Ars Magica, the TRoS way....

[Marc Hameleers]

I might have to visit my american in-laws during convention season next year...:)

Marc

[grot]

Jake,

A good friend of mine (whom you met with our group when you demod for us, pic here: http://www.nadig.com/?page=Writing/Genconphotos.html) is planning on running a full blown campaign for us starting in early 2004.  He ran a wonderful Ars campaign for our group for a little over a year I think, and we wept when he had to shut it down for a while.

I think he'd be DELIGHTED to run a one shot at Gencon, especially for the designer!!!!

If not, I'll commit to doing it myself.

[Morfedel]

so would I actually.

I can only make it to either Origins or Gencon, and I was PLANNING to go to Origins, primarily because my SFB tournaments I attend are bigger at Origins.

But, for if i were wanted to run a Riddle of Magica game :D I'd seriously consider it.

My only problem is I haven't run a con game before. I consider myself at least a good gm, but I have never run a short one shot con scenario, as I do long term campaign stuff; I'd have to sit down and really think how I'd run it.....

Hm. The Riddle of Magica? TRoM? :D

[grot]

Practically all I ever GM are one-offs - I live too far away from my core group of gaming buds to have a solid schedule.

IMO, the key to oneoffs is:

1: Pregens.  While character generation is cool, having the right characters ahead of time saves valuable time.  It also lets you, as GM, ensure you have a group of characters that has the right skillsets for the adventure at hand, and the right motivations to work together (or NOT, depending on what you set up.)

2: Linearity.  In a campaign, you have all the time in the world, literally, so if your party says "you know, I'm tired of fighting off slavers, let's head south and see what's in the swamps" and you can wing it until you have time to react.  Good one-offs should START with a setup from the GM that puts them right in the middle of the action.

For example, in the Demo Jake ran for Gencon, we all played characters who we're at a Royal tournament, and the first words we got to speak we're our reactions to "you see smoke on the horizon, Viking Raiders!  What do you do?"

No elaborate rituals about finding the other characters etc, just jumping right in.

I've also done succesful one-offs where the setup was literally mid-battle.  The GM handed out char sheets and pulled cardboard off the minis set up.  Turning to me he said "Maldor, you have 4 skeletons in front of you, but you hear a scream from behind you.  You turn to look and see a rotting corpse errupt from the ground beneath you.  In turning, you get hit for 8 points of damage from the skelleton on your right."

So think of Con Games as being the CLIMAX to what you might already do in a campaign.  You just need to work the storytelling up to that point.

[Brian Leybourne]

Just a quick note to say that I like what you've done so far, and that the word doc is corrupted. You can download it, but not open it. The HTML works though.

I'll have a proper read and come back with some questions.

I like the idea of an alternate magic system to use with TROS, just for the hell of it. I've been tossing around the idea of porting over Sorcerer style magic into TROS too (i.e. all magic is actually done through the summoning, bhinding and controlling of demons) but have never really had the chance to flesh it out much. Again, just for the hell of it.

Brian.

[grot]

Oops.  Didn't ftp it right, it appears.  Should work now.

I hope no one is offended that we've done this.  None of it's a slam on TRoS magic.  I think that TRoS just appeals so naturally to people who are really into AM.  And AM is cool, but very hard to tinker with and with a suck combat/dice system.  It's just such a NATURAL.

A sorcerer conversion would be cool as well.

How about a "kill puppies for satan" conversion?

[Morfedel]

I thought that, despite all the arguments I've heard for it, that Sorcery is a bit too powerful. And I dont mind powerful characters; AM characters are powerful; I just thought that TRoS can go too far, for a variety of reasons.

I liked AM's magic better. But TRoS had the advantage in most other areas, and TRoS is more easily fiddled with. Hence, this decision. And while it hasnt been tested yet, I think it shows a lot of promise.

I havent played sorcerer; I'm seriously considering picking it up, but A) my money dice pool is severely limited, so I have to allocate wisely, and B) many of my players are very strong christian types, who dont happen to think that roleplaying is evil, but from what I understand of the premise, summoning demons for fun and profit may be going a bit TOO far for them.

Now that I think of it, I loved what Palladium Fantasy tried to do with magic over D&D; it was still not an ideal system, but a PFRPG conversion to TRoS could be really fun.

[grot]

FWIW, we're just starting character development for a local game using these rules right now.  Probably playing in a few weeks.  Note, we're probably going to use the AM conversion "lite" - that is, not using any of the Vis/Lab/Advancement rules - JUST the spell system modification.

My next project on this is to do a little "borrowing" from the old Iron Crown books and come up with some damage tables for various types of magical damage.  I'll post here when/if I get around to that little challenge.

[Brian Leybourne]

Grot,

I'll look forward to hearing how your TROS/AM game goes.

Brian.

[Morfedel]

Ditto; keep us apprised and give us playtest reports! :)

I would myself, but my group voted that they wanted to play Palladium Fantasy for our fantasy game (we have an OLD campaign we played for 3 years way back when they wanted to resurrect, and felt converting it to any other system would see it lose a lot of the flavor); and our non fantasy game is going to be Godlike, so I'm without my TRoS fix for now, sigh....

[Marc Hameleers]

Well, as soon as i can afford Tros, i will restart6 my pendragon campaign..using Tros with the Am modification for magic... Can't wait till i can afford it!

Marc

[Morfedel]

Awesome! Let us know what you think!

[Marc Hameleers]

My guess is i will love it...sadly, I probably cannot Afford Tros until Spiel in Essen...Hopefully i can pick it up there!

ZBought to many rpg stuff of late,,,and i have a LOTR TCG habbit that needs a regular fix as well :)

[Darcy Burgess]

I've been toying with an AM Saga for a long while...(I picked up the 3rd ed book at a friend's "going out of gaming" sale, and was intrigued).

I agree that the AM combat system is a horrible one (I'm not fussy about WW dice mechanics in any iteration, especially regarding combat).  I think that the ROS/AM merge is a great idea, and the wheels are currently spinning like mad in my Gee-emerbellum.

However, there is a minor sticking point to my masterful scheme...

I was also surprised to see that there was relatively little background work on their setting -- atypical of most WW games.

Anyone have suggestions on good avenues of research?

Thanks

[lemmiwinks]

I'd be interested in seeing you Palladium conversion.  I'm well versed with Palladium magic but I really haven't gotten comfortable with TROS magic yet... and I'm about to look into AM.  Hopefully I can pull something together, but I'm thinking I might just get comfortable with TROS first in an Ice and Fire spin-off and work magic into it like the series does past book three.