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[chrispedersen]

Originally Posted by AdmiralZhao

My understanding is that a lot of the Dominions magic system was borrowed from Ars Magica, which has a similar system of combining a small selection of verbs (e.g. Conjuration) with a small selection of nouns (e.g. Death) to create spells and effects. A lot of the other concepts were carried over, like gems, searching for magical sites, magical empowerment, spell research, and item crafting & boosters. Oh, and Ars Magica also had the concept of Dominions. So there was a Fairy Dominion, a Christian Dominion, etc. where magic is weaker or stronger, and various other effects hold.

All that being said, Dominions III is the better game. Ars Magica had a lot of character and was very interesting, but I'm not sure it really works for most RPG groups.

I loved ars magica, which seemed derivative of PEI Bonewits' works.

it didn't suffer from one of the ever so occurrent political correctnesses. Developers said mages rule - and then came up with interesting ways to compensate for asymptric power.