Freebies RPG

Freebie: Ars Magica 4th Edition

Long before White Wolf created their World of Darkness there was Ars Magica by Atlas Games. And when you first have a look at Ars Magica’s rules and setting you could believe it was some kind of Mage: The Dark Ages or something. And this is not far from the truth since the Storyteller system was developed by Ars Magica’s co-author and initially Mage: The Ascension was planned as “Ars Magica in the Modern World”.
Some years agon I bought a copy of Ars Magica at my friendly neighbourhood game store, but I never actually played it. The one thing that always bothered me with Ars Magica is that you play not one character but at least two: the Magus and his Companion. While this sounds rather intruiging on paper, I prefer playing only one character in roleplaying games. But since I never tried it out, it could really work.
If you want to have a look at Ars Magica you can either buy it at your local game store or download the fourth edition for free.
The 272 page long PDF is available at e23, Steve Jackson Games’ digital content store. As far as I’ve seen the PDF is pretty close to the printed version. And by the way, you don’t need to register at e23 for downloading free content and that’s a big plus in my book!
Stargazer

Michael Wolf is a German games designer and enthusiast best known for his English language role-playing games blog, Stargazer's World, and for creating the free rules-light medieval fantasy adventure game Warrior, Rogue & Mage. He has also worked as an English translator on the German-language Dungeonslayers role-playing game and was part of its editorial team. In addition to his work on Warrior, Rogue & Mage and Dungeonslayers, he has created several self-published games and also performed layout services and published other independent role-playing games such as A Wanderer's Romance, Badass, and the Wyrm System derivative Resolute, Adventurer & Genius, all released through his imprint Stargazer Games. Professionally, he works as a video technician and information technologies specialist. Stargazer's World was started by Michael in August 2008.

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2 comments

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Bob

Nice one! Maybe I'll get to play Ars Magica again some day soon after this 🙂

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rekres

"The one thing that always bothered me with Ars Magica is that you play not one character but at least two: the Magus and his Companion. While this sounds rather intruiging on paper, I prefer playing only one character in roleplaying games."

The game invites you to make up several characters, but you only actually play one main character during each adventure. The main characters are the Magi and the Companions. There may also be a handful of grogs along which all players are expected to help out with…. but since they're only minor characters its not that big a deal. 😀

The funny bit is…. Ars Magica was originally published by a company called Lion Rampant. The people behind Lion Rampant went on to form White Wolf. Ars Magica was intended to link into White Wolf's WoD games, but they had to separate the two lines when ArM was sold to Wizards of the Coast, then sold once again to Atlas Games.

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