Heirs to Merlin
Heirs to Merlin is supplement for Fourth Edition, describing the Stonehenge Tribunal. There is an official product page at Atlas Games.
Rules Edition: ArM4
Abbreviation: HtM
Topic: Tribunal sourcebook
Authors: David Chart
Publisher: Atlas Games
Product Number: AG0262
ISBN: 978-1887801799
Release Date: December 1999
Format: Softcover,
Availability: Out of print since October 2010; PDF available. Some distributors and retailers may still have some hard copies in stock.
Subject and Contents
A brief summary is available on the official product page.
Heirs to Merlin is unusual in that, while it was written for Fourth Edition, it contains no game statistics or mechanics; instead, characters are described in general terms. Therefore it should be easy to adapt to a Fifth edition saga. However, it is still considered a Fourth Edition book and therefore is not officially part of Fifth Edition canon.
To give a clearer idea of the contents of the book, here are the chapter titles:
- Introduction
- History
- The Peasants
- The Town
- Travel, Trade, & Industry
- The Church
- The Nobility
- Law and Governance
- Wales
- The Order of Hermes
- Politics
- Myths and Legends
- Glossary
- Bibliography
Opinion & Reviews
What This Book will Add to Your Game
Some of the topics Heirs to Merlin covers in detail are:
- Customs: pages 113-116
- Politics, Hermetic: pages 140-141
- Politics, Mundane: pages 136-140
- Suggested Reading: page 6
- Tribunal of 1351 Age of Aries: ArM4 11
Also see the community reviews below.
Why This Book Might Not Fit Your Game
Heirs to Merlin is its lacks game statistics for creatures and characters: they are described in prose instead. Thus it doesn't offer fully ready-made NPCs at the level of detail many gamers expect. On the other hand, now that a new edition has come along, Heirs to Merlin is as directly usable as most other Fourth Edition supplements, whose statistics are now obsolete anyway.
The book concentrates on England; the treatment of Wales is limited to a page or two.
Community 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: *** (14 reviews; 0 *, 3 **, 7 ***, 4 ****)
- An excellent resource for anyone running a Saga in Stonehenge. My only complaint with it is that it is a bit short on mythic detail, but other than that it is quite possibly the perfect Ars Magica supplement.
- Not bad, good flavour, details are good with lots of hooks.
- Raised the standard for Tribunal books.
- Excellent sourcebook, though it has been legitimately criticized for ducking the "power level" issue by failing to provide NPC stats.
- A solid look at England and Wales. Concentrates overly on the mundane and ecclesiastical aspects and suffers in the Mythic department. No stats or kewl new powerz.
- Nice, maybe not Mythic enough.
- Sorry, but I thought the lack of stats was a cop out. I've never set a saga in England, so I didn't find it very useful.
- A very good tribunal book, although the number of magi described leaves less room than I would have liked for the SG to manoeuvre. I was particularly pleased by the absence of stats.
- Well detailed, integrates the Order into the local setting. Dodges the power issue almost completely, probably the only viable solution to the power level issue.