Ars Magica Suitability of 4th ed books for ArM5?
From: EdNorthcott Posted on: 1/19/2005 1:18 pm
To: ALL
Message: 500.1

I've been browsing through the Atlas catalogue, and a few books have caught my eye. Rather than wait for the entire catalogue to be re-written, I was wondering how many of these books remain relevant for 5th edition. More specifically I was wondering about "The Medieval Handbook", "Heirs to Merlin", and "Lions of the North".

Any feedback or opinions?

From: qcifer Posted on: 1/19/2005 2:06 pm
To: ALL
Message: 500.2
in reply to: 500.1

Heirs to Merlin and the Medieval handbook provide little actual game stats, (Merlin provides none whatsoever), so they would work just fine.

The Lion of the North though would be problematic as it not only is heavy on mechanics, it introduces high powered wizards, plus alternative wizards, like the Gruagachuns.

From: SirGarlon Posted on: 1/19/2005 4:47 pm
To: EdNorthcott
Message: 500.3
in reply to: 500.1
Lion of the North is for 3rd Edition. You would need to revise the characters and monsters, but the setting and background would still be relevant. So it depends how you want to use the books - as setting books and background they are still relevant, but as a sourcebook of characters with statistics... not so much.
From: John Nephew Posted on: 1/19/2005 5:43 pm
To: EdNorthcott
Message: 500.4
in reply to: 500.1

It's worth noting that most of the old Ars Magica books will never be rewritten for 5th Edition. The product line is enormous, and at the rate of 4 books per year, we've got a lot of ground to cover before we'd look at doing revisions of a lot of the old material. (E.g., it makes more sense to do a new tribunal book rather than revise Lion of the North...and we don't have any plans for more tribunal books within the next 4 years at least.)

Heirs to Merlin remains particularly useful, since it was written stat-free in the first place. 100% system compatible! :)

-John Nephew
President, Atlas Games

From: myrpg Posted on: 1/20/2005 6:47 am
To: EdNorthcott
Message: 500.5
in reply to: 500.1
Well "Mythic Europe" is 3rd Edition, but does not contain any statistics of any sort. So, it can be used like "Heirs to Merlin" with no problem.
From: SirGarlon Posted on: 1/20/2005 12:39 pm
To: John Nephew
Message: 500.6
in reply to: 500.4
John, this brings up a question - is Atlas still planning to keep up the 4 books per year rate of production? Myself, I can only read and use about two per year, so I have about a 20-book backlog...
From: John Nephew Posted on: 1/20/2005 4:44 pm
To: SirGarlon
Message: 500.7
in reply to: 500.6

4 books/year is the current plan. I'm happy if that's more than you need, since I know there are some folks who would like a lot more...so if we fall somewhere in the middle and make almost no one perfectly happy, we're probably on target. ;)

-John

From: Ed9C Posted on: 1/21/2005 3:08 pm
To: John Nephew
Message: 500.8
in reply to: 500.7

I am at the other extreme, one a month would be perfect...
Never going to get it though...

Ed

From: EdNorthcott Posted on: 1/21/2005 3:10 pm
To: ALL
Message: 500.9
in reply to: 500.7

Thanks for the feedback, guys.

I was thinking about Lions of the North as a source for info, rather than stats and NPCs. While those would be nice, I can function without them -- either ad-libbing or going through the process of making my own. Or hunting down other folks on the web and offering NPC swaps to spike the number of available pre-made NPCs. :)

It's still going to be awhile before I've got time to tackle ArM with a group, but I'm looking forward to a point when my schedule will stabalize. Keeping my fingers crossed. :)