My Gamemaster is looking to expand our group up to 4 players (we’re currently at two). It’s a fun game (that I should post about more) so hopefully we’ll find someone soon.

(In the interests of fairness, I should point out that there was no wagons in the game, despite the headline and the ‘yeehaa’)

I’m not going to go into a blow by blow account of the session, but I do have a few things to say.

1) I hate Ars Magica character creation. I don’t hate it entirely – the flaws and virtues system works pretty smoothly and there’s some great flavoursome examples which took me from ‘I have no idea what to create’ to ‘Fuck yeah!’ in a few minutes. But the system is a) needlessly complicated and b) terribly laid out.

It’s needlessly complicated because it has too many levels of detail. The 45xp of early childhood skills and the (assuming a mage who goes into apprenticeship at 10) 75 points of later childhood xp don’t actually add too much to the character that couldn’t be handled by just saying ‘here, have this amount of xp. As a suggestion, try to think of things that your PC might have learnt as a kid and don’t spend any more than X% on mage specific stuff”

It’s terribly laid out because I have to spend character creation with 3 different book marks at any given time. There’s no consolidated character creation info, and some things seem hidden in the examples. This takes a reasonably complex thing and makes it more so. Always a bad idea.

2) This actually goes for the book in general – stuff is sort of all over the places and while the game does have a clear unified mechanic (characteristic+ability+die roll) but while it’s explained at the beginning of the book, I don’t think it’s carried through the rest of the rules examples well.

3) That said, it’s a wonderfully evocative setting and while I was nervous about the magic system being a bit intimidating, it actually flows wonderfully easily in play. For those who don’t know, wikipedia can probably explain better than I but in short all spells are made up of a Form and a Technique. The techniques are all I statements (I Create, I Perceive, I Destroy etc) and the forms are the classical elements, plants, animals, the mind etc. You have ranks in Forms and Techniques like a skill – 5 points in Perdo (I destroy) and 5 in Ignem (Fire) would let you extinguish a small fire. You can learn specific spells or make up effects as you go along (at a penalty).

My magus, Alberic the Changer, is an arrogant know it all but who is kind to his friends and not deliberately an asshole. Rescued from a devil cult as a child he’s been raised with excellent Latin, a keen mind and almost no skills outside of his studies. I’m looking forward to seeing how he develops so watch this space.