Ars Magica Definitive Edition is the definitive addition to your collection! Whether you’ve been playing for years or this is your first introduction to the series, you’ll be blown away by the detail and artistry within this book. We’ve thought of everything with this project. The 600+ page, full color leatherette-bound book looks great on a game table and on the shelf, but we’ve also included a Reference Guide to help you quickly find info without derailing the action. Plus, the beautiful new art included in the book and the Mythic Europe map will bring your Ars Magica campaign to new life. You’ll regret NOT buying this set!

Your best bet is to pledge $1 for the "A Grog's Lot" tier, then as Add-Ons pick up these three things: Get the ARS MAGICA 5TH ED STANDARD CORE RULEBOOK for regular use. It has all the rules for the game, at less than half the size of Definitive Edition. Grab the new STORYGUIDE SCEREEN & REFERENCE GUIDE SET. Pairing them with the standard core rulebook is exactly why we're offering them separate from Definitive! And yes, the Reference Guide has page references for standard, as well as Definitive Edition. Then pick A SCENARIO BOOK. The Scenarios Digital Bundle is the best way to get them all, or choose the softcover you like best. We recommend HOOKS for one-offs that start story threads; THRICE-TOLD TALES for ready-made multi-session sagas; or TALES OF MYTHIC EUROPE for shorter scenarios. Descriptions are at https://www.atlas-games.com/arsmagica#scenarios THEN, after you've got your feet under you, get your gorgeous Definitive Edition set! Have fun!

That depends on what you mean by "new." If you mean "completely new, not in the existing Fifth Edition line", then the answer is "almost nothing apart from the art". All errata have been incorporated, and some explanations have been clarified and expanded, but this is the definitive version of Fifth Edition, not a new edition. If you mean "what is in the book that wasn't in the original Fifth Edition core rulebook", then there's a lot! The added material includes: all self-standing Virtues and Flaws, rules for Mythic Companions and a handful of example types, all self-standing spell guidelines, rules for Mystery Initiation and one Inner Mystery for each Mystery Cult House, Laboratory personalization rules, rules for training Apprentices, rules for original research and incorporating non-Hermetic magic, rules for creating mundane animals and a lot of examples, and a lot more example supernatural creatures from each Realm. There are also some other bits that were pulled in to fill in gaps. These were all taken from the supplements for Fifth Edition, and means that the "core" rules for the game are no longer scattered across multiple volumes.

"Advance Manuscript Doc" and "PDF of Rough Layout" are two different things. The first is David Chart's raw manuscript in a text-only word processor file, which only those who pledge in the first 48 hours (at any tier) will get, delivered on Fri of the first week of the campaign. The second is the gorgeous almost-complete full-color layout, which will be released chapter-by-chapter after the campaign, as we finish up the layout.

BackerKit has a new program that allows backers ordering $149 or more to pledge ASAP, but distribute the financial burden of their pledge over the course of four months, with the first payment starting at campaign close. This opens up opportunities for more folks to back Ars Magica, who may not want to pay the lump sum right away. We know that this deluxe, collectors edition item is pricey, and we're excited to open up accessibility with this payment plan option! "Pay over time" will show up as an option after you enter your credit card info. Read the full details: https://help.backerkit.com/article/805-pay-over-time

The minimum for Stretch Pay is $149. It shows up as an option after you add your credit card info, in checkout. When the campaign launched, we discovered that Stretch Pay's minimum was $150, while our core tier was $149.95. We added a five-cent "Faerie Glamour of Stretch Pay" item in the Add-Ons tab as a temporary fix. That's been hidden now that Backerkit accommodated our request to lower that minimum in their code.

We're well into layout, so our "To Press" goal is March. We hope to be mailing your stuff to you by the end of this summer!

We're using BackerKit for both our campaign and pledge management this time! We're excited to have everything hosted on one site, which will streamline pledges. Additionally, BackerKit now offers payment plans, so you can pay your pledge in easier installments.

You should be able to update your address using this method: 1. Login to your BackerKit account here. 2. Go to Settings in the top-right corner of your account. 3. From there, click "Update Address". This will update your address across all unlocked projects. For more information, or if the campaign has LOCKED and you need to change your address, visit: https://help.backerkit.com/article/638-how-do-i-update-my-shipping-address

In most cases the answer is no. Pledge level and add-on prices shown on our campaign page do NOT include VAT or other taxes. Our intent is to collect applicable taxes such as VAT or GST in advance, during pledge management, and have our carrier pay it at the border during customs clearance. In some countries, though, government policies require taxes to be collected directly from the recipient, so we can't collect it in pledge management. In those cases, any tax or fees that may be due on delivery will be your responsibility. Please be aware of your local taxes and regulations. We cannot refund pledges for rewards returned because the recipient didn't pay their tax/fees due on delivery.

There are three Fifth Edition physical books not listed … Library of Durenmar doesn't include the physical Ars Magica 5th Edition standard core book in softcover, since you're getting the superior Definitive Edition! The digital version IS included. And you can pick up as many physical copies as add-ons that you like, for example to give to your players. It also doesn't include the physical Fallen Fane LARP softcover and Black Monks of Glastonbury 3E D20 softcover. Digital versions ARE included! Black Monks is out of print, and Fallen Fane is nearly sold out, and we didn't want to have to limit the tier by including it. Neither is being reprinted, because Fallen Fane is actually too thin for PoD, and Black Monks' d20 license was revoked. Plus, they're both tangential to the Ars Magica line, since they use alternate rules systems. You can get one of the very few Fallen Fane softcovers we have left in our webstore at https://www.atlas-games.com/product_tables/AG0274 Use the coupon in Backer Update #2. With those exceptions: If the book is available today in print or digital, it's in the Library!

Retailers won't get the option to order add-ons through BackerKit. Just before rewards ship, we’ll contact you to customize your pledge and add any extra products. If you’d like to do it sooner, please contact [email protected] and we'll be happy to get you everything you need at your 50% retailer discount. More details and terms are at https://atlas-games.com/retailer

Normally the answer would be yes. However, this is a premium item with a high manufacturing cost and a big price tag. There is now a serious threat that a tax of 60% to 100% may be applied next year on imports from China, where we expect to print the book, to the United States. If that happens, we do not think that it will be viable to offer the book into the traditional distribution channels. Retailer backers of this campaign will still receive their rewards in any case.

Ars Magica Definitive Edition has literally been YEARS in the making. Over the course of those years, generative AI has emerged and changed, and so have attitudes toward it as we’ve all discovered its capabilities, significant limitations, and its real global impact. Over the same years, the artists we’ve hired have wrestled with generative AI as both a challenge to their livelihood and a potentially useful tool. We made the decision early on in this project to support our human artists. The entire text and vast majority of the art in the book is from pre-AI sources, whether that’s the re-licensed covers from decades of Ars Magica sourcebooks, or actual medieval art in the public domain. For our new art commissions, we spent months working with our artists on the traditional process of wireframes, sketches, feedback, revisions, and approvals (which you’ve seen in our art process backer-only updates), and we paid our artists for their creative work with the biggest art budget of any project we’ve done to date. At the start of this project, we knew that generative AI was potentially of some use in limited ways, but not a substitute for human artistry and creativity. But we also knew professionals and amateurs alike were experimenting with the new tools. Generative AI was increasingly integrated into the software they used, where they couldn’t avoid it. We realized that an outright prohibition likely wouldn’t stop all artists from using it at any point in their process, and might just make some hide the fact. So we wrote a generative AI policy that we added to all our contracts for new commissions, which we hoped gave reasonable guidance on responsible use of generative AI tools. But we made it clear that we were paying for human creativity, not machine output. In the interests of transparency, here’s that specific language: • *We expect that artists will NOT use stock art,* not even textures or minor elements, in commissioned work. This is because stock art is copyrighted material even if you licensed it (via subscription or pay-per-download). Most stock art outlets have licensing restrictions that are incompatible with our commercial use. • Artists who use AI assistive tools to enhance their commissioned work (for example, by using generative fill) must *notify and be given approval by their Producer at Atlas Games in advance, and must submit a record of the AI they utilized.* Your statement should list the tools and prompts you used, and give the output of those tools and prompts at each step (use screenshots). Please sign and date the bottom of your statement. This record will be used as evidence if we ever need to defend our copyright. You can see our biggest concern was about copyright, making sure there was an intellectual property asset that the artist could transfer to us and that we, in turn, could license to others. Remember that we were working out our plans to release Ars Magica under an open license, at that point. Our policy tried to respect the fact that artists themselves asked about using generative AI in the iterative creative process between wireframe and finished piece. We considered that allowing AI tools like generative fill, and very early concept sketches that wouldn’t appear in the final art, gave artists the creative freedom to use the process they preferred in their own art. We agreed that this seemed much like using Photoshop digital filters/effects, augmenting rather than replacing human creativity. Since we wrote those specifications for Ars Magica Definitive Edition art, generative AI has evolved and infiltrated more and more of our lives, often in unwanted ways. Its impact on the economy, the environment, and human well-being is still unfolding. It’s a polarizing topic, for good reason. If we were writing those art specifications today, we might just prohibit the use of AI tools entirely. It would be simpler for our community relations to have a zero tolerance policy, and would make no difference to the project budget and production time. Now, years later, and having watched pieces in the book go from pencil sketches to fully rendered final pieces with hundreds of hours of work invested in them, we’re quite certain of the human creativity that guided their creation, regardless of what digital tools were used along the way. We’re tremendously impressed with the final product, and hope you are too. - John & Michelle Nephew Atlas Games Co-Owners UPDATE: To be certain there are no AI elements in this project, we paused mass production and went over every newly commissioned piece for artifacts. We've also changed our contracts to disallow AI art in future.

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