[Design] Ars Magica was Re: Character Generation: Detail vs Opportunity Cost

[David Cake]

At 4:07 AM +0000 18/11/05, Andrew Leitch wrote:
>The problem with Ars Magica is that PC's start off way too powerful 
>compared to say, the grogs. They seem almost like demi-gods. If they 
>started off less powerful, you wouldn't need to spend the entire 
>night just reading up on spells.

	actually, they generally start of quite low powered. They 
should be able to quickly become a lot more powerful, though.
	IMO saying the mages in Ars Magica are too powerful/important 
is like saying the monsters in Call of Cthulhu are too scary -- its 
not so much a criticism of the game balance, as a rejection of the 
basic principle of the game. The game is completely centered on the 
magicians, if they weren't clearly the most important characters it 
would be a different game.
	That said, I think the game balance works OK - the magicians 
are clearly dominant, but most of them are vulnerable enough to 
sudden violence, and often incompetent at dealing with normal mortal 
affairs, that there are good reasons to keep the other characters 
around.
	And if you think anyone is too powerful compared to the 
grogs, you've missed the point of what a grog is. They are spear 
carriers, cannon fodder, occasional comic relief and supporting cast.

>
>My experience went:
>
>"What sort of character do you want?"
>
>"Well, can I be a fighter?"
>
>"No."
>
>"Can I be a fighter mage?"
>
>"Yes. But you'd be severely limiting yourself."
>
>"Okay. So I'll be a mage."
>
>"What kind of mage do you want to be?"
>
>"I've no idea... (and after they were explained to me)... I've still 
>no idea... How about I have a look at the spells. There can't be 
>that many.... OH MY GOD!"
>
>4 hours later: "So have you decided yet?"
>
>"Well... no... Every time I get started looking at a spell someone 
>steals the book away to make their character..."
>
>They should have gone for spell lists rather than spell groups. That 
>way you only had to make a choice from 20 spell lists, rather 2000 
>spells.

	But then you'd have 20 cookie cutter types of magic, and half 
the fun of Ars Magica is that your magician can, if they choose, get 
really individual with their spells, and have a little library of 
weird personal magic effects.
	I think its more focus on how the game is presented. You 
should be choosing your arts first, rather than choosing your spells 
and trying to retrofit your arts  - then you only have a few dozen 
spells that you can really have accessible to you as a beginning 
magician. Sure, there are thousands of spells, but its not as if you 
can pick 8 good ones from 8 completely different form/effect 
combinations as a beginning character. Besides, the arts choices will 
have a much longer term effect on your character, and determine how 
you fit into the background much more, and Ars magica is a game that 
is all about the rich background.

>  You could buy the first 3 or 4 spells in each list and be done with 
>it. (Maybe I'm recalling this wrong though...).

	The normal way to run a long game is for everyone to have one 
magician, one companion (non-magician) and for there to be a bunch of 
grogs that people take it in turns to play. It gets a bit complicated 
with various types of magic using companion that aren't technically 
mages (pagan magicians, half-fairies, etc), but thats more or less 
the standard model. If you run a game where people have one character 
each, I'd make half of them mages and half not.
	When creating characters for an initial session I'd tend to 
get half the players to make up magicians, half to make up 
companions, and anyone that takes too long to create their character 
can play a grog for the first session. You can fill in the rest later 
(I'd prefer to know a little about most of the magicians before 
starting a game, but you don't actually need stats if they aren't 
actually in that session).
	So I'd do it more like
"What sort of character do you want?"

"Well, can I be a fighter?"

"Well, you should have a magician later, but one of your characters 
can be a fighter."

"Can I be a fighter mage?"

"Yes. Fighter mages can actually be pretty effective, if thats what 
you want your magician character to be. But you'll be fairly 
specialised to particular sorts of magic, playing another sort of 
magician might be a lot more interesting. You might want to have a 
fighter character and a mage character instead."

"Okay. So I'll be a mage, but not a fighter mage."

"What kind of mage do you want to be?"

"I've no idea... [explains houses, arts, etc]... I've still no 
idea... How about I have a look at the spells."

"Have a quick look if you want, but its a better idea to select broad 
areas of magic rather than get lost in the details of the spells. A 
lot of the time you will be probably be improvising small bits of 
magic rather than casting a known spell anyway, and the choice of 
which broad types of magic (arts) you specialise in determines what 
your character will do long term."

1 hour later: "So have you decided yet?"

"Well... no... Every time I get started looking at a spell someone 
steals the book away to make their character..."
"Thats why I told you not to spend too much time worrying about the 
exact spell list before choosing your house and magical specialties. 
Luckily, I have an extra copy of some of the material more relevant 
to character creation here."

>
>There's not much encouragement for playing good characters either, 
>when the central ethos of the various magic guilds seems to be 
>"don't get caught" rather than "don't do".

	Depends what you mean by 'good'. There are Virtues to reflect 
various kinds of, umm... virtue, but in generally Ars Magica tends 
towards the school of game design that says characters moral status 
is reflected in their actions not their stats. I have a fair bit of 
sympathy towards it, in general it makes for a richer game 
experience. Ars Magica does tend to get into moral subtleties. I 
think its a virtue of the game - there is nothing wrong with a game 
that lends itself to moral extremes (such as D&D), but Ars Magica can 
be more interesting in that sense if its what you like. Though if you 
want to run a game where its morally straightforward (ie all the bad 
guys are into diabolism) it can do that too.
	And some of the major houses of Ars magica have a rather 
different definition of good, in part because of the way the game 
sets up the Church as an antagonist of the magicians. For me, it 
makes the game more fun. YMMV.
	Cheers
		David