset for a Glantri campaign.

Quote from: TrippyHippy;966877T... troupe style play, covenant design, improvised magic and personalised styles of magic with 1E AD&D.

Between the class-based character system and emphasis on henchmen and hirelings, D&D is basically the Ur-troupe-style-play game.

Covenant design is also obviously something closely related to D&D's longstanding priorities on PC's establishing power centers when they reach 9th level or so. This is well supported in OD&D and 1E, but mostly relegated to splat books in later editions.

The improvised and personalized magic I'll give you, though I frankly get sick of them in play - they are a bit rules-y and twee for my tastes. The excellent concepts for setting and campaign that are at the heart of Ars Magica don't actually depend (or even relate to) the nitty gritty details of what sorts of magical effects wizards can create. The only exception is the concept of Parma Magica, which only exists in D&D as a few specific counter spells. I suppose you could simply specify that one or two protective anti-magic spells are known to magicians of the Order but only taught to those who have reached their apprenticeships and are ready to become mages.

Quote from: Larsdangly;966903BThe improvised and personalized magic I'll give you, though I frankly get sick of them in play - they are a bit rules-y and twee for my tastes.

I will just point out that we now have a wide variety of options to vary magic and still keep it straightforward and D&Dish. I get what you are saying. I was surprised at how well the small tweaks I used for my Majestic Wilderlands worked for making the players feel they were dealing different types of magic. Although I didn't touch the actual list of spells.

I agree 100 per cent. Especially about the white room wankery. When I was trying to put together an Ars Magica campaign, I frequented the game's forums to get some sense of running the game. All I came across was thread after thread after thread of libraries and new spells and vis this and lab projects that. No evidence anyone was actually playing the game, rather than sitting at tables scribbling up formulas.

Ars Magic has a fantastic premise. But it's one of those games where I'm convinced the ratio of people who actually play to people who just fart around with it is around 1:40. I'd play it in a heartbeat if someone cut about 80 per cent of the mechanics and turn it into a game playable by the average group of beer-drinking gamers. Until then, yeah, I'd just as soon run a D&D game based on the Ars Magica premise.

What is the Ars Magica premise?

The heart of the game is a covenant of wizards. A covenant includes the wizards, their powerful or interesting allies (think D&D characters), and their mundane servants. Along with libraries, workshops, etc.

Each player runs one of the wizards. Each player also runs one of the powerful allies. Everyone takes turn running the various grogs.

An adventure consists of one of the wizards and several allies and grogs dealing with some issue confronting the covenant. Trouble with the church. Access to magic mana (vis). A rampaging giant or rival covenant.

The magic system uses a very clever combination of techniques and forms.

Players take turns DMing.

There's a bunch of other cool stuff around the setting of medieval Europe, vying houses of magic, the faerie realm, etc.

I've never read a game I wanted to play so badly. But it's chock full to the gills with mechanics. There are something like four pages (in a tiny font) of formulas for various processes. I honestly don't know how you could enjoy playing unless you really get off on crunching numbers for every single aspect of play.

Quote from: Haffrung;966946I've never read a game I wanted to play so badly. But it's chock full to the gills with mechanics. There are something like four pages (in a tiny font) of formulas for various processes. I honestly don't know how you could enjoy playing unless you really get off on crunching numbers for every single aspect of play.

Which edition? There are five of them.

Also 2nd edition is in PDF at Warehouse 23.

Also Covenant for 2nd edition.

Fifth edition.

Quote from: Haffrung;966957Fifth edition.

You 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.

While 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
2. System Mechanics
3. Supplements coverage and quality

Quote from: Haffrung;966946The heart of the game is a covenant of wizards. A covenant includes the wizards, their powerful or interesting allies (think D&D characters), and their mundane servants. Along with libraries, workshops, etc.

Each player runs one of the wizards. Each player also runs one of the powerful allies. Everyone takes turn running the various grogs.

An adventure consists of one of the wizards and several allies and grogs dealing with some issue confronting the covenant. Trouble with the church. Access to magic mana (vis). A rampaging giant or rival covenant.

The magic system uses a very clever combination of techniques and forms.

Players take turns DMing.

There's a bunch of other cool stuff around the setting of medieval Europe, vying houses of magic, the faerie realm, etc.

I've never read a game I wanted to play so badly. But it's chock full to the gills with mechanics. There are something like four pages (in a tiny font) of formulas for various processes. I honestly don't know how you could enjoy playing unless you really get off on crunching numbers for every single aspect of play.

Thanks for the synopsis. Doesn't sound like a game I'd ever want to play, but just because I've never been into wizards and magic all that much. I've only ever seen the name of the game; I've never seen an actual boxed set or book or met anyone who owned it or played it (although I could say that about a lot of games). It probably came out during my RPG hiatus.