STATUS A quarter of the world's 8.2 billion people celebrate Lunar New Year, which lasts two weeks or more and this year started Feb 17. During this festival, mass production on Ars Magica Definitive has been paused, as expected. It should be starting up again within the next week or so. Happy Year of the Horse!
DEFINITIVE REVIEW Thankless Roll Players just reviewed Ars Magica Definitive Edition! It's a long-haul reminiscence of campaigns past, and preview of the new book. View it on YouTube and Spotify. ARS MAGICA OPEN LICENSE
Ars Magica's Open License also has this this new fan-created content:
House of the Crescent Sun Campaign: The mages arrive at the Count's court, seeking permission to settle on his lands. The first murders are subtle, the initial corruptions hidden in the shadows. Step by step the evil advances, unless you stand firm against it! The complete campaign includes the Campaign Book, Players' Book, System Notes, Handouts and Portraits, and reworked Normandy Tribunal Meetings PDF.
Wrath of Köln Adventure: In the Rhine Gorge, The player characters are assisting the siege of the castle of Isenberg, they need to thread the needle between the discretion demanded by their Code and helpfulness.
ARS MAGICA LEGACY DOWNLOADS Recently we found a bunch of Ars Magica downloads from the old site that weren't moved over to the new one. They're now up on our site again. You can find them in the sidebar at atlas-games.com/arsmagica
BACKER PREVIEW You've seen the new Bestiary chapter illustration from Doug Shuler before, but it has so many "guest appearances" in it that I thought it deserved its own update, with the wireframe and sketch included this time, plus notes from our Make Your Character Magical backers! Take a look, in the backer-only section below.
Enjoy!
-Michelle Nephew Ars Magica Definitive Co-Producer Atlas Games Co-Owner
Physical proofs are approved, and all the Ars Magica Definitive products are now in mass production!
We made a few last changes after we reviewed the physical samples. In particular, we did a big revision to the measurements conversion table (which appeared in 3 places), reworked some art issues, and removed the not-so-helpful regio map. We fixed some important typos that affected meaning, including on the character sheet. Plus we improved the cover files gilding design for the sigil snake heads. All that will be in the physical printing.
In the digital files we ALSO fixed the minor typos reported. Updated files are ready on your Backerkit downloads page, so be sure to get those now!
ENWORLD MOST ANTICIPATED RPG
Ars Magica Definitive Edition made #5 on ENWorld's list of "2026's Most Anticipated TTRPGs!" Thank you for your vote! (Skip to 20:45)
ARS MAGICA OPEN LICENSE
Ars Magica's Open License also has this this new fan-created content, which officially makes FIFTY FAN TITLES on DriveThruRPG now. Check them out here!
STATUS The printer sample box came today! We couldn't wait to show you all the Ars Magica goodness, so we put together a quick unboxing video for you ...
NEW GOOGLE DOC CHARACTER SHEET Why do we need another character sheet? Because I like to put all my saga stuff into tabs in a single Google Doc, but Google Docs won't take PDFs. :(
Timothy Ferguson has space in Mythic Europe Magazine volume 2 for more submissions. The hard deadline for publishing it is April, so you still have time to pitch and write! Send queries and submissions to [email protected]
The Liber pantegni is a great example of what in Ars Magica rules is a “summa,” a book pulling together knowledge about medicine, surgery, and treatments in one work. It also illustrates the quirks of medieval books: translations of varying qualities, incompleteness, and the physical constraints and mishaps of copying lengthy technical works by hand and carrying them across continents (and sometimes losing many pages to water damage in storms on the sea!).
Here’s what I’m doing with these historical nuggets.
For a baseline of comparison, I’m looking at Avicenna’s Canon of Medicine, as described on page 138 of Art & Academe: Summa Level 6, Quality 8, in its Latin translation (9 in Arabic original). I think this would provides an upper boundary of stats for the Pantegni.
We can describe thebasic version of the Liber pantegni, Contantine the African’s Latin translation of Kitāb kāmil aṣ-Ṣināʻa aṭ-Ṭibbiyya by ‘Alī ibn al-‘Abbās al-Majūsī’s, as it might be found in the libraries of monasteries, medical schools, and the Order of Hermes in Mythic Europe, 1220 AD. This Latin work contains all ten books of the Theorica, but only three incomplete books out of ten in the Practica. Based on the contents of those books, it can be used as a summa in the abilities Medicine (Level 4), Craft: Apothecary (Level 2) and Chirurgy (Level 2). Stephen of Antioch (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_of_Pisa) had complaints about the completeness and accuracy of Constantine’s translation, so let’s assign it a Quality of 6.
But then, the twist: A “complete” version of Liber pantegni, with all twenty books of Theorica and Practica together, began to circulate long after Constantine’s death. Green wrote, “Exasperatingly, we still can’t pinpoint when and where this last, unknown editor was working. No extant copies of the ‘re-created’ Pantegni Practica have been found that date before the second quarter of the thirteenth century,” which dovetails quite nicely with the canonical year of 1220 for Ars Magica. So...enter the fantasy fiction!
In our Mythic Europe, a monk at the famous Benedictine monastery of Monte Cassino, where Constantine the African worked, carries on his legacy. He has finished the great work of his predecessor (though he is too modest to attach his own name). With the full Practica, it now has Medicine Level 5, Apothecary: Craft Level 4, and Chirurgy Level 4.
Now I need to develop a scenario hook for our family Ars Magica game. Inspired by Mohamed Qassiti's article about the spread of Constantine's translation into the Germanic lands, and with our spring covenant set in the Tyrolean Alps, I imagine the monk from Monte Cassino, bringing a copy of the newly completed Theoretica and Practica together. His destination is the monastery of St. Michael in Hildesheim, where medicine is taught and the incomplete Pategni is already known. His journey would carry him through the Brenner Pass and along the Inn Valley, where our covenant, Silverwatch, is perched.
Throw some trouble his way, give the magi and companions the chance to save the day, and as a reward he may stay long enough to allow them to copy the new manuscript and add it to their own library! For a spring covenant, this rare book would be a precious asset, even though it's not magical. It can be studied for experience points, and copies or access to it would be valuable for trade and diplomacy with the more established communities of the Order of Hermes.
We managed to send those PDFs out to you before the end of the year, only to discover we have a SECOND New Year's gift for backers … photos of the physical samples just came in from our printer!
Since we've had some errata from the PDFs being reported on various venues, I thought I'd also set up a 3rd (and final, really) errata submission form. I already let our printer know we'll be sending them some changes on Monday, to give everyone until Sunday January 4th to send us any last issues you find. Please post them here, to avoid duplication …
My co-producer Ben Hartfield worked SO HARD to get these PDFs finished before the end of the year, and at a file size that's not actually going to crash all our computers. He even managed to finish the high-contrast version, as promised. Thank you Ben!
The PDFs are available for download from your BackerKit account (two ZIP archives), just like previously distributed digital files. Please note that they are only available if you've filled in your survey and paid any balance due for shipping, VAT, or additional add-ons.
Pre-Order Backers
People who missed the BackerKit campaign have been able to pre-order but not sign up for the full tiers that were available while it ran. However, we're distributing the Digital Edition to all pre-order backers of the physical Definitive Edition. Thank you for your support!
Vote for Ars Magica on ENWorld by JANUARY 8TH
ENWorld is running its annual poll for “most anticipated RPG” and ArMD is on the list, for good reason! If you're as excited to see the final book as we are, add your vote before Jan 8 … VOTE FOR ARS MAGICA DEFINITIVE ON ENWORLD!
ArM Printer Status
We're waiting for our physical proofs of the books from our printer, but we just got a new image of the full-size dice, compared to the "standard" size I showed you before. I love how you can see the pearlescent swirls in the dice so much better at the larger size!
We also received samples of the poster map on various different fabrics, which I'm not attaching photos of since they all look exactly like the last photo! We're opting for the heaviest of the options, a "composite suede" which I told John "feels like vellum should but probably didn't." ;P
Adding Dice & Cloth Map to Your Order …
To get your own set of dice and cloth map, pick them as add-ons to your pledge. If you're not able to make this change (probably because some of your add-ons have already been fulfilled), email us at [email protected] and we'll take care of you.
Ars Magica Open License Releases
While we're waiting for Ars Magica Definitive Edition to finish printing, we have a whole batch of new release announcements for the Open License!
