Ars Magica Open License

What is the Ars Magica Open License?

The text of Ars Magica 5th Edition and its sourcebooks has been released under an open license: the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International license (CC BY-SA 4.0).
The Licensed Material is the TEXT of the game books. It does not include the the trade dress, artwork, cartography, or logos.
We have created a new Ars Magica Open License logo, to let fans identify their work as open license material for Ars Magica. You are permitted but not required to use this logo.
The open license is a COPYRIGHT license, not a TRADEMARK license; use of trademarks associated with Ars Magica may be permitted subject to conditions below.
There is no System Reference Document (SRD). The full text of the released books may be extracted from PDFs available for sale on our webstore in most cases. In some cases, we don't have digital text and so aren't able to provide it, as in the case of text from the oldest books that may be licensed. We'll note this situation in our releases list here, if it applies.
Interested parties may contact Atlas Games about licensing Ars Magica outside of the open license.

Which Titles Have Been Released?

All the released Ars Magica Open License titles and images are listed in the sidebar here.

Why Release Ars Magica as Open License?

Atlas Games has had the amazing opportunity to publish Ars Magica for over three decades, supported by our devoted fan community. 5th Edition is a weighty line of over FORTY supplements, fleshing out every facet of Mythic Europe. As the stewards of this incredible piece of roleplaying history, we feel it's time to give back to our fans, and let them take the game in new directions we haven't had the resources to explore.

There's also a whole argument about copyright and RPG rules, and one point of this license is to just sidestep it. Go ahead and make a techniques/forms based magic system RPG of furry space wizards. We were not ever going to sue you, but now you can be sure that no future owners of the game could either.

This open license release of Ars Magica was just part of our crowdfunding campaign for Ars Magica Definitive Edition. Thank you to all our backers who made it possible!

What Does This Mean for Ars Magica?

You are free to:

Share — copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format for any purpose, even commercially.
Adapt — remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercially.
Atlas Games cannot revoke these freedoms as long as you follow the license terms.

Under the following terms:

Attribution — You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests Atlas Games endorses you or your use. Since adapted works are likely to make use of elements from numerous titles, you may use this general attribution statement:

ShareAlike — If you remix, transform, or build upon the material, you must distribute your contributions under the same license as the original.
No additional restrictions — You may not apply legal terms or technological measures that legally restrict others from doing anything the license permits.

With these trademark limitations:

Atlas Games trademarks — You may apply the Ars Magica Open License Logo to, and use the trademarks "Ars Magica" and "Mythic Europe" within, any Adapted Material that you produce from the Ars Magica text under the Creative Commons license. If you do so, you must add this statement in your legalese:

Paradox Interactive AB trademarks — Certain terms in Ars Magica were claimed as trademarks by its original publisher White Wolf: Order of Hermes, Tremere, Doissetep, and Grimgroth. Atlas Games has signed a new agreement with their successor Paradox Interactive AB to allow use of these under the open license. Please help us live up to our agreement with them, by respecting these conditions if you use them in any Adapted Material:

Order of Hermes, Tremere, Doissetep, and Grimgroth may only be used in Ars Magica material and not be exploited in any shape or manner separate therefrom;
You must include Paradox Interactive's permission statement (below) in your legalese, and agree that all uses shall inure to the benefit of Paradox Interactive AB;
The material created under the open license may not misrepresent its origin to state that the material is provided by Paradox Interactive AB or in connection with World of Darkness®;
You are not granted any other rights under trademark law to Order of Hermes, Tremere, Doissetep or Grimgroth other than the right to use the aforementioned trademarks as explicitly stated here.
The material created under the open license may not be called Order of Hermes, Tremere, Doissetep, or Grimgroth and these terms may not appear in the title/name of the material.

If your Adapted Material uses these terms, you must comply with these conditions, and add this statement to your legalese:

“Order of Hermes, Tremere, Doissetep, and Grimgroth are trademarks of Paradox Interactive AB and are used with permission.”

Can you tell me if this specific thing I want to do is OK?

No, sorry. We encourage you to read all of the extensive Creative Commons documentation about the license and its use (linked below), and to seek your own legal counsel as necessary if you still have questions. Our goal is to keep things simple and straightforward, to encourage creators to proceed without special permission from us. However, we can take no responsibility for the actions of third parties or speak to the interpretations of copyright and trademark law across all the jurisdictions of the world. We're not lawyers, are not offering legal advice, etc.

READ THE CC BY-SA 4.0 DEED & LEGAL CODE

DOWNLOAD THE ARS MAGICA OPEN LICENSE LOGO