Connection between "Ars Magica" and "World of Darkness"?

[PenguinKing]

I've been looking through some of my RPG books lately, and I've noticed some interesting links between Atlas Games' Ars Magica and White Wolf's various "World of Darkness" material.

For example, House Tremere appears in both Ars Magica and Vampire: The Masquerade - same backstory and all. I think a couple of the Traditions from Mage: The Ascension have guest appearances in Ars Magica as well (or vice-versa, I suppose).

Meanwhile, on White Wolf's side, Ars Magica terminology keeps popping up in their Mage setting. Off the top of my head, in the sourcebook "Sorcerer Revised", a fire spell is referred to as "Creo Ignem" at one point - yes, I know, it's just the Latin, but it's also the precise terminology Ars Magica uses.

So what's the deal here? Is there some connection between the settings, or are the two publishers just "borrowing" material from each other?

- Sir Bob.

P.S. Nih!

 

[rounser]

Ars Magica has changed hands among publishers a few times. It's possible that WW had it for a while.

 

[BadMojo]

No connection that I know of, Penguin King. Note: Ars HAS been around ALOT longer than M:tA. I wouldn't be shocked if some of the Mage developers were Ars players from way back.

Is it also possible that these games are sharing some historical or folk lore source material? That could account for *some* but not all similarities.

 

[Sam Witt]

Lion Rampant

The connection between the WoD and Ars Magica is pretty easy to forge:

Ars Magica was originally published by Lion Rampant.

The primary designers for the game at the time were Jonathan Tweet and Mark Reign*Hagen.

Lion Rampant eventually merged with White Wolf magazine, I believe, which then went on to become White Wolf Games studio.

In the early-to-mid-nineties, WW sold AM to WotC (whew, acronym overload) and Tweet joined WotC as head of RPGs.

When WotC scuttled RPGs, Ars found its way to Atlas Games and has remained there ever since.

This moment in gaming history brought to you by the letter Z and the number 6.

 

[BadMojo]

Cool! Thanks, Sam. That's interesting. I forgot how many times Ars changed hands. Still, did any M:tA actually do any work with Ars Magica?

 

[Michael Tree]

Ars Magica was originally written by Jonathan Tweet (who wrote the 3E player's handbook) and Mark Reign*Hagen. Mark R*H later went on to create the Vampire RPG, and included a few references to Ars in it, namely house Tremere.

By the time WW was creating Mage, Ars had changed hands and was being published by WW. The developers at WW decided to turn Ars into the "back-history" of the world of darkness, in in doing so introduced a bunch of utterly boneheaded ideas into Ars, and stuck massive numbers of demons everywhere in the books in an attempt to make Ars "darker" to boost sales. (One truly shameful example of this is the Spain tribunal book. The (corrupted) line editor took a good manuscript, and stuck in "demon tainted" references (no doubt inspired by the devil) in practically every other sentence, hoping to make it edgy and cool, but just making it almost humorously lame, or was his real plan to lure consumers to sell their souls to the devil? The sort of lame demon-references I randomly inserted into the previous sentence fill the entire book.

Anyway, because White Wolf had decided that Ars was the WoD's history, they included a number of Ars concepts into their new game Mage, most notably the Order of Hermes.

Later, WW sold Ars to Wizards, who in turn sold it to Atlas, who currently publish it. All lame white-wolfisms have been removed from the current edition of Ars, which is no longer considered to be the history of the World of Darkness. They have some similarities, but they are two entirely different worlds and game settings now, as they should be.

Please note that I'm not slamming the World of Darkness games, just WW's bad treatment of Ars Magica. WW essentially tried to turn Ars into what Mage: Sorcerer's Crusade is. M:SC is a good prequel to the WoD, much better than a compromised Ars, and a good game in its own right, bur has a very different feel from Ars Magica.