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Ars Magica occurs as role-playing game set in Mythic Europe, an idealized (or even quasi-historical) version of Europe around 1200 AD. A game revolves around magic-using wizards and their allies. A game was originally developed by Jonathan Tweet and Mark Rein-Hagen in the late 1980s.

Player characters take on the role of either Wizards (Magi; singular form: Magus (male), Maga (female)) or even Companions (Consortes, singular Consors). In addition, there are Grogs (humble workers) played/controlled by everthing characters. A wizards survive clustered inside specific bastion (known as Covenants), which are then typically built in situ of power. (Covenants come a at home base for a Magi, however it tend to roam the Magical Europe for their adventures.) Companions come pick out skilled non-magi (warriors, foresters, castellan, then forth) world health organization assist wizards conduct their affairs (Magi tend to exist as distanced from either "mundanes" due to their learn of magic). Additionally to the "authentic" sense from either with such a historical setting, the game utilizes mediaeval Latin for a total of key terms..

A bet on models is considered innovative, by owning all about according to d10. A heart of the game is the magic system, the virtually all celebrated & emulated charming systems among role-swimming games. There are Fifteen "Arts" divided into Pentad "Techniques" & Tenner "Forms." the Techniques come what a single does; a Forms come a objects 1 hump to or even sustaining; this is periodically known as a "Verb/Noun" magic-models. A Arts come known as inside Latin; a Techniques come: Creo, Intellego, Muto, Perdo, & Rego (Create, Perceive, Change, Destroy, and Control, all Latin verbs conjugated in the first-person singular.) The Forms are: Animal, Auram, Aquam, Corpus, Herbam, Ignem, Imaginem, Mentem, Terram, and Vim (Animal bodies and minds, Air, Water, human Bodies, Plants, Fire, Images/Sensations, human Minds, Earth, and raw arcane Power, once again, all Latin, declined in the accusative case). So, Creo Ignem spells produce fire (& a normal results of fire, like heat or even weak), when Perdo Imaginem spells kill images & more receptive lives (like invisibleness or even inaudibleness.) Muto spells vary a fundamental nature and severity of objects, whereas Rego spells control items forswearing altering what it is. So, Rego Aquam may turn a water system supply into ice, when Muto Aquam may turn water into oil, stone, or even weasel.

Magic is treated in that game-technique as a good object of survey: wise men come supposed to spend an extended instance in their laboratories, preparing newly spells & potions, & increasing their noesis of the Arts. A more systemic innovatiin was a insistence on play-acting a characters - indeed, several characteristics of the late Storyteller body developed by White Wolf Game Studio can be traced to Ars Magica (& a fact that two Ars Magica and a Storyteller technique were each developed per equivalent individual); White Wolf's Mage: The Ascension was envisioned as "Ars Magica in the Modern World," & numerous of the changes within Ars Magica's Tertiary edition were introduced sequentially to produce a game-worlds supplementary compatible.

Ars Magicthe is an lesson of a Troupe System, although a total of campaigns (called Sagas) have had virtually all stories dog per equivalent human, known as a Alpha Story Resolution. For the length of the story (dangerous undertaking) there might occasionally exist as further Companions than Magi. At a prevent of a story a players keep close at hand the stock of changing characters (becoming Magi, or even even Companion) or ingesting on the role of Storyteller.

Ars Magica was 1st published by Lion Rampant games, world health organization too published a Second edition of the game. In the early 1990s, rights to Ars Magica were acquired by White Wolf, a company that Rein-Hagen got in the interim founded. Arctic wolf published a Third edition, which greatly expanded a settings & peripheral formulas when allowing a core system intact. Canis lupus tundrarum besides published numbers of supplements, detailing specific regions of Europe, or even outlining stories that can be played in the original setting. Ars Magica was late sold to Wizards of the Coast, who produced many supplements, however upright prior to publishing a Fourth edition sold the rights to Atlas Games. Atlas published a 4th edition & has published freshly source-books since.

A Fifth edition was freed by Atlas around 2004, including extensive changes to a technique, especially the combat system & character creation. Ars Magica 5th edition won a Origins Award for Best Role Swimming Game of 2004.

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Bifrost Ars Magica Pages
Details of a saga set in the Stonehenge tribunal, together with descriptions of covenants, libraries and magi across Mythic Europe. Also includes some new spells, rules and libraries, as well as a brief description of an Ars Magica - World of Greyhawk cross over campaign.

Project Redcap - The Crossroads of the Order
Features an Ars Magica FAQ, mailing lists, resources, and a large link collection for multiple languages.

Cliffheart Covenant
A nicely laid out site about Ars Magica that was originally done in Italian, but has now been translated to English.

Hermes' Portal
A fanzine about the game.

Rabenstein Covenant
Offers characters, maps of the covenant, house rules, summary of the saga, and historical background.

Malinbois Home Page
Includes characters, maps of The Covenant and its library, and rules.

Insula Maledictus
AnProvides characters, relations, stories, history, spells, magical items, letters, essays and in-game and off-game material.

Secretum Secretorum
Background for the game, contains information from a text translated from Arabic in the middle of the twelfth century.






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