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My, this is a large sourcebook. 221 pages of fairly small print, with hardly any wasted space. Thankfully, it's also well-written, comprehensive, and damn useful for any Ars Magica game - and near essential for any game that places heavy emphasis upon noble PCs.

So, what's in those 221 pages? A thorough overview of noble society, obviously, but also an array of useful new rules. In a way this might almost be considered The Companion Sourcebook, because substantial portions of the book are useful for running or creating any companion, not just nobles - new Virtues and Flaws, a clarification of the monetary system, workable combat rules, and a system for handling trials, for instance. Plus three pretty good adventures. Fine value for your $26, all in all.

The style is fine; pleasingly light in places, but always backed up with a sense of real knowledge and an easy familiarity with the medieval paradigm that makes this much more than just a 'knights and swords' book. It's well-laid out, and good use is made of boxed text, which often gives original medieval sources. Nice large biblography, and a thorough index. The artwork's average - poor in a few places, quite pleasing in its depiction of faeries for one of the adventures - but it is definitely medieval rather than fantastical, a plus, and I like the use of woodcuts. And, blessed be, the statistics for characters are actually consistent with the rules, and with roughly the level of power I run my Ars games at, which is a rare thing in Ars sourcebooks, especially for magi. The new rules, although I can't be certain until I get a chance to run a game with them, actually feel as though they've been playtested for once.

Ordo Nobilis certainly has enough in it to be worth going through chapter by chapter, so let's do so:

Preface - This nicely sets out the author's intentions for the sourcebook and the view of nobility that they're working with. I especially like the line: "Nobles are good, French nobles are best, and pious French nobles the best of all."

Chapter 1: Noble Society - An overview of kingship, feudalism, and nobility as a whole, it gives a good sense of general protocol in Mythic Europe, and of the theological and historical basis for nobility. The new rule that grant kings limited magical protection through the possession of relics and Divine Might is a good one, but I'd be inclined to hit any player who tried to magick a king even harder than the book suggests.

Chapter 2: Characters and Status - A big chapter, this sets out the essential principles of land ownership and feudalism, and then reworks the Ars monetary system. The new system abstracts the various currencies of Mythic Europe, which it takes pains to detail, into Mythic Pennies, and seems, as far as I can tell, fine. There's rules for going into debt, investing, spending money to advance in status, and so forth, all of which are good. I was mildly disappointed it didn't sort out the complete mess that 4th edition makes of Covenant finances - a confusion of pounds and pennies being the main problem - but I guess I'll have to wait till Ars does a new edition of Covenants.

New Optional Virtues and Flaws is where things really kick off. It completely reworks Companion Social Class, separating Class and Wealth into separate categories and suggesting all kinds of interesting possibilities for PCs - Prosperous Clerks, Poor Clergy, and so forth. There's a nice new virtue for Knights, Blessed Sword, which grants them limited magic resistance. Best of all, there's a whole bunch more -1 Flaws, something that PCs often need - for instance, Language Block, Miser, No Sense of Direction, and Nocturnal.

Finally, there's a nice reworking of the Experience system, severely limiting the amount of time that most PCs get to spend practicing, training, and so forth. I like this, seeing as the current system produces wildly overpowered characters after only a few years, but I can see an awful lot of players deliberately choosing the classes that get them lots of free time. Personal recommendation; use a d6 instead of a d10 for practice rolls.

Chapter 3: Law - Comprehensive, surprisingly entertaining. I'm not quite certain about the trial system given; it seems to me more likely that these things would be roleplayed, but I suppose if one's just brushing over them - say a grog gets arrested, or similar. The menace of the law does add an interesting element to games, certainly.

Chapter 4: Leisure - This is brilliant, and gives a real idea of what people do with their time. The emphasis upon the social element of all activities is good, and the collection of legends - including an inspired section on the Cycle of Reynard the Fox as about animal faeries, which gave me all kinds of ideas - is great. There's tons of little good bits in here - variants of chess, hunting rules, expansions of area lore, short adventure ideas, and rules for non-magical research.

Chapter 5: Chivalric Combat - The illustration of the principles of mass warfare through the battle of Bouvines is very nice, and that only two knights were killed during said battle, as opposed to a few thousand footman, really brings home the invulnerability of the nobles. Plenty of detail on tournaments and ransom and such, and a good mass combat system, as well as suggestions for and warnings against the use of battlefield magic. Lots of ways to defend a castle from magic - a common concern in many games, not just Ars. It's a shame there's no mention of just how incompetent at strategy most medieval leaders were, but I'll let that pass.

And, thank G-d, a cleanup of the Ars combat system, which is currently a complete mess in which armor is a considerable disadvantage, and everyone with any sense fights with two weapons. Lots of little rules - the most important of which is that encumbrance in combat is now divided by three - and all of them are improvements. Knights in full armor become very formidable, as they should be - but there's details on knocking them over, or finding that vital chink in the armor. This is near essential if there's going to be any combat in your game - well, either this, or using the good old 3rd edition rules!

Chapter 6: The Realms of Mythic Europe - Details of the nobility of all the countries of Europe. Damn, this is thorough. Perhaps too much so, but it's good to have it all in one place. Not that good a read, but very, very useful.

Chapter 7: A Bad Knight's Work - A rather mediocre adventure, based around intrigue at a tournament. Not that interesting, but passable.

Chapter 8: By the Law of the Land - A much better adventure, full of twists and turns, and with good use of Hermetic opponents, and a nice theological point at its center. Sometimes it feels rather too designed to show off the Law rules, but it's fun nonetheless. One quibble; the vis source the characters can get is far beyond the scale of vis in my games - up to 118 pawns of Creo vis a year, potentially!

Chapter 9: On the Respective Merits of Twilight and Gloaming - A brilliant, brilliant Faerie adventure, capturing them in all their nastiness and glory. The PCs go out hunting and are drawn into a faerie realm where the inhabitants demonstrate the nastier aspects of nobility. The arcane debates, the severed talking heads, the chance for characters to be permanently changed, the fight for kingship - this is really top-quality stuff, and, I think, the best adventure I've yet seen for Ars.

Appendix I: Bestiary - Stats, and good stats, for soldiers and beasts. Useful when you need a 'basic fighter.'

The book is packed full of goodies, to say the least.. It is, I think, the best sourcebook yet published for 4th edition ("Kabbalah" was of equal quality, but much less applicable to most sagas) and nearly on a par with some of the great sourcebooks, such as "Faeries" and "Order of Hermes." If you play Ars Magica, or, indeed, any medieval game, you should get it. I'd also advise picking up "Lordly Domains" for Pendragon, which covers some aspects of noble culture in even more detail, and includes a land management system that could be easily adopted for Ars.

Style: 4 (Classy and well done)
Substance: 5 (Excellent!)

Ordo Nobilis: Mythic Europe's Nobility
Author: Michael de Verteuil, Ian Hargrove, and Robin Steeden Category: game Company/Publisher: Atlas Games Line: Ars Magica Cost: $25.95 Page count: 221 ISBN: 1-887801-82-0 Capsule Review by James Palmer on 06/03/00. Genre tags: Fantasy Historical	My, this is a large sourcebook. 221 pages of fairly small print, with hardly any wasted space. Thankfully, it's also well-written, comprehensive, and damn useful for any Ars Magica game - and near essential for any game that places heavy emphasis upon noble PCs. So, what's in those 221 pages? A thorough overview of noble society, obviously, but also an array of useful new rules. In a way this might almost be considered The Companion Sourcebook, because substantial portions of the book are useful for running or creating any companion, not just nobles - new Virtues and Flaws, a clarification of the monetary system, workable combat rules, and a system for handling trials, for instance. Plus three pretty good adventures. Fine value for your $26, all in all. The style is fine; pleasingly light in places, but always backed up with a sense of real knowledge and an easy familiarity with the medieval paradigm that makes this much more than just a 'knights and swords' book. It's well-laid out, and good use is made of boxed text, which often gives original medieval sources. Nice large biblography, and a thorough index. The artwork's average - poor in a few places, quite pleasing in its depiction of faeries for one of the adventures - but it is definitely medieval rather than fantastical, a plus, and I like the use of woodcuts. And, blessed be, the statistics for characters are actually consistent with the rules, and with roughly the level of power I run my Ars games at, which is a rare thing in Ars sourcebooks, especially for magi. The new rules, although I can't be certain until I get a chance to run a game with them, actually feel as though they've been playtested for once. Ordo Nobilis certainly has enough in it to be worth going through chapter by chapter, so let's do so: Preface - This nicely sets out the author's intentions for the sourcebook and the view of nobility that they're working with. I especially like the line: "Nobles are good, French nobles are best, and pious French nobles the best of all." Chapter 1: Noble Society - An overview of kingship, feudalism, and nobility as a whole, it gives a good sense of general protocol in Mythic Europe, and of the theological and historical basis for nobility. The new rule that grant kings limited magical protection through the possession of relics and Divine Might is a good one, but I'd be inclined to hit any player who tried to magick a king even harder than the book suggests. Chapter 2: Characters and Status - A big chapter, this sets out the essential principles of land ownership and feudalism, and then reworks the Ars monetary system. The new system abstracts the various currencies of Mythic Europe, which it takes pains to detail, into Mythic Pennies, and seems, as far as I can tell, fine. There's rules for going into debt, investing, spending money to advance in status, and so forth, all of which are good. I was mildly disappointed it didn't sort out the complete mess that 4th edition makes of Covenant finances - a confusion of pounds and pennies being the main problem - but I guess I'll have to wait till Ars does a new edition of Covenants. New Optional Virtues and Flaws is where things really kick off. It completely reworks Companion Social Class, separating Class and Wealth into separate categories and suggesting all kinds of interesting possibilities for PCs - Prosperous Clerks, Poor Clergy, and so forth. There's a nice new virtue for Knights, Blessed Sword, which grants them limited magic resistance. Best of all, there's a whole bunch more -1 Flaws, something that PCs often need - for instance, Language Block, Miser, No Sense of Direction, and Nocturnal. Finally, there's a nice reworking of the Experience system, severely limiting the amount of time that most PCs get to spend practicing, training, and so forth. I like this, seeing as the current system produces wildly overpowered characters after only a few years, but I can see an awful lot of players deliberately choosing the classes that get them lots of free time. Personal recommendation; use a d6 instead of a d10 for practice rolls. Chapter 3: Law - Comprehensive, surprisingly entertaining. I'm not quite certain about the trial system given; it seems to me more likely that these things would be roleplayed, but I suppose if one's just brushing over them - say a grog gets arrested, or similar. The menace of the law does add an interesting element to games, certainly. Chapter 4: Leisure - This is brilliant, and gives a real idea of what people do with their time. The emphasis upon the social element of all activities is good, and the collection of legends - including an inspired section on the Cycle of Reynard the Fox as about animal faeries, which gave me all kinds of ideas - is great. There's tons of little good bits in here - variants of chess, hunting rules, expansions of area lore, short adventure ideas, and rules for non-magical research. Chapter 5: Chivalric Combat - The illustration of the principles of mass warfare through the battle of Bouvines is very nice, and that only two knights were killed during said battle, as opposed to a few thousand footman, really brings home the invulnerability of the nobles. Plenty of detail on tournaments and ransom and such, and a good mass combat system, as well as suggestions for and warnings against the use of battlefield magic. Lots of ways to defend a castle from magic - a common concern in many games, not just Ars. It's a shame there's no mention of just how incompetent at strategy most medieval leaders were, but I'll let that pass. And, thank G-d, a cleanup of the Ars combat system, which is currently a complete mess in which armor is a considerable disadvantage, and everyone with any sense fights with two weapons. Lots of little rules - the most important of which is that encumbrance in combat is now divided by three - and all of them are improvements. Knights in full armor become very formidable, as they should be - but there's details on knocking them over, or finding that vital chink in the armor. This is near essential if there's going to be any combat in your game - well, either this, or using the good old 3rd edition rules! Chapter 6: The Realms of Mythic Europe - Details of the nobility of all the countries of Europe. Damn, this is thorough. Perhaps too much so, but it's good to have it all in one place. Not that good a read, but very, very useful. Chapter 7: A Bad Knight's Work - A rather mediocre adventure, based around intrigue at a tournament. Not that interesting, but passable. Chapter 8: By the Law of the Land - A much better adventure, full of twists and turns, and with good use of Hermetic opponents, and a nice theological point at its center. Sometimes it feels rather too designed to show off the Law rules, but it's fun nonetheless. One quibble; the vis source the characters can get is far beyond the scale of vis in my games - up to 118 pawns of Creo vis a year, potentially! Chapter 9: On the Respective Merits of Twilight and Gloaming - A brilliant, brilliant Faerie adventure, capturing them in all their nastiness and glory. The PCs go out hunting and are drawn into a faerie realm where the inhabitants demonstrate the nastier aspects of nobility. The arcane debates, the severed talking heads, the chance for characters to be permanently changed, the fight for kingship - this is really top-quality stuff, and, I think, the best adventure I've yet seen for Ars. Appendix I: Bestiary - Stats, and good stats, for soldiers and beasts. Useful when you need a 'basic fighter.' The book is packed full of goodies, to say the least.. It is, I think, the best sourcebook yet published for 4th edition ("Kabbalah" was of equal quality, but much less applicable to most sagas) and nearly on a par with some of the great sourcebooks, such as "Faeries" and "Order of Hermes." If you play Ars Magica, or, indeed, any medieval game, you should get it. I'd also advise picking up "Lordly Domains" for Pendragon, which covers some aspects of noble culture in even more detail, and includes a land management system that could be easily adopted for Ars. Style: 4 (Classy and well done) Substance: 5 (Excellent!)

Ordo Nobilis: Mythic Europe's Nobility