Ars Magica

[Username17]

Frank, spontaneous generation was disproven centuries ago, but I would bet you that in Laertes' game, I could spontaneously create wasps and flies by putting a cow carcass in a shed, because, like with Runequest, Ars Magicka uses an ancient belief system as it's physics engine, not real life.

edit:

And after all that, I'm not entirely certain how much of my knowledge is what works in Ars Magica 5 and how much is what works in Laertes' Ars Magica 5.

Totally this, though.

Here's the thing about spontaneous generation: not everyone knows how it was supposed to work. Indeed, the people who believed in it did not agree on how it worked. And people today don't all even know about it, let alone have a coherent understanding of how it was supposed to work.

So maybe you could get wasps and flies in Laertes' game. Maybe just flies and not wasps. Maybe neither, since in reality you do actually need to have bug eggs to get bugs. And while I'm unwilling to take a bet on specifically Laertes' game (especially as the sample has now been spoiled), I am willing to take a bet that if you took that idea to ten games with different storyguides that you would get at least three different answers.

-Username17

[Prak]

Most likely, yes. AM is probably very prone to "YGMV" syndrome.

[Laertes]

That's a fair criticism of it: Ars Magica is dependent on the GM and to an extent the party as a whole as to exactly how it works. This extends beyond the rules, since Ars Magica encourages a group-consensus view of gaming and the construction of things like plot and world. Parties end up playing their own house-ruled variants of the game, and the discussions of house rules on the forums can end up as a fascinating study of phenotype/genotype selection.

As regards spontaneous generation: yes, that's how it works. That's probably a bad example because Ars Magica explicitly lays out spontaneous generation and dictates the precise point at which it ceases to occur (mice and smaller spontaneously generate, rats and larger breed.) However, the point is a valid one: it depends on the view that the group in particular has of Aristotelean physics. This is a good thing because as virgil points out, none of us are professionals in it.

Since Frank feels mansplained to, I'm going to withdraw from the thread. I'll still be reading it, but I don't want to create a non-safe environment.

[Prak]

...don't rats and mice fall into the same Size score in Ars Magica?

[MGuy]

People keep saying that Frank is "wrong" about AM but, as someone who hasn't played it and is just reading this conversation, it seems to me that he's right in that the magic system is likely too vague to function without grievous amounts of mind caulk and a social agreement. Admitting that you basically have to know about this 'other thing' in order to make sense of the rules means that the rules themselves can't hold up and that's pretty damning for the system. I mean Frank has been saying this since the last thread and thus far no one has really made a convincing argument otherwise because they themselves fall into the trap of trying to explain away some sample function in a way that is different than someone else who would explain the same thing. If the rules can't even get its own fans to agree on what the fuck is going on then that speaks volumes for what it is lacking.

[angelfromanotherpin]

...don't rats and mice fall into the same Size score in Ars Magica?

Rats are size -8 or -7 (conflicting sources). Mice are size -10.

[Kaelik]

However, the point is a valid one: it depends on the view that the group in particular has of Aristotelean physics. This is a good thing because as virgil points out, none of us are professionals in it.

This is either the dumbest thing in this thread. Or you accidentally forget a negative, and it's still a massive understatement.

[Ars Fan]

People keep saying that Frank is "wrong" about AM but, as someone who hasn't played it and is just reading this conversation, it seems to me that he's right in that the magic system is likely too vague to function without grievous amounts of mind caulk and a social agreement.

That's an unwarranted assumption. In fact the magic system leads to very few arguments because it is so detailed. IF you want to create a spell that turns snails into brown bears there isn't really a question regarding what level it is.

Admitting that you basically have to know about this 'other thing' in order to make sense of the rules means that the rules themselves can't hold up and that's pretty damning for the system.

The point about Aristotle and cosmology being essential is in my opinion completely bogus. What the player needs to read are the rules. The section that defines the techniques and forms is about two pages (IIRC, I don't have a book here to check).

[Laertes]

For fuck's sake. I'm as pro-ArM as the next person, but can we not fucking dogpile into communities to mindlessly defend our favourite game? This is the type of shit that gets people a bad name. Neither Frank nor MGuy have actually played the game and have made no effort to even research their views to any extent; their views on the matter can safely be disregarded and do not need to be addressed. You registering an account called "Ars Fan" just to post this shit is neither constructive nor helpful. Now go home and leave your single-issue account at the fucking door. K thx bye.

Yes, I know I said I'm leaving the thread and I am, but this shit annoys me. Being an ignorant asshole is forgivable; being a bad forum citizen who'll leap into a disposable user account because someone dares create a thread to disparage a game you personally like, is not.

[John Magnum]

Frank has repeatedly talked about his experiences playing Ars Magica, just not 5th Edition specifically. Can you at least not lie about the people you disagree with, Laertes?

[MGuy]

Yup, I haven't played. That's why I'm not taking a stand on it. That is just how it seems to an outsider looking in. Frank pointed out that the Ars fans don't even have a consensus on what works yet they claim it does, which I've yet to see, and that makes it look bad to me. Whether or not it is true in play I don't know. I've read the book (4th ed) to mine it for ideas a while (2 years+) back when I was looking at how different systems handle magic and I found it vague then, but then I assumed it was supposed to be that way.

[Heaven's Thunder Hammer]

Frank has repeatedly talked about his experiences playing Ars Magica, just not 5th Edition specifically. Can you at least not lie about the people you disagree with, Laertes?

Frank mentioned playing 2nd or 3rd edition many years ago, both of which are more cludgy than 5th. If Frank actually ran a 5th ed game for a dozen sessions his criticisms would have more merit. I was fairly unimpressed with his criticisms in the last discussion about AM. His argument boiled down to Ars can't stop stupid GMs from being stupid therefore Ars is stupid. I'm not sure any game can do that.

That said I have a harder time identifying problems since I have played the game so long (16 yrs) I have huge chunks of the core and other supplements memorized. The whole aristotilian cosmology stuff I personally have never delved very far into and don't see the need to.

Having run a game with new people 3 times in the last 2 years... I can completely agree that the game is not newbie friendly. I can also agree that different GMs will have very different styles and interpretations, perhaps more so than other RPGs.

My most successful game to date started the PCs out as apprentices and slowly introduced new aspects of the game.

[virgil]

I'm going to pointedly ignore the spontaneous magic defenses and comments about anyone's proficiency with the rules/setting/metaphysics, as that is the opposite of productive. I can only hope the rest of you follow suit and not make backhanded (or direct) comments one way or the other to keep giving it legs.

My most successful game to date started the PCs out as apprentices and slowly introduced new aspects of the game.

That's a good idea. The system seems understandable enough, but you can say the same thing of D&D and Shadowrun, and many casual gamers are going to balk at such a learning curve. There is a light concern for the level 1 problem, where few enjoy talking about how their character carried a bucket from a well and fought some rats.

I'll need to research scenarios and adventures for Ars Magica, and hope they're more than "goblins are harassing the village, send a few grogs to investigate" and other D&D crap.

[tussock]

If Frank actually ran a 5th ed game for a dozen sessions his criticisms would have more merit.

I fondly remember people complaining about how I shouldn't judge 4e/D&D based on the preview material and had to wait for the books to come out, then couldn't judge 4e/D&D on the rules because I had to play, then couldn't judge 4e/D&D on what people who play it say because it hadn't been long enough, about how the paywall was hiding all these wonderful fixes and only the ones I'd seen were complete bullshit.

But that wasn't true then, and it's not true now. Frank's a much better critic than I am, but even my casual exposure to Ars Magica showed players constantly negotiating for the most trivial bullshit with the GM, in tiny play groups that hardly got anything done after all the fucking bookkeeping around tying down each little endlessly negotiated bullshit spell effect. People enjoy the grog sessions because you can stop doing that for a while.

It's full of wank about pre-scientific naturalism because that's the only bit of the game most of the players cared about. Messing around with trying to fuck up the game world by abusing stupid implications of ancient ideas, if only they could gather enough magic dust without annoying the bishop too badly. Which of course the GM never allows. Zzzz.

The reason it's a game with very few sales is that it's just not a good game.

[ishy]

I can also agree that different GMs will have very different styles and interpretations, perhaps more so than other RPGs.

So are you saying that nobody who is not the GM can know what the rules actually are?

[Parthenon]

The whole aristotilian cosmology stuff I personally have never delved very far into and don't see the need to.

This confuses me. Either:
[*]the whole cosmology is important for adjudicating the rules in which case you have been doing it wrong for 16 years.
[*]Or it's not and others which have previously talked about rules based on this cosmology were wrong.
[*]Or, whether it is or isn't depends on the GM in which case the whole rulesystem is fucked and too vague and dependent on the GM's whims.

[Ars Fan]

For fuck's sake. I'm as pro-ArM as the next person, but can we not fucking dogpile into communities to mindlessly defend our favourite game? This is the type of shit that gets people a bad name.

So there's a discussion where my favorite game has some serious misconceptions spread about it, and I decide to move from lurker to poster. This is the sort of thing that gives people a bad name? really? What was your first post about?

Neither Frank nor MGuy have actually played the game and have made no effort to even research their views to any extent; their views on the matter can safely be disregarded and do not need to be addressed.

So I should not address any misinformation that comes from people who are uninformed, only well informed people?

You registering an account called "Ars Fan" just to post this shit is neither constructive nor helpful. Now go home and leave your single-issue account at the fucking door. K thx bye

.
How would it have been better if I had chosen a username that obscured my passions, perhaps something that is totally opaque? I post as Ars Fan on a few other boards as well (mostly the onyx path Exalted board),

Yes, I know I said I'm leaving the thread and I am, but this shit annoys me. Being an ignorant asshole is forgivable; being a bad forum citizen who'll leap into a disposable user account because someone dares create a thread to disparage a game you personally like, is not.

I'm sorry that I annoyed you. Is jumping into a thread about one's favorite game really being a bad forum citizen?

Where do you think new posters come from?

[Ars Fan]

The whole aristotilian cosmology stuff I personally have never delved very far into and don't see the need to.

This confuses me. Either:
[*]the whole cosmology is important for adjudicating the rules in which case you have been doing it wrong for 16 years.
[*]Or it's not and others which have previously talked about rules based on this cosmology were wrong.
[*]Or, whether it is or isn't depends on the GM in which case the whole rulesystem is fucked and too vague and dependent on the GM's whims.

It's kind of the second one.

The rules were originally made by some college kids who didn't put a whole lot of medieval philosophy in to the book. They said that the setting is what the people of the time believed it was, but they weren't particularly well versed in what these people actually believed. Over time, other authors have fit Ars Magica closer to medieval beliefs, much of this is in setting detail which one could reasonably gloss over.

Some of the philosophy is in the rules themselves, The technique of Muto is defined in two paragraphs on page 78. This definition is informed, a little bit, by medieval philosophy. But whether it is informed by medieval philosophy or not, the rules would still have to define what Muto does, and it would probably take at least two paragraphs to do it. Likewise the abilities of infernal and divine beings are infused with medivalism, but you'd have to give the critters stats in some way regardless.

There is a book in the line that sets up the medieval physics, chemistry, medicine and cosmology of the setting (Art and Academe) it tells you where thunder comes from, the nature of the world's geography, and how the human body works. It has story seeds based on the weird functioning of the medieval conception of the universe (what would a hermetic trip to the moon look like and why would your players do it? A gifted artist is influenced by two literal muses that want to inspire his creativity, do the PC's help one of them, help the other, or kill them both for their vis?). I like the book, but people play just fine without it.

[virgil]

That's an unwarranted assumption. In fact the magic system leads to very few arguments because it is so detailed. IF you want to create a spell that turns snails into brown bears there isn't really a question regarding what level it is.

But there *can* be a question of what words you use, because the classification of turning a man's hair white or suffer from keratinous skin tumors can legitimately be argued to be Perdo or Muto (or potentially Creo since it can make a stick bear fruit in winter) based on the book's definitions.

You can get largely consistent, but there exist vagaries and those are the areas being blasted because it requires DM fiat to resolve. However, I can guarantee that jumping in to defend the system from that criticism is going to go nowhere; as are efforts to continue to harp on that feature of the system.

[Username17]

So because Ars Fan is being extremely thick, let's open up the actual page 78 definitions:

By using Muto magic a magus can grant or remove properties something cannot naturally have. Thus, Muto can give a person wings or turn her skin green, or turn a person into a wolf. The difficulty of the magic depends on the extent of the change, so that turning someone’s skin green is easy, but turning someone into a golden statue is difficult.

Muto magic cannot affect the properties that something has naturally, although it can add other properties to them to mask their effects. Thus Muto magic can neither injure nor kill someone directly, although it could render her immobile, by turning her to stone, or kill her indirectly, by turning her into a fish on dry land so that she suffocates.

Now, those of you who aren't mouth breathers will notice that that description contradicts itself repeatedly despite its brevity. Also you'll note that since it has everything to do with "properties" (undefined) and whether or not they "can be natural" (also undefined), that there is essentially no chance whatsoever of finding two storyguides who agree on what you can and cannot do with Muto. No two people agree on what is and is not a predicate, nor can you find two people who agree on what properties are and are not things that can occur.

We could get into deep philosophy of time dependent traits or traits of number to get really weird arguments ("What happens if I give myself the trait of 'only surviving member of House Anjou?'"), but it actually falls apart way earlier than that because of the whole "naturally" thing. Any trait you don't have is one which in this particular time line is one that you can't have had at this moment. But we're pretty sure that's not what the book is talking about, and that it's actually talking about some sort of alternate history hypothetical. That being the case, holy fuck why does it list green fucking skin as something that could not occur in nature? There are lots of natural ways to get green skin, fro m hypochromic anemia and gangrene to just eating a lot of dark leafy vegetables or soaking yourself in dye. What is or is not natural would seem to be horribly confused and impossible to untangle even from the examples in the book, but it's actually worse than that, because not only are the limits of nature undefined in the game but you could very plausibly be talking about nature as understood by 13th century Christians. Or more precisely, the limits of nature in an undefined hypothetical of different events occurring in a context of natural laws that are to an undefined degree based on the limited knowledge of actual physics and medieval philosophy of the person sitting in the storyguide seat.

Muto is a badly defined thing. If you wanted to defend Ars Magica as not being a clusterfuck of incomprehensible gibberish, Muto is not the hill you want to die on.

-Username17

[Ars Fan]

Trollman,
If you are having arguments about "What happens if I give myself the trait of 'only surviving member of House Anjou'" or "Is it natural to have green skin?" the problem isn't the game.

I can say that I've been playing fifth edition for nearly 10 years with several GM's and I've not had any difficulties (there were more difficulties with previous editions).
I follow the Ars Magica board and I rarely if ever see issues that other folks bring up in regards to confusion of the meaning of muto. It doesn't seem to be an issue for other people.

and as Trollman pointed out muto is the technique that looks like it is most amenable to misinterpretation. If you want to make the game look worse than it is muto is certainly the hill to do it on.

Virgil

But there *can* be a question of what words you use, because the classification of turning a man's hair white or suffer from keratinous skin tumors can legitimately be argued to be Perdo or Muto (or potentially Creo since it can make a stick bear fruit in winter) based on the book's definitions.

Creo can clearly only make things better examples of their type which explicitly includes bringing to maturity. It is clear that white hair and skin tumors aren't making a better example of type.

It is also clear that you could do both with perdo.

the definition of muto that trollman quoted above says "Thus Muto magic can neither injure nor kill someone directly" so Muto Corpus skin tumors looks like its out if they are extensive enough to constitute an injury.

There can be a question, and you are almost certainly correct in that further attempts to defend the system on this issue are going nowhere. But the areas of GM fiat are smaller than your example makes them appear. (An aside, the way that the question is phrased "is this muto or perdo" implies that it has to only be one. That's not really how the system is set up.)

[Username17]

Trollman,
If you are having arguments about "What happens if I give myself the trait of 'only surviving member of House Anjou'" or "Is it natural to have green skin?" the problem isn't the game.

I would submit that it obviously is. It's time to play put up or shut up:

What criteria do you use to determine if a trait is or is not part of nature?

Keep in mind that I already listed four reasonably simple and natural ways to get green skin, two of which can be achieved by simply eating or not eating the right kinds of common foods. And it's specifically listed as a trait that is not natural.

Part two:

What criteria do you use to determine if something "is a trait?"

Keep in mind that example traits include specific (color of skin), expansive ("is a wolf"), potentially fatal ("is a fish"), and completely made up ("is a living statue made of gold").

So seriously, put up or shut up: Muto has two provisions ("creates traits" and "traits must be non-natural"), how do you understand either one of them?

-Username17

[Kaelik]

Trollman,
If you are having arguments about "What happens if I give myself the trait of 'only surviving member of House Anjou'" or "Is it natural to have green skin?" the problem isn't the game.

I can say that I've been playing fifth edition for nearly 10 years with several GM's and I've not had any difficulties (there were more difficulties with previous editions).
I follow the Ars Magica board and I rarely if ever see issues that other folks bring up in regards to confusion of the meaning of muto. It doesn't seem to be an issue for other people.

Look idiot. People play with shitty vague rules all the time. And the PCs have different expectations from each other and the MC. And then the MC just tells them what it is, and because they are all friends, they all internally sulk for a session but outwardly pretend that is what they all thought all along, and then they move on and 10 years later forget that every time they start with a new MC they have different expectations and the first session is papering over those.

That doesn't magically make the rules definite. Literally every part of those rules is basically bullshit. I could conceptualize it being both natural and unnatural for literally any given trait anyone would want. That is a real problem, because the rules do basically zero percent of the work and the players and MC have to do 100% of the work to come up with standards.

and as Trollman pointed out muto is the technique that looks like it is most amenable to misinterpretation.

How can you possibly call it misinterpretation when literally any one of thousands of different mutually exclusive possible interpretations are exactly as complicit with the vague guidelines as each other.

[Ars Fan]

So seriously, put up or shut up:

I'll choose shut up. I don't think that there is anything to be gained by continuing the discussion.

[zasx]

What criteria do you use to determine if a trait is or is not part of nature?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platonic_idealism

PS - Adversarial story guides are a plague. They don't leave any wiggle room for fun.

PPS - Maybe you should bring that question to the Ars Magica forum if you want intelligent answers and not some passers-by.