I. Love. My. Hobby.

[smjn]

Typing the notes from last weekend I'm totally psyched out on our epic RuneQuest Dragon Age campaign and roleplaying in general. People who haven't tried this stuff sure are missing a lot!

Having been a bit frustrated over all the political intrigue in the nation's capital, the GM decided to give us a little change of pace by sending us on a more traditional search and rescue adventure, in the course of which we, among other things, managed to save a barbarian village in the mountains from an evil horde of uncharacteristically intelligent darkspawn. (Think orcs etc.) It sure was good to be able to tell who was evil and who was not, things like this tend to get rather muddy in the mire of politics.

The heroic defense at the Battle of Redhold sure was something to remember, but what was even more notorius is what I'll be typing next. On the way back to the city on the other side of the country was fought the much smaller but even more satisfying Siege of Tavistock.

You see, this bastard of a highwayman had decided that he wanted to be a noble too, so he had started a campaign to seize some of the lands and loyalty of the freeholders from the domain of his half brother. Unfortunately for him, our four heroes were in good terms with said nobleman, so on the way back, when we noticed the ass had had some good men decapitated and their heads struck on the tips of long poles, we had enough.

So my normally benevolent and cautious healer made up a plan, had to spend some time talking the others into it, but finally managed to sway them. We found a new tower fortification where we surmised the bandit was hiding, attacked it from four sides, killed some of the guards, a traitor mage who had joined up and seized the hapless upstart, who had spent months building his plan and support only to be foiled by a motley group of adventurers, who happened to pass through his newly conquered lands on the way back from a mission. Took about five minutes. Glorious!

Edited June 13, 2013 by smjn
Fixed small typo

[Heimdallsgothi]

sounds awesome

How did you convert the magic system over?

[smjn]

How did you convert the magic system over?

This campaign started long before the Dragon Age PnP RPG came out because the GM had liked the Dragon Age: Origins computer game, and its expansion Awakening. We just took the spell trees from those two games and statted them up for RuneQuest 3. The Dragon Age Wiki is an invaluable tool for us. Unlike the computer game, however, the spells all require a skill roll. The skill starts from 25 +Magic bonus.

The actual effect of each spell is generally just figured out based on what feels right for the level of RQ3, although there are fixed formulas to figure stuff like magic points cost, durations and skill modifiers based on the effect in the computer game. For example, the main attack spell Arcane Bolt takes 2 magic points, has range of 35 m, does 1d8 + Spellpower(=INT+some bonuses) damage to total hitpoints (resist w/CON halves), ignores armor.

There is no limit like Free INT to how many spells one can learn, meaning a mage can potentially learn all the spells listed. The spells in Dragon Age are all combat oriented, so we have decided that small cantrips, like shining a light from the knob of the wizards staff are available to just about all magic users.

The Rogue and Warrior talent trees were also ported and some other house rules made up, like getting rid of SIZ ('cause the GM doesn't like the stat) and all negative skill category modifiers, giving all characters (NPCs as well) five action per melee round and allowing melee rounds to continue past ten strike ranks until all action points have been used.