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-= About Ars Magica =-

Ars Magica is a roleplaying game where the characters are powerful magi belonging to an arcane organization called the Order of Hermes. It is set in Mythic Europe, roughly equal to the medieval Europe we know except for most superstitions and beliefs of those times being actually true.

Small groups of magi, for convenience and mutual protection, live in covenants, usually placed in magical sites. Players roleplay their magi, but also grogs (including the warriors and bodyguards whose job is to protect the wizards) and companions, interesting characters who for different reasons associate themselves with magi.

Some of the distinctive features of Ars Magica are the magic system, extraordinarily flexible and evocative, and the existence of the covenant as the home of the characters and the unifying heart and arguably the most important “character” of the saga.

In this review I will assume that you already know the basics of the game, but if you do not I encourage you to find out more. It is quite unique and it is certainly the most satisfactory RPG I have ever played.

-= About this book =-

Covenants, by Mark Rein*Hagen, was the first rules supplement ever published for Ars Magica, not counting adventure modules. It has 64 pages and was published in 1990. It should not be confused with the longer (144 pages) and more recent (2006) sourcebook with the same title, published for the 5th edition of the game. Even though they deal with the same subject, they are completely different books, by different authors.

Although this book is out of print, you can still find it online in several places (Amazon.com, for example) and you can also buy it in PDF format. See Atlas Games’ web site for details (http://www.atlas-games.com/product_tables/AG1010.php).

-= Description of the contents =-

* Introduction (2 pages): It explains what a covenant is and its importance for the characters in an Ars Magica saga. It also discusses how to use the supplement to design your own covenant or, even if you already have a covenant, to get ideas to flesh it out and also design covenants belonging to NPC magi, possible allies or rivals.

* Four Seasons (6 pages): It discusses the different stages in the life of a covenant (spring, summer, autumn or winter), explaining the typical features of a covenant during each stage. It also gives some information about rites of entrance celebrated when a wizard is granted membership in a covenant.

* Covenant Attributes (2 pages): It states that the book will be organized as a collection of attributes, grouped in different sections. Each attribute has a positive or negative numerical value (think of virtues and flaws for covenants) and, depending on the season of your covenant, you are given a number of positive and negative points to purchase attributes. Each attribute you choose may modify the covenant’s characteristics: defence, watch, contacts and morale. These characteristics can be used in play but mostly they just give you an idea of the strengths and weaknesses of your covenant.

There is also an example of the oath a covenant may ask magi to make when they gain membership.

* Setting (3 pages): Brief introduction about the physical placement of covenants, and then a collection of attributes, with different costs and grouped under these headings: - Locations - Magic Aura - Other Details (including underground covenants, and those placed in cities or in faerie forests).

In this chapter, as well as in the following ones, there is a short example about how the covenant of Mistridge was designed, and which attributes were chosen for it (see the Ars Magica sourcebook Mistridge for more details about this covenant).

* Fortress (5 pages): Introduction about covenants’ layout and defences. In includes a rather exhaustive listing and descriptions of the places or building you may want your covenant to have, to help you design the layout. Then there is a collection of attributes, grouped under these headings: - Size - Defensibility - Integrity (meaning how well maintained the covenant is). - Other details (including underground areas, caves, watch towers, moats, etc).

* Inhabitants (7 pages): After a brief introduction about what kind of people live in a covenant, there is a collection of attributes, grouped under these headings: - The magi (including how they are organized and how cooperative they are). - Apprentices - Grogs’ Armament - Grogs’ Discipline - Grogs’ Loyalty & Morale - Grogs’ Training - Covenfolk

* Outside World (4 pages): Introduction about the relationships between the covenant and the outside world, and then the attributes, grouped under these headings: - Contacts (including sources of information about the outside world, etc) - Hermetic Status - Mundane Relations - Liege Lords - Enemies - Friends and Allies - Reputation

* Mystical Attributes (4 pages): Magical attributes natural to the area or enchanted items made by wizards for the covenant, grouped under the following headings: - Arcane Library - Magical Laboratories - Magical Artefacts - Sources of Raw Vis (both protected and contested) - Aegis of the Hearth - Other Details (such as haunted, demon infested or faerie plagued covenants).

* Mundane Resources (3 pages): After a short introduction about what kind of mundane things a covenant needs, the attributes are grouped under: - Mundane Library - Equipment (its quality) - Source of Income (and wealth of the covenant) - Mounts - Ships

* Obligations (2 pages): Obligations the covenant or its magi may have, with attributes grouped under: - Time - Raw Vis - Other Details (helping allies or superiors, favors, etc).

* Other Features (1 page): It very briefly discusses other details, such as covenant history, charter, emblem and house alignment.

* The Covenant in Play (4 pages): Includes some advice about roleplaying rivalries between magi, rules for improving the covenant and also some incident charts to generate quick stories when you have nothing prepared. Stories related to the covenant are a good way to get players interested, since the covenant is their home, their source of security and welfare. Therefore, there are charts to choose political, mystical and hermetic incidents. You can roll a dice in any of them or just use them as sources of story seeds in case you are not feeling inspired.

The chapter finishes with the charter of the covenant of Mistridge, given as an example. It includes provisions about requirements of membership for its magi, right and privileges of members, duties and responsibilities, council meetings and functions of the council.

After that, the book ends with the description of four covenants, as examples (one for each season). For each covenant there is a general description and a more detailed one depicting the location, fortress, inhabitants, outside relations, mystical attributes, mundane resources and obligations. Then there is a story idea to introduce that covenant in your saga.

The covenants described, all of them located in the Provencal tribunal, are:

* Lariander (3 pages): This is a spring covenant located in the middle of a faerie forest, complete with tree houses and mischievous faeries. Its magi are young and inexperienced, overwhelmed by the responsibility of governing a covenant. They are thoroughly unprepared, in fact, and the covenant is in shambles.

* Bellaquin (4 pages): This summer covenant is deeply involved in mundane affairs, protecting all kind of artists and fully integrated into the feudal system. It is the best-known hermetic covenant among those who are not magi, since most covenants are secretive and located in isolated places.

* Doissetep (5 pages): This autumn covenant might possibly be the most powerful and impressive in the Order. Twenty-three magi live there, and it has great influence in the Order but little contact with the outside world. It has a complex hierarchy within its members, and there is fierce internal competition, both among the magi and among the grogs. While a circle of older and more powerful magi govern the covenant, committees responsible for different functions deal with day-to-day issues.

* Val-negra (5 pages): This winter covenant is so decadent and isolated that the rest of the Order is not even aware that it still exists. The magi are decrepit and crazy and the same could be said of the covenant itself. The best way to describe the inhabitants and their pursuits is “weird”. The project one of the magi was working on seemed virtual reality rather than medieval magical research to me.

-= Comments =-

This supplement deals with an important part of any Ars Magica saga. Even though it was written for the second edition of the game, it can be used without a problem no matter what edition you are playing with: It is a set of guidelines, and the rules are few, very simple and do not depend on the rest of the Ars Magica rules. It can even be used as a source of ideas to complement the chapter on covenant creation in the core rules.

It obviously deals with the subject in a more deep and comprehensive way than the core rules, and it does not seem too outdated. Ideas like the different ways the magi could organize the government of the covenant or the rivalries that could exist among the grogs can make the game more interesting. Although it has little flavour text, it is still entertaining to read, because of the abundance of useful stuff for your saga.

Evidently, for something as important as the player character’s covenant, this book is not enough. First you need an idea about how you want your covenant to be. Then you can use this book to discuss a more detailed outline with your group. Even if you had good ideas for the covenant, there were probably areas you didn’t think about, and a comprehensive approach like this is much useful to expand and improve your original idea. When you finish, however, you are not done yet. You have a good outline about how your covenant is like, but you have to flesh it out a lot. If you compare the examples in this supplement about the covenant Mistridge with the supplement Mistridge itself you will see that you have many things to develop. You know how many vis pawns you can collect, for example, but you still have to design the mystical sites around the covenants where you collect them. You have a general idea about what your relationship with the Order of Hermes, the church, peasants and local nobility is like, but you have to develop monasteries, abbeys, parishes, neighbouring manors, villages, towns, covenants… Of course, you can work on that gradually as your saga progresses. That is part of the fun!

The book also has its flaws. As I read the attributes and their costs, the evil power gamer in me could not help noticing good ways to maximize the strength of the covenant with little cost. However, the responsible gamer in me did not worry about rules and costs too much, but about the ideas. I mean, you can use this supplement to make your game more interesting and that is what matters. If you want an extensive underground labyrinth under your covenant, by all means, have it, and don’t worry about whether you have enough points to purchase it. And weaknesses are, of course, at least as fun as strong points.

Also, I would have liked to see more options and more detailed attributes. More descriptions about how covenants function in practice would have been nice too.

The inclusion of sample covenants and story ideas involving them is a nice touch. However, the attributes that were chosen for each of those covenants should have been stated explicitly and I was also bothered by how extreme the covenants were. I realize that if you are going to describe a covenant in a few pages you need to invent something to make it unique and memorable, but perhaps they were not good examples of what a typical covenant might look like. I certainly would have to change things to make some of those covenants and the story seeds associated with them work in my saga (for example, would a secretive covenant like Doissetep really invite the PC grogs to compete against the covenant’s grogs?).

However, all in all, I found it quite useful, and certainly much better than having just the core rules. Now, sixteen years after the publishment date, there is also a fifth edition supplement dealing with covenants. I have not read it yet, so I don’t know whether it makes this older one completely redundant or whether you can still get useful ideas out of this one. The new one is longer and I’m sure it deals in a much more detailed way with several important subjects that are only mentioned in passing here. I’m sure it also has more rules, although that is not necessarily a good thing. I will have to wait till I have read it.

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