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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Nagol" data-source="post: 5167958" data-attributes="member: 23935">I've run and played both.Ars Magica really focuses on a high sorcery experience.  Mages can literally call forth plagues, hurricanes, and tidal waves (at high enough level and a small risk to themselves).  The basic campaign revolves around a small group of mages that band together for support, protection, and resource sharing (a covenant), those highly talented individuals drawn to mages for whatever reason (companions), and typical support inhabitants (men-at-arms are known as grogs).The expected campaign setting is somewhere in Mythic Europe -- historical Europe with a fair amount of supernatural overlay.  The Church is a strong supernaturally protective force.Mages have extended life spans and gain power primarily through uninterrupted magical study done over the course of a three month period.The expected adventure pacing is an adventure a year.  For each adventure, the player picks whether he will run his mage, his companion, or a few grogs.  The power levels between the three choices is quite noticable.  Character advancement is reasonably rapid for active companions and inactive mages.A character is composed of attrbutes, virtues (character advantages) and flaws (character disadvantages), skills, and magical arts.  There is a small personality system for tracking free-form loves/hates to help define personality, but little mechanical effect.Pendragon focuses on knightly adventuring set in Arthurian Britain.  Magic is weak and limited -- especially in the hands of players.  The basic campaign revolves around a group of knights questing to get landed titles, notoriety, and romance. Players create a single character, typically a knight, but other options are possible.  The expected adventure pacing is one per year.  Familial dynasties as possible as the adventuring lifetime of a knight is reasonably short.  Character advancement is slow.A character is composed of attributes, skills, passions (loves/hates that can have a very large mechanical effect when encountering the object of the passion), and personality traits  (a set of virtue/vice pairings common to all characters with assigned values).</blockquote>

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