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alchemyprime
2011-11-21, 10:05 PM
I am not the biggest fan of Ars Magica. Maybe it's the system (the White Wolf way of doing things seems to lend itself more to Exalted for me), Maybe it's that for once I decide to play a tank, at the request of my fiancee, and it's a campaign meant to be focused around cerebral wizards (my normal character type). Maybe it's the setting.

But I am not enjoying Ars Magica. And all of my friends love it. Now, the other two games my friend runs (an Arrowflight game and a West End Star Wars game) I love, but this particular campaign is doing nothing for me.

So I ask you Playground, is there any way that I can enjoy Ars Magica as much as I like D&D, Pathfinder, M&M, Arrowflight, BESM or Star Wars? Or am I doomed to hate this system forever and sit there to be the "player's girlfriend"? Well, boyfriend, but you get the idea.

Diskhotep
2011-11-22, 12:46 AM
It's been a long time since I've played Ars Magica, but if memory serves the game is meant to be played with everyone having more than one character - a wizard and one or more non-magical sorts who assist with the day-to-day affairs (bodyguards, stewards, etc.). Typically only one or two players per story arc play wizards while the other players run support, then the focus changes to give the support players center stage in the next season.

Think of it like your favorite episodes of (series with an ensemble cast). Each episode focuses on just a couple of main characters, and may or may not involve a greater storyline for the season, but the other characters are still in the background doing things.

If this trading off is not happening in your group, you are well within your rights to say that you are not having much fun playing the heavy while everyone else gets to play with magical toys, and ask to be allowed a character who is of a more equitable power level with the others. The tank can just as easily be a player-controlled NPC who just comes out to make a witty observation and defend the group from time to time, then melts into the background again.

Now, if you just don't find the game system or the setting in general fun, there's not much to be done about that. You can either play along just to be sociable and wait for another game to come along (as they always do), prepare a game of your own to run in a system you enjoy more, or wish everyone fun with their game (in a completely non-sarcastic way) and go do something you enjoy more until they are doing something you feel you would enjoy participating in.

Blacky the Blackball
2011-11-22, 04:03 AM
As Diskhotep says, if you're playing Ars Magica as the designers intended, you should have more than one character.

Each player should have a mage character who is a member of the Order of Hermes.

Each player should also have a "companion" character who is a skilled mundane who works with the mages for whatever reason. These characters are often much more socially adept than the mages since they don't have The Gift.

There should then also be a couple of dozen "grog" characters. These are the "Tanks" that you mention. They're meant to be less fleshed out than the main characters, and are not run by any player in particular. They simply belong to the group.

What generally happens is that either the players take it in turns to be the GM and present some kind of scenario or situation that would interest the characters that belong to the other players.

While theoretically both characters (the mage and the non-mage) belonging to a particular player could be interested/involved, meta-game convention is that it is easier if only one character per player is interested (and/or available). Similarly, meta-game convention is that when it's your turn to be the GM you don't present a scenario designed to appeal to your own characters, but to the characters of the other players.

Sometimes this will mean that everyone's playing their mage, but more often it will mean that there will be couple of mages and a couple of companions being played at any given time.

And the grogs? Occasionally a scenario or section of a scenario won't be of interest to either of a player's characters - so that player plays the grogs temporarily. If everyone's playing a character then whatever grogs are being taken along are played either communally or shared out to be played alongside the main characters.

From your description, it sounds like you have a single GM, and that GM is used to games like D&D and has decided that - like D&D - there should be a "party" of mages and non-mages and that the rest of you should only have one character each. So some of you are always mages and some of you are always companions or grogs.

I won't go so far as to say you're playing it "wrong" because I don't think there is ever a wrong way to play an RPG as long as everyone is having fun; but you are definitely not playing the game the way it was designed to be played, and that seems to be what is causing your problems.

You need to talk to the other players and the GM. Point out to them that the game is designed for everyone to have a mage and a non-mage, and to switch between them. Otherwise the person or people playing non-mages continuously - i.e. you - won't have fun.

Edited to add: Also, since you mention White Wolf, it sounds like you're playing 3rd edtion. That edition is generally considered by Ars Magical fans to be the least good edition of the game (although your mileage may vary of course). I'd advise checking out 4e (the PDF is free) or 5e (which in my opinion is the best edition, but isn't free).

alchemyprime
2011-11-22, 04:41 AM
That's the thing: they built me a mage meant for battle. If I cast most of his spells, he ends up turning into a Scottish fusion of Collossus and Wolverine. But the story is not very engaging to me because most of the fights are meant to be huge gigantic fights! That one of the elder wizards just blows up because of all the Weiss he has stockpiled.

And yes we are playing 3e Ars Magica. This is also a group that half of them are convinced that d20 is a terrible system that doesn't lend itself to role playing because the experience system makes too little sense. And I'm lost of this whole "seasons" nonsense they keep talking about in AM. "But seasons make so much more sense than a level based system!"

... No. No it doesn't. Exp being spent on skills, sure. This seasons thing is weird.

Blacky the Blackball
2011-11-22, 05:51 AM
That's the thing: they built me a mage meant for battle. If I cast most of his spells, he ends up turning into a Scottish fusion of Collossus and Wolverine. But the story is not very engaging to me because most of the fights are meant to be huge gigantic fights! That one of the elder wizards just blows up because of all the Weiss he has stockpiled.

Ah - ok. That changes things...

The fact that you talk about "most of the fights" being "huge gigantic fights" rings alarm bells with me. Ars Magica isn't designed to have combat play a large part in things. The expectation is that there will be a fight occasionally; but the majority of your time will be spent doing political and/or social roleplay or exploration/investigation. I certainly wouldn't expect there to be a fight breaking out more than one session in five or six. Again it sounds like your group is trying to play D&D using the Ars Magica rules, rather than actually trying to play Ars Magica as its designed to be played.

I'm also very puzzled as to why someone else chose your spells for you - especially if most of those are combat spells. Even the most combat oriented mage tends to have only three or four combat spells and the rest of their spells are related to their other interests...

Also remember that the majority of magic that a mage does on a day to day basis is spontaneous magic. The formulaic spells they have learned are for particular instances where spontaneous magic wouldn't let them achieve the result they're after.

What house are you, what arts are you specialised in and what spells do you have?

I'd advise talking to the group and saying it was nice of them to build the character for you, but now that you know how the rules work you'd like to change things (or possibly even do a new character from scratch) so that it does what you want rather than what they thought you might want.

It also sounds like the people who built you a "combat mage" didn't know what they were doing. Because combat isn't the main focus of Ars Magica, it doesn't emphasise combat balance. The level of spells is based on a "realistic" estimation of how the effect would be achieved using the magical techniques, rather than any notion of combat balance. Because of that, some types of magic are simply much more combat oriented than others.

For example, a fire specialist will be much better in a fight than a water specialist. That's not a balance problem, it's just facing the fact that fire is more dangerous than water in a combat situation. From what you've said (and I'll know more if you can remember what spells you have) not only have you been given a character with all combat spells, you've been given a character with all terrible combat spells!


And I'm lost of this whole "seasons" nonsense they keep talking about in AM. "But seasons make so much more sense than a level based system!"

... No. No it doesn't. Exp being spent on skills, sure. This seasons thing is weird.

The seasons thing isn't that weird. If spells take a lot of studying to learn, it does make far more sense that you might have to spend two seasons in a lab researching in order to work out how to cast a new one rather than going off and killing a few people and spending the experience to suddenly know how to do it when you've never even tried it before.

But I don't think that's anything to do with your problems. It can even be used to your advantage. You can spend time in the lab learning new non-combat spells and broadening your mage so that he or she is more interesting. The easiest way to do that is from books. Your covenant should have lots of books in its library (and hopefully they're not all full of combat spells!) Let combat be someone else's speciality and you concentrate on your character's other interests.