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Old 08-29-2020, 10:30 AM   #1
larsdangly
 
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Default The world of Ars Magica as a TFT setting (or corner of Cidri)

I have always been a big fan of the central concepts of Ars Magica as a setting for a fantasy campaign. However, the rules system itself doesn't suit me, so I prefer to use the game as inspiration for various things, big and little, that I port over to games I like to play.

I'm currently working up some materials to make an Ars Magica-like setting for TFT. The end result could presumably serve as a stand alone campaign, though Cidri already has a wizard's guild and is very much an open sandbox so there is no harm in plunking it into a corner of that mega-verse as well (that's what I'm doing).

The end result will only be a couple of pages of notes (I'm of the mind that anything you don't directly use at the table is basically a waste of time and creative energy!). The following brief list lays out the key elements:

1) The social setting is high-medieval / Gothic in overall structure and technology. A couple of 'advantages' and existing talents are used to police who falls within each social caste, and a job list and list of major guilds lays out the sorts of PC and NPC roles that are common.

2) The wizarding guild in this world/region is organized into 'houses', each of which is focused on particular aspects of magic (though not to the exclusion of others), and consists of a set of 'chapters' that are each more or less like a monastery in scale and structure. Political jostling and historical disagreements among houses and chapters serves as a driver for the campaign.

3) PC roles could include anything from wizard who is a senior member of a chapter to a hero who has some connection to a house, to clergyman who views the wizard's guild and all of the houses and chapters as political or theological foes, to anything else you can imagine. In this sense, I am approaching the Ars Magica idea much more flexibly than is the intent of the original game system (though I also played Ars Magica this way, for what it's worth!)

4) The supernatural world is structured around 'realms', that include both those that are part of the canonical Ars Magica game (Mundane, Magic, Fairie, Divine, Infernal) and some others I like to treat the same way ('Unlife', the 'multiverse' a'la Moorecock). The important point is that the divisions between the realms are more significant and formalized than in a bog-standard fantasy roleplaying game, and magic and reality work differently as you move between them. This component of the setting blurs into house rules.
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Old 08-29-2020, 10:45 AM   #2
philreed
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Default Re: The world of Ars Magica as a TFT setting (or corner of Cidri)

This forum is for official Steve Jackson Games titles and licensed releases. Please keep discussion of all other publishers to the RPG forum.
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