This is a very general question.

Do we assume that said text comes from the same future as the campaign world?
If time travel exists , does it cause paradox?
Can the past/future be altered?

In Ars Magica seems likely any such book could well be taken as something of the Infernal , especially if the knowledge contradicted what the learned knew at the time.
Possibly Magi might be able to deduce new methods of making paper , perhaps even the idea of printing.

The standard fictional upset would be if the text contained the process for making gunpowder.

The other assumption is language of the book.
If it is in modern english it may well be untranslatable(or at least very difficult)

If you have a Campaign idea in mind , give us something more specific to work with :-)

Graham.

why would it be interesting in Ars Magica, though?

(There are plenty of games where space/time rifts are common, but...)
the major point of Ars Magica is to explore a Mediaeval feel in the game, not to always be pulling in concepts which come from the modern era. I remain puzzled why you are quite *so* keen on anachronisms...

If you still want to explore Modern Concepts in the ArM Mediaeval Paradigm , you could just create/make up a Regio of some kind.

The use of doing this in game might be to make your players more familiar with the contrasts between modern/13th Century life.

A Faerie regio is probably best , possibly even a Twilight experience (but this would only apply for one magus at a time).

The regio could be a copy of a modern library/museum.

To ensure you dont kill your campaign , dont allow anything out of the regio , even memories (except possibly for vague , unsettling dreams).

Think how a modern librarian would react to a smelly(by our standards) latin speaking magus walking through the front doors.
Yes he/she could be mistaken for an SCA member or being in a Mage LARP.

Graham.

Why do you think trivia or fiction might be interesting? I doubt I am alone in asking this question. As I mentioned in the spell creation often the most important question is "Why?" If the book was written in English I am not at all convinced a mage could read it...even if the mage knows Anglo-saxon there are a great deal of differences between modern and middle or old english.

This is not to say there might not be a good story you could make from something like this but it is also possible it might not be a good Ars Magica story. Rather than just saying "What if..." why not first say what you are thinking about and then say "What if..." or "What do you think..." There seems to be a great many people with considerable experience in the game who it also seems are willing to help you but they need to understand what the end result you invisage is. Then it is far more likely they can help you achieve it.

a C12 person from England could not read modern English - they spoke (what we call) Anglo Saxon, and they called (?) (Dunno - the only regional language whose name comes to mind is Mercian, from East Anglia)...
(Old English (Anglo Saxon) is quite unreadable to me; I can read Chaucer's English though it's unfamiliar, and sometimes difficult; and Shakespeare is basically modern English with a different style and spelling - but even Chaucer is over a hundred years later (1343-1400))

Or, if noble or better educated, they spoke Norman French (not to be much confused with modern, Parisian style French: Normand vs. Francien in period, and even Francien is subtantially differnt from modern French), or Latin.

Oh, and most people couldn't read - though Magi could read Latin...

Outside England they spoke all sortrs of language, but certainly did not speak English: many Celtic languages: Cornish, Breton, Welsh, Irish, Gaelic,.. Norse languages: Orkney (Orcadian? Arcadian?), "Northumberland" (they are still recorded as speaking Old Norse in the Lake District in C16)

In France there are at least 6 languages; in Iberia, Basque, Catalan, Castilian, a.n.oth + Portuguese, and of course Arabic.

I recall reading Shakespeare in school, without the glossary on the side of the page I would have had a completely different understanding of the plays...Hamlet calling Ofilla (spelling is surely wrong) a fishwife for example meant something far different then than it does now.

But even if the mage or mages in question could read the book which on the whole I would doubt in the first place, I fail to see how it would be of significance to them. My real failing is that I don't see the point to the suggestion...any more than I saw the point of a tankard that after drinking from it lets you breath fire. While I believe you could make a good story from this (though I am highly doubtful it would be a good ars magica story) I would need to see the end intended to comment on how to achieve it.

And from recent play experience adding more 21th century stuff is not needed. We are working to wean our two new players from thinking in this century and not the 11th (saga set in 1090).

> But even if the mage or mages in question could read the book which on
> the whole I would doubt in the first place, I fail to see how it would
> be of significance to them. My real failing is that I don't see the
> point to the suggestion...any more than I saw the point of a tankard
> that after drinking from it lets you breath fire. While I believe you
> could make a good story from this (though I am highly doubtful it would
> be a good ars magica story) I would need to see the end intended to
> comment on how to achieve it.

I agree with you here. The best benefit from ArM comes from accepting the background and working with it.

> And from recent play experience adding more 21th century stuff is
> not needed. We are working to wean our two new players from thinking
> in this century and not the 11th (saga set in 1090).

C21, 20, 19... none of that - for that matter, one of the hardest things is excluding C14 stuff - the changes that start 100+ years after the standard time period of ArM are huge and significant, and make the whole world feel different from that portrayed in ArM.

"But even if the mage or mages in question could read the book which on the whole I would doubt in the first place, I fail to see how it would be of significance to them. My real failing is that I don't see the point to the suggestion...any more than I saw the point of a tankard that after drinking from it lets you breath fire. While I believe you could make a good story from this (though I am highly doubtful it would be a good ars magica story) I would need to see the end intended to comment on how to achieve it."

It all depends upon what book was sent back. I would think mages might be interested in books on the 19th and 20th century archeological discoveries in Egypt, anc could prompt the mages into going to Egypt for a saga based there. Any other books of this type, dealing with history (from the mages' standpoint as well as the players') which goes into more detail than is normally available in their time may be of interest.

Translation dictionaries from one language to another may also be of interest...if the language is one that exists in the mages' time or even previously. (Some mages might even be interested in a totally different language, as it could give them a language to talk in that other people wouldn't understand without the aid of magic. (And any mages that cast spells to understand them could be brought up on charges of scrying upon the mages.....no guarantee of winning, but could make for a fun storytelling event)

Scientific books might or might not be of use. Gunpowder already exists in Cathay (fireworks, smoke bombs, things like that), so there may be something of use there to someone skilled in alchemy. Books on construction of clocks and clockwork devices might be of interest, but again may not be. Military books might interest certain types of mages, but discussions of things like armored vehicles might lead only to the building of armored wagons powered by Rego Herbam spells. Books with chemical information? Possibly something to be studied by alchemists, with some knowledge able to be applied and some not (though the alchemist might view the different elements as compounds made up of different 'flavors' of earth, air, fire and water.

A book with a map of the world, showing North and South America (and Antartica) as well as the continents more familiar to the mages might well be of interest and be a spark for an exploration saga.

The biggest thing that a book coming from the future, though, would most likely be the mages trying to study the effect and develop an understanding of how to send other things through time (definitely a major discovery, if at all possible)

Of course, a lot of this depends upon how you define the world. At the time of Ars Magica, the medieval paradigm dominates, but you would have to decide if it is possible for physical laws to change if there is a major paradigm shift (in the vein of Mage's Consensual Reality). I've had some thoughts of trying to set a saga in the 1500-1600's when Galileo and others are challenging the basic concepts people believed in, and letting mages try to work out how that could affect their magic. If you go purely by Medieval paradigm, though, sending the book into the past would only be done through major Powers in one of the four Realms (a warning from God perhaps, or a demon trying to trick the mages? The argument over that alone might be worth doing it).

Another evil ST trick you can always pull in this case - let a book be sent back from the 20th century, but (especially if it deals with the 20th or 21st century) not have the world be the same as ours is currently. A world where mages discarded the Oath, took over countries and war against each other could be done (which wouldn't require major changes in paradigm), or books dealing with any other type of weirdly changed world could be used (pulling from 1930's - 1940's SF "World of Tomorrow" concepts could be fun here - ray guns using vacuum tubes, nobody using computers, something sounding like Verditius and Natural Philosophers running amok could be fun). Of course, the mages would need to work out why the book showed up....
again, it could be a plot of Heaven or Hell to involve the mages, or something that a Faerie Lord thought would be an amusing jape. or even something from the Magic Realm (mages in the 20th century finding a way to briefly send their consciousnesses to where other mages go after Final Twilight before coming back to their bodies, possibly bringing things back with them - the book is sent as a warning to keep mages from ever pushing through boundaries past which they weren't supposed to go).

I wouldn't, however, say that there wouldn't be any book that could be sent back that would be of any significance to the mages. After all, the book might deal with the mages' future history, including how and when they die in a grisly fashion (and something they would want to change).

oh, come off it!!!

This is ridiculous... even the Middle Ages would see the DND books as fantasy.

No, they wouldn't get "ideas" from them (discounting the difficulty of reading them), as they are not phrased in any manner which would make sense to Hermetic magic...

I'm not sure that the Encyclopedia Magica would give them all that many ideas, for two reasons:

They live as magi, full time, and are part of a culture of magi. They have cultural capital in the area of making cool magic items which we can't hope to match. So, when I said redcaps had enchanted plates which stick to the roofs of their mouths, some people said "Hey, now that's odd." but if you had been spending the last twenty years thingking about how to hide magic items, would it be?

DND is kill, kill, kill. Magi are quite good at that already. Tools are for use.

No need to be sorry mate.
Could have been worse , you could have sent 'Green Eggs & Ham' instead.

Graham :D