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Preparing for my second Dragon Age game, I have decided to add in some tactics for NPCs, and allowing the players to discern those with a few Cunning rolls. The reason? To personalize and to add color to what otherwise would be just block-stats and to keep the players on their toes.

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I recall chatting with a fellow GM who was running D&D 3.5. “My magic-using PCs keep dying like flies,” he was musing. “It could be because I always target them first with all available ranged attacks”. What followed was a discussion where I suggested maybe he should have tipped off his players to cast Entropic Shield, Mage Armor and so on before wading into a combat. Yet during the course of the conversation, a thought nagged at me at the back of mind. Should NPCs in combats act as though they belong to some hive mind?

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The official Green Ronin’s GM guide to Dragon Age came with a few items; In preparing for my first game, I’ve decided to give the PCs some more items to play with, and have the idea of using existing items from the CRPG instead of coming up with my own. So today I would start with enchanted swords, and slowing move my way down. The list comes from the official Prima’s Strategy Guide, to give credits where it is due.
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There is always one challenge when it come to combats with multiple opponents who are of the same type – goblins, wolves, zombies and what have you. It sometimes spoil immersion if you say, “Right, Goblin B is leaping at you with his spear!” So just for fun, while prepping for my first Dragon Age game I settle on some simple descriptions.

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Green Ronin has released their Dragon Age pen and paper RPG, and one thing that has been pointed out is that there are some elements from the CRPG missing. As I was preparing for my first session of the game, I asked a rogue player what he wanted. “Darts with tranquilizer poison” and that when I realize…”This game needs some poison rules”. And here they are.

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Mouse Guard is a lot of things, and isn’t a lot of things…one thing for sure is that it has taught me how to appreciate RPGs in ways I didn’t notice. I always was worried about in-character presentations and the ‘mood’ of the game, yet Mouse Guard points out one thing. Part of the experience is the table chatter, and there’s whole lot of fun in that too.

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The grimore of Dragon Warriors is not as thick as in other fantasy role-playing games. Sorcerers, Warlocks and Mystics get access to five (or four for the Mystic) new spells per level. The good thing is that you get all those spells automatically though. However, there is one way to quickly get about two times amount of castable spells, and this is by reversing them. Moonglow becomes Darkness, and so on. Presented below are the level 1 Sorcerer’s Spells, reversed. They are still considered as level 1 spells, but cost 2 MP to cost.

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When it comes to physical conflicts, scaling them upward is a no-brainer. We have tests of speed and strength, then followed by a duel between two combatants. Scale that upwards and we have mass combat, and move it up by another notch, we have mass battles and wars. Less said in RPGs are how social conflicts can be scaled upwards. When we think of social conflicts, we think of haggling, persuasion and seduction. However, those belongs to the scale of one-shot physical tests, handled akin to some form of social arm-wrestling. Perhaps to add more nuances to social conflicts, we have to scale it upwards. So here are some suggestions.

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I finally picked up D&D 4th Edition (just the Player’s Handbook) and as I flipped through it, an interesting thought comes my mind. Every class has a well-defined role during combat, be it healing, blostering others, crowd controls (through shifting and pulling), debuffing (marks, combat advantages), area of effect damages and a scissor-paper-rock system (the types of Defenses – Armour, Will and Reflex). It looks like the designers took a page or two out from Game Design Patterns.

This got me wondering though. Who is responsible for building effective characters. This question, however, can be broken down. What do you mean by effective? And in what situation?

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Those monasteries are located all over at the most inhospitable places of the realm. Nested against hills with no villages in mile, upon a storm-wrecked island or sometimes in a wing of a collapsed and abandoned castle. One visiting the place should take some heed and be braced for the sight that would greet them if they step into one. Only the caretaker of the monastery is alive. Inside, hundreds of skeletal monks, still in their robes, tirelessly makes copies of important treatises, tomes and religious texts. What magic keeps them going? Isn’t anyone particularly concerned about this? Why would adventurers need to go to such a place, anyway?

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