Bundle of Holding - Dragon Age & Fantasy Age

I bought the 1st Dragon Age Boxed Set when it released and I was impressed. It had flavor and a system I could grok. Later, Green Ronin removed the video game's IP and released Fantasy Age. Both are part of the Dragon Age & Fantasy Age Bundle.

For 10 bucks you get what is effectively a Fantasy Age starter set. For a hair over $24 you get Dragon Age and Titansgrave as well as some other material.

I'm in for at least Fantasy Age but I never followed up with the later Dragon Age releases. Hmmm... decisions, decisions.

Mini Review - Blood in Ferelden - Three Adventures for Green Ronin's Dragon Age

Green Ronin's Dragon Age RPG is based upon the computer / video game RPG of the same name.  The computer version is outstanding, and well worth the price of admission.

Dragon Age, the Table Top RPG, uses the same setting and gives the players a chance to play in the setting that is so well detailed for the computer.  The initial game set covers levels 1-5, and is well done and nicely put together.  Without support material in felt incomplete tho.  Blood in Ferelden does a fine job at removing that incomplete feeling, and gives you three complete adventures and three adventure seeds.

In reality, Blood in Ferelden is more like a mini-campaign, or an Adventure Path (that's what the kids are calling it these days - its all the rage).

A quick synopsis from Blood in Ferelden for the three adventures follows:

     In Amber Rage the heroes survive a surprise attack on a village fair and must journey, in the aftermath of the attack, into the Korcari Wilds to find a key ingredi- ent to the cure for the horrible disease that the attackers brought with them.      

In Where Eagles Lair the PCs are pressed into ser- vice tracking down the kidnapped daughter of one of Ferelden’s arls in the Frostback Mountains, where the strange and savage Avvarian hillmen dwell.          

Finally, in A Fragile Web the heroes must negotiate an entirely different manner of challenge, where almost nothing is as it seems, in dealing with a series of deadly political intrigues in Fereldan’s capital city.

The adventures average about 40 pages a piece and should probably take 2 to 3 sessions each to complete, so you are getting a nice bang to your buck ratio.

Did I mention that Green Ronin did a fine job bookmarking this?  They did.  It's a pleasure to read.

Dragon Age RPG - The Boxed Set...

was at my doorstep when I arrived home yesterday.  I promptly opened it and was suitably... unimpressed.  The last boxed set RPG I had ordered was the latest incarnation of Warhammer.  Steep price but a plethora of goodies to fondle and oodle.  Not so much with Dragon Age.

Lets see.  We have a Player's Guide, a Game Master's Guide (both perfect bound soft covers), a fold out map, and three lonely 6-sided dice (2 blue, 1 green).  The box feels... light.  Eh, maybe because I received the PDFs earlier due to preordering  my anticipated excitement is lacking.  The books look nice, the artwork is professional and appropriate, they just don't feel like they were worth 30 bucks for 2 64 page softcover books, a map and three dice I could have grabbed from any family game.

Maybe I'm harder to please in my old age, but this was anticlimactic.

The computer / Xbox 360 game rocks tho ;)

Dragon Age: Origins - Seeing Double

Alright, I bought Dragon Age for the XBox 360 initially. I figured I needed to get more use out of my 360, and it would be awesome playing a game like this on a 42" screen. And it is, or was. One a scale of 1 to 5, I give the game nearly a 4.5 after playing thru about 15% of the game. That being said, it is almost impossible to run tactical combat with the 360 interface in this game. Just doesnt lend itself to it.

So naturally I broke down and bought it for the PC. Hey, at lest it was at a 30% discount from the EA store as a download. I've barely started the PC version, but already I prefer the interface. Then again, I am primarily a PC gamer. Assuming the rest of the gameplay is like the 360, I expect a very solid 5 out of 5 on the pc version.

Course, I have Borderlands standing by to be played on the 360 next, but that is a RPG / Shooter hybrid... it may just work ;)