Dragon Age RPG review

[Novem5er]

That's a bad stereotype, so I am going to politely disagree with you here.

In 30 years of gaming, most of which has been in mixed-gender groups, I have found that you simply cannot generalize in this fashion. I've played with hardcore hack & slash women gamers (quite a few, actually). I've played with guys who were all about building intricate relationships for their PCs (quite a few of those as well). I've seen these same players go into a different game and flip roles, too.

Some gamers like creating personal relationships. Some gamers like killing things and taking their stuff. Some gamers like both, depending on their mood. Stereotyping any one group of people is just inaccurate and counterproductive.

I apologize for offending any female hack-n-slashers out there My comment was really a comment on what women in general prefer... not so much women gamers. It's still a generalization that women are more interested in relationships than combat... but romance novels, chick-flicks, and soap operas sell for a reason.

Twilight isn't popular because it has awesome vampire combat scenes.

Yet the world is filled with billions of individuals, and any particular gamer, male or female, will have varying tastes. I will propose that the tabletop RPG business has a pretty poor record of attracting females. The video game industry has done better over the last 15 years because they make a variety of games that many women find appealing. According to one article many women enjoy:

"Studies and sales data have shown that women are more likely to play hand-held casual games, such as the Nintendo DS, along with social oriented games such as "The Sims," where women make up more than 55 percent of players."

Wooing women gamers -- and game creators - CNN.com

I'm glad Nagol mentioned Pendragon! I'd played it like a decade ago and I remember our whole group loving the whole family system. Even if my current group (containing two women) wouldn't like it directly (playing all male knights, if I remember), maybe the system is something that could be ported over.

To bring the discussion back to Mouseferatu's Dragon Age review... I merely was trying to point out another missed opportunity for the designers at Green Ronin. I think the DA RPG is pretty neat, though, I haven't played it yet. However, my wife who LOVES the DA video game was very disappointed that the RPG was basically hack and slash, while the video game it was based on has a large focus on social interaction.

Yes, as GMs we can hand-wave the social stuff, or make someone make a simple attribute/skill check... but my wife is ALSO a gamer and she'd like to see a system to handle that kind of stuff.

Some games have included a social system, but my point was that Dragon Age chose not to, and that many of the big games (D&D specifically) also lack a strong social mechanic.

I (politely) suggest that more detailed discussion of making or exploring existing social systems be in another thread; and I'd gladly contribute! I just don't want to take away from Mouseferatu's excellent review!

 

[RangerWickett]

Hm. Using the skill challenge gimmick . . .

Partial success requires 5 successes before 3 failures. Complete success is 7 before 3. (If you get 5 successes, you can stop and take your partial success. Or you can try to get 2 more successes for a complete success. If you accrue 3 failures before you reach the total of 7 successes, you still get the benefit of a partial success.)

How much time each check requires depends on the emotion you're trying to play on. For each of these, I'd probably allow you to substitute an Insight check to get a +2 bonus on your next check. It wouldn't count toward successes or failures, just eat up time. (Also, as always, circumstances can count as automatic successes or failures, so if your entire team is dead and you're melting in a vat of acid, you'll have a hard time intimidating anyone.)

Fear is quick and easy, so making someone scared or intimidated requires a minor action for each Intimidate check, though they can be spread out across an encounter. If the target is bloodied, that counts as 2 successes. Partial success can make someone stop fighting. Complete success can make them take a particular action you desire, like run away, or help you do something without considering betraying you.

(If you fail or get only a partial success, the person might still stop fighting, or might help you, if that makes sense. Using Intimidate just gives you the option of short-circuiting their normal decision making.)

Seduction or conning someone requires about ten minutes for each Bluff check. If you're in a rush you can shorten that to a minute by taking a penalty to your check. Partial success can win short-term trust. Complete success earns long term trust, though if they catch you in lies, that can break trust.

Befriending someone sincerely requires Diplomacy checks, and likewise takes about ten minutes, or can be rushed to one. And, just like real life, you can do a combination of Bluff checks to hide stuff the person would dislike, or Diplomacy checks to make the person like you despite those things.

DCs would start at or around the target's Will defense, and be modified by circumstances.

 

[Jeremy Ackerman-Yost]

Novem5er, I would humbly suggest that you are proceeding from a more basic false assumption.

The fact that lots of women choose social computer games does not mean that women will choose to play a more social PnP game, or a PnP game at all. The vast majority of the women playing The Sims and casual/puzzle games will never, ever play a PnP game no matter how you package it. Just like the obscene number of guys (and moderate number of girls) playing Modern Warfare 2 are incredibly unlikely, on the whole, to play a PnP game.

Heck, Modern Warfare 2 has 2.5 times as many players as WoW. Does that mean WoW needs to adopt Modern Warfare 2 style play? No. Not at all. That would alienate their existing customer base and wouldn't necessarily attract any Modern Warfare 2 players at all.

 

[Novem5er]

Novem5er, I would humbly suggest that you are proceeding from a more basic false assumption.

The fact that lots of women choose social computer games does not mean that women will choose to play a more social PnP game, or a PnP game at all. The vast majority of the women playing The Sims and casual/puzzle games will never, ever play a PnP game no matter how you package it. Just like the obscene number of guys (and moderate number of girls) playing Modern Warfare 2 are incredibly unlikely, on the whole, to play a PnP game.

Heck, Modern Warfare 2 has 2.5 times as many players as WoW. Does that mean WoW needs to adopt Modern Warfare 2 style play? No. Not at all. That would alienate their existing customer base and wouldn't necessarily attract any Modern Warfare 2 players at all.

Really?

Is it really such a leap of assumption that women would be more likely to play an RPG that had strong social mechanics? Or that, along that nature, maybe more women would play?

I'm not saying millions of new women would start rolling d20's if only there were games that included rules for relationships. I'm not saying that a woman who liked The Sims would automatically like and play any tabletop RPG.

But never mind... apparently, the RPG business is fine as it is. Game designers have already done a bang-up job at attracting women, as is evident by the equality of sexes around every gaming table. In fact, there is nothing that designers could do to attract the very slim number of women who aren't already satisfied with today's roleplaying games.

And if there was something they could do, it would certainly not be including stronger mechanics for interpersonal relationships.

Duh, what was I thinking?

@ RangerWicket, I think you've got a great idea there, and that's how I'd handle it in 4e. We've done a pretty good job at just RPing social encounters with the odd Bluff or Diplomacy check thrown in. If one could make a "relationship template" of some kind, it would be easier to integrate skill challenges like that.

I did recently see the demo for the Song of Ice and Fire and it does include some interesting social mechanics, as does the Mouse Guard game that I've run over the last 2 months. So, I'm not saying that there are no acceptable systems out there.

To bring it back to Dragon Age, my wife simply noticed a big disconnect between the PnP game and the video game. She loved the video game because of the relationship building (and destroying), but when she saw nothing mechanically in the RPG rulebook, her reaction was one of "bah, it's just like D&D..."

 

[Jeremy Ackerman-Yost]

No offense was intended. But I feel like when the subject of female gamers comes up, it turns into dueling anecdotes. Half the people willing to post on the subject line up on one side and say, "Build it social and they will come!" and the other half line up on the other side and say, "My female gamers are power gamers/tacticians/barbarians/just-one-of-the-guys or whatever."

Treating female gamers as a monolithic whole is about as useful as treating male gamers as a monolithic whole.

Furthermore, I submit that the huge number of female gamers on the DS and Wii is a function of the control mechanics, not the games. Lots of the women playing the DS are playing puzzle and tactics games, for example. Not the slightest whiff of social interaction there. But interacting with the game is intuitive and has a feeling of feedback that you don't get from a control pad.

Or the entire genre of flash farm management games. That has a HUGE female presence. Does that mean adding a farming element to your PnP game will bring women to it in droves?

 

[Treebore]

Humanity has yet to understand itself, yet. So how the heck are we going to figure out women?

Irregardless of sex, I do think good social interaction rules are good to add to a game. I had hoped "Blue Rose" would take off due to its social/romance angle, but apparently it pretty much flopped.

Personally I think how "social" a player likes to play depends on how socially apt or inapt they are. Meaning I see only players who are comfortable with social interactions get into such RP actions in RPG's, OR social morons who use the RPG to explore some sick deviant ideas they have floating around in their heads.

Most players aren't comfortable either way, so just concentrate on killing things and taking their stuff.

This is just based on my observations with the comparatively few gamers I have played with over the decades.

I certainly haven't figured out humanity, let alone woman, or gamers.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Irregardless of sex, I do think good social interaction rules are good to add to a game. I had hoped "Blue Rose" would take off due to its social/romance angle, but apparently it pretty much flopped.

Personally I think how "social" a player likes to play depends on how socially apt or inapt they are. Meaning I see only players who are comfortable with social interactions get into such RP actions in RPG's, OR social morons who use the RPG to explore some sick deviant ideas they have floating around in their heads.

Yes, I think it would be a cool feature regardless of whether it attracts female gamers, any type of gamer, or just adds a new option to play with for myself.

 

[ExploderWizard]

Why does combat in any system take up dozens or hundreds of pages to detail, but something that many female gamers enjoy (personal relationships) is relegated to a simple skill check or in-character roleplaying than can often be creepy or inappropriate?

Combat does not always take up so large a space so I cannot agree with your any system theory.

Just rolling a die for interacting with other people is boring. Turning that into a series of complex rolls will just get more boring. I don't see that being dependent on the sex of the player at all.

As far as being creepy and inappropriate goes, there are no rules that mitigate this in any way. If there is a genuine creepy person at the table then he/she will find a way to make that known to others and will not need any rules to help with that.

 

[amerigoV]

Or the entire genre of flash farm management games. That has a HUGE female presence. Does that mean adding a farming element to your PnP game will bring women to it in droves?

I studder to think what type of gamer one would attract by advertising sheep as a central element to their game.

 

[ExploderWizard]

I studder to think what type of gamer one would attract by advertising sheep as a central element to their game.

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