here're the contents of two emails i sent in discussing aria. the quoted stuff
isn't mine.

>_Aria_ is a new game system that currently has two books out. The full name is
>_Aria: Canticle of the Monomyth_ and if you thought White Wolf was pretentious...
>:)  They work really hard to pull in Campbell's ideas of the Hero and the ways
>that relates to societal form and structure. It's intriguing. Reviews are due in
>the new year in Shadis, White Wolf and Dragon. The books are really thick and
>fairly expensive, so only buy them if you're one of those strange fools who sucks
>all the marrow out of every available source (which sounds so much more ...
>graphic than plagiarism :).

>Dunno how directly useful the books would be to Ars Magica. 

i have here a review posted on r.g.f.m, that i'm forwarding, without the author's
knowledge, though i'm leaving in his headers (i.e. credit). i meant to write my
own, but never quite got around to it. the only thing i would have to add to his
is that these books, especially the _Worlds_ one, can have a great deal of
relevance to creating societies and so forth, even if you don't intend to use
their system. where else can you find a "history of technology" covering from the
paleolithic to the renaissance, and such diverse topics as smithing, banking, and
feudalism? also, for the ars magica types, it goes one step further than
consensual creation of the setting (covenant) by the whole group. it concerns
itself with consensual creation of the reality and the world that the setting is
in (though obviously these are unneeded in mythic europe).

>Path: news.doit.wisc.edu!uwm.edu!cs.utexas.edu!convex!convex!insosf1.infonet.net!newshost.marcam.com!charnel.ecst.csuchico.edu!waldorf.csc.calpoly.edu!decwrl!netcomsv!netcomsv!matrix!TERRY.MCCOMBS From: TERRY.MCCOMBS@the-matrix.com (TERRY MCCOMBS) Newsgroups: rec.games.frp.misc
>Subject: Aria.
>Message-ID: <89FA52F.13C0000D0C.uuout@the-matrix.com> Date: Wed, 14 Dec 94 22:07:00 -0600
>Organization: The MATRIX, Birmingham, AL (205) 252 9888 Reply-To: TERRY.MCCOMBS@the-matrix.com (TERRY MCCOMBS) X-Newsreader: PCBoard Version 15.2
>X-Mailer: PCBoard/UUOUT Version 1.0
>Lines: 58

>My review of. . . .

>ARIA:
>Canticle of the Monomyth.
>(World Book and Roleplaying Book)

>By Christian Scott Moore and Owen M. Seyler 

>Published by Last Unicorn Games.
>Roleplaying $29.95, 528 pages. Worlds $25.95, 334 pages. 

>There is a new roleplaying system out and it is to say the least NOT for the
>casual gamer! Aria: Canticle of the Monomyth is not just another game with a
>seting for a world, a few races and/or classes, some spells or wonders of
>science, and a list of monsters to kill or powers to have. In fact in the 800+
>pages of the set-up books there is not a list of races, monsters, or set spells
>to be found, one of there goals they say is to stay away from handing down too
>much by way of seting to the players, but to give a unique system with which the
>players (which they call not game master and players but mythguide and ensemble.)
>can creat a world that is unique to them.

>One of the most unique things about Aria is that the idea of the game is not to
just come up with a P.C. and play that charactor in a set era while trying to
improve the lot of that charactor as best you can, but to at times have thousands
of years pass during the play of the game. With game time ranging from Action
Time (seconds), to Narrative Time (hours to months), to Aria Time (1 - 10 years),
to Mythic Time (Decades to Millennia). So that while most often the player will
be runing a single person in a seting, the idea is not just to play that one
untill killed, but to run them in the game untill after many years they are
killed or even die of old age, but that is not the end of the P.C. as the player
continues with later members of the family (or order or guild if your charactor
did not have any kids.) and when in one of the faster times such as Aria Time or
Mythic Time you can even switch to playing whole societies or parts of society
(play a member of the army then BE the army.). Only to find that after one or two
hundred years when you slow back down to Narrative Time and take on a new persona
your past persona has become a part of that societies myths and has an effect on
it. Which is why they use mythguide and not game master or such like. They say
that one of the aims of Aria is to help the players creat their own body of myths
as rich as those found in history.

>But to say the least this game does not lend itself to just seting down and
having Thud the barbarian smash his way to demi-godhood in a few games. This
thing is realy for the "serious" RPGer who realy wants not to just kill a few
boogems and amass a pile of gold, but to get heavily into the whole creation of
the game. While this might be daunting to some, others will eat it up with a
fork, the hard part is going to be finding those who want to go into the detail
or take the time do the whole myth making thing. But even if you do not want to
go for the whole she-bang the book such as Worlds could still be used to add
something extra to just about any other game system.

>So while Aria does look like a very, VERY good system, it just is not for
everyone, but if you are someone who realy likes the creation part, and are
willing to put the time into it, then take a look at it and see what you think.

[snip]

>cultural groups - 300 pages. Aria Worlds (200 pages) covers the creation of
nations and their social systems in much greater detail. If nothing else, it
looks to be a great GM's tool for creating the social environment in any RPG.

That's exactly my take on it. i've been using it extensively for a campaign that
i'm setting up, and it's proved invaluable. the biggest strength in my mind is
their ability to quantify in understandable terms very abstract concepts, i.e.
level of trade or technology. at the same time, the books stress and the system
allows for more realist, less number-based definitions, which can work
hand-in-hand with the numerical ones. for example, if you were running a military
campaign, you might care very little about the economic structure except to note
that it runs on barter and has a resource value of 14 and a trade value of16. at
the same time you'd need more than a number to define the military structure, and
so you'd go on to add as much detail as you had the patience for. i think that's
how it's best used. for the areas that i'm not much going to employ, i use it's
system to give a quantification, and i can add detail later if i need it, but
i'll have some sort of guideline. i also use it the other way around. that is,
let's say there is a sudden resource discovery, and i've got a very well detailed
economic system. if i'm not sure exactly what the outcome should be, i can then
and there assign a numerical rating to the resources already present, or any
other aspect of the economic situation, and make a roll. i can also look at the
tables that show which attributes entertwine with which, so that i have a better
idea of what other areas are likely to change, (trade, obviously, in this case.)
personally, the example i just gave is one where i'd rather make the decisions
than roll them, but even then, some historically-based guidelines on what ought
to happen can always help.


>I'm not quite so optimistic about its potential as an RPG unto itself. Aria
character creation is handled well and the basic game mechanic is fairly simple:
try to roll under (Ability - Difficulty) on 1d10. Unfortunately, you need several
tables handy to collect all the relevant modifiers (if you care that much) and
another table to interpret the result (succeed by 15 or more = Mythic Success,
succeed by 10-14 = Extraordinary Success, etc. - I'm sure that this table would
be memorized after a couple sessions) - the game also uses an unusual system of
open-ended rolling which shifts the final level of success directly instead of
letting you roll <1 or >10. Anyhow, I can stand lots of table lookups (I used to
run Chartmaster), but Aria has the _worst_ proofreading in any published RPG I've
ever seen and there is no central repository for the charts.

to come to their defense, i've found only a couple of typos, and none that
weren't easily read through (i've read the entire _Worlds_ book and parts of the
other). i'm not convinced that there should be pages spent on a central
repository of charts. most of them you'll use once, when you create the setting,
and they're presented in the order you need them, with the relevant text
surrounding them. it's not very hard to find the chart on a given topic by
finding that section in the table of contents and flipping through the page or
five that it covers. the only charts that you will need during play are all
collected on a two-page spread (xxvi-xxvii).

as for proofreading, you've obviously never seen any of White Wolf's stuff or the
late 1st ed. AD&D stuff. in both cases, there are entire sections that don't make
sense because of a few strategically placed typos. for that matter, i've seen
big-press books (bantam, doubleday, etc.) with more errors (only rarely, i'll
admit)

they do have a few problems with text over graphics that need addressing, but
it's not entirely their fault. the entire book was originally typeset for 400
lines per inch and was to be hardcover. at the last minute, economics forced a
change, and it became perfect-bound, which means slightly lighter-weight paper,
which forces the resolution down to 330 lines per inch (so the ink won't saturate
and bleed through). that's why the plate on pages vi-vii is nearly unreadable.
and their masking needs a little work, but, no more than a third of a letter is
cut off at any point that i've found.

>So: PCs are a product of their environment, excellent design tool for do-
it-youself types, good potential as a game, weird dicing, lots o' tables
scattered throughout the book, lousy editing.

like a said, the tables are right where they belong. as for the dicing, it makes
more sense than the (much-vaunted by some) Storyteller system, which plenty of
people seem to not only use but like.

>(Oh, also, while Aria is a truly generic system within fantasy/medieval
settings, the books published to date don't acknowledge modern or futuristic
technology. Maybe I'll get motivated and fix that someday...)

according to the authors, the game is intended to work for any technology/society
level up through the renaissance, and they don't intend to try modern or future
supplements.