Green Ronin
Dragon Age RPG mini review
The other day I pent 4 or so hours playing through the introductory Dragon Age adventure The Dalish Curse. This gave me my first taste of the new Dragon Age RPG ruleset in play and over all my impressions were positive.
The stunt system was a fun way to make combat more dynamic, with out bogging down the rules. I’ll be especially interested in how they add new stunts as the box sets are released. I noticed even in our one session that people gravitated to the same stunts. Unfortunately the other day my dice weren’t in the mood to pair up, which made each time they did that much more exciting.
Otherwise the system was easy to pick up and didn’t seem overly intrusive in play. There was some discussion around the table on the Dragon Die and it’s place as the decider of success levels. Personally that didn’t bother me too much. If you succeed at a task, you succeed. The number of successes you have only matters occasionally. Using them in extended tests did seem a little cumbersome to me however. But as with all these things I’d just adjust how I used them so it didn’t get in the way.
I was playing a Dalish ranger type so didn’t have much to do with the magic system. there was quite a lot of discussion after the game on whether mages are ineffective. Reading through the rules I’m not sure it’s such a problem. The ability for people to turn aside a spell seems like a good one, especially going forward. Perhaps it could have been streamlined so that you have a Magic defence score rather than needing to do a roll every time to see if it gets through. But I’m sure that is the type of thing groups will house rule if they feel strongly about it.
I’d be a little reluctant to kick off any sort of campaign (even if I had the time) until I had a firm idea of when box set 2 will be out. I have a feeling that many of the gripes I’ve read in forums about the lack of setting info will be addressed in the up coming box sets. There are two releases already announced, the Blood in Fereldan adventure pack and the Dragon Age Game Master’s Kit. No release dates for these yet however.
All in all I liked the system and think it works well and has room to grow with the additions. If you have been looking for a light weight fantasy system then this might just be it. I’m planning on running an adventure at KapCon this month, so look out for the actual play report of that.
Dragon Age the RPG – first impressions
Just before Christmas Green Ronin announced that they were starting to take pre-orders for their new licenced RPG, Dragon Age. As an extra insentive they offerd a free PDF version for ever hard copy ordered. Being a bit of a Green Ronin fan, and also having just spent the majority of my free time playing the Xbox version of the game, I decided to take advantage of this offer (which if any one is interested is still avalible).
Crap – console versions of Dragon Age lack isometric view (plus RPG info)
Well something had to ruin the party. According to Kotaku (and all over) only the PC version of Dragon Age will have the classic CRPG isometric view. And my PC won’t run the game! There’s rumours of other issues as well, including smaller battles.
Not sure exactly what I’ll do here – I’m planning on getting a new PC but it probably won’t be until next year and I don’t want to wait for Dragon Age. Stink!
In other DA news, there’s some details of the pen and paper RPG in a new podcast at the Green Ronin site. I haven’t listened but there’s details in this RPG.net thread. It sounds interesting actually – simple but with a stunt die sort of system called a ‘Dragon Die’.
Also in comic form
As has been mentioned here before Bioware’s new fantasy RPG, Dragon Age is coming out on PC and Xbox 360 in November. Also with the help of Green Ronin it will be a table top RPG. And now, through Penny Arcade it’s an online comic!
Check out the first 4 pages here, and check back every Friday (North American time) for a new page. It’s pretty cool and looks to be doing a bit on the back story before the game starts.
And the winner is…
The ENnie awards were announced last week and I was pretty pleased to see that a game I’ve talked rather a lot about here, A Song of Ice and Fire Roleplay picked up a Silver for Best Rules as well as the Gold for Best Free Product for the Quickstart rules. Coming second place to a game like Dungeons and Dragons 4th edition is a pretty good feat and Green Ronin Publishing must be very pleased.
I’m hoping that off the back of this positive response to the game that Green Ronin firms up the plans for further products as well as officially announcing when the Campaign Guide will be released. According to a report from Gen Con on the Green Ronin boards, the hold up is not that they are waiting on approvals from George R.R. Martin. Though this of course should be taken with a grain of salt until there is some sort word from Green Ronin.
Most of the other award winners covered off DnD 4th ed, Dark Heresy and Paizo Publishing, though it was great to see that some of the smaller publishers and games had a good showing like Mouse Guard (which I own, but have never actually played) and Evil Hat Productions with both Don’t Rest Your Head and Swashbucklers of the Seven Skies. Unfortunately my friend Malcolm’s Hot War didn’t pick up awards in the two categories (Best Setting and Best Writing) it was nominated.
A full list of winners can be found over at the ENnie Awards site.
Comics and the movie biz
On a plane yesterday I watched the really, really terrible Wolverine movie. I mean the worst comic movie I’ve seen in years – like comic movies used to be. That said it reminded me how there are some pretty cool things about Wolverine as a character.
But what to buy if I wanted to get into Wolverine? This link is all about how the comics business interacts and fails to win from successful movie tie-ins. And a key reason is a lack of obvious starting points for characters – especially characters that have been going since before I was even born. This is similar to the complaints that are made about the lack of a good introductory RPG – attempts Chris Pramas and Green Ronin are trying to solve with their Dragon Age RPG.
I don’t have the time or inclination to get seriously into superhero comics, especially big name ones from the big two publishers, so I’m glad the films like Iron Man, the first 2 X-Men and Spiderman movies and the recent Batman movies are getting made – they allow me to get my big super hero fix without spending wads of cash on comics of variable-quality comics. I just hope that they re better than Wolverine…
More news about A Song of Ice and Fire
It seems that George R. R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire series is all sorts of hotness at the moment. First the new, shiny RPG from Green Ronin finally came out, and then (as Nick reported in this post) the HBO series based on the first book in the series, Game of Thrones, is starting to get traction.
Talking of which the Hollywood Reporter has this small article giving the first names (other than Martin’s) to be attached to the project. It seems that the star and director of The Station Agent are joining together again, but for something quite different. I think that Peter Dinklage as Tyrion is a very good start at casting. Looking forward to hearing more news.
Now over to the computer game world and it seems that the rights have been obtained by a company I’ve never heard of, Cyanide. At the moment I’m not going to get in anyway excited as in all honesty I think these books would be extremely difficult to turn into a computer game. Possibly you could do a Total War type thing and have the houses facing off across the battle field, but I’m not sure. The thing about the books I enjoy so much is that they are made up of complex webs of characters which would be extremely difficult to emulate. However the setting that Martin has created is very rich and it will be interesting to see how it pans out.
The Dragon Age PnP RPG and Nick’s thinking
As Sophie’s posted, Green Ronin have announced that they’re producing a pen-and-paper version of Bioware’s upcoming CRPG Dragon Age. This was hyped by a series of clues on the GR twitter feed and now Chris Pramas has updated the thinking behind these clues on his blog.
GR have done a bit of a closet Mongoose thing of late, publishing increasing numbers of licensed properties alongside their original settings: A Song of Ice and Fire, Wild Cards (George R. R. Martin’s shared world superheros setting), Thieve’s World and the Black Company. More than anyone, they must know how to make this work for them financially. And Dragon Age will expose them to a great new mass of potential customers – there’s already a page up on the official Dragon Age site and presumably there will be mentions in the manual and possible even load screens and the like. Pramas specifically says that:
As for “something needed,” I was talking about a really good intro game for new roleplayers. I don’t think D&D has had that since the early 80s (hence “something overdue”) and the tabletop roleplaying hobby needs new blood. It is not a coincidence that the first release is a boxed set.
I could be wrong, but I don’t think that this is going to bring in these new gamers in large numbers, box set or not. The vast majority of video gamers don’t care about tabletop games – if you look at the offical forums, you’ll see that near everyone commenting on this is an old tabletop RPGer. No one has popped in to say “I’ve always wanted to play a table top RPG and now here’s my chance!”
One other concern I have is that Bioware’s best work has been with other people’s settings. Star Wars and the Forgotten Realms in particular. Mass Effect is the only game of theirs I know with a totally original setting (Jade Empire is pseudo-historical) and I was fairly under whelmed.
I have every faith that GR will do this well and that it will be an interesting game , and I’ll probably pick it up if I like the setting from the game, but I hope no one thinks this is going to make RPGs mainstream again.
No homosexuality in Star Wars?
Given Sophie’s coverage of the Dragon Age PnP game Green Ronin are putting out, I thought it was worth pointing out some rather silly stuff Bioware staff have been doing lately.
A mod on their forums for upcoming MMO closed a thread discussing discrimination against gay and lesbian forum members by saying that gay and lesbian are terms that “do not exist in Star Wars”.
Oh dear.
Bioware apologised and made the staffer apologise, but what a stupid move. One good thing was that it helped raise the issues surrounding gay and lesbian gamers and their treatment online. Kotaku ran a good history of these issues that hopefully a lot of people read. Just try to stay out of the comments…
Dragon Age Pen and Paper
A quick update on my previous post. It seems that there is already a heap of info about the Pen and Paper game up on the offical Drago Age site.
Including this cover image. Check it out.
