Tabletop Roleplaying Games
Ars Magica
English
Complex
Low-Fantasy
Ars Magica is a troupe-style tabletop roleplaying game about wizards and their allies in Mythic Europe, a version of medieval Europe around the year 1200 in which folklore and religious belief are literally true. It was created by Jonathan Tweet and Mark Rein-Hagen and first published by Lion Rampant in 1987.
The Fifth Edition, written by David Chart and published by Atlas Games in 2004, won the Origins Award for Best Role Playing Game of 2004 and took Gold for Best Rules at the 2005 ENnie Awards. Atlas Games has since released the Definitive Edition, a revised and expanded version of the Fifth Edition with over 600 pages, new art and a new layout. It was funded on BackerKit in 2024 and shipped to backers in 2026, and it keeps the Fifth Edition rules.
The Fifth Edition directly evolved from Ars Magica Fourth Edition (Atlas Games, 1996), which in turn descends from the original 1987 game.
Description
Players portray magi, powerful wizards of the Order of Hermes, alongside companions, skilled specialists who go out into the world, and grogs, the hired hands and retainers who do the dangerous legwork. Most players run one of each, and the group's real shared character is the covenant, the wizards' home base, often built on a place of power.
A Game Master, called the Storyguide (SG), frames the stories, which can span decades or centuries of in-game time.
The game asks a table to think in long arcs. Magi spend most of their time studying and working in a laboratory, and many of the best stories come from what that research costs the covenant and its neighbors. It also asks for a fair amount of reading and bookkeeping: the magic system rewards players who plan spells and lab projects, and a character's progress is measured in seasons rather than adventures.