Some brief time after that I was invited into the Friends and Family playtest, and have been on that ride ever since, so yeah, I’ve been playtesting 5th Edition D&D.  That’s why there has been so little D&D content on this blog.  I am no longer playing or participating in any 4e stuff, although I had a chance to playtest some of the Encounter season stuff and one of the books you are seeing on the shelves this month.   So what do I think about it?  Well, it certainly looks and smells like the D&D I played when I was younger, no doubt.  If that’s the feel that they are going for, they’ve succeeded.  There are some aspects of it that are downright cool (themes, I’m looking at you), and some things that make me wonder why they weren’t always part of the game (the way ability scores interact with DC’s, for example.) I love the fact that minis and a grid aren’t assumed, although I’ve been playing D&D Next with a grid, as it’s just easier for me.   One thing I still don’t like:  conditions.  I really prefer the way Star Wars Saga handled those, and it’s a shame that mechanic has been discarded.  In the playtest that went out today, there are a far less number of conditions than in the version I tested, which had 21!   Too many, and I’m glad that number was reduced.

I think this playtest material is a great way to introduce somebody new to D&D to the game.  The rules are fairly simple, and you have everything you need to start a game. I would encourage people to not just play with experienced roleplayers, but to also try and play with somebody new to rpg’s, as it may give you a different perspective on the game.  The input and feedback that they can offer to the playtest may also let the designers see things from a newbies point of view, which at this point in time may be lost on them.

I’m going to ask the community a few things.  First, even if you don’t like something, try to be critical but in a positive way.  Don’t be a troll for the sake of being a troll.  If you don’t like a mechanic, explain why.  ”Because I think it sucks” is not an answer, and you aren’t helping anybody that way.  Second, lets try and remain civil, and not turn this into a 4e vs. D&D Next edition war.  D&D Next is coming, there’s no turning back.  You don’t want to switch?  You don’t have to. Your 4e books aren’t going anywhere.  Don’t troll people who have switched and are enjoying D&D Next.  Nobody’s dancing on 4e’s grave, relax, it’s just a game.

One last thing.  This game is not complete.  My guess is that they need the basic core of the game to be tight first, and that’s what we are seeing.  Something missing?  Bring it up, but don’t assume it’s gone for good, it may be in the works or not relevant to the playtest.

So in closing, that’s the reason why I’ve been kind of silent on the D&D front.  I was muzzled.  I expect to do a little more writing as I get deeper into the latest version of the playtest packet.  I need to check what’s changed from the previous one!  Good times.

Oh, and once you go through the playtest, take a look at my prophetic article from February 2011, where I predicted 5e was coming.  I think I nailed it.

Have fun in The Caves of Chaos this weekend!

I originally posted this on my Google+ page, I am reposting it here for those not on G+.

I play tested space combat in my SW/Age hack last night, and it went pretty well.  I’m going to get into a bit of the crunchy AGE bits here, so bear with me if you don’t understand the AGE system mechanics.

So right off the bat I want to say that space combat assumes a grid, but it isn’t really necessary if you are just running a small skirmish.  Ships have a speed, and that determines how many squares/hexes they can move on the grid on the pilot’s turn.  Moving through occupied spaces is fine, as that symbolizes the 3d aspect of the grid.

Out first scenario was a stock YT-1300 in a fight against 3 tie fighters. The ship had to make a jump to light-speed while avoiding the ties.  Neither the stock yt1300 nor the Tie Fighters have shields.  (Shields in this hack are just hit points that sit on top of the regular ship’s hit points. They can fluctuate, kind of like 4e’s temp hit points mechanic.)

We had 4 players: a pilot, an astrogation guy plotting the jump to light-speed, and two gunners sitting in the turrets.

Dragon Age has an action economy of a Minor/Major action per turn. A move falls under a Minor action. You can also take 2 minors in a turn instead of taking a Major.  Under a space combat situation, every crew member of the ship can take both actions if he wants, although for some it would make no sense.  Like the guy at the astrogatrion computer would have no reason to take a minor action, while the gunners would, as aiming is a minor and grants a +1 to the attack.

Moving the ship its speed is a minor action for the pilot.  Attempting a special maneuver is a major.  Maneuvers grant special bonuses and other stuff.

Let me show an example of play.   Initiative will go like this :
Pilot
Tie Fighter 1
Tie Fighter 2
Astrogation
Gunner 1
Gunner 2

Round 1

Pilot:   I’m getting away from those ties while the astrogation guy plots lightspeed. I’m moving the ship its speed (minor action) and attempting the Corkscrew maneuver (major), it halves my speed on my next turn, but gains me a +2 to defense until the end of my next turn. My roll is a 3d6+Dexterity (Piloting). A 17!  Made it!  My turn is over.

Tie 1:   Tie 1 is quick, he easily comes within short range of you. He rolls a 15 (3d6+Dexterity (Starship Gunnery), he would have hit your ship’s defense of 14 (10+Pilot’s Dexterity+2 for Piloting Focus) but that cork screw maneuver threw him for a loop!  His turn is over.

Tie 2:   Using his minor, he pulls up behind you, in a space adjacent to his ally.   As a major action,  he’ll attempt the Howlrunner Formation maneuver instead of firing at you.  If successful, it’ll grant him a +2 to attacks for as long as he’s adjacent to his ally. Rolls 3d6+Dexterity (piloting), 18! He made it.   He’s attacking at a +2 for now, but can’t attack this round due to having spent his Major action on that maneuver. His turn is over.

Astrogation guy:   Astrogation during space combat is an AGE Advanced Test.   The GM has determined a difficulty of 13, with a threshold of 15. That means my Cunning (Astrogation) roll has to beat a 13, and my Force Die has to add up to 15 before the jump to light speed is successful. Coordinating this jump is going to take me a few seconds (rounds are 6 seconds in AGE), so keep us alive! I roll a 14 with a 5 on the Force Die! Made the check, and i’m 10 away from threshold! I’m done this round.

Gunner 1:   These guys moved in at close range, so I have a good chance. As a minor I aim, gaining a +1.  Tie 1 is going to get it from me! 3d6+Cunning(Starship gunnery) is a 16! I beat their defense of 14! Oh, I generated 5 stunt points! I’m resolving damage… 2d6+Perception is a 13! And I’m using the Lethal Blow stunt for an extra 2d6 worth of damage, for another 11! 24 points in one round!

GM:  With just 35 Health, that tie is at 11 hp now!

Gunner 2:  I go after Tie 2. Even aiming I rolled a 6. I miss.

Round 2

Pilot:   Ok, so my move is halved due to my manuever last round.   So as a minor, I circle around these guys, slowly.  As a major though, I’m gonna try to do the Afterburn maneuver, which lets me move triple the ship’s speed! 16! Did it! Even though I’m slowed I pulled that one off.   Let’s go astrogation, get us out of here! (Run in AGE is a major action, it lets you move double your speed.  This maneuver lets you move triple speed).

Astrogation: I botched my roll! All these maneuvers are throwing off the computer, it can’t pinpoint our exact location! Argh! We need a droid, he has a better chance than me! Turn is over.

Tie 1:   His move of 11 easily puts him close to your ship, he takes a shot, but misses!

Tie 2:   He moves adjacent to his ally, remember that his Howlrunner Formation maneuver is still active, so he attacks you at a +2,  and he hits! You take 11 points of damage.

Astrogation: I rolled a 14, beat the test! And a 6 on the Force Die. My threshold count is now at 11, 4 more and we’re outta here! Keep us alive guys…..

So as you can see, everyone has something to do while combat is taking place. There are maneuvers for the pilot that grant bonuses and other special things, the Astrogation guy is biting his nails trying to break out of here before the ship is blown to bits, and the gunners are doing their thing.

It works just like regular dragon Age combat but at a larger scale, while maintaining the regular action economy, stunts, and other things native to Dragon Age.

Thoughts?

So here’s how I’m handling the Force and the dark side; the Force is one of the starting eight abilities, replacing Magic.  There are three focuses tied to magic:  Alter, Control, and Sense.  If you are familiar with the AGE rules, you know that those focuses grant a +2 to the test made using them.  If your Force attribute is at least a 4, and this isn’t easy to accomplish at character creation, you can select Force Talents.  There are Talents for Alter, Control, and Sense.  So you could go Force Alter Novice, and next time you select a talent you can go Journeyman in the same talent, or choose to be novice in Force Control instead.  Each rank in a talent opens the door to new force powers.

So once you have Force powers, using them is just another action.  Here’s a sample:

Force Push (Alter)
Action: Minor Target Number: 10
Test: None
Using the Force, you push back one or more creatures or objects within
your line of sight and up to 6 meters away from you. The number of
creatures you can push are equal to 3+Force Die of the Force (Alter) test.
Each creature is pushed back 4 meters and falls prone.

So, a Force Push is a minor action that requires the user to roll a Force (Alter) test and beat a 10.  The “Test:  None” line refers to whether or not the targets can do anything to avoid being pushed.  They can’t.  The effect of the power is self explanatory.

Let’s talk Dark Side now.  I plan to incorporate the Dark Side Point thing from other games into this conversion.  So here’s how it’s going to work for now, keep in mind that I have to test it.

When you use a force power with the possibility that using it in that manner will lead you to the dark side, the GM will warn you.  Once you make your choice, you’ll gain dark side points equal to the Force Die of the roll.

When you accumulate enough dark side points this way,  you’ll hit certain milestones.  it’ll come to a point where the DM will tell you that you can apply a +2 to certain rolls, thanks to the dark side. If you accept those, you’ll gain 2+Force Die worth of dark side points.  Your next milestone will involve the DM offering you a +5 to your rolls, and accepting those will give you a 5+Force Die to your Dark Side point total.  Eventually, you’ll succumb to the Dark Side completely.

There are other ways to do this too.  You can tell the DM that you are reaching into the Dark Side, and that you’d like a +1 bonus to any test.  This willful search of the dark side to aid you will get you faster towards the dark side, so tapping the dark side like this is dangerous.

So how do you atone, and head back towards the light side of the Force?  You reject the dark side and it’s temptations.  if the DM offers you a chance to use the Dark Side, you turn it down, and make your roll at a -5.  This will reduce your Dark Side points by the result of the Force Die, and possibly causing you to fail at your test.  You sacrificed your action and rejected the dark side, and you are now closer to the light.

So that’s what I’m planning for the force in this conversion, which is closer and closer to being done.  At least the first 5 levels worth of game.

“I’m just sitting here Watching the wheels go round and round I really love to watch them roll.”  John Lennon

Well, this certainly made for an interesting week in D&D land.  As you probably have already heard, Monte Cook is off the 5e team.  And to top it off, Wizards announced that the release of the 5e open playtest will be on May 24th.  Oh, they happened to drop that last nugget on the same day Monte announced he was off the team.  No, I don’t feel like that was coincidental.

Oh wait, there’s more. It seems the reprint wagon just got a little heavier, as these guys turned up on Barnes and Noble.  I’m a little concerned about these, and I hope that it won’t confuse any new players looking for “D&D”.

Oh, yeah, then there’s this guy. More stuff with the D&D label on it.  That’s a whole bunch of D&D!

So what’s going on?  We have 1e reprints on the way, 3.5 books with errata, and an old boardgame.  I predict, by the way, that we will see 2e reprints announced before the end of the year. If not core books then settings and boxed sets.

I think what we are seeing is that either Wizards has to make a number, and they are throwing everything they can at that attempt, or simply they need to raise more cash to fund a new edition and pay the bills.  They essentially (see what I did there) made 4e a lame duck when they announced 5e at the beginning of the year, so maybe they need to make up for some of the lost 4e sales caused by announcing a new edition.

I don’t fault Wizard’s for casting “Bigby’s Generate Gold”, businesses have to do what they have to do.  My two concerns are overcrowding the shelves with more D&D books that’ll just confuse the heck out of new hobbyists, and whether or not there’s a mad rush out the door to get 5e playtested, printed and in stores. I can’t help but wonder what Monte’s concerns and disagreements were about.

I am excited about D&D Next, I want it to do well. The WOTC guys genuinely care about the game, that much is certain, I just hope that corporate pressures aren’t getting in the way of creativity. That’s never a good thing.

May 24th can’t come soon enough.

Oh, predictions!  Since I was pretty spot on with my 5e prediction, let’s do another one.

I predict 2e reprints will be announced perhaps at Gencon.  This will include campaign sets and all that stuff that made 2e popular.  I also predict pdf’s will be announced as well.  The entire thing. The whole library.  Time to make some money.

Discuss!

Here are some sample enemies:  a stormtrooper, a thug, a young rancor, an average bounty hunter, and an imperial customs agent.

As you can see with the rancor, the system’s stunt mechanic allows you to break the rules a bit and have creatures and enemies do neat things.

Check them out here.

So here’s what I’ve come up with:

• Like in the old D6 game, ships have a move that represents space units.  In d6 this was “Space”, in my AGE hack, it’ll be the familiar “Move”.  These numbers are lifted straight from d6, they work well.
• How to handle “shields”, which basically serve as a buffer before ships start taking damage?   I lifted it right from 4e, yet kept it in AGE terminology. Shields have “Health”, and when that runs out from getting blasted too much, then the ship’s “Health” begins to get hit.  These are 4e’s temporary hit points.  Want to upgrade to better shields?  Mechanically they’ll just have more health.  Easy. No need to complicate things with some invented sub-system.
• Determining a ship’s health stands for right now as some arbitrary system I came up with on the fly based on some d6 rules die codes.  This needs work.
• A ship’s “defense’ stat is right now based on it’s d6 rule-set “maneuverability” stat.
• Weapon damage?  This was a little bit of work, but I think I may have figured it out.  I took the ships found in the D6 Rules and looked at the die damage that their weapons did.  I then assigned, from least to greatest, equivalents based on the Dragon Age weapons group list.  So the starship weapon that dos the least damage in SW d6 would be paired with the die damage from the least weapon damage in Dragon Age. It’s rough, I admit, but since this is all relative, it may work.  I want to playtest this a bit.
• Weapon ranges were lifted straight from the d6 game.
• AGE’s Armor ratings?  Thinking hull plating will handle that, as you can upgrade to better hull in SW.
• Missing here is the whole thing of actually maneuvering this thing around, and using the Stunts mechanic with them… one step at a time.

Here are the basics of the hack, which I’m calling “Star Wars:  Age of Rebellion”:

• Like Dragon Age, it’ll have three classes, Soldier, Scoundrel, and Diplomat.
• Force Sensitivity is determined at character generation.
• Races are determined through background selection.
• The “Magic” ability is replaced by “Force” ability.  While not everyone may be force sensitive, the force does surround all living things.  That ability score represents the extent of that.
• Force Powers will become available through Talents, available only to Force Sensitive characters who have been trained in their use.  Yes, you need to find a trainer in the Civil War era of play.
• Piloting will work very similar to the WEG d6 game, it will consist of Dexterity (Piloting) checks with a TN determined by the situation.  No need to over complicate things.  There are talents to enhance piloting a bit.

Things I need to work on are force powers and their use, whether there will be a dark side point system, scale (starship vs. character for example), and a few other things.

So there, for the two or three of you that asked, I’m still pushing along, but slowly, it isn’t a big priority right now.

Here are the 6 backgrounds I’ve come up with for the game.  As you read through them, you’ll get a look at some of the special Star Wars focuses in the conversion, as well as some special abilities some of the races will get.  You’ll also notice that speed is missing on these backgrounds, that’s coming in my next pass through.

—–> Star Wars Age of Rebellion Backgrounds

Also, check out the first 5 levels of one of the classes, the Scoundrel. It’s a work in progress, but pretty close to being done.  You can find that and much more Dragon Age stuff at the Dragon Age Oracle.

—–> Scoundrel character class

It’s no secret that the WOTC playtests for DNDNext are being played with a theatre of the mind assumption, leaving the option open to play with minis and a grid if you want. This is the assumption made in Dragon Age, and it works well for us. But I’ve found something pretty interesting is going on at my table, and I wonder how many other folks experience the same thing.  I think that my group *likes* the idea of a game not needing minis (the main reason for dropping 4e was the length of encounters due to the tactical combat), but in practice prefers the minis and grid (even if just as a reference).

When we played 2e many moons ago, we played with a grid, and while positioning and movement wern’t really all that important to us, it helped us visualize the scene.  We do the same with DA, terrain and movment aren’t to strict at my table, and the minis serve as a reference.  So I’m finding that when I try to run a gridless combat, most people would prefer to see minis at the table.  This is surprising to me, because for as much as we may have wanted to drop the 4e baggage,  some things just work better. It’s an interesting thought.  In fact, I think the only game we may play without really needing any minis is the Star Wars d6 game.

So yeah, grids.  I find my recent experience interesting.  Where do you stand, and why?

On DNDNext

I’m not going to talk much about DndNext (use your imaginations), but I will say this.  I’m seeing some 4e fans feeling burnt by the talk coming out of official columns, public playtests and nda-breaking writers regarding the game.  All I can say is relax.  First, you are experiencing what 3e fans felt when 4e was announced 5 years ago.  Now it’s y(our) turn.  Such are the breaks.  Also, the game is nowhere near finished.  it’s unfair to judge a game based on snippets of information and marketing speak.

I personally have stuff to say about the game, and when the time comes, I will, trust me.  But for now, I urge you to wait for the public playtest, where you’ll have your chance to help shape the game.  Everything else right now is noise.

On a last note, I know I’ve been slacking here on the blogging front, but life’s kicking my ass.

If you would like to support NewbieDM.com, perhaps you’d consider visiting Amazon.com for your next rpg related purchase. Check out the following products:

World of Greyhawk AD&D Boxed Set

Menzoberranzan AD&D Boxed Set

Conquest of Nerath: A D&D Boardgame

Legend of Drizzt: A D&D Boardgame

Fragility dealt with time travel and alternate worlds, and while I never followed up on it or gave it much thought, I still think the premise is pretty neat and I’m glad to have stumbled on it.  I’m going to publish it here because I think it’s pretty interesting, and may help spark someone’s imagination.  Keep in mind the nature of Wave when you read this, it is incomplete, and may be missing stuff.  I’m putting it here for fun…

Straight from a forgotten Google Wave, Fragility:

Fragility
What if you should never have been born?

The general idea behind a Fragility 4e campaign is the concept of realities, love and loss, and tragedy. It’s a campaign setting in which the PC’s ultimate goal is about protecting all that they know from being dispersed into nothingness, and the shocking and sad realization that comes with knowing that they probably should never have even existed to begin with.

With this knowledge, the PC’s are left to ponder questions about reality, life, the universe, their place in it, and who they are or could have been.

In this setting, rather than there being a happy ending with the PC’s eventually becoming epic heroes of the land, more than likely sacrifices and hardships will plague them on their journey as paragons.
The concept:

A Fragility campaign can take place on many of our Earths, with timelines shifting and diverging. There is an Earth Prime, holding it all together. This is the earth we would know in our future, the earth of the 22nd century. Time travel is an unfortunate reality. Discovered by accident, an attempt was made to contain it, but as with all great discoveries it was released to the wild. Governments scrambled to assess the situation and diffuse any potential abuses. The Temporal Integrity Agency was created by the United States, serving as a branch of Homeland Security, with their mission being to right the wrongs of time travel by all means necessary. They are tasked with maintaining the knowledge, and the trajectory, of the one true timeline.

With the help of the world’s top scientists, the government manipulated, advanced and reworked the technology. The TIA works on its own plane of temporal existence, watching the world’s temporal integrity and correcting the wrongs caused to history or to the future. Whether it’s the South winning the Civil War, or the current timeline splitting off into a different future, the TIA is there to correct the wrongs caused by time travel.
The PC’s role:

The PC’s are inadvertidly caught in a fight for survival. As members of the “wrong” timelines that are due to be corrected by the TIA, they should never have known that their fate was sealed, but somehow, much to the TIA’s chagrin, they do.

And they aren’t going down without a fight.
But this also begs the following question. For a party of different PC’s, from different realities who have all ended up together, what determines what reality to fix? Why work together when only one reality can exist at a time? Or can it? These are all assumptions and questions that the GM would have to take into account and flesh out for his game.
Fantasy Races in a Fragility campaign:

Standard fantasy races all have their place in a Fragility campaign. The assumption being that in the reality that they come from, they are the true “human”. So while in essence they are elves and dwarfs; in their world they are just what normal human beings look like. This could be due to genetic engeenering, the butterfly effect, random acts of mutation, the randomness of evolution, or any other sensible reason for their evolution into those races. It really doesn’t matter why, just that they are who they are and they don’t see themselves as “wrong humans”. To themselves, they are simply human beings.

It is worth noting that for example, an elf PC would not likely find many other elves as the adventures through the campaign trying to regain his or her timeline. That individual PC is the one that escaped the “fixing” of his reality, so more than likely he is the only one of his kind out in the stasis universe.

So I’ve decided that my Dragon Age campaign will switch to following the story line (albeit a bit altered) of the videogame.  My 5 players are level 5, and we’ve gone through most of the published adventures, which I believe springboard nicely into getting noticed by the Grey Wardens.  I wanted to chronicle my conversion of the video game unto the tabletop, so I’m going to do it here at the Dragon Age Oracle, the web’s best place for Dragon Age content outside of Green Ronin’s site.

I’ll pick up the story after finishing the adventure included in Set 2, “The Autumn Falls”.  There, they caught the attention of the Nevarran Grey Warden Commander, who instructed them to go to Ostagar and meet The Ferelden Commander, Duncan.  Behind the scenes, Duncan already knew about this group of people because they had helped stop a Darkspawn assault on the Avvarian village of Redhold, and had defeated a Desire Demon in Denerim.  Duncan was waiting.  The party’s journey towards their fate would begin in the port city of Amaranthine, where the ship bringing them from Nevarra back to Ferelden docked….

Campaign Journal 1

In Amaranthine, the first thing the party wanted to do was change some of the coin they were carrying into smaller currency or jewelry.  They looked around for a money changer and were led to the part of the city where the nobility’s more likely to be found.

Game bit:  The party is wearing very finely crafted masterwork Armor that grants +1 on social tests, so they definitely do not stand out among the nobility.  

They were led to an inn/pleasure house called The Hen and the Cock where the local nobility goes to “unwind”.  There was sufficient money on hand to allow them to change their silver into Sovereigns, so they were able to take care of that bit of business.  At the “Cock”, as the locals call the place, they overheard a pair of nobles talking politics.  It seems that Arl Rendon Howe (of the Arl of Amaranthine) recently led an army to the Castle of Highever and killed most of the inhabitants along with the Tyern, Bryce Couseland, and his wife.  The apparent reason for the attack was that Highever was planning on forging an alliance with Orlais against King Cailan.  Most of the party had little interest in the politics of northern Ferelden, as they were eager to arrive in Ostagar and meet with Duncan.

Game bit:  I planted this seed so that later on, Loghain’s treachery and alliance with Howe would make them remember this bit of knowledge.   Also, this happened while the party was out of the country participating in the Autumn Falls tournament.

The night before they were due to ride south, one of the party members wanted to find healing potions.  This led him deep into the underbelly of Amaranthine, where they were introduced to a city elf who claimed he could get them some potions.

Game bit:  Since Dragon Age is a low magic setting and magic stores don’t really exist, there are no prices in the books for potions so all this was improvised. 

The city elf made them pay some heavy coin to get information and access, but he found them what they needed.  Only two of them were allowed to go, and they had to be unarmed. They were led to the door at a warehouse where a woman named Verescinse lives.  Along the way they noticed that they were being tracked by a pair of elves up on the rooftops.  One of the party members actually acknowledged the lookouts with a friendly wave.  At Verescince’s house, the elf that led them there left them at the door after ringing a hidden bell.  A pair of armed guards opened the door.

Inside, they witnessed a horrid sight.  In the large, dark room they were in, an extraordinarily large oak table was cluttered with chemical components, flasks with smoke coming out of them, and more importantly five elves of various ages and sexes, strapped to the table.  The elves were whimpering, their bodies twitching in pain.  Every now and again they’d cry out for help.

There were about 5 guards in the room.  And then Verescinse entered.  She was a rather large woman in her 60′s, who quickly got down to business.  She was very soft spoken, and knew what the two party members were there for.  Throughout the conversation, the elves begged for help, but everyone in the room just ignored their cries.  After receiving the potions, she offered them a poison and called for someone from one of the other rooms to come.  An elven child arrived, obviously a servant or slave, and she instructed him to bring some “Crow”.  It became obvious to them that the elves on the table were being used as test subjects for the poisons and chemicals she was mixing.

Game bit:  An out of character discussion followed but they figured that there was nothing they could do about this situation.  They’d get killed if they tried something now, and coming back armed would have been a messy thing to deal with with.  With a really bad taste in their mouths, they chose to get on with this quickly and leave.  The morality aspects of DA really hit them here. 

She charged them 1 gold sovereign for the potions, and they were quickly led out by the guards.  On their way back from this part of the city they again noticed a pair of lookouts following them, and again acknowledged them with a wave.

Back at the inn the two characters didn’t mention what they witnessed, mostly due to the fact that there are some elves in the party who might act on impulse and create a mess, so they just decided to get past what they witnessed.

The next morning they picked up riding horses and took off on their week-long trip south to Ostagar.  On the second day of the journey, they were ambushed by some human bandits led by a dwarf.  The bandits weren’t exactly very capable opponents, and the party quickly defeated them.  They begged for their lives saying that they were from Highever and that Howe’s attack had left them destitute and desperate.  The Apostate in the party chose to ignore their cries for mercy and killed the bandits outright, showing little mercy.

The rest of the journey south was uneventful, and the party eventually arrived in Ostagar.  There, they were introduced to Duncan, who had heard about some of their exploits; and to Alastair, a young man who was already a Grey Warden.  The King made it a point to seek out the new recruits and celebrate their arrival, as he was “anxious to fight alongside Grey Wardens in this battle against the Darkspawn”.  The party was also introduced to Teyrn Loghain Mac Tir, and they quickly learned that he’s a man who’s not too fond of the Grey Wardens.

One of the party members privately asked Duncan about Arl Howe’s attack on Highever, but Duncan said he wasn’t too concerned with Fereldan politics right now, and neither were the darkspawn. “Defeating the Darkspawn should be your focus now boy, rather than concentrating on the whims of those who crave power.”

Game bit:  I ignored the Human Noble opening of the video game and what Duncan knows or doesn’t know.  At this stage in the story there’s no proof that Loghain and Howe are plotting together.

Later that evening, Duncan explained a bit of the history of the Grey Wardens to the party, and told them about the coming battle against the Darkspawn horde.  He also sent them on their first mission.

He told them that in the morning he wants them to ride south along with two other recruits into the Korkari Wilds  and collect Darkspawn blood for their coming Joining ritual.  He also instructed them to find an abandoned Grey Warden outpost turned crypt, as he has learned that some Grey Warden documents were magically sealed and buried with a member of the order some time ago.  He wants those documents back and in Grey Warden hands.

The party rode south in the early morning, and quickly met their first opposition of the day.  As they rode through the cold forest, the party’s horses became spooked and ran off, knocking the Warden recruits to the ground.  Then the noise caused by the horses alerted the darkspawn and a fight commenced.  One of the recruits, a pudgy man named Ser Jory, became too scared and ran off, leaving the rest of the recruits to fight alone.  Ultimately, the party was victorious, and were able to collect enough blood from the darkspawn before heading off to find the crypt Duncan mentioned…

Game bit: The horses getting spooked required a Dexterity (Riding) test, which everyone failed.  The session ended after this fight against the darkspawn.

As you can see, it wasn’t too difficult to adapt this part of the game to the table top.  Next, the Battle of Ostagar, Loghain’s betrayal, and what to do with Flemeth at the tower?

If you’d like to support newbiedm.com, perhaps you’d consider using the following Amazon links:

The Videogames:

Dragon Age Origins Ultimate Edition

Dragon Age 2

The Tabletop RPG:

Dragon Age RPG Set 1

Dragon Age RPG Set 2

Dragon Age RPG Gamemaster’s Kit

Dragon Age:  Blood in Ferelden (adventures)

Novels:

Dragon Age:  The Stolen Throne

Dragon Age:  The Calling

Dragon Age: Asunder

Soundtrack:

Dragon Age: Origins soundtrack (this is really cool, I have it, the music is pretty epic and works as nice back ground for any fantasy rpg.  Highly recommended. Listen to it on youtube.)