Dragon Age: the White Wolf conversion.

I'm guessing I'm not the only one dissatisfied with the published pen & paper Dragon Age roleplaying game. Now, do I understand why they did it the way they did? Sure. They wanted it to hearken back to ye olden days of Gary Gygax and original D&D, and be simple to set up for play. Sure.

What they forgot was that original D&D was very, very simplistic, and built kind of (among a few other things) on the premise that the game master is only there to kill the player characters. It was based on war-game rules, after all. They also forgot that roleplaying games have evolved a lot in the past 30+ years, and that there are quite a few systems that could easily handle the setting as presented.

Before Dragon Age 2, I would very probably have used GURPS, or possibly straight-up D&D 3.5/Pathfinder. After DA2, I can't see any other solution than Exalted. 1st edition, too.

Hear me out.

Have you looked at the talent trees in DA2? Go ahead and do so, I'll wait.

*twiddles thumbs*

Back? Good. They look exactly like the charm trees in Exalted, don't they? Complete with prerequisites and everything.

So basically, what comes next is tying the Talent trees to Attributes or Skills. Oh, and making the races in Storyteller. And balancing mages versus non-mages...

Oh, and...no, I won't include rules for playable Qunari. Those guys are fucking creepy.

Worldwide premiere!

Uh, right.

So this is my blog for roleplaying game stuff. Just random stuff, from opinions (clearly marked as such) to things of my own that I tinker with that I don't mind others seeing (usually because making money off of it would be illegal, so better to put it up for free with copyright and trademark disclaimers).

My background in gaming is...as a gamer. Okay, I once had long discussions with several game designers back in the old mailing list days, but that's about it. So this is all amateur stuff, not professional. As for what games I have played, I have a little experience with most major systems, from D&D to Storyteller and Storytelling, from FATE (which I do not enjoy very much) to Smallville, from BRP to free-form. Not a lot of experience, but a little.

My favorite game of all time? Easy; Adventure! (Storyteller system version) published by White Wolf Game Studios. Love it to bits. Also, to some degree I kind of like Exalted 1st Edition, in spite of the clunky system (I prefer clunky to overly numeral or abstract).


Coming up next: Dragon Age: Exalted? My own homebrew notes for using White Wolf's Exalted 1st Edition to game in the Dragon Age setting by Bioware...