First printed in 1987, Ars Magica is a tabletop RPG set in a model of medieval Europe the place magic is actual and all of the player-characters are wizards. Properly, technically. One of many novel concepts of Ars Magica was “troupe-style play” during which each participant created a number of characters, taking part in completely different ones because the story dictated. You may be a robust wizard of the Order of Hermes one week, then one in all their menial sidekicks known as “grogs” the following.
Ars Magica additionally pioneered guidelines for shared worldbuilding, with gamers collaborating to create a covenant—a stronghold the place the wizards and their related outcasts and misfits banded collectively. It additionally recommended gamers take turns being the Sport Grasp or Story Information, every telling completely different tales in Mythic Europe earlier than handing on the reins.
One other space the place Ars Magica innovated was its magic system, as you’d anticipate for a sport so closely centered on wizards. In addition to pre-made formulaic spells, magicians can invent spontaneous ones on the fly by combining a method and a type—a verb and a noun, every with a Latin identify. To make fireplace, for example, you mix the strategy of creation Creo and the type of fireplace Ignem, which supplies you one thing snappy to say when a fireball goes off.
The fifth version of Ars Magica was launched in 2004, and its final complement got here out in 2016. Writer Atlas Video games has introduced it has been engaged on a Definitive Version for the previous few years, a revised model of fifth version it is planning to crowdfund in fall, 2024. “We’ll launch a deluxe, full shade, hardcover print version of the Definitive core rulebook,” Atlas stated, “with new artwork and structure and heirloom manufacturing high quality.”
It will be “a lot larger” than the fifth version guide, with revisions that “mirror a long time of play and incorporate a bunch of recent materials printed because the authentic rulebook’s launch.” It will even be primarily based on an open license.
“We just lately accomplished our long-term venture of resurrecting authentic printer recordsdata for your complete Ars Magica fifth Version line of dietary supplements,” Atlas stated, “changing them to softcover print-on-demand. Which means that your complete line of dietary supplements, totally appropriate with ArM5D, can stay in print indefinitely, each as ebooks and as printed books made to order and delivered to patrons wherever on the planet. We intend for Ars Magica to be a sport loved and creatively expanded for generations to return.”
Ars Magica will likely be acquainted to followers of the World of Darkness video games. Its guidelines turned the premise for the WoD’s storyteller system, and elements of its background impressed related ideas in video games like Vampire: The Masquerade (in Ars Magica, the Tremere have not but turned undead and are merely darkish wizards) and Mage: The Ascension (which is actually Ars Magica within the modern-day).
There was an try and crowdfund a videogame primarily based on Ars Magica in 2012 by Black Rooster Studios, however sadly it fell in need of its purpose.