Medieval Tapestry
| A Medieval Tapestry: Personalities of Mythic Europe is a supplement for Fourth Edition. It was edited by Jeff Tidball from the work of several contributing authors.
Subject
The majority of the characters in the book are mundanes, but there is also a chapter with ready-made magi. There are no hedge wizards in the book.
Contents
- Introduction
- Magus Archetypes (6 archetypes)
- Those Who Rule (5 characters)
- Those Who Pray (14 characters)
- Those Who Toil (12 characters)
- Those Who Work Magic (8 magi)
- Outsiders (5 characters)
This book includes a bibliography.
Relevance to Current Edition
Since this is a Fourth Edition supplement, practically all the game statistics for the characters are obsolete in terms of ArM5. However, the character concepts, backgrounds, motivations, and story seeds remain relevant. It would be a lot of work to convert the whole book to a new edition, but to convert one character should not be too difficult (especially with the help of a computer tool such as Metacreator).
Player Reviews
Until about 2005, the original Ars Magica FAQ site solicited reviews of Ars Magica products from the community. The online review submission form is no longer available, but please feel free to edit this page to add your own comments. A synopsis of the survey results for this book is:
FAQ Rating: \*\*\* (10 reviews; 0 *, 4 \*\*, 4 \*\*\*, 2 \*\*\*\*)
- Some interesting snippets of varying quality.
- A big list of NPCs, with backgrounds and stats included from every concievable strata of Mythic European society. I found the archmage rather a lightweight. Didn't engender much interest. Could be useful as a list of templates.
- Nice "pick an NPC" book.
- Not only NPCs, but some background and interwoven ideas, more than what was expected.
- This offers many guides and insights into medieval characters.
- Handy for NPCs. The best bits are the sidebar articles. With so many authors, the presentation comes off unevenly.
- You are bound to find some useful parts.