Dragon Age questions?

[Elf Witch]

I am been looking at different systems to replace DnD as my system for my home brew.

I started researching Harn, Savage Worlds and fantasy Hero.

Some one in passing mentioned Dragon Age can anyone give me a basic idea of what it is like? I understand it is based off a computer game. I don't play computer games so that gives me clue what so ever.

What I am wondering is it level based, gritty or more fantastic? Does it require a lot of DM prep and it easy for players to break character creation?

 

[fba827]

my personal experiences...

only played it once while at a friend's place out of town. Overall i had fun. of course, i just had the one experience so don't know how it feels in the long term. Nor do I know what my friend was doing as a house rule versus rule-by-the-book since i didn't read everything and he may have just been streamlining for our short one-session play.

It's fantasy (sword and sorcery feel). My friend called it "dark fantasy" (if that term means anything to you, it doesn't mean anything to me). But it is more of the grittier sort (in terms of decapitations, etc when you do the crits).

Level based. stunt dice mechanic. three classes: fighter, rogue, mage. three races: human, elf, dwarf (with a couple subraces -- surface dwarf vs underground dwarf, dalish elf vs city elf; but as far as i gathered, the subrace difference is more about background than actual difference in game mechanics -- but i could be wrong on that point as i didn't pay -that- close of attention on my limited time playing)

"set 1" is the core rules player stuff for levels 1-5
"GM kit" is the GM rule stuff
(something like that)

i didn't DM so i can't really say from that perspective. And the DM did basically make my PC for me as he asked me questions along the way (again, we did it that way in the interest of time since it was a one-session thing and we only had a few hours). so i can't speak to how complex character creation actually was, but he seemed to do it within 10 minutes easily enough...

overall, in my one session, i did have fun. that said, i did also enjoy the computer games, so i had that to mentally tie things to as we played. that certainly affected my perspective.

 

[Ahnehnois]

My group ran it once. It is level-based. I would not call it gritty; it seemed low-lethality and and healing was really fast. The mechanics are quite different from the computer game.

It is rules lite and use d6's only. Combat was mostly players deciding who to attack and rolling to see if you got stunt points, which let you trip or take extra attacks. It went pretty fast. The skills system is also pretty simple.

I did not see a lot of design space to min/max in. There are three archetypical classes (fighter/rogue/mage), no multiclassing, and each is legitimately important IME. There is not a ton of depth in character creation.

The flavor of the world is kind of a fun riff on D&D. New spins on dwarves and elves, with mages being treated almost as a race of their own as well.

Not knowing what you are looking for, I can't recommend for or against it. I could see it for someone who wanted a rules-lite D&D-ish game and enjoyed the world. Me, I don't mind my rules-heavy D&D, so DA is in the back pocket as a changeup but not something I run regularly.

(Um, yeah, [MENTION=807]fba827[/MENTION] pretty much just wrote the same post while I was writing this one. I guess that's called a consensus.)

 

[amerigoV]

This is my READ of the system - I have not gotten to play it.

1. Go back to AD&D 1e/early 2e and grab some of the randomness (char creation) and level of adjudication (you are given a framework in which you will have to make rulings)

2. Throw away all dice but d6s. Use 3d6 as your d20 (make sure one die is distinctive) and you will use varying number of d6s as damage.

3. Grab 3e's resolution mechanic (roll + mods vs. Target Number (including AC))

4. Skills are more like proficiencies (but see 3).

5. Grab an old favorite magic house rule (mana points instead of spell slots)

6. Add in stunts (if you get doubles, look at your Dragon die (the different colored on) and you get to do something else based on the result of that die). Also, if it is important, the Dragon die determines how well you did something (for example, if you rolled to hide something and met or exceeded the target number, the results on the Dragon die says how well (1="well, if no one looks hard" to 6="crap, exactly where did I just hide it!?!?")

I suspect it plays like a cleaned up 1e/early 2e game. I suspect if my group had not been viciously Savaged (Savage Worlds), we would have given this system a go as 3e/4e were not working well for us.

To address the "Dark Fantasy" vs "Gritty". The system is not gritty or realistic. It probably plays much like 1e does. The Dark Fantasy is from the video game where occassionally you have to make a tough choice (ie, its not White Hat vs. Black Hat - its Gray Hat choices). That concept is not built into the mechanics - its just a campaign world theme.

 

[mach1.9pants]

It is a simple elegant system. We played it for a while before I moved town and my group split up. After 4E we wanted a much lighter more RP focused system that combats didn't take an hour. We got it! We used minis and a grid, but didn't use the squares just eyeballing the movement with the grid as a help. It worked really well, combat flowed fast and the stunts added fun. The stunt system is pretty cool, you get a stunt something like 45% of the time you hit so it is often used.
It is also easy to houserule having a very simple unified mechanic, esp very easy to convert the rules to vanilla fantasy/DnD style if you don't want to use the DA campaign. IIRC one of the Kobold Quarterly issues had Freeport (read normal DnD) races/backgrounds. (here is a cheap PDF of it: http://greenronin.com/2012/06/age_explorations_freeport_back.php) there is also Gifts of the Gods giving clericy rules.

In all I would 100% recommend it, I am planning a game with my 9 and 7 yr old boys and have this as one of my systems that I have short-listed.

 

[MatthewJHanson]

I've played it several times and enjoyed it. Like other's said it's similar to a rules-lite D&D. The biggest addition is the stunt system which I think adds just enough variety to combat.

My only real complaint is that it can be difficult for the GM to eyeball the power level of monsters sometimes.

The "dark fantasy" part is more about the setting. If you're taking the system to your own setting you can ignore that part.

 

[Prickly]

Its a decent system. So I pretty much echo what others have said here.
worth checking out.

I should mention that if you don't like arbitrary randomness in char creation, set 2 gives optional rules to remove that.