Oh, that’s kind of cool. I wrote Cambridge/Schola Pythagoranis into my background just because of the education, but Uillorard and Hubertus probably know each other pretty well. I didn’t read that background before I wrote mine so it’s really a coincidence.
1 Like
Yes - in trying to justify the education I looked up the foundation date of Cambridge and worked out that it was a cool link. Not being deep into the AM lore I did not realise a Covenant was there.
I have done my early years, stats and virtues and flaws; I just need to do the rest - spending points on magic etc.
Do you have a shareable template for the google spreadsheet character sheet or did you just type it all in? I don’t really have a solution for that other than pictures of the character sheet I have been using!
Here you go: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1pdfp14vqFKPEJopE4PfJzFcMmKXNa8RR78scbTFA_Fk/edit?usp=sharing Just save a copy and have at it.
I made it from scratch so it may be counterintuitive in some ways. But basically you enter the xp values and stat values and it should calculate. There’s a more intuitive but less mutable sheet out there somewhere, too, plus Metacreator, but I’m an advocate for mine, of course.
Thanks I’ll give it a go and revert to plan Z if needed!
For a companion I’m either thinking of a merchant (taking wool to sell in foreign markets and buying exotic goods for customers in Yorkshire) or possibly a huntsman who can track things across the moors.
Hi Tom - your second idea is quite close to mine for a companion. Let me know what you prefer so I can rethink if needed.
What is our guideline for the starting age of companions?
I think (unless anyone objects) it’s ‘Be appropriate to the character and remember that aging starts at 35.’
A default age of 30 gives you a certain amount of experience and a little time before your joints start giving you problems.
You could take a grizzled veteran or a freshfaced youth. Let’s not have too many of the same sort of age band though.
Rules as written - you can have a character as old as you like, but you have to make aging rolls honestly. If you want a character with all the skills who might have a massive aging crisis after one in-game year, you can.
I remember being in a game where the group was a little pessimistic that this game would get off the ground, as the previous attempt to do Ars Magica had stopped after two or three in-game years. One player made a 49 year old with strong faerie blood so they had a lot of skills and no aging. We play the first adventure. Next thing, we’re being told to do a couple of years downtime as our storyguide wants to try running a pulsed saga. Cue a very bad aging roll from the player who had cynically min-maxed. Ironically, this was the start of the longest-running Ars Magica saga I ever played in.
How hard & fast are you planning to be about the “1 magus per story” rule? As in, if we have a magus that likes to go out and do things, do we need to find a reason for him not to if another is going?
Also, does this mean our companion needs to be one that would be likely to go out on stories? (Though I suppose I can answer my own question because grogs can always be played.)
The grogs and the NPCs I really ought to detail to the level of companions (such as the lady wannab-knight who commands the turb) will be available for play of course.
As to the availability of more than one magus per adventure my fears are that Magi a) fight among themselves and b) tend to dominate the narrative anyway.
Once we get going there may be more than one adventure going at a time. But let’s see how things go.