I have played a lot of roleplaying games over the years. We started out with Dungeons & Dragons and Warhammer Fantasy Role-Play 1st Edition but one of my favourite campaigns was with the Dragon Age RPG by Green Ronin.
Recently I was reminiscing about old campaigns and I thought that now would be a good time to dive in and give some thoughts on the game and its rules after a few years of pondering. It certainly got me considering just how fantastic the Dragon Age world is and the possibilities for adventure within its realm.
The Many Faces Of Thedas
One of the first things that I liked about the game when I first broke it out on the tabletop was the possibilities for character creation. Sure, the game has a lot of different races in it like Dwarves, Elves, Humans and the Qunari but the difference with Dragon Age was that it went a little deeper and introduced the concept of various cultures.
When you make a character in Dragon Age you don't just choose a "race" but something more tailored to fit the lands that they come from. For example, a man from Ferelden is very different from one that comes from Antiva or Orlais and this immediately helps players who are embodying these characters to work out just how they should be building their heroes. A valiant knight, whilst still a knight, can play very differently depending on which culture they come from.
As well as helping in the building of a character you've also got the roleplaying side of things too. A man from Ferelden has a very different outlook on the world when compared to those who live in the more defended cities of Orlais. They have faced The Blight on the front lines for example and this forms all manner of perceptions about others out there in the world who might have had it a lot better than them!
This variety doesn't just extend to the humans of Thedas. The same variety also exists within the Elf, Dwarf and Qunari races of Dragon Age who all have very different paths they could have walked before becoming adventurers. This is incredibly fun for players who love their roleplaying and weaving interesting stories which are loaded with backstory. In turn, this also makes it a joy to run as a Games Master, drawing on a character's backstory and heritage in order to develop a diverse campaign.
With all of this diversity in play already you might feel slightly hard done by when it comes to the core "class" variants of Warrior, Rogue or Mage. This has been designed to match the classes you can play in the video game of course but it also works as a quick and easy way to dive into roleplaying with a clear focus. There are a lot of additional ways for you to develop and change your character as you play and it's very hard for you to find two characters that are exactly the same each other after a level or two.
Dark Fantasy
As well as being able to create interesting characters, the world of Dragon Age is also one which works as a little bit of a barrier between different themes. It has many of the High Fantasy traits you'll be aware of with magic, dragons and more but it also has a real bite to it. Heroes can die, people can be claimed by The Blight and more often than not you'll fail just as much as you'll win during your adventures.
This isn't quite grimdark but it's close enough and it makes for really fascinating roleplaying opportunities. The world has no real black and white in its design and most of the time the "good guys" are usually grey in their morales, looking to right the world through some questionable decisions.
You can have a lot of fun with this as a Games Master and tell stories which challenge the players to make some hard decisions. I remember playing out one of the storylines from the various sets where they had to decide between chasing down an escaped warrior and his love in order to save their own skins from a sinister organisation or stay and protect the warriors kin from a siege by Darkspawn. It made for some fascinating moments and led to quite the storyline and relationship developing between the characters.
Combat For Veterans & Newbies
Another of the elements of Dragon Age that I really enjoyed was the mechanics behind combat but also the game in general. Everything is as simple as just rolling three dice and comparing it against a difficulty value but the nuance comes with its Stunt System.
The Stunt System is there to help add some drama to combat but it can also be used when exploring or delving into social encounters too. If you roll doubles on your dice when making a test you can then spend a number of points as determined by the dragon dice to perform stunts.
Stunts could be as simple as being able to move quickly away from your opponent or preparing to be attacking but you could also disarm your opponent, toss them on their arse or perhaps deliver a decisive blow against your enemies to cut them down quickly with another attack.
This means that if you're playing with someone for the first time they can do a lot more than just "attack" their foes. With the choices presented on the Stunt table, they can begin to see that combat is more than just an exchange of blows and it becomes a lot more descriptive. For Veterans, it means that you have something extra to consider during gameplay and it will become second nature after a while as to the best way to use Stunts to your advantage. For example, you could be playing a Rogue and use the ability to seize the initiative in order to push yourself up the initiative order so you can strike quicker and harder in subsequent rounds.
The Stunt System can feel a little overwhelming to some but once you're deep into a campaign like we were it was fun seeing what is offered to players. It does mean that you have to reel in players expectations sometimes as to what a character can do on a turn but it often provides options rather than taking them away.
Scale Problems?
One of the things that isn't quite as easy to dive into with Dragon Age is working out how best to build encounters at high levels, especially for me during those early days of Dragon Age. It was fairly easy at low levels but as things develop and your characters grow in strength it becomes a little harder to match foes against your players in a way that it poses them a challenge.
In the latest edition of the Dragon Age RPG they have included some tips for building encounters but it's nothing like the easy options presented in the likes of Dungeons & Dragons. There is a degree of nuance and tinkering involved when making Dragon Age combat encounters that challenge as well as thrill.
The answer to that is to try and develop encounters which provide choices rather than simply being a clash of arms. If you can throw lots of environmental elements or perhaps bystanders that need protecting then suddenly it's not an even fight against your foe. Whilst combats are quick and brutal I still believe in making sure that a fight has a purpose behind it. This was the way that I was able to tweak and change things at higher levels to counter the problems of not quite being able to challenge the players in a purely mathematical way.
Another answer is to simply dive into some of the pre-made adventures by Green Ronin. A lot of the sets contained a lot of pre-made quests which are easy to break into and provide you with some fun options to put before your players. In an age where being a Games Master takes up a lot of time, it's often good to have options like this. It was even good for me back when I was back from university and had much more time to dive in and write up stories.
So, Time To Return?
After talking about the Dragon Age RPG here I am really tempted to try and dive back into it. Alas, it will probably be quite the long wait before I actually get to do that but I can dream and make plenty of characters in the meantime. I think for its vaults mechanically there is a lot of depth to it as a game and it has plenty to offer.
It does a splendid job of recreating the world of Dragon Age on the tabletop and building up those themes of the video game with its storytelling opportunities. It might be a little old now and there might have been a few developments in its time since with the Fantasy AGE range but I still think it holds up as a system.
If you're a big fan of the video games and you've not had a chance to play tabletop roleplaying games in general then you can't go far wrong with Green Ronin's work. It's very friendly to new players and there is a lot of additional options for you to read to make the process of starting up a campaign easy.
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