Story Ideas

recurring problem for Storyguides (those of us who are human, at least) is how to find an idea for the next story. While you should not overlook you own imagination as an asset, there are also some story ideas you can find on the net. I've collected a few ideas and pointers on this page.

Additions are of course always welcome. You can mail story ideas to me, and I'll add them to this page. But you might first consider uploading them to the Ars Magica Archive.

Ideas Elsewhere

Here are some links to story ideas on the net.

Ars Magica: Adventures from the Mailing List

Peter Hill's website hosts a nice adventure collection.

Net.plots.book

A collection of plots, some game-specific, some not. A lot of the material is not suitable for Mythic Europe, but there is some quite useful stuff too.

Story Generator

Flat Earth Games hosts this simple but useful story idea generator.

Out of Ideas -Help

Some adventure ideas in Finnish.

Adventures at the Ars Magica Archive

The Ars Magica Archive ftp site contains some adventures.

Project Redcap (mirror)

Project Redcap is a cross-linking page for Ars Magica information. Among other things, it contains links to a host of pages dedicated to player covenants. These pages often contain descriptions of sagas and other resources, which can be mined for story ideas. A nice example is Lydia Leong's archive of past campaigns.

Local Ideas

Here are some local texts, from mails and the like.

Anders Kjellman:

Try running a campaign, or a few stories at least, based upon some well-known folk tale or myth. I brought my entire Covenant on a world-spanning expedition to search for the seven Wonders of the Classical world, where great and powerful treasures and artefacts had been hidden before the fall of the Roman Empire. Of course, these treasures were all guarded by natural as well as unnatural dangers, ranging from traps to demons to natural hazards such as lava flows. This campaign lasted more or less two years but it is not necessary to expand so very much as my Troupe and I did. The choice, as always, is yours..

If this does not appeal to you, you might want to try basing a story upon your favourite computer or console game. I have successfully done this with "Quake" (Yes - in Ars Magica !!) and it worked out to be one of the coolest campaigns I have ever seen. I am currently in the process of turning "Tomb Raider" into a series of stories for my Troupe..

Saving the best for last, have you considered an expedition to the undiscovered lands out west ? Both North and South America open up some great gaming possibilities - for example: dinosaurs might have survived on the North American continent after the great division. Or the Gods of the Mayan are preparing an all out conquest of Mythic Europe and your Troupe are the only Europeans who knows about this - let alone the fact that there IS an undiscovered continent to the west Just imagine the implications this would have on the historians, the Church and... basically everything in the world...

Geoffrey C. Grabowski:

The Magi, or whoever, find a band of outlaws lurking in the (big dark woods / cold mountain pass / sewers of paris) and approach (one / several / all) of them posing as a (biblical / mythological / pagan) figure. They say, "you are (my/our) (chosen man/ prophet / hero), take this (magic sword/ bow/ armor / banner/ we're too cheap to give our flunkies items) and (protect the forest / rob people and give the money to us / go get stuff) and you will (be amply rewarded / find a seat in heaven / get all the babes)." Tah-dah, you have a new Turb and anonymity. The story ideas are obvious, I think, in any area where mundane politcs leaks over into the Hermetic world, or where you just have people willing to be fooled. Not that fooling people is hard, with Disguise of the Transformed Visage, Aura of Ennobled Presence, Aura of Rightful Authority or your choice of other incredibly impressive spells.

Other neat story ideas:

• A magus from Provencal infatuated with the ideals of chivalry these bards are talking about rides on a Quest to do (something).
• The characters stumble onto a strange subculture of the Order, wehre hermetic and non-hermetic magicians mingle.
• Someone tries to convince people to sail to Hy Breasil.
• The covnenant is approached by a singularly unpleasant older magus who wants them to do something disgusting in return for huge sums. Originally, this was a necromancer who approached a Covennat asking for the eyes of murdered men and hands of glory from the local gibbet. It was clearly an Offer they Could Not Refuse.
• Someone close to the Covenant is taken in by a mircle worker / fraudulent magician.
• The Covenant catches fire.
• A bad winter drives the gryphons out of the mountains.
• A new vis source is discovered.
• One of the character's Pate / Mater dies and wills them something. Their fellow apprentices are resentful, escapades ensue.
• A band of Unseelie knights ride across the Covenant's lands.
• An old Magus who had ought to know better finds his Vivien.
• A elemental starts roaming around.
• Someone approaches the characters describing this wonderful thing they saw that is clearly one of Verditius lesser creations.
• One of the Magi needs to go find something strange to finish a project.
• A redcap is brutally murdered and the Characters must visit the vengance of the Order on his slayer. It turns out the Redcap was a dick and his slayer had a really good reason. Have the characters any morals?
• Plague, pick one...
• Berserker Celts on a suicide run!
• One of the characters finds a familiar.
• The local city offers the Magi some sort of reward for some civil engineering.
• "I didn't kill my wife, it was the evil old wizards that took 'er!"
• Someone falls madly in love with one of the Magi.
• The Magi come across The Thalarion, a huge codex translated from Persian into Greek before the founding and rediscovered, then later banned by the Quaesitori. Said to hold the keys to the kingdoms of the living and the dead, and to drive mad all who read it.
• A *very* foolish diabolist, perhaps a theurgist cleric, summons something really nasty that eats him and gets away. Play hide and seek in a major city / deep woods / trackless tundra with a truly nasty devil. Better if you use a non-Maleficum non-conspiratorial non-Dantean Hell.
• A thief steals something really valuable.
• Someone's Pater / Mater requests their aid.