RPG Review: Dragon Age Boxed Set 1 - Part 2: Mechanik

What You Get

Dragon Age uses a simple, unified mechanic it refers to as the Adventure Gaming Engine, or “a.g.e.”, that centers around a dice roll called an Ability Test. To perform this test, the player rolls the three six-sided dice and adds one of 8 Ability scores as well as a modifier known as a Focus. If the number overcomes a target number, the Ability Test is a success.

To make it more crunchy and more “adventury”, the system uses the colors of the dice in a novel way. Two of the dice are one color, the third is of a different color. The die of a different color is referred to as a “Dragon Die”, and is used in two ways.

The first way the “Dragon Die” mechanic is used is to resolve ties. In cases where two characters' actions directly oppose one another, the two players each perform an opposed Ability Test to determine which one succeeds. Each player makes an Ability Test, with the player rolling the higher result considered the winner. In the case of a tie, the Dragon Die is used to determine the winner, with the person rolling the higher number on the Dragon Die winning.

The second way the “Dragon Die” mechanic is used is to create a dramatic result to some extent. Whenever any two of the three dice thrown for an Ability Test match (e. g. doubles are thrown), then the player is given a number of “stunt points” equal to the number showing on the “Dragon Die”. The player can then spend these points to immediately affect the results of the action in a mechanistic way as determined by one of two standard charts that lists special effects and the cost of each stunt in stunt points. One of the charts is used to modify combat results, and enables such things as apply damage to multiple targets, negate armor, or double damage. The second chart is used for spell casting and enables the player to alter the mechanics in a number of ways, such as causing extra damage, intimidating an opponent, or chaining two spells together in rapid succession. The rules say that monsters have their own charts and there are stunts specific to each class the players can choose from as well.

My Take

The mechanic is clever, but has two idiosyncrasies.

The first quirk is in terms of ties. If two characters tie, then they look at the Dragon Die to determine the winner. What if the Dragon Dice of the two players is a tie. The game then reverts to whoever has the higher Ability. What if the abilities are the same as well? The rules say nothing what to do in that case. Good luck, Game Masters! Why not just say defender wins, attacker wins, or the tie remains until it can be resolved the next round?

The second quirk is in terms of critical results. By my reckoning, this system gives roughly a 44% chance or greater of getting a critical success and a 0% chance of getting a critical failure. I have no problem with such a high percentage chance at a critical success, that as it is a design decision. But, considering the system uses a 3d6 bell-curve distribution which tends to centralize results, I find it odd that the designers would just completely disrupt the centralized result functionality by adding the second mechanic.

The system appears like it was designed by those who firmly stand in the camp of bell curve-based dice statistics and wanted to use them instead of a d20 for their home-grown basic Dungeons and Dragons campaign.

For whatever reason, they chose to add on the Dragon Die mechanic, which completely disrupts the central tendency mechanism of the underlying mechanic by shifting the probability of good results way to the positive side.

• Maybe they did it because they used it as a Dungeons and Dragons house rule and wanted to use it as a marketable gimmick (along with all their other house rules they have been playing with since 1983 that they wanted to market).
• Maybe one or more of the designers had some egocentric need to feel clever about themselves for creating something “novel”.
• Maybe the marketing team decided they had to differentiate themselves from the multitudes of other RPGs out there or didn't want to be limited by the SRD.
• Maybe the designers and marketers got together and just threw it together to capture some of the money from the crossover fans of the video game that wanted to bring that experience to the table top. This would be in line with the lack of a critical failure mechanic and the completely contradictory mechanics being mashed together.

Whatever the reason, the mechanics feel like a bunch of home rules put together from a designer's point of view. The lack of a clean tie-resolution mechanic seems like they missed one, however, like they forgot to add it from their play-test notes.

Conclusion

All of this being said, from a player's point of view, the mechanic is smooth, easy to learn, and unified even with the crunchiness. Once players have memorized the stunt point charts, the game will flow much more smoothly, and that will come with experience. It would be great for kids, as they have no real chance of critical failures, a ridiculously high chance of bonuses to their Ability Tests. Players and Game Masters who like to reflect their heroism through mechanics will like the system, while more free-form players will be annoyed or just laugh at it after the game is over.

From a more mechanics-based Game Master's point of view, you and your group could add a bunch of stunts as house rules to make it more individualized, and will need to add some sort of simplified tie-resolution mechanic. Those who prefer to run more free-form games probably would be better off running something else....

What is HiBRiD About This?

I liken this to the house rules draft I wrote before I even started on HiBRiD 1.0 in 1994. In that 32 page document, I took all the stuff I did in our home games, mashed it together and unified it enough to make it playable and easily readable. This system feels the same way. Rather than refining it, as I have, however, it seems like they took it to an editor, cleaned it up best they could, tagged it on to a successful game franchise and let it rip!

As many of you know, I also despise the standard distribution curve and any mechanic that uses it. It aesthetically makes me vomit a little bit every time I see it. It is the ONLY thing wrong with FUDGE and FATE. This squarely puts it in the non-HiBRID camp from a mechanics point of view. Also, the crunchiness and disproportionately high chance of a critical success without the chance of a critical failure also makes it not HiBRiD at all!

Little things I also can't stand:

• The use of the term “Ability Test”. What, are we filling in Scantron sheets? I think the use of the word “ability” is more accurate than its use in Dungeons and Dragons, but the word “Test” kind of muddies it. I still think the HiBRiD term “Task Roll” is better.

• The use of the term “Dragon Die”. It sounds like a cheesy, lame, plasticky gimmick. I know they need to call it something, but “Drama Die”, “Exploding Die”, and many, many, many much better terms were already taken and the marketing people obviously stepped in and overrode the true roleplayers that had any sense of style. It's too late to change it however; the “Dragon Die” is already cast! (Had to take the shot at that pun...). I can totally see the term catching on in gaming groups, as at least it gives players a handle to grab onto when describing it during play (and reviews like this one).

I will honestly never play this game. The only way it could possibly happen would be the following scenario:

• I am trapped in a small hometown like where I grew up due to a job that allows me to support my family here in Illinois...

• ...The only roleplaying group within a 3 county radius asked me to play it when my family was away in Europe for two weeks doing something Disneylike...
• ...the group refused to play HiBRID because their little xenophobic closed minds couldn't handle it... 
   
• ...I was stuck with no one else to play with...

I would play with the system but shred the Dragon Die. I would have double 1's represent a Critical Fail, double 6s be a Critical Success, and overlay the Ite' Gamine Engine.The IGE would easily fit on top of this and I could use this system to ease xenophobic, small town, closed-minded geeks into HiBRiD, my dream game...  

Next Up: Magic....

An Addendum: On second thought, I would repurpose the Dragon Die and call it the Ite' Indicator. If the number on the Ite' Indicator was a 1 and one of the other dice was 1 it would be a Crit Fail. Likewise, if the Ite' Indicator indicated a six and one of the other two dice equaled six, it would be a Crit Success.