It's fun. Don't upset the apple cart, or else the Vatican comes for you. And then if you manage to fend off the Vatican but don't shape up anyway, actual Angels buttfuck you.

>>44221613
Yeah, it's pretty rare to see a game where the dominant, ruling power of the setting is unambiguously Lawful Good. I have no idea what that'll do for player agency, but it certainly gives the game a unique flavour.

>>44221502
Troupe play isnt required but it is novel and great if you've a group to handle it.

The game is godlike even if you're not a history major taking the boot to some satanists or making deals with the fae Ars Magica is a great time.

>>44221502
Love it. Been running a campaign for a bit over two years now. The rules are extensive, but there's a strong internal logic to how a lot of it is put together. No magic system is better!

I can't comment on the troupe play, never tried it. I put time in so we can play every week, the players don't really have the rules competency or setting familiarity to run sessions.

I've only skimmed the lore in the past, any brief summary of how the game works?

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>>44223291
More about the campaign I'm running (no spoilers though, I know some of my players browse tg).

It's set in Hungary, part of the Transylvanian Tribunal, dominated by the Hierarchical and orderly House Tremere. The campaign is very political. The players are in cahoots with the Pawnbroker faction of the Redcaps, they pulled off a convoluted scheme to purchase the rights to the Royal Mint of Hungary, and as a result are currently filthy rich in mundane currency.

Current long term threats are the Mongols (who kidnapped a bunch of wizards in Novgorod and are currently fucking up Khwarezm), the potential beginning of a new schism in the Order of Hermes, and their inability to pick up on clues I shove in their faces as aggressively as possible.

>>44223356
Players are wizards. They fuck around in their towers learning magic for seasons at a time, going out to enable further hikkikimori wizard-living every once in a while or mess around with wizard politics.

All of this takes place in Mythic Europe, aka 1200s Europe as the people who lived then imagined it. Your body has four humors, the earth is surrounded by a crystal sphere, God is real, so is the devil, faeries will steal your baby, and the touch of a king can cure scrofula.

>>44221502

Ars Magica is one of my favorite RPGs. The rules monkey in me loves how versatile and precise the magic system is, and the manager in me loves the rules for setting up and running covens and laboratories. And on top of that, it plays nothing like your standard dungeon crawler, which is a big plus in my book.

>>44221613

Or you can just play so far removed from the Church's sphere of influence that it doesn't matter. The last game I played took place in the Novogorod Council - we had to worry more about all the goddamned faeries and the looming threat of Mongols bending us over a rail than any kind of Catholic interference.

Have a copy. Enjoy reading it. Never played it because in the two groups I play with, at least one person - a different one each time - drops within a few sessions in anything we run that isn't min-maxing tabletop WoW in paethfeindeer. Might be different if I DMed. Not sure.

>>44223357
Sounds like a fun campaign and typical players.
Are there supernatural forces backing/exploiting the Mongols in Mythic Eurasia, or are they just historical? Because honestly, historical Mongols are OP enough.

>>44221502
Its fun but people sold me like it was the most verstile game with magic and i was a little dissapointed.

>>44225154
What were you expecting? I don't know any game that's MORE versatile with magic, unless the rules are just "make up a spell and ask the gm how hard it should be".

Though I don't think Ars' magic system is flawless, and at this point I'd rather be playing Mage: the Awakening in Mythic Europe. The hermetic arts themselves are a bit constraining I find, and some forms have many more useful applications than others.

I firmly believe that every single RPG campaign should take place on a generational scale, with characters improving their abilities mainly or exclusively by training in months of downtime.

What I'm saying is ars magica ftw.

>>44225103
If I intended to make them antagonists to the covenant I'd give them some supernatural backing (probably demonic) - so the magi at once have a reason to get involved, the challenge of facing enemies with magic resistance, and they get to demonstrate their powers to the local mundanes by detecting/banishing dangers that ordinary people can't handle.

If the mongol invasion is just a backdrop then I'd leave them as normal humans. History is going to happen without supernatural intervention.

>>44221502
>What does /tg/ think about Ars Magica?
"That thing that White Wolf ripped off when they made Mage", I think?

Although technically Rein•Hagen did both games.

>>44226909

Well, I mean, the original concept of Mage was "what if we took Mythic Europe and speed up the timeline to now?" The execution was way different, but there are clear bits here and there.

Are there any good actual plays of Ars Magica for me to look at? I'd love to play it but I think I'd need to see it in action to get a feel for the mechanics.