TGDMB & Ars Magica

[Korgan0]

Just out of curiosity, how have studied Aristotelian medieval metaphysics at a university level? Hell, how many of you have studied Aristotle at a university level for more than a week or so? Raise your hands if, without googling, you can tell me whether Ockham ran more towards realism or nominalism.

If those questions have anything at all to do with parsing the action resolution in a fucking tabletop roleplaying game, those rules are bad and need to be changed. Your attempt to whip out your epistemic nerd wang only showed how wildly inappropriate that wang is for cooperative storytelling about wizards among your friends.

-Username17

When I "play wizards" with my friends, my wang is typically involved. So are drugs, but that's besides the point.

Your argument is that the Forms and Techniques are incoherent. My argument is that while the book descriptions are incoherent, extant medieval metaphysics provides a firm foundation for them, perhaps even on par with Shadowrun's. You obviously disagree. I was curious as to your experience with exactly the body of work I am claiming provides a way out. I'm not defending ArM5; it requires a copious amount of spreadsheeting and mind-caulk to work well, and the setting is weirdly contradictory in all the ways you've pointed out, with a few exceptions, that I'll get to later. However, if you're talking about going forward, it's perfectly possible to adapt medieval metaphysics into a structure capable of supporting the classic ArM magical system. Remember, a realignment of metaphysics entails a realignment of physics. Galileo's experiment, if the players performed it, would necessarily have different results. Catapults would have differing ranges. Plastics couldn't exist. It would take work and reading and all that fun stuff, and some definition of physical laws, but it's still possible. You could probably dedicate 12 or so pages to a brief explication, prefacing it with "yes, it's weird, but this is how this world works deal with it" and going super in-depth in a splatbook.

In any case, while the assimilation of the Order into Medieval politics is weird, to not mention the Fae, the problem of an activist God is much less substantial than I think you're making it out to be, purely because the players don't interact with God except in very precise ways. Specifically, they can eat/drink or piss on the transubstantiated body and blood of Christ, or they can work miracles. That's literally it, and the Limit of the Divine means that magic can't affect anything directly emanating from God. The remainder of the interactions with the Divine occurs through angels, who are predominantly interested solely in making sure humans don't sin, and otherwise executing their narrowly defined jobs. As such, while it's weird that God supports both the Crusades and those fighting against the Crusades, if you abandon the notion of omnibenevolence (which doesn't appear to factor prominently in medieval theology; Aquinas' notion of goodness is very different, and I don't think a lack of omnibenevolence is a problem for perfect being theory) there would really be no reason for God to intervene directly, since God typically doesn't do that without mortals asking super nicely. Angels are different, but angels are (a) not limitlessly powerful (b) have their powers well-defined and (c) care more about the afterlife than who's killing whom. As I said, while it's certainly weird, you can say "God works in mysterious ways", and it's not inconsistent.

[Whipstitch]

Korgan's position is so dumb that until I got to this new page I assumed he wasn't taking it. Instead, I mind caulked the theory that his earlier post was dismissing Aristotelian physics as a game mechanic on the grounds that even reasonably educated players probably shouldn't be expected to know enough about that particular dead end historical curiosity to make a good go of things. But no, I guess he really is doubling down on that hilariously unreasonable idea.

[John Magnum]

It's not quite as ridiculous as that. It's just the idea that theoretically a designer could make a game which relied on Aristotelian physics, and presented it in sufficient detail and coherence in the game book itself that players could use it, without relying on a vague pointer to centuries of arguments in which every participant was badly wrong.

This still seems fairly absurd.

[Longes]

If the rpg writers can't come up with a simple and functional method of basic action resolution, then I refuse to believe that they can write a functional and understandable set of Physics. Tolkien wrote LotR because he was toying with fake languages because he was a linguist. Most rpg writers don't understand real physics well enough to say what certain changes will entail, much less write a complete world that functions on alien physics.

[erik]

Um, yeah. Anywho, things that are worth taking from Ars Magica:

• * Logistics and Minions
  A game with hard-coded downtime, domain-building and minion maintenance is a novelty worth pursuing.
  * Rotating spotlight vs. ensemble cast.
  I think if people want to all play an ensemble of magi in the same session that's an okay alternative, but must be able to support Magus + Cohorts as well.
  * Structured magic.
  Having structured spell spheres/schools or whatever where it is plausible to say "I am researching (necromancy/ pyromancy/ divination/ potion brewing/ defense against dark arts)" and as bonus points able to say shit like "Creo Auram!" and players will know what you're doing.
  * Politics.
  There should be a power balance the players have to deal with, be it between pitchfork wielding peasants, a powerful church and wealthy nobles... or between modern governments, mega-corporations and supernatural rivals. Players don't just need worthy opponents; Covenants need worthy foils.

That's the entry bar.

Stuff that doesn't have to be included...
Mythic Europe setting. Take it or leave it. I could have just as much fun with it in Modern Notnarnia, or an East Asian magic school (not using latin in the latter case, but another stand-in of simple word combo spells). I think it is worthy option to include, but it shouldn't be the only option.

Demons, Angels, Fae.... meh. As Korgan demonstrated there's nothing to save there. Write your own supernatural realm and it will be just as good as anything extant, if not better.

Attributes and raw mechanics. Nothing worth saving implicitly.

Aristotelean physics. This brings nothing helpful to the game.

[Korgan0]

It's not quite as ridiculous as that. It's just the idea that theoretically a designer could make a game which relied on Aristotelian physics, and presented it in sufficient detail and coherence in the game book itself that players could use it, without relying on a vague pointer to centuries of arguments in which every participant was badly wrong.

This still seems fairly absurd.

You're right about what my position is. But even so, is it really so absurd? It might take a couple of editions, and definitely a great deal of work, but if the people behind Shadowrun can get something coherent out of the fucking mess that was those weird magical/spiritualist movements I'm confident in the ability of someone who knows what they're talking about to churn out something solid.

[Schleiermacher]

The difference is that if I'm not very much mistaken, the early Shadowrun authors were actually pretty deeply invested in the stuff they based their magic system on and knew a lot about it. I question whether anyone on the current ArM team has that level of knowledge or investment in Aristotelian metaphysics -and if they don't they're that much more likely to make a hash of it.

[Red_Rob]

The problem with declaring Aristotelian metaphysics true is that it has knock on effects for the world. These have just enough impact on the logical effects of your actions to trip you up if you aren't thinking super carefully about things. For a setting which is nominally "The real world" this is a big nono.

[Prak]

That's why I only proposed that magic used it. Magic is already inexplicable weirdness, so it's not like saying it uses old incorrect philosophy is hugely different from making one up.

[Longes]

That's why I only proposed that magic used it. Magic is already inexplicable weirdness, so it's not like saying it uses old incorrect philosophy is hugely different from making one up.

But what's the point of that? Aristotelian physics is incomprehencible bullshit. What do you get by making pointers to it, instead of writing your own list of laws of magic?

[DrPraetor]

I should write something longer, but due to time constraints I can't.

Cutting to the chase with the whole Platonic magic thing:
- If I teleport a boulder into the sky and drop it on someone... does it bounce? Does it leave a crater?
Real world physics has answers for all of these things, but Platonic physics doesn't. Frank - you don't really need an answer to this that makes sense and does a good job of modeling a more-or-less realistic world, but you do need an answer and the game manual needs to include it, rather than depending on Mister Cavern (and the players!) to all be experts in Platonic philosophy.
If you have a table full of people who enjoy the platonic-reality conceit, and I think you can find such people, there is nothing wrong with making a game for them. But the rulebook needs to do a lot more of the heavy lifting than it currently does, especially for some crucial instances that come up in play.

- Divine intervention doesn't play a huge role in the setting. Again, if Ars Magica wants to have Unitarianism be the thing that is real (God grants miracles to all monotheists, doesn't really care about theology or dogma), that may offend some players but does that mean they can't have it in their game? I don't think so.

- Divine intervention doesn't play much of a role in the rules except implicitly. Frank thinks Creo is the way to go and that's true on a first pass of the rules, but actually is wrong. What you really want is Rego - the Rego/Muto distinction is pretty weird even by Platonic standards, but Rego gives you:
1) Teleport
2) Mind Control
3) Throwing (teleporting?) boulders at people, thus ignoring their magic resistance.
which means you win. UNLESS God comes in and stops you.
Seriously, this is where the Divine becomes a problem.

So if Ars Magica 6 is going to double-down on the Platonic thing, it needs more of that material in the basic book.

Frankly, Ars Magica 6 is pointless unless it is a "Battle Bible" equivalent that incorporates all of the high-end crunch from the previous supplements. Trying to reissue the entire line (again) is just not going to fly, commercially speaking or otherwise.

There are a few mistakes in Frank's Ars Magica review, because he's describing the historical Ars Magica as the game *I described to him and wanted to run*, rather than Ars Magica 2nd edition as it actually existed in print. So Ars Magica 5th is more adherent to the roots of the game than Frank makes out. Does this matter in the least for his overall review? No.

Sorry for the disorganized rambling post, have to get back to work.

[Korgan0]

The difference is that if I'm not very much mistaken, the early Shadowrun authors were actually pretty deeply invested in the stuff they based their magic system on and knew a lot about it. I question whether anyone on the current ArM team has that level of knowledge or investment in Aristotelian metaphysics -and if they don't they're that much more likely to make a hash of it.

I'm not familiar with the makeup of the current team, so I can't comment on that. Certainly, the fact that people study these things professionally, of their own free will, means that people are invested in medieval philosophy, both metaphysical and natural, although perhaps not the point of actually beleveing in it. I'll happily concede, though, that if you made a venn diagram containing "People who are experts in medieval natural philosophy and metaphysics" and "People who are committed, talented, and experienced TTRPG designers" the middle section might well be empty. It is, however, possible for people with that skillset to exist, and turn out a good TTRPG, and that's the point I'm making.

The problem with declaring Aristotelian metaphysics true is that it has knock on effects for the world. These have just enough impact on the logical effects of your actions to trip you up if you aren't thinking super carefully about things. For a setting which is nominally "The real world" this is a big nono.

As Frank pointed out, the setting really has shifted from "mythic EUROPE" to "MYTHIC Europe. The way I had it explained to me was "everything the medievals thought was true (this obviously occludes debates) plus magic." Doubling down on that setting at least makes it internally consistent for heavier things to fall faster. In other words, it seems reasonable to double down and insist on Aristotelian physics and metaphysics. Contra Longes, the theories in question aren't incomprehensible nonsense. They're internally consistent, sophisticated, widespread, and cover a wide range of phenomena. What they don't do is correlate with the observations we make in the real world. Fortunately, we don't have to set it in the real world.

That's why I only proposed that magic used it. Magic is already inexplicable weirdness, so it's not like saying it uses old incorrect philosophy is hugely different from making one up.

Now this is a really interesting point. If we take Shadowrun as the best example of the good things that can come from a robust magical metaphysics system, that actually works against my argument for having everything accord with the medievals, because, quite simply, Shadowrun's metaphysics don't extend as far as everything-that-isn't sorcery, and doesn't appear to suffer for it. Certainly, the game-mechanical linkages are robust, but categories of magic don't in any way correspond to non-magical categories (with the exception of metahuman-targeted spells), and Shadowrun doesn't appear to suffer for it. There's some weirdness with Shape spells, and I'm sure that AH and co could come up with some other edge cases, but it seems to work. As such, if we take Shadowrun as our example, having "regular" physics operate at the mundane level and Aristotelian physics at the magical level could work, barring perhaps a few weird edge cases with perpetual motion machines or whatever the fuck.

I don't think it's a good idea, though, and here's why. Magic-users in Shadowrun will, predominantly, be using their talents to either manipulate people, sneak, fight, or clean up after a run, purely because those are the PC playspaces that Shadowrun is built around. It's in the name; the core assumption is that PC's will be using their talents predominantly within the playspace of a shadowrun. Ars Magica, on the other hand, not only envisions a far higher proportion of PC's being mages (at least half, and possibly far more depending on how widely companions figure), but also envisions magic being used as a problem-solving technique in a far wider range of situations. Not only do all those situations mentioned above figure, but on top of that playing Dwarf Fortress with magic is a big part of the game. As such, you have to be able to define and predict mundane-magic interactions with a far wider range of substrates, for lack of a better term, than in Shadowrun. In Shadowrun, spells are going to be cast on small numbers people, predominantly, with the exception of indirect combat spells, shape spells (which can be weird edge-cases) and illusions, which are pretty predictable. In Ars Magica, due to the requirements of playing Dwarf Fortress, spells are going to be cast on much wider range of things. Building machinery and fortifications, supporting/creating economies, influencing mass combat, dealing with Realms, manipulating regios, and so on are all things that have to be taken into account, and it seems to me that such a wide range of activities, encompassing things like plant growth rates and artillery ranges, really requires a much larger amount of magic-mundane integration at the metaphysical level.

I should write something longer, but due to time constraints I can't.[snip]

A brief aside: using the term "platonic" for this kind of thing is fundamentally inaccurate; the medievals were only working off the first half of Timaeus, which is hardly typical. Aristotle and the Neo-Platonists, especially Plotinus, were far more important, and the methodologies of the medievals owe far more to them than Plato. Otherwise, I agree. The book needs to do a lot more, there aren't very many people who know who the differences between the two Scotuses who also know what RNG stands for, and so on and so forth. As a nitpick, though, on the grounds that the impelling force is present in an object until its motion is done, throwing/dropping boulders on someone requires an Aiming roll, while hurling it magically makes it susceptible to Magic Resistance, making it something less than an auto-hit. Again, though, it comes down to what Forms you choose. ReCo is great, ReAq is nice for aquaculture but has limited applications in land-based combat barring hurling ice darts, ReTe is fantastic, ReAm is kinda shitty, and ReIg is definitely shitty.

[Roog]

Doubling down on that setting at least makes it internally consistent for heavier things to fall faster. In other words, it seems reasonable to double down and insist on Aristotelian physics and metaphysics. Contra Longes, the theories in question aren't incomprehensible nonsense. They're internally consistent, sophisticated, widespread, and cover a wide range of phenomena.

So, how how much faster does an Aristotelian object with twice the weight fall?

[Morat]

So, how how much faster does an Aristotelian object with twice the weight fall?

Aristotle says that the speed is directly proportional to the weight. So a 10kg object falls 10 times as fast as a 1kg object.

Of course, then you run immediately into Galileo's objection. Okay, so if a 1kg object falls at speed X, a 10kg object falls at speed 10X. What happens if you tie them together? Does it now fall slower, because the light object holds back the heavy one? Or does it fall even faster, because it's now a heavier object? Is the answer different if you tie them together or if you glue them together? Nobody knows!

[Longes]

Doubling down on that setting at least makes it internally consistent for heavier things to fall faster. In other words, it seems reasonable to double down and insist on Aristotelian physics and metaphysics. Contra Longes, the theories in question aren't incomprehensible nonsense. They're internally consistent, sophisticated, widespread, and cover a wide range of phenomena. What they don't do is correlate with the observations we make in the real world. Fortunately, we don't have to set it in the real world.

Setting the game in an Aristotelian world creates strange results alien to anyone who lives in our world. Fireballs will curve up, because that's where Fire is drawn. Condoms don't work, because babies are created out of mother's matter and father's intention. Tigers exist specifically to eat human, because everything has a reason for existence and action.

If there are any benefits from dealing with this madness - I don't see them.

[Korgan0]

So, how how much faster does an Aristotelian object with twice the weight fall?

Aristotle says that the speed is directly proportional to the weight. So a 10kg object falls 10 times as fast as a 1kg object.

Of course, then you run immediately into Galileo's objection. Okay, so if a 1kg object falls at speed X, a 10kg object falls at speed 10X. What happens if you tie them together? Does it now fall slower, because the light object holds back the heavy one? Or does it fall even faster, because it's now a heavier object? Is the answer different if you tie them together or if you glue them together? Nobody knows!

Here's the thing: medieval philosophers were incredibly fucking argumentative. so fucking argumentative. they would argue for fucking ever over the most minute fucking irrelevant details and i'm saying that as a fucking philosopher. I've gone through the modern debates over the fucking twin-earth theory (semantic externalism bullshit) and the medievals are worse. I would bet you one of my fingers there have been several well-recorded debates on that issue. So, you go through the debates, (this requires having that kind of archival access, which in all fairness is easier nowadays with the internet and scanners) pick a side, and there you go.

Doubling down on that setting at least makes it internally consistent for heavier things to fall faster. In other words, it seems reasonable to double down and insist on Aristotelian physics and metaphysics. Contra Longes, the theories in question aren't incomprehensible nonsense. They're internally consistent, sophisticated, widespread, and cover a wide range of phenomena. What they don't do is correlate with the observations we make in the real world. Fortunately, we don't have to set it in the real world.

Setting the game in an Aristotelian world creates strange results alien to anyone who lives in our world. Fireballs will curve up, because that's where Fire is drawn. Condoms don't work, because babies are created out of mother's matter and father's intention. Tigers exist specifically to eat human, because everything has a reason for existence and action.

If there are any benefits from dealing with this madness - I don't see them.

Honestly, (and as a caveat i'm pretty high) that sounds awesome. That tiger bit is false though; insofar as living beings can have final causes it would be predation in the sake of the tiger, most likely.

[virgil]

Here's the thing: medieval philosophers were incredibly fucking argumentative.

Contra Longes, the theories in question aren't incomprehensible nonsense. They're internally consistent, sophisticated, widespread, and cover a wide range of phenomena. What they don't do is correlate with the observations we make in the real world.

It's one thing where several major medieval principles follow medieval thought, it's another where the fvcking muggle lamps no longer behave as understood by modern thought. Something as fundamental and pervasive as the differences that would lead from the decision of making medieval science needs to be covered, because assumptions no longer work in this case and therefore need to be covered. And you obviously can't just say "look at these websites" because there's enough argument that you have to pick sides, and to be honest here, the internet is not in a good place right now for that subject to be well indexed/documented. As players only really have so much room for a game. It's a waste to dedicate so much of their brain space on making sure babies are made correctly where there's so much other stuff like Hermetic politics and culture, historical culture and politics, and the isolated exceptions to physics made with magic.

[angelfromanotherpin]

So, you go through the debates, (this requires having that kind of archival access, which in all fairness is easier nowadays with the internet and scanners) pick a side, and there you go.

No, there you don't go. Because that's like step two in a long and arduous process to get at-table functionality. The full deal is an absurd amount of work.

The actual process you are proposing is:

Step 1: Identify all the areas in which your non-actual science diverges from actual science.
Step 2: For each of those areas, do an undergrad paper's worth of research to pick a side.
Step 3: Do at least a master's thesis in physics on how the world would actually work with those divergent physical laws.
Step 4: Somehow reconcile your new dimension with anything even vaguely resembling 13th-Century Europe.

If things fall faster depending on their weight, then horses break their legs every time they take a jump. So if you pick that variable, then horseback hunting ceases to be a thing that people do, and a significant slice of medieval society ceases to exist. And that's one consequence of one change.

[Username17]

Fireballs will curve up, because that's where Fire is drawn.

No. Fireballs will travel in a straight line and then crawl upwards as soon as they hit something and stop. Because there's no fucking calculus, so things cannot move in accelerating curves.

-Username17

[RadiantPhoenix]

Fireballs will curve up, because that's where Fire is drawn.

No. Fireballs will travel in a straight line and then crawl upwards as soon as they hit something and stop. Because there's no fucking calculus, so things cannot move in accelerating curves.

-Username17

... it's like a Warner Brothers cartoon!

[DSMatticus]

The fact is that medieval not-physics was wrong, and it was an inaccurate way to describe the world medieval people lived in. And a funny thing about being wrong is that no one theory ever seems to hold a monopoly on it - there are a lot of different ways to be wrong, and medieval not-physicists went through a lot of them. You could spend a lot of time and effort building a self-consistent framework based on the literature of prior not-physicists, but the instant you did you'd just be picking up where hundreds of years of unfinished debates left off, because your self-consistent framework would demonstrably not describe the world medieval turnip farmers lived in even in ways that would be noticeable to sufficiently clever and analytical medieval turnip farmers. And solving that problem either involves changing the setting in a way that it stops looking like medieval Europe or doing a bunch of original work to improve the theories. And the assumption that "creating a sufficiently advanced Aristotle-derived system of physics to accurately describe day-to-day life" is something you could feasibly do during the development cycle of a TTRPG (or even over the course of a handful of passionate enthusiast's lifetimes) is not an obvious or even safe assumption.

This is a silly and pointless conversation, but fuck it, we have lots of those. The main point is you should just fucking scrap the idea that your gameworld runs on not-physics. There's nothing to be gained by that. If you want to fluff all of your magic with ancient theories about how the world worked, by all means. But Joe Turnip Farmer of the fictional past need to be living under the same rules Bob Turnip Farmer does today, because those rules are the only ones that can reliably describe Joe Turnip Farmer's experiences without someone who doesn't understand the source material spewing bullshit or someone who does understand the source material pointing out legitimate contradictions.

[GreatGreyShrike]

For illumination, consider Greg Egan's Orthoganol books. In these books, he takes a very small difference in our theories of space and time and comes out with a fantastically different world that doesn't match our ideas of the world as it is at all. The differences between Orthogonal equivalent of Earth and our Earth is way, way greater than the difference between, say, our earth and 12th century Earth. And the physics changes people are talking about with Aristotlean and Medieval physics being literally true is *much, much* greater than the cumulative total differences between Orthoganol physics and Aristotle/Medieval physics. Consider the literally hundreds of different opinions and ideas about physics in all of medieval history and Aristotle: You'd have to arrange all the hundreds of changes and which sources to support and uphold and which ones to ignore extremely carefully and perfectly, and would probably have to ignore or cherrypick much of the source material really hard, in service of the ultimate goal: to have them all cancel out somehow and have something that resembled 12th century earth on casual examination. And what's the overall point of this titanic effort? Why not model 12th century earth using the physics that actually *generated* the 12th century earth, which is to say actual physics?

[Judging__Eagle]

A tangental aside from arguing why Korgan0's doubling down on Aristotelian physics is bad, but I feel I must bring it up as it tries to clarify that programmed games =/= vague guidelines.

Not only do all those situations mentioned above figure, but on top of that playing Dwarf Fortress with magic is a big part of the game. As such, you have to be able to define and predict mundane-magic interactions with a far wider range of substrates, for lack of a better term, than in Shadowrun. In Shadowrun, spells are going to be cast on small numbers people, predominantly, with the exception of indirect combat spells, shape spells (which can be weird edge-cases) and illusions, which are pretty predictable. In Ars Magica, due to the requirements of playing Dwarf Fortress, spells are going to be cast on much wider range of things. Building machinery and fortifications, supporting/creating economies, influencing mass combat, dealing with Realms, manipulating regios, and so on are all things that have to be taken into account, and it seems to me that such a wide range of activities, encompassing things like plant growth rates and artillery ranges, really requires a much larger amount of magic-mundane integration at the metaphysical level.

I'm not sorry, but I'm going to have to ask for comparisons between Ars Magica and any game with pre-established (i.e. hard) code to not be made at all.

Not on the grounds that you are making some sort of equivalent to apples with oranges between coded games and vague guidelines. Rather that you're making as ludicrous a claim as saying that "the square rainbow palette of hues" and "the linear monochromatic tonal range" are comparable forms of tone of colour.

An alternative (non-colour based) example would be for you to be comparing 'seaworthy aircraft carriers and their complement of aircraft' with 'road killed squirrels', as being similar because you insist "both are naval vessels capable of projecting long-distance military force."

While it's been since the mid-1990's since I've planned out any code for a programmer to code down, programmed code really is so dissimilar from vague guidelines that any sort of comparison is asinine; and insistence that they could both generate "predictable results" makes facepalming too soft a response.

Especially when the vague guidelines you're assuming act like coded program have been demonstrated to be worse than "magical tea party" at almost every step of the way in figuring out what said 'mechanics' are doing (specifically because with MTP you know that you're trying to have a magical tea party; while with Ars Magica's magic 'system' no one has been able to coherently parse what any part should be doing).

While you may believe that a "complex" game like Dorf Fortress (or Dominions:Latest Edition) 'is' as complex as Ars Magica, they are so for entirely different reasons.

A set of guidelines without pre-existing codes for how actions will be resolved does not at all equate with a game whose code is baroque, and therefore difficult to foresee how interactions within said code will turn out for an inexperienced player.

That is to say in Dorf Fortress things like "Carps eat mai Dorfs?!", "Ah! A Dorf(s) tantrumed and it spiraled out of control until they all ded!", "I unburied ancient demons/gods; they blew up my mountain!", and other common complaints are just that; commonly occurring calamities that anyone who knows the code could predict.

Ars Magica's magic system on the other hand is completely impossible to predict, because it doesn't actually say what it cannot or can do. Apologists for Ars Magica's magic system have claimed several times on TGD that it was complete, that they could understand it, and that is was functional. However, said posters have had to retract their totally impossible claims that a completely uncoded(and also lacking any sort of logic-gates) collection of vague guidelines could ever be considered consistent within an actual campaign to give any sort of "expected" results. Let alone be expected to generate similar results between any two gaming groups campaigns.

While I don't (and never actually have) played Dorf Fortress; nor have I ever played Ars Magica; what I've read about (and talked with game programmers about in person) both has demonstrated that attempts at comparison really are as asinine as comparing saying Hue Range == Tone Range; or Aircraft Carrier & Planes == Road Killed Squirrel.

Coded games can actually function inside of something as low end as a non-gaming laptop CPU (caveat: RAM is more critical to DF operation than CPU; however better CPUs correlate with more RAM). While the vague guidelines have been demonstrated over and over again on these forums as something that cannot function coherently inside of a computer as nuanced by parallel processing as the human brain.

I can't say what is The closest approximation for Ars Magica's "magic system" is not programmed games, but other vague guidelines pretending to be games; such as Apocalypse/Bear/Dungeon World (i.e. suddenly [maleficence!]), Dogs in the Vineyard (i.e. shoot around your allies first, for bonuses to shoot enemies after), FATE (i.e. take penalties on easy tests for bonuses on hard tests), Exalted (i.e. there is no written dice roll resolution mechanic), and the like.

While this is an aside; I feel that it also is at least tangentially tied to the current argument. Unless you actually have a consistent set of rules (i.e. your world's physics engine) that people can agree upon (and that is consistent not only within a single campaign; but across any campaign) your game is not actually in existence, and what is happening is just magical philosophy party.

[DrPraetor]

I think we need to distinguish the game (as a platonic construct, oh I kill) from the 5th edition rulebook. In general I like magic systems - RuneQuest, Ars Magica, Powers & Perils, Stormbringer - more than Frank. Frank likes Shadowrun, and he likes Vampire minus the thaumaturgy discipline. He does not *want* a magic system that tries to procedurally generate new types of wizard to be by mixing splats in different combinations. His reason for what he likes is driven by game design considerations, but I *do* like the combinatorics, even though it is a pain.

Ars Magica spells certainly have problems but they are not as vague (or contradictory) as Judging Eagle describes. This is not to say that they aren't vague or contradictory, just not as bad as is claimed.

First, the 5th edition reflects (in the spell descriptions, not in the spell guidelines, I'll get back to this) a lot of accumulated rulings on how individual spells should work. It's the Talmud and not physics, but a lot of the problems that come up in play have been caulked over. There are enough examples that you can figure out how a spell (I want to make the wind super-terrifying) ought to work. It may or may not be easy or especially objective, but it has enough precedents that it mostly works (as opposed to mostly failing.)

That said, the organization is terribad. One of Frank's complaints is that MuAu guidelines don't require form pre-requisites while MuXX guidelines do. This is false - as you can see from the description of the spell Rain of Stones (which has a Te pre-requisite.) Frank's review of the book itself is still accurate, since a sensible person would more-likely-than-not fail to realize that was part of the guideline. In fact, since the rules say that individual guidelines over-ride general guidelines, you could get into an argument over this (which is only resolved if example spells are viewed as the definitive rulings - otherwise, you're completely screwed).

Imaginem is awful to deal with, but if you read the individual example spells it's pretty obvious where they go; and the 5th edition incorporates a firming up of those guidelines which makes the game a lot more playable.

Furthermore, if you've had the displeasure of trying to parse Ars Magica 2nd edition - 5th edition is much better. 4th edition is available as a free pdf, and is worse in just about every respect.

This is a secondary point -
I agree that Ars Magica makes a lot more sense if you have a Masquerade (which is why this is how I have generally described the game to Frank); but that was never part of the rules. Early versions were purposefully-vague about the relationship between Magi and society (so maybe you were sorta-hiding); but the default setting was always supposed-to-be that the church and society viewed you like Michael Scot.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Scot

This falls apart because Michael Scot was not viewed as a wizard at the time and was furthermore a priest. Also, he was up to his eyeballs in royal patronage. But this is where Ars Magica gets the notion that you can be a wizard in 13th century Europe, and the Church might sorta gripe about you but wouldn't tie you to a stake and set you on fire. They add to this a rule against having royal patronage and it further collapses from there.

[virgil]

Now that Ars Magica is cancelled, there was a panel in GenCon essentially verifying that the game was a bust and only managed to continue through being subsidized by its other games (and couldn't justify burning money any longer). Evidently, the guy in charge of the IP (Cam) is actively open to suggestions of where to take Ars into the future.

From the community I've seen on their forums, they feel more open to constructive input and hard numbers than Paizo ever did.