Fan Community
Ars Magica enjoys a very active, productive fan community. There is a great deal of unofficial Ars Magica material on the Web, and there are active online fora where fans discuss the game.
Game Conventions
Ars Magica players organize Conventions where they gather to discuss, play, and enjoy the game.
Note: we should create a Conventions page. It could contain information about past conventions as well as upcoming ones; for instance, photos and stories from people who attended.
Come to a convention and meet other Ars Magica players! Ars Magica fans have been organizing conventions since 2007. Upcoming conventions are:
- Grand Tribunal 2010: The Ars Magica convention will be held in Take Tahoe, California, USA on August 20-22, 2010. Register before June 1 to avoid a extra fee.
Online Play
Please list any play-by-post or play-by-e-mail games open to new players.
- Play-by-post at the Atlas Games Forums: http://www.atlas-games.com/forum/
- Not exactly Ars Magica, but using Ars Magica concepts, is the Tempora Heroica MUD
Finding Players (for tabletop games, as opposed to online)
- Ars Magica Player Finder: http://arsmagicafinder.atspace.com/index.html
Online Discussion Fora
- Mailing Lists
- The official Ars Magica discussion board: http://www.atlas-games.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=4
- ICQ
Fan-Created Material
- Fanzines are fan-created periodicals about Ars Magica
- Mythic Europe, the Ars Magica Wiki: http://arsmagica.wikia.com/wiki/Ars_Magica_Wiki
- Sanctum Hermeticum Revisited is a collection of articles and materials: http://www.geocities.com/sanctumhr
- Durenmar is another online collection (last updated 2005): http://www.durenmar.de/
- The Net Wizards' Grimoire http://arsmagica.pbwiki.com/ is an archive of fan-created spells.
- Projekt: Ars-Magica.net http://www.ars-magica.net/index.php?id=29&L=1 is a bilingual (English/German) community site
And there are also many Web pages devoted to individual Sagas
Size of the Fan Community
There are no hard statistics on the actual number of active Ars Magica players, but John Nephew did post the following on the Atlas Games forum in response to a fan's question:
Well, as a privately held corporation, we don't as a matter of general practice share detailed sales or financial information with the public.
In terms of supplements, I'm comfortable saying that we have typically printed 1,000 to 1,500 of each Ars Magica 5th Edition supplement on its first printing. Numerous supplements have needed to be reprinted.
The core rulebook needs to be printed in larger quantities, both because of higher demand and also to make its 2-color interior printing affordable. Today we are down to the very last case of the second printing, and the third printing is due to arrive from the printer in the middle of this week, avoiding any out-of-stock time between printings.
I hope this is enough to satisfy your curiosity. :-)
“--John Nephew, 16 March 2009”
Idiosyncrasies of the Fan Community
The Ars Magica fan community was historically centered on the Berk List, which has developed its own special Jargon and even a geeky notation called the ArM Code.
Since the launch of ArM5, the Atlas Games forum has developed into a distinct, but overlapping, community in its own right. Due to the number of people who participate in both discussion groups, much of the jargon has migrated over to {enrich, corrupt} the newer forum.