Mailing lists

The following are public mailing lists related to Ars Magica.

The Berkeley List

The Ars Magica Mailing List hosted at University of California Berkeley, also known as the Berk List, BerkList, or BerserkList (due to the vigor of the discussions that characterized it c. 1995-2004), was formerly the main discussion forum for the Ars Magica community. It is no longer active, and has been largely supplanted by the official forum and social media such as the Ars Magica discord server. Its primary language is English.

In the 1990s, UC Berkeley was home to one of the largest and most active enclaves of the Ars Magica fan community. The mailing list was set up by Dave Martin at UC Davis in 1988, and moved to UC Berkeley after his graduation, first to the Open Computing Facility (OCF) then to the Computer Science Undergraduate Association (CSUA). It attracted Ars Magica fans from around the world from the start. Today, UC Berkeley continues to operate and administer the list even very remaining few list members are directly affiliated with the university as students, staff, or alumni.

See also the articles on the mail list's Jargon (much of which has been adopted by the broader online fan community), and the geeky block of ArM Code used by many of its members.

The Berkeley List in the 1990's

This was the heyday of the Berkeley List when dozens of messages were posted per day about Ars Magica. This was also a time when the flame wars took place on the list due to the nature of mailing lists not being monitored.

The Berkeley List in the 2010's

In its heydey, before the official forum was set up, the Berk List saw dozens of messages per day about all kinds of Ars Magica topics: rules discussions, collaborative design of new spells and enchanted items, discussion of products as they were released, character concepts, and story seeds or even complete stories.

In 2016 the Berk List saw considerably less traffic but still covers the same sorts of topics. There were 365 members as of November 5, 2016. The Berk List remains an important way for Ars Magica fans to stay in touch with the community -- especially fans who lack the time to keep up with the daily discussion on the official forum.

The Berk List was once a good way to keep the extended community informed of events such as conventions, fanzine releases, and upcoming products related to Mythic Europe. General discussion of Ars Magica -- rules, stories, funny things that happened in your game -- is also very welcome. However, as of 2021, the Berk List has entered Wizard's Twilight

The Berkeley List in the 2020's

The Berk List no longer active and primary ArM discussions take place on the official forum. One could say that it's in its Winter Season.

Berkeley List Policies

The mailing list is for the discussion of Ars Magica and related subjects. It is not a suitable forum for commercial advertising (unless you publish Ars Magica material), or for unending flame wars. Otherwise, almost anything related to the game is on topic: rules, background, medieval history, alternate rules, alternate background (although if you have alternate rules and alternate background, people might wonder whether you are still playing Ars Magica), upcoming supplements, the quality of the binding of supplements, etc. The best advice is to lurk (read the list without posting anything) for a while, to see what sort of thing is discussed.

Please do not post attachments (binary files especially): text files can be included in the body of the email. Also, if your email program is attaching things automatically (rich text, HTML, whatever), please find out how to turn it off, and do so. Note that if other people on the list tell you that you are posting attachments, you probably are: your program will be able to handle its own attachments, so they may not be visible to you.

Subscribing to the Berkeley List

As of 2021, the following instructions are no longer valid since the Berkeley list has entered Wizard's Twilight:

To subscribe or unsubscribe via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to ars-magica-request@lists.CSUA.Berkeley.EDU

Additional ways to interact with the archives of the Berk List, visit http://mail.csua.berkeley.edu/listinfo/ars-magica.

Other Mailing Lists

Additional mailing lists about Ars Magica existed at one time, dedicated to specific sub-topics. Most of these are no longer active but their archives may be of interest.

Inter-Saga Relations: is a list aiming to set up communication between people's Sagas. The details are on the web page. (Project appears to have died circa 1998, but contains much useful content for Tribunal sessions.)

Hermetic Penpals: Hermetic Penpals is a list where members can reply to letters from other covenants as magi. The aim is to take some of the load off storyguides, and to give people away from a troupe the opportunity to play magi. (Project appears to have died circa 2005.)

Lex Hermeticum: Lex Hermeticum is a semi-moderated list dedicated to the discussion of Hermetic Law, Politics and Society. (Such discussion is also welcome on the general list, above.)

Troubleshooting Mailing Lists

Unfortunately, due to the massive amount of spam on the Internet and the increasingly draconian measures system administrators must use to combat it, email messages from the Berk List may stop coming. This is especially unfortunate if the messages that get lost are password reminders or reset confirmation.

If you aren't receiving messages from a list, there are three things you can try:

1. Check your junk or spam folder.
2. Whitelist the sender according to these instructions, or search the web using keywords "whitelist email" followed by the name of your email service provider (Yahoo!, gmail, hotmail, Comcast, Verizon, etc.)
3. Contact tech support of your email service provider.

The edit history of this page before August 6, 2010 is archived at Legacy:mailing_lists.