If you’ve been living under a rock then you probably haven’t heard about the hot new electronic RPG Dragon Age: Origins from Bioware. Dragon Age is supposed to be the virtual descendant of the classic Baldur’s Gate but this isn’t about e-games. It’s about the good old pen, paper and dice games.
Green Ronin is scheduled to release the licensed version of Dragon Age RPG for us analog gamers. Not a lot of information has been released yet but I’ve been able to glean enough.
The game should be released sometime in the next couple months. (Just my guess. No hard date has been announced). It will be released in boxed sets just like old school D&D. Each set will cover five levels (Set 1: 1to 5, Set 2: 6 to 10 and so on) with a price point between $20 and $30 for each set. Yes, it has classes. The first set will have the Fighter, Rogue and Mage. Wait. No clerics! Who will do the healing? The Mages do that. And by the way, magic is fuels by Mana/Power points.
The base mechanic sounds pretty simple. 3D6 plus some modifiers. One die is the Dragon Die. This sounds a bit like the wild die mechanic from the d6 system. Basically, if this die rolls high then you have an extraordinary success, low then it’s oopsy time.
Currently, I’m in wait and see mode. The great folks at Green Ronin have put out some fine stuff but I have to say to myself do I really need another Fantasy RPG? It depends. Hopefully, they’ll bring some neat mechanics to the table. Something that will set the game a part from every other fantasy RPG out there. I’m keeping my fingers crossed.
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This is a very interesting development.
I think a lot will depend how closely the tabletop game and the computer game match. Are they using the same mechanics? Does the game play feel the same?
The nature of computer games is completely different to tabletop RPGS and one of my concerns over this sort of cross-over is that the computer market is far larger than the tabletop market. This will almost certainly result in the computer game driving the development of the tabletop game which is likely to be detrimental to the tabletop experience.
On the overhand if Dragon Age develops a strong brand and brings loads of people to the tabletop, I’m not going to complain.
The goal is to create an introductory game to draw new people new. I’d call it inspired by mechanics but haven’t seen enough to make a good call on how much it will reflect the feel of the e-game.