Ars Magica, Fifth Edition (Ars Magica Fantasy Roleplaying) Hardcover – November 10, 2004

I'm such a huge fan of this game. It has what's probably the best (and deepest) magic system ever, and one of the best (and deepest) character generation systems ever.The setting is also wonderful in every sense - deep, unique, melding real world history with fantasy (however high or low fantasy your group wants to play).There's also a huge array of supplementary books and material to go even deeper, for any gaming groups that want to.The book itself is very high quality - my group played with the same core book for 5+ years and it held up very well. (I'm buying my own copy since we're starting a new game, to make it easier for char gen, etc.). It has beautiful illustrations and the formatting, font, etc. all is done very well. Very readable, and it has great "coffee table book" appeal.

Lovely world and the Ars Magica setting of Mythic Europe is one of my favorites probably influenced by my love of Microprose's Darklands video game. This is one of the best systems to train your players to help take over gamemastering sometimes so you can play. Just the practice making grogs and playing them is a huge deal for nudging people into becoming storyguides. After a few years of gaming with some breaks for other systems I had three competent beta storyguides trained to run the occasional short adventure which was brilliant. The long term aspect was very good for making long lived characters in other games like In Nomine or the derivative World of Darkness vampires and mages. It can be a lot of fun to port these ideas to games like d&d especially with elves and half elves and I always have longevity potions in many settings in some form or another. Traveller was my first exposure to anti-agathics in an rpg. Spontaneous magic is another first for me back in the second edition Lion Rampant days when I first played.

This is not 5th edition. its 4th. Title does not declare the edition.

As a long time gamer, I had seen Ars Magica come and go on the shelves through its various editions. I'd always intended to pick it up and take a look, but I didn't get around to it until its fifth edition. Being completely new to the rules and setting, I was charmed by both the setting and character creation process.The setting is "Mythic Europe," possessing all the places and people we know from history classes, but with magic and wizards added to spice things up. The first thing I thought of was it would be great for folks who have more than a passing interest in things Medieval and Renaissance. Perhaps history teachers might use this for enrichment in their high school classes, even. Having personally slogged through the "D&D is Devil Worship" eighties, I was intrigued to see that the Church and the God worshiped by the Hebrews, Christians, and Muslims is recognized as the most powerful political and spiritual source in the setting.Many games today have a system where you can buy extra benefits for your character at creation by taking additional faults. I understand this is one of the first systems to do so. There are some delightful ideas in this section of the book. I really enjoyed reading through them. "Difficult Underlings" and "Offensive to Animals" are two of my favorites.From checking the fan sites before and after my purchase, I got the impression that the players generally liked this update/edition of the rules. I also understand that the drive behind the fixes and improvements in this edition came from a fellow named David Chart. Mr. Tweet gets top bill for 5E, but Mr. Chart gets the fan site love. Not having seen previous editions, I will take the fans' word that this is a nice tightening and fixing of the RAW (rules as written).I have no problems with the production values of this book. I don't see any marking that might indicate what printing I purchased, but I do not agree with the previous reviewer that the printing was substandard. It won't lay flat like some gamers prefer; it's a nice tight binding that will hold up well to being hauled back and forth to games.I highly recommend Ars Magica. Cool setting, lots of ideas to take to another game, and a good recent update to the rules system.

The point of buying hardcover is to be able to use this book at the table. I'm planning to run an Ars Magica campaign but I'm realizing now that it's going to require some other format for the game book due to the tiny writing. I have a couple of other game books that have very tiny writing but which I can barely read with sufficient lighting, but this book has the tiniest writing of all and is absolutely useless without reading glasses, the use of which at the gaming table make me dizzy, as I frequently need to look up and down to refer to the text and then look up at the players.

This is a fascinating RPG that takes you into the history of medieval Europe and lets you play modern anachronisms in the form of Wizards. The Game neatly solves the quadratic wizard vs linear fighter by breaking the game into narrative PC tiers of play where players have more than one PC and take turns playing different tiers of PC. While this worked in my youth, as an adult, everyone wants to play a Magus, which leads to a different style of game. For what this game is: "Logistics & Dragons circa 2005" this is a top tier high crunch, high system mastery game that offers a gamut of options to players who love numbers. For those less interested in numbers, the game offers less complex characters to play.

Ars Magica is definitely a change from your conventional hack 'n slash Dungeons and Dragons RPGs. The game mechanics and character rewards are built around research and development of magical items, familiars, spells, and other arcane craft and lore. This book is very well organized and contains the most complex and customizable magic system of any RPG I've ever played.

Per quanto i contenuti siano belli, la qualità della carta è molto scadente, appena arrivato ha iniziato a diventare ondulata.Inoltre le stampe sono interamente in bianco e nero.

The latest edition is worthy, streamlining and updating as needed.Still the best magic system around, still one of the greatest and richest settings.Not a game for absolute beginners, perhaps, but something of a midpoint between the computer/figs on a board style of DnD and the freeflowing imagination of the FATE system.A good compromise - solid rules but ample room for imagination

A different take from the D&D RPG system!

A++

My partner was super happy with this as a present, my only gripe with it is that the book came a little dog eared which could be down to the packaging.. the box was a bit big and the paper stuffing was only on top of the book.