Nikchick
Explorer
I love Ars Magica. Unlike most people in gaming, I came in through Ars Magica and not D&D. It was my first game, and the game I played the longest, for multiple campaigns.
Obviously the magic system is what gets the most praise, and it's definitely deserved. But there are other aspects of the game that thrill me as well.
Ars Magica, as a game, is "balanced" in a meta way, not in a character-by-character way. I've seen people try to play the game by "rebalancing" it on a character level, but that takes away many of the innovative strengths of the game.
First of all, the fact that grogs are played as shared characters is something that I've encountered much resistance to over the years. Many people have said to me that grogs can't have personality and are relegated to "Nameless Minion #1" status. I think this is a shame and a failing of the groups involved, not the concept. In my years of play with Ars Magica, often it was the grog characters who were most fully fleshed out, and loved by all members of the roleplaying group: everyone had played with the character over the years and each person had had the chance to invest the character with an expansion of personality. Of course, we had grog characters that never caught on, they didn't "work" with the group for whatever reason... but that happens sometimes whether the character is played by a single person or not.
When implemented correctly, troupe-style play offers many more chances to try unusual characters and to attempt things in roleplaying that just wouldn't work in your typical D&D style campaign. Especially in 3E, I've noticed that much published material is presented with the assumption that you have the properly balanced *party*, that you have the correct representation of iconic characters (fighter, cleric, magic user, rogue) and if you play a party made up of differerently than the assumed "standard" things can go very badly for you. Instead of playing with a concept that I really wanted to explore, I've found myself playing a cleric because we needed one. A party made up of a halfling rogue/fighter, a witch, a sorceror, and a pirate (beyond whatever convoluted backstory you've created to have them adventuring together) is just at a disadvantage and far more difficult to "run" and play successfully in the standard pre-published D&D mindset. Ars Magica uses troupe-style play to support and explore that kind of unusual character set-up.
In Ars Magica there is no reason to not make an obese, bookish, non-combatant wizard with an obsession for the arts if that's what you want to do. The limitations of such a character are balanced out by the fact that you're allowed to have a "companion" character (perhaps the handsome, strapping swordmaster, heir to the throne in a far-away kingdome if not for his dark secret of being cursed with lycanthropy) who gets to beat things up or run through the wilderness on rugged quests while your roly-poly, art-loving wizard waddles around the city looking for new works of art and new struggling artists to secretly sponsor. Different characters for different kinds of adventures, but all part of the same party and the larger back-drop of the covenant and the setting. No one wants to play the cleric as their primary character? No problem. Griselda the Chirugeon grog comes along on nearly every adventure, shared by everyone in the party at one point or another, her own virtues and flaws (healing touch? persecuted for witch craft? faerie blood?) coming into play as well.
::sigh:: Sorry for going on so. Ars Magica is like my first love, and I look back on it with much fondness and nostalgia. I haven't played in far too long, and I miss it. Some of the best times I ever had roleplaying were in Ars Magica.
I hope you have a chance to give it a try and that you have as much fun as I had with it.
Nicole
Obviously the magic system is what gets the most praise, and it's definitely deserved. But there are other aspects of the game that thrill me as well.
Ars Magica, as a game, is "balanced" in a meta way, not in a character-by-character way. I've seen people try to play the game by "rebalancing" it on a character level, but that takes away many of the innovative strengths of the game.
First of all, the fact that grogs are played as shared characters is something that I've encountered much resistance to over the years. Many people have said to me that grogs can't have personality and are relegated to "Nameless Minion #1" status. I think this is a shame and a failing of the groups involved, not the concept. In my years of play with Ars Magica, often it was the grog characters who were most fully fleshed out, and loved by all members of the roleplaying group: everyone had played with the character over the years and each person had had the chance to invest the character with an expansion of personality. Of course, we had grog characters that never caught on, they didn't "work" with the group for whatever reason... but that happens sometimes whether the character is played by a single person or not.
When implemented correctly, troupe-style play offers many more chances to try unusual characters and to attempt things in roleplaying that just wouldn't work in your typical D&D style campaign. Especially in 3E, I've noticed that much published material is presented with the assumption that you have the properly balanced *party*, that you have the correct representation of iconic characters (fighter, cleric, magic user, rogue) and if you play a party made up of differerently than the assumed "standard" things can go very badly for you. Instead of playing with a concept that I really wanted to explore, I've found myself playing a cleric because we needed one. A party made up of a halfling rogue/fighter, a witch, a sorceror, and a pirate (beyond whatever convoluted backstory you've created to have them adventuring together) is just at a disadvantage and far more difficult to "run" and play successfully in the standard pre-published D&D mindset. Ars Magica uses troupe-style play to support and explore that kind of unusual character set-up.
In Ars Magica there is no reason to not make an obese, bookish, non-combatant wizard with an obsession for the arts if that's what you want to do. The limitations of such a character are balanced out by the fact that you're allowed to have a "companion" character (perhaps the handsome, strapping swordmaster, heir to the throne in a far-away kingdome if not for his dark secret of being cursed with lycanthropy) who gets to beat things up or run through the wilderness on rugged quests while your roly-poly, art-loving wizard waddles around the city looking for new works of art and new struggling artists to secretly sponsor. Different characters for different kinds of adventures, but all part of the same party and the larger back-drop of the covenant and the setting. No one wants to play the cleric as their primary character? No problem. Griselda the Chirugeon grog comes along on nearly every adventure, shared by everyone in the party at one point or another, her own virtues and flaws (healing touch? persecuted for witch craft? faerie blood?) coming into play as well.
::sigh:: Sorry for going on so. Ars Magica is like my first love, and I look back on it with much fondness and nostalgia. I haven't played in far too long, and I miss it. Some of the best times I ever had roleplaying were in Ars Magica.
I hope you have a chance to give it a try and that you have as much fun as I had with it.
Nicole
