Triamore: The Covenant at Lucien's Folly

Ars Magica 4th Edition #AG0264

by Charles M. Ryan

"Of the covenant I can tell you That it is located within the lands of the Holy Roman Empire, on the skirts of that temporal power, and that it enjoys some standing with Frederick II. That is makes its home in a great castle, and holds a manor of land as might a temporal lord or abbot, with a village of peasants under its hand." -- Goliard of Tremere Welcome to the Covenant at Lucien's Folly. This sourcebook describes this unique covenant, its manorial holdings, and the surrounding region. It's more than a narrow treatment of these topics, though. I's a treatise on the society, politics, and manorial life that surround every covenant, explaining how Triamore, the nearby villages, and the surrounding manors are similar to -- or different from -- every covenant, village, county, or duchy across Mythic Europe. Triamore is a living covenant, ready for occupation by a group of player characters, for use as a detailed non-player covenant, or as an example of what a well-developed Ars Magica covenant can be.

144 pages, Paperback

First published June 1, 2000

About the author

Author of the well-reviewed novel The Mason of New Orleans, Charles M. Ryan also has more than 30 years' experience in the games industry. There he's created or contributed to nearly every class of tabletop game—board games, card games, trading card games, miniature games, and roleplaying games—and he’s garnered awards and recognition for game design, editing and development, graphic design, and fiction. As a businessman, he’s worked in every tier of the market, from running his own independent publishing firm, to serving as Hasbro’s global brand manager for Dungeons & Dragons, to heading up marketing at the UK’s Esdevium Games, one of the world’s largest game distributors. Charles served as Chairman of the Academy of Adventure Gaming Arts & Design, the professional organization of the games industry, from 1997 through 2001. For the past decade, he's been the COO and a partner at Monte Cook Games, publisher of innovative and imaginative roleplaying games such as Numenera, Invisible Sun, No Thank You, Evil!, and the Cypher System.

Reviews

[Angela · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a good supplement for anyone who does medieval-style fantasy gaming, whether in the Ars Magica system or not. It provides a detailed, accessible description of a medieval village and the political situation surrounding it, with (from my perspective) the advantage of being quite accurate in terms of the political and social arrangements depicted - this is a refreshing change from settings written by people who have no background in medieval history and who consequently just write a modern town slapped with a medieval coat of paint. The fact that the manor is owned by mages is mostly due to the supplement being for Ars Magica, where magic-users are the focus of the action, but with just a little massaging, the situation could be changed to suit just about any other set of fantasy-world assumptions. All in all, this is a nice supplement, complete with little touches I wish a lot of other setting-books had, such as inset boxes in each chapter that include a master list of all the NPCs introduced in that chapter. Very well done.