History TabletopGame / MAGUS

* AdventureFriendlyWorld: And how. Sometimes reading the books made people wonder how any muggles could ever survive in this.

* LightIsNotGood / GoodIsNotNice: Depending of interpretation the one god Domvik, Sogron the Kyr god of fire (and knowledge) counts too, and the Elves. Generally there is hard to find actually nice and merciful gods, old races or anyone powerful even when they embody light or are nominally good.

* GameplayAndStorySegregation: OK. There is the game and the gamestats that say what a character can or cannot do, and there are the official novels and other assorted background material that give backstory, flavor etc.. ''The former has nothing do with the later! Or vice versa.'' '''AT ALL!'''
* HotWitch: Not mandatory, but witches get a bonus on their "Beauty" roll, and a spell that turns them into one even if they aren't.

* InhumanlyBeautifulRace: The elves' "Beauty" score caps at 21 (normal humans 18, if specifically beautiful class 20), the [[HornyDevils Hurii]] don't come in anything else but 21, the [[BeyondTheImpossible Amunds' cap at 23]].

* {{Precursors}}: The Elves, the Kyr, the Aquir, The Amund, The Dzsen, The Dragons etc.. And your adventurer can be unlucky enough to encounter any of these. But he likely won't live to tell the tale.

* DependingOnTheWriter: One of the biggest problems of the game and the novels was the lack of unifying direction, which resulted in this and the GamplayAndStorySegregation.

There is currently news of yet another reboot with a late 2013 release date. Fans are divided.

--->--What '''[[FunWithAcronyms M.A.G.U.S]]''' stands for [[BlatantLies according to]] WordOfGod.

The gameworld, called Ynev, was originally LowFantasy / StandardFantasySetting, but later got expanded with more and more CyberPunk and {{Horror}} (mostly CosmicHorror) elements and was subjected to frequent and abusive {{Ret Con}}s as time went by. And there were also more and more novels of [[SturgeonsLaw varying quality]] published that shaped it, for better or worse, as many times the [[GamplayAnsStorySegregation fiction writers didn't know much about the RPG]].

''M.A.G.U.S.'' subtitled ''Avagy a Kalandorok krónikái'' (Or the Adventurer Chronicles), [[FanNickname colloquially]] also known as ''Mákos'' (Lucky), ''Mókus'' (Squirrel) or the ''Nagy Ződ''' (Ye Big Green), is the second[[note]]The first was "Harc és Varázslat" (Fight and Sorcery).[[/note]], the most influential and probably only ever marginally successful Hungarian tabletop role-playing game.

Its based on the fantasy novels ''A Halál Havában'' (In the month of Death, 1990) and ''Észak Lángjai'' (Flames of North, 1991) by Gáspár András and Novák Csanád (they wrote under the PenName "Wayne Chapman") and was first published in 1993, then republished with minor bugfixes in the following years culminating in a major revision in 1999 that got a [[TheyChangedItNowItSucks cold reception]]. In 2004 the game got a d20 rewrite and later in 2007 a modernized edition of its original system. It suffered a lot of [[ExecutiveMeddling publisher changes]], [[WeAreStrugglingTogether dispute between the creators]] in its turbulent history.

The gamesystem is quite [[LoadsAndLoadsOfRules rules heavy]] (not Rolemaster level but still) and uses percentage based resolution except when it doesn't. To elaborate basically from the four different editions only the d20 one has a unified mechanic. The whole original system is a mess of percentage based, base number and add roll, roll under with d10, etc. mechanics.

The gameworld, called Ynev, was originally LowFantasy / StandardFantasySetting, but later got expanded with more and more CyberPunk and {{Horror}} (mostly CosmicHorror) elements and was subjected to frequent and abusive {{Ret Con}}s as time went by. And there were also more and more novels of varying quality published that shaped it, for better or worse, as many times the fiction writers didn't know much about the RPG.

* BlackComedy / GallowsHumor: Darton, the [[EverybodyHatesHades god of death]] from the Pyarron pantheon, has this as [[OddJobGod addition to]] what you expect his domain would be, so all his believers prone to this.

* LightIsNotGood / GoodIsNotNice: Depending of interpretation the one god Domvik, Sogron the Kyr god of fire counts too, and the Elves. Generally there is hard to find actually nice and merciful gods, old races or anyone powerful even when they embody light or are nominally good.

* LiteraryAgentHypothesis / RecursiveCanon: OK. The tabletop game and novels are inspired by the "Adventurer Chronicles" kept by monks in a remote monastery of the gameworld. There were also hints that its a RealityWritingBook in ways (one canonical NPC-s managed to erase himself from it... which made him ImmuneToFate).

* CharacterAlignment: Slight variation as it has a Chaos-Law axis and a Death (DeathSeeker, TheUnfettered etc.)-Life (TheFettered etc.) one which represents how much the character values life and [[SuspiciouslySpecificDenial has nothing to do with good and evil]].

* TheScottishTrope: You never ever say you'll officially remake this game or ''A Nyúl átka'' will smite you (Known symptoms include: {{Greed}}, DevelopmentHell, [[SmallNameBigEgo Inflated Ego]], [[WeAreStrugglingTogether Infighting]], [[UnpleasableFanbase Contradictionary Expectations from the Fans]], ExecutiveMeddling and [[ArsonMurderAndJaywalking obsessing over useless]] {{trivia}}). You have been warned.

* TheScottishTrope: You never ever say you'll officially remake this game or ''A Nyúl átka'' will smite you (Known symptoms include: {{Greed}}, DevelopmentHell, [[SmallNameBigEgo Inflated Ego]], [[WeAreStrugglingTogether Infighting]], relentless attacks by the UnpleasableFanbase and [[ArsonMurderAndJaywalking obsessing over useless]] {{trivia}}). You have been warned.

* TheScottishTrope: You never ever say you'll remake this game or ''A Nyúl átka'' will smite you (Known symptoms include: {{Greed}}, DevelopmentHell, [[SmallNameBigEgo Inflated Ego]] and [[ArsonMurderAndJaywalking obsessing over useless]] {{trivia}}). You have been warned.

*** ''the ex-development team member who went on to do {{TabletopGame/Codex}}''

** Also for the geographical and larger scale weirdness (Anything that would fit under ScifiWritersHaveNoSenseOfScale and various ArtisticLicence tropes) "It's a created world" ... so "The Gods Did It!". Which one and how (as there were many and the rise of humanity was a fairly recent event according to setting material) was never explained.

* UsefulNotes/{{Plagiarism}}: Not the game itself even if surely wasn't that original, but some of the art was... researched. Like [[http://img846.imageshack.us/img846/3081/plagium.jpg this]] little demonstration. Left one is from the ''Tabletopgame/{{Cyberpunk}} 2020'' Roleplaying Game the right from ''A Démon Átka'' (The Demon's Curse) adventure module published for ''M.A.G.U.S.''.

* YouKeepUsingThatWord: Many, but maybe the most aggravating was their tendency to use ''készség'' to mean thing/object when in contemporary Hungarian its only valid meaning is ability/willingness (and in the novels they also tended to put it in italic, someone was obviously very proud of it).

* AssPull: Many. For a direct example: see the PretentiousLatinMotto on the top? If you believe the creators it's actually Ur-Kyr for ''Adventurer Chronicles''... but this was claimed years before a word about the languages of the gameworld was released, so they probably just choose it because it sounded cool.

It was called ''[[FanNickname Ye Big Green]]'' for a [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin reason]].-]]]

[[caption-width-right:250:Cover of the 1th edition corebook.\\
It was called ''[[FanNickname Ye Big Green]]'' for a [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin reason]].]]

** WorldBook: ''Summarium: A teremtés könyvei'' (Summarium: The books of creation) is the most comprehensive setting book ever[[note]]Actually this was meant to be the first book of a three book total revision... which [[DevelopmentHell never got published]].[[/note]]; ''Geoframia kivonatok: Enoszuke'' (Excerpts from Geoframia: Enoszuke) about the FantasyCounterpartCulture of Japan.
** SplatBook: ''Papok, Paplovagok Kézikönyve'' (Handbook of Priests and Paladins) volumes 1 and 2; ''Harcosok, Gladiatorok, Barbárok'' (Fighters, Gladiators, Barbarians).
** Other various publications.