Ars MagicaTag line: The Art of Magic
Makers: Lion Rampant (1989)
What is it?
The 2nd edition of a long-standing game. You play a magus in medieval France, but also his Companions and Grunts. The focus is on powerful magic-users, and they make no claim that other character types can be as powerful.
Neat stuff
-After D&D's weak early level magic-users constantly taking a back seat to the stronger fighters, etc., it's time magic got its real day in the sun. Not that it isn't fun to draw up a disposable Grog (fighter) to bring along as muscle on errands.
-Of course, there's the elegant magic system. The latin names are hermetic in feel, the spells have cool names like Confusion of the Insane Vibrations and Weight of a Thousand Hells, and your magi can create and improvise their own based on the schools they study.
-Different character sheets for Magi, Companions and Grogs!
-The game doesn't shy from portraying Christianity as it was at the time, and pits Divine power against Infernal.
Bad stuff
-Not sure how I feel about leaving my Magus behind on adventures so that other players may bring theirs and benefit from my Companion's presence. Make sure you make a cool Companion! Some players might not like having to play up to 3 characters in the campaign, others will thrive on it.
-Small print and not a lot of good illustrations, as well as some really strange layout decisions in the Virtues & Flaws section.
Quote
"Once a year a patch of magical mushrooms sprouts up from the thick silvery moss that grows beneath the trees."
In conclusion
The game was good enough to be published by a number of companies over the years, and it spawned the Storyteller system used by White Wolf's games today (if I'm not mistaken). If you're not into the system, there are still some things that can be imported to another game, such as good information on the middle ages (and its attitudes) and plenty of inspiration for spells, magical procedures, etc.
How I've used it
Always WANTED to use it, but alas, you really need a focused group to really get the most out of it, create a convenant, etc. I did make some characters, I seem to remember, but I can't find them now. Seeing as I never throw anything away, maybe that never happened. I got the twice-as-thick 4th edition in a gift exchange program a year back, so obviously, I'd use that to run a campaign. Since the action takes place in Medieval France, and we always play in French, that'd be the first time it fit the setting, instead of our usual "universal translator" policy.
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