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The PCs are plane shifting into Elturel blind: They know the city has been sent to Hell, but they have no way of really knowing what the situation on the ground is (so to speak).

Let’s talk about the use of maps in RPGs. Actually, that’s too broad a topic. Let’s talk about the use of city maps in RPGs. Broadly speaking, there are two scenarios: First, you have diegetic maps. Like the map of pre-Fall Elturel that I mentioned the PCs might want to grab in Part 4C, diegetic maps are those actually possessed by the characters. They can be:

• Not represented in the real world. (The map is something your character possesses and references, presumably to some effect, but you, as the player, cannot see it.)
• Given as a prop in the real world which attempts to accurately represent exactly what the map would look like to your character.
• Given as a prop in the real world which is analogous to what your character would see, but not the same thing they’re actually looking at.

In practice, this is more of a spectrum than distinct categories. For example, even Thror’s Map from The Hobbit ultimately makes concessions to the reader by being an English “translation” of the diegetic map:

Second, there are non-diegetic maps. These are maps which the players can see, but not their characters. For example, when I was running Dragon Heist I put a huge map of Waterdeep up on the wall. This didn’t represent a map that the characters were carrying around with them; it was a reference that existed purely in the physical game space (along with a Harptos calendar and a map of Faerûn).

Non-diegetic maps may represent character knowledge (i.e., the map they have in their head). But they can also simply be a concession for easy reference. In much the same manner that handing the players a picture of an NPC can be the quickest way to distinguish them (even though their characters don’t have a pocket portrait of them in hand), so, too, have I found that the most efficient way to conjure up a cross-town trek in the minds of the players is to simply point the laser pointer at the poster map on the wall and trace the route with brief descriptions.

Which, finally, brings us to the poster map of Hellturel included in Descent Into Avernus. When should you give this map to the players?

ARRIVING IN ELTUREL

First, a brief digression. By and large, we are not going to be changing the initial beats of what happens in Elturel:

• The PCs arrive.
• They get a first impression of the city.
• The person who brought them to Avernus (probably Traxigor) panics and abandons them.
• A woman with two toddlers comes running around the corner, pursued by a couple of bearded devils.

But we are going to finesse them a bit.

Let’s start with this chunk of boxed text from the book:

When looking at a BIG MOMENT like this, it can be tempting as a GM to just pile the whole thing up on the players. That can work, but I’ve found that it’s often more effective to break the BIG MOMENT into its distinct parts — each major detail, each revelation, each meaningful moment — and then space them out (even if only a little).

This is partly about pacing, but it’s also about slowly building up a mental image for the players over time. By layering in additional details sequentially over time, in my experience, it’s easier for the players to really immerse into the environment. You get more buy-in.

I’ve been doing this long enough that I kind of do this instinctively. But in breaking down the arrival in Elturel, I identified these moments:

• Arriving in the street. Hot air. Crumbling buildings. The sky of Hell and the transformed Companion above you.
• Traxigor is nervous.
• Spotting the High Hall on a distant bluff.
• Huge clouds of smoke to the east; the city is on fire.
• DEVILS!
• Traxigor panics and flees.
• The first earthquake.
• WE ARE FLOATING IN THE GODDAMN AIR!

(That last beat probably happens much later. We’ll come back to it.)

Note that there’s nothing sacred about this sequence. For example, you could easily rearrange and remix the middle beats:

• Spotting the High Hall on a distant bluff.
• DISTANT EXPLOSION! to the east. There’s huge clouds of smoke. The city is on fire. Traxigor panics and flees.
• DEVILS!

And in actual play the players could easily shift these things around. For example, if they immediately look up into the sky and try to get their bearings you can immediately mention them seeing the High Hall and the huge clouds of smoke to the east before mentioning Traxigor getting nervous or triggering the distant explosion. The basic idea, in fact, is to give the players at least a couple of beats to react to what’s happening.

This might be even clearer if we look at the next block of boxed text (which actually happens in the middle of this sequence):

Although all glommed up as one moment here, imagine it lightly restructured as:

• You hear a scream from around the corner.
• [Players have a chance to quickly declare one thing they do in response.]
• A woman with two toddlers runs around the corner.
• [Players have another chance to quickly declare their response to this. Maybe the woman can shout out something to them in response.]
• Devils come around the corner.
• [Ask the players to roll for initiative.]
• Traxigor panics and flees.

I think you can see how this draws the players into the scene: By the time the devils actually show up, they’re already involved and invested in the actions that are playing out.

Here’s the key thing: When the PCs arrive in Elturel they are confused, disoriented, and need to get their bearings. Traxigor abandoning them should escalate that feeling, isolating and trapping them. They should feel simultaneously claustrophobic and overwhelmed by the vast unknown which surrounds them.

The take-away here is that simply whipping out the Hellturel map as soon as they arrive would cause most or all of these distinct moments to collapse into each other, simultaneously undercutting the emotional tension of the situation.

GETTING THEIR BEARINGS

So when should they get the Hellturel map?

First, this is obviously a non-diegetic map. (Nobody is doing cartographical surveys in the middle of the apocalypse.) Second, we’ve framed the PCs into a situation where they’re effectively lost and need to get their bearings. So the real question is: What is the meaning of the map? And the meaning of the map is that the PCs have gotten their bearings.

So when the PCs have gotten their bearings, you should give the players the map.

How can they do that? Well, I can think of a few options (and your players might come up with something else):

• They could seek out a tall building and climb to its top, allowing them to look out over the city.
• They could use magic to similar effect (a clairvoyance spell, for example).
• They could question NPCs in Elturel. (The initial woman they run into is clueless about the wider state of the city, but others might be well-informed enough to give them a briefing on the current situation.)
• They could use their diegetic map of Elturel (if they have one) to attempt to figure out where they are in the city.

What constitutes enough knowledge for them to be considered to have gotten their bearings? Well, it probably depends on their approach. On the one hand, we want to look at the type of information the map is giving them: Have they gotten that information in-character? On the other hand, while the map does contain information on every single block in the city, it’s overkill to withhold the map until they’ve somehow gained that block-by-block knowledge.

What I would do is look at the key revelation: Remember how “WE ARE FLOATING IN THE GODDAMNED AIR!” was the final moment we identified above? Well, the map is going to reveal that. So we want to make sure that the characters have experienced that moment before revealing the map. (And that could happen by them climbing a building and seeing out over the edge of the city, being told the situation by an NPC, etc.) That moment might be simultaneous with them getting their bearings, or it might happen before they get their bearings (so they don’t get the map until later) depending on how it plays out.

Go to Part 5B-B: Streetcrawl in Elturel

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As both a writer and a GM, I often use the Random Name Generator at Behind the Name. In the case of Descent Into Avernus, I began hitting the generator hard in Part 3 of the Remix when I needed names for murder victims. The generator ended up randomly giving me a couple of Limburgish names, and after diving into that a little bit I thought it would be a fun way to give the Elturians a distinct flavor.

Having done this, of course, I realized I would need to stick with it. And that would notably include improvising names for incidental NPCs in both the refugee camps outside Baldur’s Gate and in Elturel itself.

Which, of course, brings us to this addendum of Elturian names (which is somewhat idiosyncratic and not purely Limburgish). A full list of male, female, and last names appears on the next page for convenient printing and reference at the game table.

You might also check out my ol’ trusty list of fantasy names, Infinity: A List of Names, and The Names of Legend for other discussions of names (improvised and otherwise) in RPGs.

ELTURIAN NAMES

Go to the Avernus Remix

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Before the PCs arrive in Elturel, we need to talk about the current state of the city, because there are some basic issues that should be addressed.

First, the city is broadly described as if the Fall of Elturel just happened. There’s one reference to a family’s supplies running out (although not how many supplies they had to start with), but other than that pretty much everything in Chapter 2 is described as if the city were still in the earliest hours and confusion of the crisis.

Except this isn’t true: It would take at least ten days for the first refugees to reach Baldur’s Gate. Even if we assume the gates were immediately closed (although that’s an iffy reading of the text), the PCs still need at least a couple of days to investigate the murders. Then it’s four days to Candlekeep. So Elturel was actually taken at least 15-20 days ago by the time the PCs show up.

On the flip side, when the PCs are done in Elturel they’re going to head out on a quest to find the Sword of Zariel. As they leave, they must suspect that they will be gone for at least days. In point of fact, it’s likely that they will be gone for weeks before they can return to save the city.

The problem is that nothing about the current situation in Elturel makes it seem plausible that there will be anything worth saving by the time the PCs get back: Demons and devils are freely roaming the streets of the city, more or less systematically slaughtering people in their homes. There’s no organized resistance and no reasonable expectation that there’s going to be one. (Ravengard supposedly “organized a defense,” but has actually just spent 2+ weeks cowering in a basement and now his meager retinue of guards has been wiped out.)

This creates a situation where the PCs need to do X in order to save the city, but have no reasonable expectation that they can actually achieve X in time to save the city. The result is not a sense of urgency, but rather a conclusion that the plan can’t work. A plan that doesn’t work, of course, will be discarded, and the PCs will end up looking for a different solution: They might stay in Elturel and try to spearhead a defense themselves. Or they might abandon the entire idea of “saving the city” and look for other alternatives, like simply escaping themselves or organizing some kind of inter-planar evacuation for as many people as possible.

Of course, you could use an NPC to say, “I promise you, as the Dungeon Master, that you’re supposed to go on this quest and I guarantee that the city will not fall and a bunch of people won’t be slaughtered in a devilish genocide while you’re gone.”

The result, however, still won’t be urgency: The players will probably go and do the thing, but Elturel will lose any sense of reality for them and the “crisis” will lose all meaning. Like a video game where the world remains frozen in a state of status quo until you hit the button labeled Next Plot Point, the world will be reduced to two-dimensional cardboard cut-outs.

So what we need are two things:

1. A clear understanding of what’s been happening in the city in the fortnight since it was sent to Hell, and what the current situation is when the PCs arrive.
2. Some form of status quo in which the city seems secure enough that the PCs can leave, do their quest, and have a reasonable expectation that there’ll still be a city to save when they come back.

However, we don’t want the status quo to feel too safe. The city is in Hell and being dragged to its destruction in the River Styx. There’s a very fine line that needs to be walked here between the PCs feeling that Elturel will still exist if they can hurry up and save it and the PCs feeling like there’s nothing to worry about.

For similar reasons, although we can easily imagine a scenario in which the status quo has already been firmly established by the time the PCs arrive (most likely some variant of Ravengard actually securing the city), that’s probably also the wrong direction to go: The PCs are walking into Hell. We want them to feel that; not enjoy some weird Pax Elturian.

WHERE ARE THE LEADERS? In the adventure as written, the highest surviving authority of Elturgard is supposedly a lone acolyte named Pherria Jynks. Descent Into Avernus tries to explain this with a meteor that fell out of the sky and destroyed most of the High Hall.

But that still doesn’t make a lot of sense, does it? Even in a Designated Survivor situation where the “entire” government is in a meeting that explodes, you still have the vast majority of the military and civilian infrastructure and chain of command intact. You don’t end up in a situation where the entire government is just one DMV clerk.

WHERE ARE THE DEVILS? Descent Into Avernus tries to explain why the legions of Avernus haven’t overrun the city already with the Battle of Elturel. At the very moment that Elturel popped in, a huge army of demons crossed the Styx and attacked the assembled legions. A huge battle broke out.

The battle has continued, without change, for 15-20 days.

It will continue, without any change, for the next several weeks.

Despite this, the battle is incredibly isolated: No reinforcements are arriving. No one in the area even seems to be aware of it.

In short, the Battle of Elturel is a valiant effort to explain why Elturel remains largely unmolested, but it actually contributes greatly to the sense that Elturel can’t possibly survive long enough for the PCs to save it. Yes, we know that the battle is just a permanent, unchanging video game instance with the same actions playing on an endless loop, but if you accept the situation at face value, then it would seem as if the battle would certainly conclude shortly and the city would be overrun.

THE PHYSICAL & METAPHYSICAL

The Companion now hangs low and large in the sky, basically on a level with the High Hall. It emits a strange, purplish-black light that mixes kaleidoscopically with the reddish light of Hell itself. Thunder from the lightning crackling across its surface intermittently cascades across the city.

Elturel is floating in the sky above the Avernian plains, connected to the Dock of Fallen Cities by huge chains.

THE CHAINS: The chains obviously have a physical reality, but they are also a metaphysical construct. They both represent the corruption of the city and are operant upon it. They are not just physically dragging Elturel down into Hell, they are also dragging down the souls of everyone in the city.

This is possible due to the influence of the Companion and the Writ of the Pact. To be clear, this process doesn’t mind control the people in the city or somehow make them evil. It’s subtler than that; a contamination of the city’s collective souls with something akin to original sin. Conversely the city remains afloat because the souls of the city are fighting against this taint.

As described in “The Metaphysics of Elturel’s Fall” (Part 4B), the final stroke comes when the city completes its descent into both sin and the Styx: The population drowns not only in the waters of the river, but in their own sin at the very moment that their minds are wiped clean and the Pact completes.

DOCK OF FALLEN CITIES: Elturel is not the first city to suffer this fate. It is actually tethered to an ancient facility known as the Dock of Fallen Cities. The chains are connected to huge pillars that rise out of the Avernian plains. Between and around these pillars are the overlapping layers of countless cities which have been pulled down and drowned in the Styx. The river still floods their broken and forgotten streets.

These cities are most likely drawn from across the multiverse, so when the PCs pick their way through the ruins you should feel empowered to get romantic with your descriptions of the melancholic, cyclopean ruins. They are most likely haunted by strange will o’ wisps, which are perhaps related to the Many Colours Out of Space that are here the spiritual detritus left behind by a dozen dead civilizations.

WHERE ARE THE DEVILS? The Dock of Fallen Cities here takes the place of the Battle of Elturel: There was no demonic invasion. There is no endless, looping confrontation.

So why hasn’t Zariel sent her legions into Elturel to pacify the city?

Largely because she doesn’t need to. With a few key exceptions (described below), killing the population before they can drown in the Styx is actually contradictory to her goals. There are some devils stationed around the pillars to make sure no one messes with the chains (not that there’s actually anything the PCs or anyone else in Elturel can do to the chains without a lot of help, see Part 6), but they honestly don’t care if a few people manage to “escape” the city.

HOSTILES

Even though Zariel isn’t motivated to stage an invasion of a city she’s already conquered, that doesn’t mean that the city is in any way safe.

ZARIEL CULTISTS: Zarielites from across Faerun had learned what was coming and made the city a sort of pilgrimage site in the final days before its Fall. (They knew it was going to Hell and they hitched a ride.)

Once they arrived in Hell, groups of these jubilant cultists emerged onto the streets in a millenarian orgy of sin and destruction. Many have indiscriminately pillaged and burned. Others have set up little gangland fiefs of oppression and misery. Regardless, they all know the party ends when the city hits the Styx, and they’re mostly okay with that (believing that in the moment of the Pact’s completion they will be exalted as powerful devils).

In addition, while many members of the Cult of the Companion (see Part 3B and Part 4B) fled the city before its Fall (much like Thavius Kreeg), others remained. Many of those became Hell Knights (see below), but others remain as a sort of fifth column. (Adding such a fifth columnist to the refugees in the High Hall is an obvious choice.)

Devil cultists have the shadows of devils here. Those in the former group tend to delight in this; those in the fifth column will obviously take efforts to hide it.

HELL KNIGHTS: Before the Fall, the High Knights were the upper echelons of the Elturian government. The term originally applied to those who could lead (or had led) a grand expedition of the Hellriders, including the High Rider and the High Watcher of Helm’s Shieldhall. The use of the title formalized and then expanded over time until essentially every senior member of the government was a High Knight (along with a fair number of lower positions as well).

By the time Thavius Kreeg became High Observer, many of the High Knights were already Zarielites, and Kreeg made sure that most of the remaining High Knights were also replaced by cultists.  By the time of the Fall, the High Knights were largely synonymous with the inner circle of the cult. These cultists had sworn special oaths above and beyond the Creed Resolute, and as Elturel was pulled into Hell they immediately transformed into devils, becoming Hell Knights.

These Hell Knights had two immediate goals: First, they began slaughtering the other knights under their command. As noted previously, any Elturian knights who had sworn the Creed Resolute and were killed after Elturel was sent to Hell had their souls immediately claimed by the Pact. Here in Hell itself, this meant that any knight killed was immediately transformed into another Hell Knight.

Second, as their ranks swelled with devils, the Hell Knights targeted wizards, clerics, and other high-level or important characters who might pose a threat. Most of their targets were eliminated within the first few hours of chaos, and the Hell Knights continue hunting for those who escaped the initial purge.

(You can use any devil stats for a Hell Knight, with specific recommendations being given in Part 7G. They generally still wear the armor of their former orders.)

DEVIL RAIDERS & DEMON INVADERS: Although Zariel is not sending in her legions, Elturel is not free from devils. Small groups of devil raiders from the Avernian plains have snuck into the city to loot and rend what they can before the city’s final destruction. (Would you sell your soul to escape Hell? They can offer that, too.)

In addition, a lieutenant of Yeenoghu named Liashandra has led a platoon of demonic troops into the floating city. They’re perhaps the most immediately dangerous to the common people of the city, reveling in wanton destruction as is their demonic wont. However, Liashandra’s primary mission is to sabotage the Fall of Elturel if she can and prevent Zariel from recruiting the entire city into the ranks of her legions.

This means that all of these hostile factions (Zarielites, devil raiders, and the demonic incursion) are as likely to be fighting each other as anyone else. Liashandra might also be an unexpected ally in saving the city.

THE VAMPIRE LORD: When the Companion first appeared in the sky above Elturel, the vampire lord High Rider Ikaia was not destroyed. He fled into the vast cavernworks beneath the city and lurked there for decades. Now the Companion is gone and the High Rider has emerged.

He does not, however, command a slavering horde of vampires. He and a select few “sons and daughters” are actually a bastion in the northeast of the city: Elturgard maintained vast storehouses in the caverns beneath the city, with supplies that could support hundreds of thousands of people for months if the surrounding farmlands had to be evacuated into the city and a heavy siege were laid. Ikaia has secured some of these storehouses that were scooped up along with the rest of the city and is now distributing them to people in need (see Part 5C).

A STABLE ELTUREL

Last but not least, what needs to happen for the situation in Elturel to feel stable enough that the PCs will feel comfortable leaving?

Well, to some extent I think we’ve tweaked things enough so that the city still feels like a warzone without feeling like such a genocidal horror that the PCs would reasonably expect everyone to be dead within a week. So it’s possible that you’ll just glide past this point without the PCs thinking about it.

Failing that, there’s also the clear cosmological deadline of the city being drawn down into the Styx. Yes, you could help here, but it’s all meaningless unless someone can get the sword and save the day!

But it’s quite possible that the players will still feel it necessary to help stabilize the situation in Elturel. Or maybe you’re just interested in exploring that idea.

Unless you want to radically expand this section of the campaign, what you’ll want is a Grand Gesture That Turns the Tide; i.e., one big thing that the PCs can do (or help do) that can be framed as essentially putting things on the right track. Possibilities might include:

• Joining the east and west sides of the city. This might be leading attacks on the bridges, clearing them of demon infestation, and helping Ravengard set up garrisons there.
• Forging alliances between the surviving enclaves. This would send the PCs around the city essentially as ambassadors.
• Securing the supplies necessary for survival. Ravengard, for example, might know that somebody on the east side of the city has a cache of supplies. When the PCs investigate, they find High Rider Ikaia. They might negotiate with him for access to the supplies; or they might track Ikaia’s people back to the cache they’ve secured and then clear them out.
• Some sort of mass combat (most likely with Ravengard and his men). That might be leading a siege on Helm’s Shieldhall and shattering the stronghold of the Hell Knights. Or returning to the cemetery and cleaning it out.

I’d recommend following the players’ lead here: They’re unlikely to just say, “We need to secure the city… but how?!” Rather, they’ll have some specific problem that they’re looking to solve (the population is starving, Ravengard doesn’t have enough soldiers, etc.). They might even have a plan. You just need to make sure to give them the opportunity to carry out that plan and then frame the outcome as the city turning a corner in its struggle for survival. “This has made all the difference. Now go get that sword!” says Ravengard (or whoever).

If you DO want to radically expand this section of the campaign, then you’ll want to provide a structure for the PCs’ efforts. This will most likely consist of specific needs that the city has and flexible options for how those needs can be achieved. Off the top of my head:

• Food & Water. Seizing or gaining access to Ikaia’s storehouse. Finding alternative storehouses. A magical fountain. Organizing rationing.
• Security. Eliminating specific threats. Forming alliances. Restoring one of the demonseals which once protected the major citadels of the city by scavenging components from each.
• Shelter. Forming neighborhood patrols. Securing citadels which can house refugees in safety away from the demon-infested streets.

Once again, be flexible in responding to and empowering ideas the PCs come up with to fulfill these needs. I would go so far as to track these needs with specific gauges; i.e., put hard numbers on this and let the PCs’ schemes score points towards filling those gauges. (And, conversely, allow enemy factions to damage the gauges.)

THE RETURN TO ELTUREL

Later in the campaign, the PCs will return to Elturel. What do they find when they come back? How has the situation developed?

To a large degree, the answer to this should be extremely idiosyncratic and heavily based on what the PCs did: The version of Elturel where the city ended up divided between Ravengard in the west and Ikaia in the east is very different than one where the PCs managed to form a Council of the Resistance which included Liashandra as a prominent member.

If we’re talking about a baseline situation where the PCs did very little to shift the status quo in Elturel, then here’s what I’d suggest:

• High Rider Ikaia has secured the eastern side of the town. Citizens have volunteered to become vampires in order to have the strength to defend themselves and their fellow citizens, and these Vampire Riders run regular patrols and control the bridges.
• Things are much worse in the west. The Hell Knights have mustered their forces and laid siege to Ravengard in the High Hall.

Go to Part 5B-A: Arrival in Hellturel

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Jonathan Tweet and Mark Rein-Hagen first published Ars Magica in 1987. It was a revolutionary game, including:

• A system of spontaneous magic (allowing you to cast any spell you could imagine at any time).
• Troupe-style play, in which players took on the roles of many different characters (and could even swap GMing responsibilities) in the course of a single campaign.
• Long-term play, in which the group created a covenant of wizards and developed not only their individual characters, but the covenant as a whole.

The 5th Edition, revised by David Chart, was released in 2004 by Atlas Games. When David took over the Ars Magica line he proposed a series of 40 supplements. He then released them like clockwork, one every three months for 10 years, until all 40 books were released. The result is arguably the single most complete and deliberately comprehensive RPG product line to ever exist.

Part of my job at the current RPG Producer at Atlas is to figure out what’s next for Ars Magica. When I got the job I ironically noted that I had played all of Atlas’ current RPGs, but none of the current editions. (This was also true for Ars Magica, which I’d been introduced to via 3rd Edition in the ’90s and did some brief dabbling with 4th Edition around 2001 or 2002.) I’ve spent much of the last year familiarizing myself with these games one by one (and also diving deep into everything we’ve published for them) and the time has come for me to run a full-fleged 5th Edition campaign.

To that end, I’ve developed one of my system cheat sheets for Ars Magica 5th Edition.

WHAT’S NOT INCLUDED

These cheat sheets are not designed to be a quick start packet: They’re designed to be a comprehensive reference for someone who has read the rulebook and will probably prove woefully inadequate if you try to learn the game from them. (On the other hand, they can definitely assist experienced players who are teaching the game to new players.)

The cheat sheets also don’t include what I refer to as “character option chunks” (for reasons discussed here). In other words, you won’t find the rules for character creation here.

HOW I USE THEM

I usually keep a copy of the system cheat sheet behind my GM screen for quick reference and also provide copies for all of the players. Of course, we’ll also keep a copy of the rulebook at the table, too. In the case of Ars Magica, I’ve found it even more advantageous than usual to have a copy of the book for EVERY player:

• Character creation features a lot of detailed decisions from rich lists of evocative options. You’ll find that the whole process can be finished in literally a fraction of the time if access to the rulebook isn’t a chokepoint.
• Play in Ars Magica will intermittently see the players break apart into essentially simultaneous solo play (particularly during season-based play), during which access to various elements of the rulebook is frequently useful. Once again, removing this chokepoint speeds things up tremendously.
• The spontaneous magic which is the crown jewel of the game is greatly facilitated by having easy access to the Technique & Form guidelines on pages 116-161. (I’m looking at potentially prepping these as a separate quick reference packet.

Another way of understanding this is that Ars Magica is a game intensely interested in the “character option chunks” — not just during character creation at the beginning of the game, but throughout the entire campaign. Even character advancement is usually not a bit of bookkeeping separate from play, but rather an organic part of the character’s lives. As such, while these cheat sheets will, like my other cheat sheets, speed things up by serving as a comprehensive system reference and cutting down the amount of time required for many rulebook references, I’ve generally found that there many aspects of play unique to Ars Magica (compared to most other RPGs) that will still benefit from easy, frequent access to the rulebook.

The organization of information onto each page of the cheat sheet is designed to be fairly intuitive. The actual sequencing of the pages is mostly arbitrary (although topics are obviously grouped together if they require multiple pages):

PAGE 1: Core mechanics.

PAGE 2: The Botch Table. Kind of weird for this to just be hanging out on a page all by itself, but I haven’t found a better place for it. You can probably also skip this page if you’d like.

PAGE 3: Less fundamental core mechanics.

PAGE 4-8: Hermetic magic. All basic Casting rules on page 4; all the rules for Magic Resistance on page 5; additional rules on pages 6-7. Page 8 has the rules for designing spells.

PAGE 9: Warping & Twilight.

PAGE 10-12: Laboratory. Basics on Page 10, Projects on Page 11, and Enchanted Items on Page 12.

PAGE 13-16: Texts & Books, Familiars & Apprentices, Advancement, Aging.

PAGE 17-19: Combat, Advanced Combat, and Fatigue & Wounds. This includes non-combat damage.

PAGE 20: Realms & Creatures. These two topics are only lightly associated with each other, but they both fit on the same page to round things out.

This cheat sheet includes the Ars Magica 4th Edition rules for movement, filling in what I consider to be a fairly essential bit of utility that got dropped from 5th Edition. These rules are indicated in blue text.

This proved to be the largest cheat sheet I’ve done to date, which I actually found quite surprising. The 5th Edition rulebook is generally so well-organized and clearly presented that reading it and using it belies how much detail is actually packed into the game. You can get some sense of that from the cheat sheets themselves, which — despite their bulk at 20 pages — nevertheless break down comfortably into very clean modules.

MAKING A GM SCREEN

These cheat sheets can also be used in conjunction with a modular, landscape-oriented GM screen (like the ones you can buy here or here).

Personally, I use a four-panel screen and use reverse-duplex printing in order to create sheets that I can tape together and “flip up” to reveal additional information behind them.

Due to the bulk of the Ars Magica cheat sheet, though, even this technique (which puts 12 pages of data at your fingertips) is insufficient. You’ll either want to create an additional “flip layer” (so you have a front sheet; can flip that up to reveal two more; and can then flip up the next sheet to reveal two more) or make some editorial choices. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, I haven’t had a chance to actually experiment with this in actual play.

As a newbie 5th Edition GM, my gut instinct is to prioritize:

• Page 1: Core Mechanics / Page 20: Fatigue & Wounds / Page 4: More Core Mechanics
• Page 4: Hermetic Magic – Casting / Page 5: Magic Resistance / Page 6: Hermetic Magic – Casting Options
• Page 8: Hermetic Magic – Designing Spells / Page 18: Combat / Page 19: Combat – Advanced
• Page 11 – Laboratory / Page 12: Laboratory – Projects / Page 13: Laboratory Enchanted Items

If I was going with just four panels:

• Page 1: Core Mechanics
• Page 18: Combat
• Page 4: Hermetic Magic – Casting
• Page 6: Hermetic Magic – Casting Options

But, as I say, these are currently just best guesses. And your mileage would probably vary in any case.

FUTURE THOUGHTS

Moreso than most, this cheat sheet is still a work in progress. You may notice that the sheets are a little more “loosely packed” than similar sheets I’ve done in the past. This is partly in anticipation of laying in additional material from the previously mentioned voluminous library of supplements. Not all of the mechanics to be found therein (that way lies madness), but key stuff that jumps out. (For example, you’ll already find a reference to the laboratory personalization rules from the Covenants supplement. I’m probably going to actually move those onto the sheets in some capacity.) This is likely to be at least somewhat idiosyncratic and a reaction to the immediate needs of the Rhine Tribunal campaign I’m currently running, but I think there’s decent odds you’ll see an “advanced” version of this sheet popping up here at the Alexandrian in the future.

If you’re still on the fence about trying Ars Magica, the 4th Edition of the game is currently available as a free PDF. Although obviously different from 5th Edition in a number of ways, the game is fundamentally unchanged and this can give you a pretty good sampler of whether or not it would be something you’d be interested in.

Nick LS Whelan has this really cool site where he reads RPG-related blog posts. They’re great whether you need accessible content or are just looking to load up some podcast-like audio for your commute.

Nick has posted readings of a couple different posts from the Alexandrian:

Blogs on Tape – Episode 74: The Day the Old School Died

Blogs on Tape – Episode 79: Spells – Parasites of the Mind

The first looks at the weird urban legends surrounding the publication of The Palace of the Silver Princess in 1983. The latter is an alternative look at what it means to prepare a spell.

You can find the original articles here and here if you’d rather just read them.