It's only got the first set out (of an eventual four, so Green Ronin tells us), so naturally it's quite rules-lite at the moment. It only covers the first 5 levels of character advancement, and the Talents (more on them in a sec) only have a couple of ranks in them, but what's there makes for a fun little swords-and-sorcery game that doesn't even require intimate knowledge of its video game cousin to play.
The game's core mechanic involves the rolling of 3 six sided dice ("3D6" to the gamers) and adding one of 8 core Abilities (Strength, Constitution, Communication, etc) as appropriate, and trying to get a high enough total to succeed at the given task. Extra skill comes from Ability Focuses, which give a +2 bonus to the roll in that specific situation. For example, your character might have a Dexterity score of 2, and an Focus in Stealth (written as Dexterity 2 (Stealth) ); they would add 2 to a roll for a task involving agility and quickness, but in situations requiring a talent for hiding and sneaking, they'd add a total of 4.
A less prominent aspect of the game, but one that still gets a use, is the Talents mechanic. These are little skills that offer benefits to different tasks, such as bonuses, re-rolls or negating of penalties. They have multiple ranks that increase in benefit as the character levels up, but so far they only have the Novice and Journeyman ranks detailed (one assumes that there'll be more in future sets if they get released), and cover a wide range from medical skills to combat proficiencies.
Just like in the video game, you pick your class from Warrior, Rogue and Mage, each being the archetypal fantasy character. You also have a background, which determines what race and character you can be, as well as offering some extra numeric benefits. There some familiar ones from Origins (City and Dalish elves as well as mages both Circle and Apostate), as well as new ones like the the Fereldan Freeman and the Surface Dwarf (that being the only kind of dwarf you could play in this game world).
The game specifies that when you roll your dice, you designate one as the Dragon Die, normally by having it a different colour to the others. The Dragon Die usually shows your degree of success (1 being just succeeded, 6 meaning it was a breeze), but it can do other things as we'll see later.
That's it. Even combat scenarios are resolved this way, using standard Ability checks with Focuses available for weapon types. However, combat does have one more in-depth feature, which makes it more interesting: Stunts.
Stunts happen when you hit an enemy in combat and get two dice with the same score. When this occurs, your character receives Stunt Points to spend on nifty effects, like extra damage, knocking the baddie prone, or even getting a second attack. The Stunt Points you get are equal to the number on the Dragon Die (remember that?), so when you see two 3s and a 6 on the red die, you know your enemy's in for a beating.
Character generation is pretty swift and easy, and uses a simple to follow step-by-step method. I managed to get a party of 3 generated in about 40 minutes with players who had never even looked at the game before, and they caught onto the game-play pretty quick too. What I can definitely say about this game is that it's small enough to be picked up by anyone.
Problem is, that smallness means there's not a lot of room to explore the game on any terms. You are really just stuck with a small amount of stuff, and while a new gamer would find that good to get on with and not overwhelming, someone a little braver might find themselves restricted. There isn't a lot of support for the game, as it hasn't gone very far into the product line (hopefully the inevitable publicity from Dragon Age II will push it back into gear); GMs don't have a plot of published monsters and adventure-making tools at their disposal, which is made worse by the fact that the rewards system for encounters is far too abstract in advising how much XP you should give the party: it just says to award them some based on how difficult they found it, when XP is used in most otehr game as a tool for decided the encounter's difficulty. Hmm..
The game world gazetter is good enough to get you started, but a bit more in-depth information would have been nice for those not into the video game (and this is coming from someone who hardly ever reads the fluff).
Long story short: if you like the Dragon Age video game series, get the tabletop game. If you like swords and sorcery, get this game. Just don't make it your main game in your group, keep it for one-offs or in-between your main game. There's enough for that, but too little for anything else.
Comments down below :)
We've been playing this for a few months now and I agree. It's the first set I've ran as a GM and it's been with a group who are mostly new to RP so it has helped them with the simplicity of the rules. However, I've started to add some rules and also ramp up the difficulty. Having looked at the set 2 playtest it looks like it will improve on most of these areas. Here's hoping as there's a lot of telling still to do!
ReplyDeleteI had no idea there was a play test out for Set 2. That certainly alleviates my concerns as to whether or not it's coming out :D
ReplyDeleteWhat do you think of the use of armour as damage reduction? I think it makes the fights drag out, but what's you take on it?
One of the things I mentioned to the others as we left was spartan look of it, like you mentioned, there not being much stuff, but it does make it easier and less intimidating for new gamers :)
ReplyDeleteLewis
Yeah, that's why it was on the list of games for a one-off; the speed of character generation meant there was more time to deal with you guys trying to sell livestock XD
ReplyDeleteAnother comment I forgot to mention was the structure of the GM's book...it's a bit poor. When trying to run the adventure in it, I had to keep flicking between stats and encounter notes, which slowed things down too much I think. Having the monster stats in the encounters would have helped a lot.
I'm probably going to be running more small games to see how well they work.