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Dragon Age: RPG


Dave ST

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You know, I was thinking that too. It seems to have as much political intrigue with it's warring nobles as it has 'hey, it's evil, lets kill it!'.

I'm not thrilled about the 3d6 system, but the built their SoI&F game around that motif and it seems to be alright. I guess we'll see.

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  • 3 months later...

So I've read the Dragon Age RPG stuff. It took them 5 months to release the game, and it shows. The Core books only take a PC to Level 5 and if you want to go higher you have to wait until they release more books that detail he next levels, this includes what abilities you get, spells, everything.

Oh, and you can't play a Grey Warden. Those are going to be detailed in an entirely different book as well.

My overall rating is that it sucks so far. The rules are well done and the content is solid and teaches you a lot about the world and the people in it but they're trying to hurry through something, and we all know how that ends up.

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Do my eyes deceive me or does it really say that it is 2 64 page books for $29.95? And they only take you to level 5?

I never thought I would say this, but the more books I look at the more I realize that the standard D&D books seem fairly priced. And yet I still don't think they are fairly priced.

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LOL You got it right.

The Players Guide is 64 pages on how to make a character and understand the world, along with skills, spells, and equipment. It's actually not that bad, honestly. It's 64 pages because it only takes your PC to what skills, stunts, or spells they might be able use by Level 5. Dragon Age the video game went to Level 30, and take my word for it by Level 30, with the proper spells and skills, even the hardest setting was a cake walk.

Had they put all 20-30 levels in the book it would have easily been 175+ pages, which I would expect an RPG Core book to be.

The Gamemaster's Guide is a joke. What they don't tell you is that 24 of those pages are an intro adventure. You get 40 pages of how to run the game (using skills, how to RP the people of Ferelden, hazards, monsters, treasure, and exp).

Dolling out XP is about two pages. It took them two pages to break down four basic ways to hand out XP: if it was routine for you, 0XP. If it's easy, 100 points. If it's average 200 points, and oh, if it's hard for you the reward is 300 points.

Yep, that's it... 100, 200, 300... I feel like a purple vampire is waiting leap into the computer room and laugh while thunder booms.

Rewards, like treasure, are one page of magic items. One page along with a chart that tells you how many coins you might find along the way too.

There's about ten pages of monsters for you to go through, but those are generic and easily set for 1-5 Level PCs. Something whipped up so they at least had something to fight.

So, for $30.00 you get a map, three dice, and two books that are, in my opinion, not even completed yet.

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The Dragon Age RPG is being released in a series of four boxed sets, each of which covers five levels of play. Set 1, available now, is for characters of level 1-5. Set 2 will cover levels 6-10, Set 3 will cover levels 11-15, and Set 4 will cover levels 16-20. Each set includes a Player's Guide and a Game Master's Guide, and other extras like dice and maps. The sets not only have information on characters, talents, magic items, spells, and monsters, but also source material on Thedas and adventures.

Each set is $30.00 a pop I think... making this the most expensive set of core rules ever I think... $120 for a Players Guide and a Gamemasters guide...

Wow.

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I guess. I have the first two book in the set, and as I said, overall the game isn't bad but the whole separating it into 4 sets is just ignorant.

Now, we all know why they're doing it. They got the first part out, so that way people can be playing it while they're working on the next part and so on... Had they released it all at once it would have taken them several more months to complete and they'd be losing money as the game's rage died down a bit.

Apparently Dragon Age 2 is due out soon anyway... so we'll get to buy 4 more boxed sets of rules updates after that occurs. :P

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  • 5 months later...

Simply put, it's because everyone is getting pissed off at GR. Set two is quickly escalating into the Pen and Paper Duke Nukem: Forever. They keep announcing it, talking about it, tossing little tid-bits about it to the players on the forums and not actually delivering anything.

They noticed that the entire project was quickly entering a risk of losing it's entire fan-base because the forums and those who love the game were all in agreement that they didn't need Set 2 (or 3, or 4) since with Set 1 all the info on the game was right there for them to just make their rules.

Once people said 'Screw you, we're sick of waiting' they decided to 'do us a favor' and open the game up to 'beta testing'. This appeases the geeks who are now all excited about it and are blind to the fact that GR only did it to save their profit margin, not because they were apologetic over their failure to produce something other than empty promises.

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  • 6 months later...

I saw that the Set 2, detailing levels 6-10, is finally set to be released in May. Set 3 will contain levels 11-20. They said that Set 3 will be out by the end of the year, but considering the timeline so far I wouldn't bet on that.

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Where did you see this?

The most recent GR press release to mention Dragon age was from back in January and didn't give any specific dates. This is standard practice for Green Ronin, no dates until they know they can hit it, especially with licensed products since the approval process can delay things. I've included an excerpt from that release below, and I would strongly suggest that you ignore any dates you have seen (or at least take them with a large grain of salt), especially from Amazon.

Quote:
Now let's go from four color superheroes to dark fantasy with Dragon Age. This is our RPG that ties in to BioWare's terrific video game franchise of the same name. Last year we released Set 1 (an introductory boxed set that covers characters level 1-5), the GM's Kit (a hardback screen and adventure), and Blood in Ferelden (a collection of scenarios). We also did an open mechanics playtest for Set 2, which covers levels 6-10. We know people are hungry for Set 2 and it is indeed on the way. We are trying to release it shortly after the debut of the Dragon Age 2 computer game, so we can take advantage of the new wave of DA enthusiasm. We'll support that with another adventure collection called The Deep Roads. We're also planning a Quick Start for Free RPG Day to give gamers an easy way to check out what Dragon Age has to offer.

The biggest news for Dragon Age is that we've decided to re-work our release schedule for the game somewhat. We had originally planned to make the game four boxed sets that each covered 5 levels of play. We are keenly aware, however, that the arrival of Set 2 has taken too long so we've decided to accelerate the pace. Set 3 will now provide the rules for levels 11-20, so all the core material can get out to you faster. Even better, we are trying to get Set 3 out this year.

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The end of what you quoted says that want to release Set 3 by the end of the year. It also says that Set 2 should be released shortly after DA2. Jeff Tidball, the Dragon Age RPG developer, said on Green Ronin's forum that they are aiming to have the products in stores in May with the PDFs out earlier in this thead:

http://www.greenronin.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?p=93456#p93456

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I've no doubt they'll try their hardest but to give you an idea, the DC Heroes and Villains Volume 1 was originally slated for a late Fall 2010 release. Due to delays on the DC end of things with artwork and approvals that product is not yet released. GR is a good company, and they put out quality products, but with their size, and the number of licensed products they run, firm release dates are not something you'll ever get.

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I get that. I just figured that people that have followed the thread may be interested in the intended release date. Knowing what the company hopes to do is better than no idea.

Green Ronin Publishing plans to release the second part of the Dragon Age RPG in May. This will be the second boxed set for the game (for the first set releases, see “Dragon Age”).

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Dragon Age: Set 2 starts where Set 1 finished, by providing all of the rules needed to develop characters through level 10. It includes rules for Grey Wardens, new role-playing and exploration stunts, 40 new spells, and expanded information about the game world.

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The boxed set will include two full-color 80 page books: a “Player’s Guide” and a “Game Master’s Guide.” Two heavy-duty reference cards and a poster map of the game world are also included.

,,

Dragon Age: Set 2 was written by Chris Pramas, Jeff Tidball, Steve Kenson, and T.S. Luikart. It will have a suggested retail price of $39.95.

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  • 1 month later...
  • 8 months later...

Has anybody actually played with this game at all?

I recently got the PDF version of the products (much cheaper) and the system seems like it could be fun to play, though I can also see and agree with all of Dave's negatives on the sets. The set 1 GMs book is a joke for anybody who's ever GMed before. Haven't looked into the 2nd set GM book yet. The Player's books seem pretty good content vs size though. The artwork is generally good, the layout clean, and its full color, so that's pretty to look at. GR announced that they were mashing sets 3 & 4 into a single product which is nearing completion. It'll cover lvls 11-20 and has an open Beta sometime this year IIRC. I'm not sure how much of the timeline of these products has been stretched by Bioware (getting a licensed product approved can take time) or Green Ronin (small company with limited resources) but set one was copywritten in 2009 and set 2 in 2011.

So, does anybody have any actual play experience with this game/system? I'm curious because GR also announced plans to decouple the system from the license and release it with a game setting of their own creation for release in 2013.

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  • 3 weeks later...

I got to give this system a try last weekend. My friend is a big fan of the video games so it was an easy sell to try out the system using the Quickstart guide. She ran us through the adventure and her husband and I took on the roles of a Human Circle Mage and a Surface Dwarf Warrior respectively. The quickstart played out pretty well, taking us about 4 hours from start to finish, largely because of a rather inconveniently skewed combat where we had some seriously bad rolling and couldn't overcome the monster armor rating easily until our dice "warmed up" some.

The A.G.E. system (Adventure Gaming Engine) that is at the core of Dragon Age relies on rolls of 3D6 with 1 die being marked out as a "Dragon Die" (just roll 2 of one color and a third with a different color). Tests are done by rolling the three dice, adding them together and adding your attribute score and a further bonus from an applicable focus (skill). If you meet or beat the Target Number you succeed with the degree of success being determined by the result of the dragon die (for non combat and extended rolls). During combat when you make an attack roll, if any two dice come up as doubles you get Stunt Points equal to the value of the Dragon Die. In theory you have a potential stunt about once in every six rolls, though some of those (like 1's) will probably miss. If you do hit you can use your Stunt Points to buy effects from the Stunt selection which includes extra damage, piercing modifiers, extra attacks and the like. It's a fun system and a standout of the playtest was my Dwarf getting an exceptionally good stunt roll and using his stunt points to knock a monster backwards into a gorge and then follow up with an immediate second attack on another target. (A lowlight was when a monster in the same fight scored two crippling blows on my character via stunts, both of which really did cripple my PC for a few rounds.)

The game is definitely geared toward a grimmer, more deadly feel than high fantasy, and our PCs came within a few hit points each of death more than once, but that only encouraged better teamwork, and smarter play. A larger group might also have had an easier time of things, as two PCs seemed a little under-powered during the first encounter. We've decided we're going to give the game another shot as an alt campaign for when the current M&M run game goes into its next break to allow GM re-charge. With luck we'll get to play through a few level gains and really see how the system plays out over a mini campaign.

Edit: feel free to ask questions, if you are interested, I'll answer them as best I can from what I know of the game thus far

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This sucks big time. I think the company may have dropped the ball in my view. Personally I like having the core rulebook detail everything. Having four instead is a bit rediculaus in my book. They should have waited in my view. Better to at least get everything out at the same time instead of looking like some greedy pig. If they sent out playtest stuff for free to just give a taste that's one thing, but this is a bit sad.

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Three sets not four ( though I think that 4 was the original plan). I'm not sure how much of that was influenced by Bioware or not, licences are often influenced by the licencing company as much as the licencee.

Not that I'm apologizing for GR here, I do think that the first two sets are priced a bit high. Thankfully the PDF pricing is a little more reasonable.

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  • 2 weeks later...
  • 1 month later...

Continued play through Dragon Age has been had. We ran another session of 8 or so encounters featuring a mix of RP, combat, and non-combat challenges this weekend. I'm enjoying the system quite a bit, though I find that the level progression feels odd to me after having played point-buy systems for many years. We're a little bit more than halfway to level 3 now, and after numerous combats I am liking the stunt system that is used quite a bit.

The odds for a stunt to occur on any given attack are right around 35-40% of the time, by pure math you can generate a potential stunt 44% of the time, but depending on the defense of the enemy and your attack bonus some stunts may never land. It's dynamic, and a couple of good stunts can turn combat in your favor, or against it swiftly, but always with a change for it to turn around with your next attack and chance for a stunt. At higher levels and greater skill with combat it is possible to add significant effects with stunts, and depending on your class and combat preference this can easily add damage enough to make for a considerable critical hit at times.

The flip side is that combat is potentially lethal. A party NPC was almost killed during one encounter after a series of spectacularly good rolls by the GM. Combat rallied quickly however with PC stunts quickly dispatching half the enemies and reviving the fallen NPC with a huge healing buff. The nice thing is that healing comes easy, and a five minute rest and a little work with some gauze can get a goodly boost to your health after combat, you don't have the old issue of having to heal up and rest for a day after every encounter.

The RP side is also good, with a nice mix of freeform and structured rolling to get what you want done, done. The pre-built senarios offered with the sets and the first module book have been nicely balanced for flavor. I don't know a lot about the Dragon Age setting, having never played the computer games, but there is a lot of ambiguity between good and evil, and the shades of grey allow for a lot of fun RP. When the party needs the surly dwarf (that's me) to be the face of the group and rally the townsfolk because they are prejudiced against elves things get hilarious pretty quick.

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Dragon Age's setting is a really good one, in my opinion. It has the bad luck of being a bit overshadowed by it's sci-fi cousin, Mass Effect...especially now. That said, for fantasy settings it's very good. I find it has a lot of nuance to it without succumbing to mind-withering complexity. A good thing that a lot of genre writers would do well to emulate.

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I dunno, it's pretty mind withering from my seat. The complexity of the elf-human relations, the levels of detail on the dwarf caste system, the way that the Circle/Chantry controls all magic, all make for a complex world to navigate within a TT RPG. I'm sure the way its downloaded to you as you play through the videogame helps, but neither myself, nor the other player my game have played the VG, though the ST has and gets us up to speed when we ask, but sometimes we don't know to ask and do stupid things as a result.

Still it does play as an interesting world, and I enjoy the extent that Mages are balanced well in terms of power and in terms of play. The fade can really make for a bad day based on the rules for the advanced spells from set 2 (though we are a long way from having to deal with such.

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I personaly like the Dragon Age Video games. To be honest I haven't played the rpg system for pen and paper. Even so if you guys want to do a game I am all interested. Just you guys have to help me out a bit since I don't have any of the subject material for the pen and paper ahead of time. I been interested in doing an good fantasy based game for a long time. The ones I have play have not done alot of character development in my view. Or I have not had the time to do so with fellow rpiers at the t.t. games I play.

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