Updates
Check out the latest news and keep up with progress
PROJECT UPDATE
Atlas Games
CREATOR
3 days ago
Project Update: NEW Ars Magica Creative Commons Release, Plus Status Update
STATUS
Our printer tells us they've mailed our production sample (one of the final, completed mass produced book sets), and we should be getting it by next week. Once we approve that, they'll pack them into boxes/pallets, and they'll be ready to ship! Their estimated completion date is still mid-May, and we expect it to arrive at our warehouse in Duluth MN in June. We'll send photos when we get the sample.
NEW OFFICIAL CREATIVE COMMONS RELEASE
"Forgotten Magic of Hermes" is a compendium of ALL the Ars Magica spells from all older (pre-Fifth) editions, unless they were carried forward into the Fifth Edition core rules. We've just released it under the Ars Magica Open License. You can download the PDF here, and also find it listed on the official Ars Magica Open License page (in the sidebar).
Line Developer David Chart warns that older spells in this compendium that aren't in Definitive Edition were probably excluded because they're broken, but releasing them allows our fans to do updates without violating our copyrights. Our thanks to Patrick M. Murphy for his work on compiling this!
Line Developer David Chart warns that older spells in this compendium that aren't in Definitive Edition were probably excluded because they're broken, but releasing them allows our fans to do updates without violating our copyrights. Our thanks to Patrick M. Murphy for his work on compiling this!
ARS MAGICA OPEN LICENSE
These Ars Magica Open License titles are NEW from our amazing fan community …
- Markdown Version of Ars Magica Definitive Edition - Our fan community on GitHub just finished this reviewed release … congratulation on this epic win! Also, the team has fix-review-completed 16 of the 53 books now. If you're interested in following or helping with their efforts, the dedicated discussion thread for the project is here.
- Form of Aether Symbol - Mad Irishman has released a new symbol in the style of our Form and Techniques, under the Ars Magica Open License.
There are OVER FIFTY fan titles on DriveThruRPG now. Check them out here!
Want to work on your own Ars Magica project? See the details of the Open License!
Want to work on your own Ars Magica project? See the details of the Open License!
20% ATLAS WEBSTORE DISCOUNT, ENDS NEXT WEEK!
An easy $1 pledge on our new Kickstarter gets 20% OFF in our webstore! Just look for the coupon code in Backer Update #1 immediately after you pledge, to stock up on gift copies of all your favorite Atlas Games products. The Magical Kitties campaign and the webstore discount both end next week Thursday, so don't wait!
Visit the campaign at atlas-games.com/backmeow
Magical Kitties Save the Day is the whimsical tabletop RPG where you play superpowered kitties protecting your humans from trouble. Whether you’re outsmarting a witch or encountering alien invaders, this fast-paced, beginner-friendly game is the purr-fect way to bring magic to your next family game night!
Thank you for your support!
-Michelle Nephew
Atlas Games Co-Owner
PROJECT UPDATE
Atlas Games
CREATOR
23 days ago
Project Update: Ars Magica Schedule from Printer
STATUS
We've had an update from our printing partner! You'll remember that Ars Magica Definitive Edition is in mass production, actually being printed right now. Their latest schedule has them finishing in a little over 6 weeks, putting their estimated completion date in mid-May. Following that schedule, we'd expect it to arrive at our warehouse in Duluth MN in June. It's getting close!
ARS MAGICA OPEN LICENSE
These Ars Magica Open License titles are NEW from our amazing fan community …
- The Theatre of Roland adventure: A faerie quest by The Medusa's Lair, centered around the song of Roland, with a springboard into the adventure in Ingelheim.
- Mythic Europe Campaign Guide: Details for 5E Dungeon Masters who want run a Dungeons & Dragons campaign in Ars Magica's Mythic Europe setting, by Erik Lee Edwards.
- Character Creation: Aegen Gaming Systems compiled a summary of the Ars Magica 5th Edition rules for character creation, with handy reference of tables and flow diagrams, bringing together the rules spread over the core 40 books.
- La Journee Sera Rüdiaria: Medusa Jank has translated their second adventure into French.
There are OVER FIFTY fan titles on DriveThruRPG now. Check them out here!
Want to work on your own Ars Magica project? See the details of the Open License!
Want to work on your own Ars Magica project? See the details of the Open License!
Meowtropolis on Kickstarter RIGHT MEOW!
Who IS that masked kitty? YOU ARE, in the superhero setting for the Magical Kitties Save the Day RPG! Back it at atlas-games.com/backmeow
Between the attention we needed to devote to ArMD, and unpredictable US tariffs, we paused crowdfunding ever since Ars Magica Definitive Edition's amazing launch. Now that it's safely in mass production, we hope you'll help us make Meowtropolis a pawsome success, too!
Visit the Meowtropolis campaign on Kickstarter
Thank you for your support!
-Michelle Nephew
Atlas Games Co-Owner
PROJECT UPDATE
Atlas Games
CREATOR
about 2 months ago
Project Update: Ars Magica Update & Bestiary Art Reveal (again)
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
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.
- The Complete Corpus in Friendly Markdown Format: OriginalMadman gives us all 53 official books of the Ars Magica RPG Open License in Markdown, on Github.
There are OVER FIFTY fan titles on DriveThruRPG now. Check them out here!
Want to work on your own Ars Magica project? See the details of the Open License!
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
Want to work on your own Ars Magica project? See the details of the Open License!
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
Includes Backer-Exclusive Content
PROJECT UPDATE
Atlas Games
CREATOR
3 months ago
Project Update: Ars Magica in Mass Production!
STATUS: UPDATED PDFs
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!
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!
- The “green line” of Ars Magica adventures in Spanish grows with the translation of Blood in the Snow, by Alexander Marsh
Want to work on your own Ars Magica project? See the details of the Open License!
Enjoy!
-Michelle Nephew
Ars Magica Definitive Co-Producer
Atlas Games Co-Owner
Enjoy!
-Michelle Nephew
Ars Magica Definitive Co-Producer
Atlas Games Co-Owner
PROJECT UPDATE
Atlas Games
CREATOR
3 months ago
Project Update: Ars Magica UNBOXING & the Liber Pantegni
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. :(
Just make your own copy of the Google Doc I put together, and you're all set!
COPY THE GOOGLE DOC CHARACTER SHEET HERE
ARS MAGICA OPEN LICENSE
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. :(
Just make your own copy of the Google Doc I put together, and you're all set!
COPY THE GOOGLE DOC CHARACTER SHEET HERE
ARS MAGICA OPEN LICENSE
- 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]
- There are FOUR DOZEN fan titles on DriveThruRPG now. Check them out here!
-Michelle Nephew
Ars Magica Definitive Co-Producer
JOHN TALKS ABOUT
SCHOLARSHIP INSPIRING ADVENTURE
I admit, I’m a sucker for medieval scholarship. When a post on BlueSky alerted me to an article by Mohamed Qassiti about the Liber pantegni, a medieval Latin translation of a seminal Arabic work about medicine, I immediately started thinking about how to use this for our family Ars Magica saga. An article by Monica Green about this work and its translator, Constantinus Africanus, gave me more ideas.
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 the basic 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.
- John Nephew
Atlas Games Co-Owner
Atlas Games Co-Owner
Image: Pantegni pars prima theorica, from National library of the Netherlands, via Wikipedia. The entire manuscript is digitized online, if you're curious!
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