Character Generation

• Each player should create one mage. At this point a companion is optional and should be designed to fit in somehow not directly attached to your mage. No Mythic Companions, nor Gifted Companions, nor non-Gifted hedge magi. Each player may also design one grog who arrives with either their mage or their companion.
  
• Canonical simple character generation rules are used.
  
• No starting character may have Might.
  
• To make things easier to build and adjudicate, magi in House ex Miscellanea should use a canonical tradition/group (either non-Hermetic or a tradition with Hermetic magic). But don't use a tradition from outside of the Order's domain, as the Order of Suleimon, the Order of Odin, etc. should be things to explore rather than things already known.
  
• To avoid overshadowing magi, companions should not have Method/Power or Art combinations. Supernatural Abilities are welcome, just not at that scale.
  
• Any book may be used, but try to stick to a theme rather than cherry-picking. A lot of things from other books show up in ArM5D, so what many of you might think of as core will be changing soon. However, there are some limits to keep things reasonable. No more than one player may play a Gifted Mercere. No more than one player may play a Holy Mage. As I don't want most the group hunting someone, straight-up Infernal stuff should at least mostly be avoided, though Tainted stuff is fine. For the same reason, Diedne Magic is probably best avoided, too. It's OK, however, to have multiple unGifted Redcaps, as they could be split between covenants; we just don't want more than one residing at each covenant. Actually, a few unGifted Redcaps could be very handy, as there aren't many already in Novgorod. (I may think of more and add them.)
  
• All magi may select a Certamen school, as covered in Houses of Hermes: True Lineages.
  
• Custom spells are encouraged.
  
• You may start with reasonable items for your station, regardless of it being printed in a book or not, but nothing of any sort of exceptional quality.
  
• Magi coming out of apprenticeship should generally have scores of at least 1 in Artes Liberales, Concentration, Finesse, Organization Lore: Order of Hermes; Organization Lore: (the covenant you were trained at), Penetration, Profession: Scribe; exactly 1 in Parma Magica; at least 3 in Magic Theory; and at least 4 in Language: Latin. Lower scores are permissible, but there should be a clear reason, such as a Gifted Mercere spending too much time traveling to get to know the covenant well.
  
• When finishing the gauntlet, magi should be in the ballpark of 23-30 years old, but this may be adjusted with a clear reason such as a very late emergence of the Gift.
  
• If you choose a canonical mage as your parens, feel free to adjust things very slightly to make it work. For instance, maybe you need to bump up a couple Arts a little to hit 5 or you need to make them slightly older. Try to keep things as close to written as possible while allowing for your apprenticeship to fit.
  
• You can come from any Tribunal, so long as you have a reason to come to Novgorod and stay in your new covenant. That could be as simple as liking the offer, but at least slightly addressing the nuances will be helpful toward adding flavor.
  
• Remember that this is intended to be even more "sandbox" than a typical Ars Magica game, so make sure your characters have things they want to do so that you will get stories rolling. At the same time, the hope is to have a lot of PC interaction to bring the Tribunal to life, so it's perfectly fine to have a mage who mostly does research in their lab and communicates with other magi while your companion actively adventures.