I finished Dragon Age II tonight. All my earlier thoughts still hold, although the pig-in-a-poke Gotcha! missions about which I complained became mercifully less common as the game progressed. (In their place came missions you were free to accept or decline, but still had to perform after declining: transporting a Qunari mage to his execution, […]
I’ve noticed a nice touch in Dragon Age II: weapon and armor shops sell good stuff. Dragon Age: Origins had a few nice things in its shops: magical tomes that would increase your attributes and backpacks to increase your carrying capacity. But weapons and armor? On rare occasion, you might find gear superior to your […]
Studying game systems and searching for campaign inspiration has taken on a sudden urgency. Ella, our current GM, has announced that she’ll be traveling: to the Philippines for a couple months, maybe elsewhere for longer, while she tries to work out where to go next after some major life events. Her intention is to return […]
David Gaider’s response to a fan irked at the implementation of romantic relationships in Dragon Age II is one reason why Bioware deserves your money. It’s worth reading in full, but for those in a hurry, here’s the synopsis: Player Bastal thinks that, since maybe 80% of DA2 players (a number he pulled from the […]
Dragon Age II uses retrospective as a narrative frame: your story is told by Varric: dwarf, bard, spymaster, adventuring companion, and accomplished bullshitter. He tells the story of Kirkwall’s implosion—magophobic templar against wizard, Qunari against Kirkwall, noble against perpetual elvish underclass against refugee human newcomers, slaver against rebel—from a distance of several years, and paints […]
Despite a large percentage of twerps in the pool of potential opponents, I enjoy the online spades game offered as part of the standard Windows package. Spades is deep enough to be worth the effort, yet can be played in a manageable bite. Well, worth he effort if you don’t get a twerp in your […]
I’ve been at work on Dragon Age II lately, getting well into the “first act,†wherein you perform odd assignments, often shady and almost always bloody, trying to make a name for yourself and collect enough gold to finance an expedition to the deep roads. So far, so…well, not good. Okay. Technically, the game is […]
I’ve largely, though not entirely, dropped out of touch with the world of RPG design in the past several years. As the hobby continues to shrink, we’ve seen a lot of consolidation into familiar titles—D&D and White Wolf’s formula—even on specialized game shops, which grow fewer every year, and less shelf space for even the […]
Continuing my search for RPG inspiration, I checked out the Douglas Fairbanks version of The Thief of Bagdad. Boy, is it ever campy! The sets and costumes, though lavish, bear no resemblance to either Arabian folktales or the historical garb of Arabs, Mongols, et al. “Florid†is an understatement for the body language, and the […]
I picked up a book tonight about the Silk Road, as a resource for RPG design. I’m considering something in the vein of the Arabian Nights folktales, a breathless whirl from Baghdad to Macao, with the PCs taking the role of retainers to an Arab prince smitten with love for a Chinese princess. With no […]