In February 2016 we initiated our customers into yet deeper mysteries of The Art with our Ars Magica 5 More Magic Bundle — and for those who didn’t get our original ArM5 offer from August 2014, we brought back that one too — again!
Designed by Jonathan Tweet and Mark Rein-Hagen, Ars Magica, about the wizards of the mystical Order of Hermes in 13th-Century Mythic Europe, is one of the roleplaying field’s seminal designs. The current (fifth) edition from Atlas Games is widely regarded as the best. We’ve presented the ArM5 core rulebook in no less than three offers, a record matched only by the Fate Core and Fate Accelerated rulebooks (both included as a courtesy in each year’s Bundle of Fate). After its debut in the August 2013 Bundle of the Ages, the ArM5 rulebook took center stage in its own August 2014 ArM5 Bundle, then again in its May 2015 resurrection. We really wanted to present a bunch more supplements from the large and excellent Atlas line, but we didn’t want to include the corebook yet again. What to do?
Ta-daaa! ArM5 More Magic was an all-new collection of supplements for Ars Magica Fifth Edition, focusing on new ways to use The Art and new wizardly traditions to make life interesting for the Order of Hermes. And for those who somehow missed the corebook in its three previous appearances, we revived the original August 2014 ArM5 offer for a second time as a companion to More Magic. (This was our first second time, if you get what we mean.)
More Magic!
The More Magic offer’s Starter Collection included three supplements (retail value $45) as DRM-free .PDF ebooks:
- Ancient Magic (retail price $15): Nine lost traditions, like Canaanite necromancy, Hyperborean hymns, fertility cult fetishes, and the mystical coordinates of Ptolemy, plus rules for integrating their secrets into your saga.
- Hedge Magic (Revised) (retail $15): Elementalists, village witches, nightwalkers, Learned Magicians, and others the Order of Hermes ignores at its peril.
- The Mysteries (Revised) (retail $15): Hermetic alchemy and astrology, divination and augury, spirit magic, theurgy, the Great Talisman, arithmetical and Mercurian magic, and the mysteries of dreams.
Those who paid more than the threshold (average) price advanced in The Art and also got this offer’s entire Bonus Collection with five more titles (retail value $75):
- Rival Magic (retail $15): Amazons, Muspelli, Soqotran sorcerers, and the Augustan Brotherhood — even more magicians the Order of Hermes likes to ignore.
- The Cradle & The Crescent (retail $15): The Islamic lands of the Mythic Middle East — jinn, Zoroastrian priests, the Order of Suleiman, and more.
- Hermetic Projects (retail $15): Build your own volcano lair, a tower to Heaven, or a mythic menagerie — or research the path to immortality.
- Tales of Power (retail $15): Five far-ranging stories (scenarios) aimed at powerful magi.
- Transforming Mythic Europe (retail $15): Shows how your Hermetic magic can fundamentally reshape the world — starting a tech revolution, building their own Atlantic island, or just taking over 13th-Century Europe.
That’s a US$120 value for a magically low price. Ten percent of each purchase (after gateway fees) is split evenly between the two charities chosen by Atlas Games owner John Nephew, Doctors Without Borders and the Duluth (Minnesota) branch of Sister Cities International. “My involvement with this group goes back to 1986,” John says, “when I was just starting my career as a freelance RPG writer, and I won a scholarship to go on the city’s first sister-city delegation to Petrozavodsk, Russia. And did you know Ars Magica (Fourth Edition) was one of the first RPGs to be published in Russia in translation?”
The original ArM5 Bundle
Those new to Ars Magica started with the original August 2014 ArM5 collection featuring the core rulebook and essential supplements. This offer’s Starter Collection included five titles (total retail value $55):
- Ars Magica Fifth Edition (retail price $18): The complete, current 240-page rulebook.
- Covenants (retail $15): The essential guide to help players improve the homes of their magi.
- Houses of Hermes: True Lineages (retail $15): A detailed treatise on four powerful Houses of the Order of Hermes.
- Apprentices (retail $7): Every great magus started as a callow youth.
- The Living Covenant: Over two dozen free characters and setting files from the Atlas Games website, collected here in a handy 42-page booklet.
This offer’s Bonus Collection added five more titles (retail $70):
- Houses of Hermes: Mystery Cults (retail $15): The second treatise on the Hermetic Houses.
- Houses of Hermes: Societates (retail $15): The third and final Hermetic Houses volume.
- The Lion and the Lily (retail $15): The Normandy Tribunal sourcebook about the many active covenants in densely populated northern France.
- Tales of Mythic Europe (retail $15): Nine short adventures that push your saga to the limits of Mythic Europe.
- The Broken Covenant of Calebais (retail $10): The first-ever ArM adventure, originally written by Mark Rein-Hagen and Jonathan Tweet, updated for the current edition.
This revival benefited the same two charities.
