I’m not sure how much of my stuff made it through the translation process, or if they just wrote from scratch, but the cover of Alliances is floating around the web and it fills me with pride. I’m not sure what Ludogames’s policy on sharing their graphics is, so if they want me to take…
Read More
A note on the new vlog
I’m doing some practice vloging, with an Ars Magica sort of theme. My current plan is to load one of these a week, on Friday, Australian time. The current plan is Introduction (which is up) Cookbook (which is about the writing process for Covenants, and is recorded) and then some material suggested by commenters. The…
Read More
Is there a better way to model longevity rituals?
Longevity rituals are kind of the ugly ducking of the Ars Magic item design process. Initially they used a Creo Corpus total, but that was boring because it meant any sane magus eventually became a Creo Corpus expert. Now it has the odd effect of making most magi look younger than me, and so you…
Read More
Could the Ancient Olympics have a link to the Normandy Tournament?
I was watching a documentary the other day about the ancient Olympics, and was struck by a few things which seemed useful for Ars Magica play. The first is that if you had a great bard like Pindar in your service, and you won at the Olympics, he could convince people you were so amazingly skilled…
Read More
Final update for the vanilla covenant page
Two months after I planned to finish the project, I’m drawing a line under what’s been done. It’s over 10 000 words of starter information for new troupes, including setting, statistics, mystery initiations and plot hooks. The piece is coherent, although it could be expanded in several ways, and underdevelops the Welsh material. I’m glad its finished…
Read More
More updates to the vanilla covenant page
So, Another thousand words on the vanilla covenant page. The additions for today are another map of Bristol, some myths about the islands, and the story of the nymph of the River Severn. I also set up the next update, which is a Mystery path based on the Cult of Nodens. My free time is really constrained right…
Read More
Ars Magica : The Harvest
I’ve been collecting books for years. In part this is because I’m a librarian, and so I’m trained to see the value in written things. In part it’s because I’m an Ars Magica author, and so I have a tendency to pick things up and think :”One day I may need this for a book…
Read More
A quick update on the Vanilla Covenant Project
It’s still fermenting away on its own page. New this week: complete stats for the other three Companion level characters. Next week I’ll be skipping for the holidays, then returning with some grog kits, and the beginning of the serious folklore work. You might think the 5 000 words of folklore you see there now…
Read More
Vanilla is everywhere because it is delicious
Over on the Ars Forum, people have been suggesting we don’t have enough material for new players, and so I’ve decided to write some material which is based on making the obvious design choices. It’s about a covenant which is a castle on a hill by a faerie forest. It’s in Summer, and has senior…
Read More
Heathcliff: I’d step away from the window if I were you
So, listening today to Kate Bush and “Wuthering Heights” I was struck by a few questions. Why does the ghost have to keep telling Heathcliff it is Cathy? Surely he knows what Cathy looks like. It’s not an amorphous blob. It looks, if we are to believe the film clip, rather like a woman in…
Read More
Games From Folktales 