virgil wrote: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.
The issue here is that Ars Magica needed to advance into the nineties and never did. While there are important and interesting innovations in Ars Magica, I don't know what the Ars Magica IP brings to the table. The world is aggressively public domain and I don't see what mechanics you'd want to preserve that wouldn't be better off starting from a better core system written in the last quarter century.
It's like Scion. There are certainly some cool ideas floating around, and I'd be way happier if the game was good. But I honestly don't see what advantage there is to making a new edition and trying to fix the flaws versus just making something from scratch that happened to suck less.
FrankTrollman wrote:While there are important and interesting innovations in Ars Magica, I don't know what the Ars Magica IP brings to the table. The world is aggressively public domain
The "lore" isn't, however. Grognards love their lore.
FrankTrollman wrote:While there are important and interesting innovations in Ars Magica, I don't know what the Ars Magica IP brings to the table. The world is aggressively public domain
The "lore" isn't, however. Grognards love their lore.
Meh. At this point, I think Ars Magica's lore is an albatross on its neck. If someone is grognardy for the 2nd edition, how will they feel about the lore of the 3rd edition? Or the 4th/5th edition? The lore got seriously revamped when it got integrated and then deintegrated from the World of Darkness. And when it got spun off and cut off from its Vampire: the Masquerade connections, it didn't just revert back to its pre-White Wolf lore, it went off into a new and crazy direction.
I don't think there's any real lore you could throw around that wouldn't piss off a super majority of your potential demographic of lore-caring grognard fanbase. Starting over from scratch is probably the diplomatic solution.
-There is the Pathfinder/Call of Cthulhu/Onyx Path trick.
A game's basic book is the real cash cow.
So a couple of years from now you release a brand New Ars Magica 5th edition revised. Fully compatible with all 5th edition supplements. It is basically the same book as Ars Magica 5th. Except some things are explained better. There are a few minor improvements. And there are a couple essays helping game masters deal with problem areas, like pink dot exceptions and medieval physics as conceptualized by scholastic theologians.
If it does really well, you throw in 1, or 2 new supplements. A bestiary, a magical treasures book, maybe a book on house Diedne. Whatever looks like the most surefire sales success. You make the whole 5th back catalogue available in some sort of print on demand form, for a friendly price.