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Games and adaptions similar to Ars Magica?

38 points · submitted Oct 2025 by u/Luftzig

Salve!

I am really enjoying Ars Magica, but after a year of campaign, half of it as the lead ST for our group I wonder whether there are games or adaptions of games that work for Ars Magica's premise of a campaign that takes generations.

One thought that I had is that Blades in the Dark has the rest period mechanic that can be adjusted for ArM, and I think that its flashbacks and starting in thick of it mechanics can really work well for ArM.

27 comments · 97% upvoted · other discussions

comments

DivineArkandos 22 points · Oct 2025

Pendragon is the obvious choice if you want a generational game. Medieval game where you play over many years and eventually retire your character for an heir/squire.

Passing-Through247 15 points · Oct 2025

Mage the Ascension is almost literally a sequel to Ars magica in the modern era. Mostly the marmite 4e(?, the one that added the realm of reason). You'd need a few books from different editions to compile lore and significant homebrew to merge everything to work in your desired system (as the timeline moves forward the way magic works changes). The base game for modern day, the sorcerers crusade line for the Renaissance, and dark ages Mage for the concurrent timeline to ars magica. The important thing is the rise of a rival organisation called the order of reason.

By 'almost literally a sequel' I mean the original owners of both were the same company who threw in references that spiraled out of control. The order of Hermes is one of the main organisation of Mage who have since allied with other practices from outside Europe to oppose the oppressive technocracy who have rigged human perception to make magic unstable by convincing humanity magic isn't real. Also house tremere went rogue when their immortality rituals stopped working, became vampires, and decided to make it everybody's problem. They are in Vampire the Masquerade.

Definitely the hardest approach but potently the coolest in result.

jayrock306 7 points · Oct 2025

Honestly mage the awakening seems like a better sequel to Ars than ascension.

  • A magic realm equivalent in the form of the supernal realms as opposed to consensual reality not really being a place just a concept existing in the background.
  • Awakening is more focused on one large organization that kinda holds the monopoly on magic users with some nameless mages, legacies, and seers running around. Meanwhile ascension seems to have a power struggle going on between the traditions, technocrats, and the disparate alliance. Meaning mage has like 30 options for main magical groups as opposed to the 12 houses in ars and 5 orders in awakening.
  • Magic is "codified" so everyone cast mostly the same meaning books can be written on magic theory and spells can be taught to others. In ascension meanwhile a verbena only has her coven to learn from as her celestial chorus and son of ether cabal mates will look at her weird when she starts talking about sacrificing animals to Odin.
  • The various groups within the pentacle actually like eachother and it's very easy to come up with a reason for why a member of the free council is working with a guardian of veil. Ascension however makes it very clear that should the traditions win the ascension war it will immediately be followed by another one. Also ascensions whole thing with consensual reality and my beliefs are right not yours encourages division and makes some pairing extremely unlikely to occur.

Honestly I'd say the setting, politics, and magic in awakening are far closer to Ars than ascension is.

Shakanaka 6 points · Oct 2025

Everytime anything oWoD is mentioned, a wild CofD poster comes out of nowhere... lol 

[deleted] 2 points · Oct 2025

Me irl:

But really, once you go CofD, you'd never go oWoD

Regular-Rub-489 2 points · Nov 2025

Honestly yea, like I will admit first edition of CofD is really hit or miss but for me 2e CofD just knocked it out of the park with far more hits than misses.

[deleted] 2 points · Nov 2025

Yeah, 1st Editions of Vampire, Werewolf and Mage felt like "legally distinct WoD", but in the 2nd Editions they became just great and actually unique.

The rest of the games were unique since the start, which I loved. Except for Beast, which was unique for all the wrong reasons

Regular-Rub-489 2 points · Nov 2025

Yea I couldn’t agree more, on all points.

Kautsu-Gamer 2 points · Oct 2025

I agree on you, but mechanically Awakeniing is a horbible mess unless you are a gambler.

And Mage the Ascension is not sequel to Ars Magica in any way except in fluff. You cannot convert a Ars character into Mage. Neither to Awakening nor Ascension.

[deleted] 2 points · Oct 2025

It's not even a sequel fluff-wise, but more like an AU. And even in the Ars Magica-corresponding time period, Dark Ages: Mage's factions do not map to Ars Magica's factions (I mean, the mages outside of Order of Hermes).

Kautsu-Gamer 2 points · Oct 2025

Mage the Dark Ages, and the Sorcerer's Crusade broke the 1e Mage link to the Ars Magica Infernal 3rd Edition with Infernal everywhere and fundamentalist Christianity Dominion.

[deleted] 1 points · Oct 2025

AM 3ed introduced the Realm of Reason and Tremere turning into vamps.  AM 4ed dropped both of those.

Mage the Ascension has callbacks to Ars Magica, with the Order of Hermes being just one group in a collection of mages and House Tremere existing as a collection of vamps, but thematically and cosmologically the two are pretty incompatible.

I'll second that Mage the Awakening is a better sequel, in that the theme of exploration and discovery is stronger there.  But in terms of "generational mechanics" as OP requested, Pendragon is the classic example, but Red Aegis and Legacy: Life Among the Ruins are also worth looking into.

Red Aegis suffer from "first edition incompleteness" issues, but basically is about taking a society from Hunter-Gatherer tech all the way to a star faring civilization.  There's some weird mysteries with monoliths as well for groups to define and develop.

Legacy is actually multiple settings focused around generations of people doing stuff: building a post apocalyptic society, establishing lineages of monster hunters in a Bloodborne-ish horror setting, establishing a pantheon of nature spirits, and so on.  It's probably most similar to Powered by the Apocalypse mechanically, but tweaked and modded to do its own thing (like most PbtA games do).

[deleted] 5 points · Oct 2025

[deleted]

Luftzig [OP] 1 points · Oct 2025

Actually, it is the complexity of Ars Magica that I find a bit discouraging. As a player I really enjoy it, and I enjoy that there is structured crafting that reached a sweet point in its balance of constraints and ope-endedness.

But as an ST this complexity means I need to plan and prepare a lot! Making an NPC can take an hour, only for it to get slain immediately by a well prepared (or lucky) PC. The crafting fun I find as a player is tiring as a ST.

Lord_Aldrich 4 points · Oct 2025

Legacy: Life Among the Ruins is a really excellent PBtA game that is about rebuilding a community after a (group defined) apocalypse. Each player plays both a family/faction that persists across generations, as well as individual characters from that family.

Luftzig [OP] 3 points · Oct 2025

I'll look it up, but from listening to actual plays I'm not very excited about PbtA games.

Lord_Aldrich 2 points · Oct 2025

Understandable! It's a somewhat different style for sure. I do love it's generation mechanics though.

One other recommendation I just remembered, for science fiction: Traveler - Dynasty. It's older but all the traveller editions are very cross-compatable.

futuraprime 3 points · Oct 2025

If you want something that's like Ars Magica but very different mechanically, you could try Edgar Allen Poe's The Raven's Ars Magica—though this is still a playtest.

Enturk 2 points · Oct 2025

There’s a PbtA adaptation of Ars Magica, that you might be interested in. https://www.reddit.com/r/RPGdesign/comments/g93781/the_dark_ars_formerly_ars_in_the_dark_an_ars/

Luftzig [OP] 1 points · Oct 2025

Interesting! Thanks!

[deleted] 2 points · Oct 2025

Pendragon is the classic example, but Red Aegis and Legacy: Life Among the Ruins are also worth looking into.

Red Aegis suffer from "first edition incompleteness" issues, but basically is about taking a society from Hunter-Gatherer tech all the way to a star faring civilization. There's some weird mysteries with monoliths as well for groups to define and develop.

Legacy is actually multiple settings focused around generations of people doing stuff: building a post apocalyptic society, establishing lineages of monster hunters in a Bloodborne-ish horror setting, establishing a pantheon of nature spirits, and so on. It's probably most similar to Powered by the Apocalypse mechanically, but tweaked and modded to do its own thing (like most PbtA games do).

CulveDaddy 2 points · Oct 2025

Mage: the Awakening

An3m0s 2 points · Oct 2025

Mage the Ascension has a somewhat similar feeling if you use the rules for rotes from Prism of Focus.

[deleted] 1 points · Oct 2025

Prism of Focus adds more confusion than understanding, imo

jayrock306 1 points · Oct 2025

There's an old ttrpg called World tree that's literally ars magica but with furries and set in more traditional fantasy dnd like setting.

[deleted] 1 points · Oct 2025

World Tree also makes its species genuinely different from humans in psychology, which I liked

StayUpLatePlayGames 1 points · Oct 2025

I took a big chunk of AM inspiration for Whole New World. - covenant becomes colony - troupe play of shared characters - 1-2 events per game year - multigenerational play

questportal_vtt 1 points · Oct 2025

You should check out The Grand Pendragon Campaign for Pendragon if you are interested in that type of play. That one is considered one of the great rpg campaigns and finishing it is a badge of honor.