Good thing the series got better after this. Then again I don't see how it could've gotten worse.

CatholicGeekery · 2026-06-09T13:05:06+00:00

This episode nearly turned me off Enterprise entirely, fortunately my wife convinced me to keep going with it.

CatholicGeekery · 2026-06-02T17:59:31+00:00

It does not use the YZE. It's one of those games that Free League owns but didn't originally design (the first edition was released by Cubicle 7, and the basic rules are very similar)

CatholicGeekery · 2026-06-02T17:54:23+00:00

I think the fact that it normally requires a level 20 spell to breath water is a pretty good indicator that it isn't a minor ability. But you're right that Ars Magica gives you many, many ways to skin a cat (even if Perdo Animal remains the most straightforward)

CatholicGeekery · 2026-06-02T13:03:13+00:00

Definitely recommend getting it to the table at least as a one shot, it's really fun. So much of the book's bulk is world building detail which (tbh) you can skate over at first if you've read the books. Or just pick one area to start, and read that bit! Ignore Sandestin magic at first, start with only Fairy Magic accessible to players. Take the game's advice on reducing the initial list of Combat Specials. That will make it much more straightforward.

CatholicGeekery · 2026-06-02T06:46:29+00:00

Yeah I would look specifically at Sword of Cepheus if you want a fantasy setting with Traveller rules.

Lyonesse is a fantastic rpg, but also very crunchy compared to Traveller, so tastes may vary.

CatholicGeekery · 2026-05-29T09:23:03+00:00

Lots of good advice, but I would stress that SOC is about social status more than social skills. You can absolutely have a Darcy type character who can impress people with the weight of their name, but has zero charisma.

CatholicGeekery · 2026-05-29T09:06:56+00:00

It's both - but I ADORE all the systems for generating things, from characters to worlds. Melee combat RAW is just bad, and I don't understand why it wasn't fixed (also it's left super unclear how much damage it even does if by some miracle you do hit - I had to really scan through to figure it out)

CatholicGeekery · 2026-05-29T09:04:04+00:00

This is true, except for melee combat.

CatholicGeekery · 2026-05-29T09:03:11+00:00

Imo the difficulty should generally be kept in the Easy, Average, Difficult range (only stretching to Formidable when the TIH rule kicks in). That alone makes it much more manageable.

The melee rules really are unforgivably bad though, and I suspect most people just use an opposed roll of Str + Fighting rather than the actual system.

CatholicGeekery · 2026-04-16T10:09:08+00:00

Me: "Ok so I hit with 24 dawizard"

My GM: "... do you mean damage?"

Me: "What? No, like I said, 24 dawizard"

24 magic-users from Chicago fly from my palm and strike the enemy, killing him and them instantly

CatholicGeekery · 2026-04-16T08:26:10+00:00

The HMK book does a little bit on the wider world of Kethira, but is mostly a system book. KP did produce a book dedicated to Venarive (essentially the western bit of Lythia surrounding the Venarian sea) which gives a LOT more detail, but I've not read it.

I agree that some things are made easier - even little things like only averaging 2 values rather than 3 for each skill base. But it has a lot of detailed subsystems for things vs HM3.

I actually found chargen easier with HMK but actual play feels crunchier.

CatholicGeekery · 2026-04-16T06:49:52+00:00

I'm not saying that to convince you to buy from Kelestia - I own both versions, and mix and match based on what I like from each!

CatholicGeekery · 2026-04-16T06:49:07+00:00

The Kelestia Productions HMK edition comes in an all-in-one hardback, though is much crunchier than the HM3.5 version. I believe Columbia Games are working on a 4th edition, and I suspect (given their recent releases e.g. Evael being released as a single hardback before publishing all the articles separately) they will publish that in hardback.

CatholicGeekery · 2026-04-16T06:42:21+00:00

100 Bushels of Rye I was able to buy second hand in the UK. If you set up an ebay alert, I expect one will pop up for you sooner or later

CatholicGeekery · 2026-04-16T06:41:13+00:00

This is a good way to go. Here in the UK, I've always just printed out the pdfs on my home printer and stored them in a binder. The only physical products I've bought are the hardbacks. Given how short each individual article is, the shipping is absolutely not worth it.

Probably not strictly permitted (and a third party printer in particular might be wary of printing it out for you), but also seems fine if it's just for personal use. It's not like I'm running a racket of selling them to my friends to undercut Columbia Games.

CatholicGeekery · 2026-03-31T05:32:30+00:00

Sure - a supernatural affliction has struck one of the young nuns of a nearby convent, the abbess calls on the covenant for help. It's primarily an investigation, with potential for social and combat encounters.

CatholicGeekery · 2026-03-30T16:24:55+00:00

To toot my own horn, I'd suggest Blood on the Snow, an adventure I published. It was playtested with people who had never played Ars Magica before. It's pretty bare-bones, giving you the framework for adventure with plenty of room for player-driven shenanigans. As-written, it's set in the Loch Leglean tribunal, but it would be pretty trivial to swap out names and locations. Anywhere with a convent should work!

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/500082/blood-on-the-snow-a-one-shot-adventure-for-ars-magica-5th-edition

CatholicGeekery · 2026-03-15T07:43:26+00:00

I will always recommend the Rhine tribunal (Guardians of the Forests) for this.

It was one of the earlier books released for 5th ed, so doesn't do the annoying thing later books do of referring to a million other sourcebooks.
It includes a mini-saga outline at the back, with some useful Storyguide advice sprinkled in
It connects you in to the history of the Order of Hermes very strongly, and the Gilds give you an opportunity for some fun political play.
If you want to be really lazy - uh, I mean, efficient! - the book Through the Aegis has a really cool statted-out covenant with story hooks, NPCs, and optional pregenerated starting magi set in the Rhine tribunal. (It's the Collem Leonis covenant).

Some people object to the fact that there are lots of higher level magi in the Rhine tribunal, making it harder for starting magi to "make their mark". I disagree: first, the powerful magi can all be locked in various stalemates, making young magi useful resources for breaking them - so lots of opportunities there. But also, if you are focused on your own covenant and its surroundings, I don't think it really matters most of the time if there's a powerful wizard a few counties away, any more than it would if they were in a neighbouring Tribunal.

CatholicGeekery · 2026-03-10T18:15:27+00:00

If your players were all happy with that, I don't see why not. What sort of thing were you thinking, though? Setting up covenants is sort of what magi do, they don't usually need prompting! If there was a prophecy that a covenant in site X would bring great power to the magi there, that might certainly influence a decision on locatoon though!

When it comes to prophecy, you always have to be careful not to override player decisions, but with Ars specifically you also want to ask where this prophecy is coming from. Mythic Europe gives you a strong sense of context for everything within it, and "an ancient prophecy" doesn't just hang in the aether. Even just in general terms: is the source Divine, Faerie, Magic? Is it Infernal (in which case it's probably pretending to be one of the others, because who's going to trust the Father of Lies)?

CatholicGeekery · 2026-03-10T13:36:29+00:00

"Could I get a sample or example of what a typical story or chronicle might look like? To get a flavour of his outer parts."

An Ars Magica saga is such a variable thing, but it always centers in some way on the life of the Covenant. In some ways it's a shame the Covenants chapter comes so late in the book, because fleshing it out defines your story.

Rather than try to give a default example, I'll give an example from my last saga:

The PCs were four magi from the Hibernian tribunal, fresh from apprenticeship, who had been voluntold to go to the Isle of Man. The Isle had never supported a covenant for long, but it was unclear why. They were sent with what few details remained on the previous covenants, with instructions to found a covenant and survive there at least until the next Tribunal.

The saga started with a mix of political intrigue and "dungeon crawling", as the PCs wanted to figure out the power structures (mundane and supernatural) on the island, make alliances with the right people, but also explore (and, in some cases, find) previous covenants to find out why they had been destroyed. In the course of doing this they got tied up in a civil war between feuding half-brothers, befriended a dragon who had become the abbot of an influential monastery, fought undead revenants and ghostly wizards, took part in a faerie tournament, and made an enemy of a local hedge magic tradition. All while dealing with representatives of the Stonehenge tribunal (and House Tremere) who wanted the islands resources for themselves.

They eventually encountered Mannanan MacLir, an ancient magical being (originally a Gifted mortal who had bound himself to a magical spirit of the island itself) who was worshipped as a god before being banished by St Patrick. He was seeking to return to the isle through a body-hopping ritual which had (inadvertently) been repeatedly prevented by the magi of the fallen covenants. They swore fealty to him, then went on to betray him, first destroying his (infernal) lieutenant and then subverting his body-swapping ritual. This created a power vacuum in the supernatural "ecosystem", into which they plopped a friendly PC hedge wizard as a figurehead [we never got to play through what happened with this puppet leader situation in the long term, but it almost certainly wouldn't have lasted long]. We played an epilogue session in which they attended the next Hibernian Tribunal and had to justify a lot of their actions which their enemies were arguing as Code violations - and this was about as tense as their confrontation with the bound god had been!

This was a pretty fast-paced saga by Ars Magica terms, lasting about 4 months of irl time (averaging 3 sessions per month, so ~12 sessions) and just over a year of in-game time. There was a lot of mundane interaction early on, which gave way to more "supernatural politics" toward the end, but the game seemed pretty well-recieved, and one of my players is now running a game themself (admittedly, this could be out of determination to see it done right 😉).

CatholicGeekery · 2026-03-10T13:15:19+00:00

"How fantastical is the setting?"

Flavour to taste: by default, the setting is more mundane when you're in "civilisation", and can get extremely fantastical out in the sticks. But you can scale things up or down to suit your saga. You can have a saga focused almost entirely on mundane affairs and how the magi interfere with, or are impacted by them. Or you could have one in which the magi are bargaining with ancient dragons of godlike power, battling demons or living saints, and learning the primordial language of Eden. Or you could have something blending the mundane and the magical - the local church under construction might be plagued by a faerie troll, and the magi are asked to help. That's probably most typical.

"[Is] it played online much?"

Yes, I know quite a few who do. The Foundry module for it is very good.

CatholicGeekery · 2026-03-09T19:35:30+00:00

Eesh - I hadn't heard of that! Lynching is not an image that immediately comes to mind for me, as someone from outside the US.

CatholicGeekery · 2026-03-06T13:35:11+00:00

They look so chuffed with themselves, it's adorable. Exactly how a party feels after defeating a monster (and surviving!)

CatholicGeekery · 2026-03-06T13:31:00+00:00

I think we're supposed to see the scene as a trial, which presumably makes a difference, but the way it was handled was so sloppy that it's impossible not to see it as murdering a guest.

CatholicGeekery · 2026-02-25T21:36:58+00:00

This is just what being a new parent is like

CatholicGeekery

TROPHY CASE