# A Grog's Life tags: #game/rpg/a-grogs-life ![[A Grog's Life (cover).jpg|600]] **A Grog's Life** is a free [[Fiasco]] playset from Atlas Games, and it volunteers you for the least-glamorous job in all of [[Ars Magica]]: you are a grog. In the Order of Hermes the grog is the mortal muscle — the warrior, the valet, the cook, the person whose entire listed purpose on the covenant grounds is to keep the monsters off the wizard. The score is cheerfully titled *"Nasty, Brutish, and Short,"* which tells you everything about how the game feels about your character's life expectancy. The hobby loves a bit of cruelty at character creation, and here the cruelty is baked into the job title. ## Setting The playset drops you into **Mythic Europe**, the medieval Europe of Ars Magica where wizards really work and where a covenant is less a castle and more an abbey for a community of spellcasters — masters and apprentices, books and laboratories, and the whole servant class that keeps the place running. That class is you. Your covenant hides in the countryside near a village and a more conventional, martial castle, and the world outside the walls teems with wolves, monsters, fay tricks, angry rivals, and suspicious priests. The heart of it is the grubbiest truth in the whole setting: the common folk don't trust wizards, and you are common folk. You're the mortal who counts on wizards for food, shelter, and a purpose in life — and whose literal job description is to be the mortal buffer between the world's swords and the magi's concentration. It's a Fiasco playset about the staff, in a genre that usually reserves all the drama for the people upstairs. ## Mechanics This is a Fiasco playset through and through, so it uses the standard Fiasco set-up rather than inventing its own engine. Players draw their relationships, needs, locations, and objects from the playset's tables — here running from doomed duties ("To serve the magi and to die for the covenant") to the objects and potions that'll do you in — then play out the escalating scenes and only roll the accumulated white and black dice at the end to discover how everyone's story falls apart. It ships with an **insta-setup** for three, four, or five players so you can go from zero to doomed in minutes. You need the **Fiasco** core rules to actually play it, which is the standard fine print for the genre. ## Editions A single edition, released free in **May 2015** as part of Atlas Games' celebration of Ars Magica and its farewell to line editor David Chart. Written by **Will Hindmarch**, with edits and cover design by **Renee Knipe**, published by **Atlas Games**. *In the library.* ## References - [Ars Magica Fiasco playsets - Atlas Games](https://atlas-games.com/fiasco) - [Download A Grog's Life (PDF) - Atlas Games](https://atlas-games.com/pdf_storage/GrogsLife-20150518.pdf) - [A Fiasco in Mythic Europe! - Atlas Games blog](http://blog.atlas-games.com/2015/05/a-fiasco-in-mythic-europe.html)