‘The Gold Den’ Bank/Bar/Smoking Rooms For AGE System

I created this place and included it in my Dragon Age (AGE system) conversion of Freeport, but you could use this place anywhere. In Thedas I personally am having this be connected to the Carta industries and have placed it in Freeport, in the Waking Sea.

Welcome to ‘The Gold Den’.

The Gold Den. A favourite haunt by sea raiders.

The place is recognisable even off the coast at night from the huge gold coin suspended as its iconic logo, with the name of the place etched into it.

When the sun goes down, the who place begins to glow outwards into the street and night waters ahead. This is partly from the huge coin design (only a painted but shiny metal) and partly from the angular lamp lighting that bounces off the walls and floor in and around, which are painted white.

A policy exists of no bloodshed inside, therefore weapons are surrendered at the door. All who come here can count on peace as one of the few places you can find it.
Those who break the law in any way, smuggling weapons or the like are dragged into the cellars below and used as sport in the fighting cages versus whatever the establishment can dream up on that day. The policy of bloodshed below doesn’t apply inside the cages. He who steps in relinquishes all rights to protection under The Gold Den by-laws. As such, those who have already committed “crimes” and dragged there have already relinquished their rights.

First Look: Dragon Age III: Inquisition Concept Art

Check out these pics BioWare has released for the upcoming Dragon Age III videogame. They might be of use for your current Dragon Age RPG campaign.

See the rest of the pics here: First Look: Dragon Age III: Inquisition Concept Art | BioWare Blog.

Two New Dragon Age Projects From Dark Horse

At New York Comic Con, Dark Horse Comics announced two new Dragon Age projects:

First is the Dragon Age Encyclopedia: World of Thedas.  It will contain hundres of pieces of art related to the gaming franchise and will have everything a player or reader needs to know about the regions, religions, monsters and magic of Dragon Age.  The first volume will be out in April, but the series will span multiple installments.

The second is another original Dragon Age comic: Until We Sleep, penned by lead writer of the game series David Gaider.  The story will be scripted by Alexander Freed and art is by Chad Hardin.  The story will follow King Alistair who “allied with the world’s most feared warrior race—the Qunari—the pirate Isabela, and the rogue Varric, brings a battle royal to the evil mage responsible for his father’s disappearance!”

Fans of Thedas are sure to love these books, so keep an eye out for them.

Source: NYCC: Dark Horse Announces two new Dragon Age projects.

Esoterica of Thedas Volumes 1, 2 and 3

We have posted before about the amazing fan work done by a group of Australian Dragon Age fans who created a series of books known as the Esoterica of Thedas. Since posting the initial links, they have finished all three volumes and revised them, then moved the files to a different location. I have received a number of emails about the broken links so I went ahead and contacted them to get new links for you.

You can now download all three volumes of the Esoterica of Thedas from these links below. Enjoy them for the great labor of love they are and for how much more of Thedas they bring to the Dragon Age RPG. All links are to PDF files.

Download:

• Esoterica of Thedas, Volume 1: Vault

• Esoterica of Thedas, Volume 2: Bestiary

• Esoterica of Thedas, Volume 2: Apothecaria

[Beyond Dragon Age] Mystara Adversary Compendium I

Dragon Age Oracle collaborator and AGE System wiz Byron Molix hits it out of the park once more with his new project, the  for AGE.

You will remember that Byron is the author of Mystara: The Known World, a campaign setting that brings the classic D&D world to the AGE System. Now Byron unleashes a collection of 112 classic creatures perfect for the Mystara setting or any fantasy world. The creatures in the compendium follow the alternate rules set up in the Mystara campaign document, but they can be easily converted back to “default” AGE with very little adjusting.

Follow the link below, download your copy of the Mystara Adversary Compendium I, and bring a classic adventure-gaming monster back to your table today. My favorite? Two words: porcine orcs!

Download:

• Mystara Adversary Compendium I (external link; 12.4 MB)

Get Adventure Ideas from the Dragon Age Wiki

One of the challenges I’ve had as a Dragon Age GM is coming up with adventures to run in the world of Thedas.  I wasn’t fortunate enough to finish the video game, and I never played the second one, so my knowledge of the world of Dragon Age is very limited.  One of the biggest obstacles I’ll face when I run out of published adventures to use in my home game will be coming up with story ideas.  I am currently running the adventure in the GM’s book of Set 2, but soon we’ll be doen with it.

I found a neat way to maybe help me generate more adventures and quests, and I thought I’d share it.   I’ve written before about how I used the expansive Dragon Age wiki to create a document outlining the basic points about the setting for my players, since none of them had any real Dragon Age experience before we played the tabletop game.  It turns out that the wiki has a fantastic resource for GM’s in the same predicament as me… the entire quest library of both games and the downloadable content!  You can find that here.

So for example, your party is adventuring in the Korkari Wilds, you can go to the Korkari quests part of the wiki and get some side quests to keep you busy for a few sessions.  The neat part is that the wiki divides quests by tons of categories, including locations.

So for example, here’s a quest called “Last Will and Testament”, that takes place in the Korkari Wilds:

Last Will and Testament

Quest Last Will and Testament
Location:	Korcari Wilds
Start:	Corpse of Missionary Rigby
End:	Redcliffe Village
Next:	Chasind Trail Signs
Appearances:	Dragon Age: Origins

The Warden will discover a note on the body of Missionary Rigby in the depths of the Korcari Wilds. His last request is that a lockbox hidden elsewhere be taken to Jetta inRedcliffe Village.

Walkthrough

• As you’re looking at the dead men hung from the fallen tree, go left and after engaging some darkspawn you should see a fight between a pack of wolves and a few darkspawn.
• You should now see a corpse of Missionary Rigby. As you pick up Codex entry: Rigby’s Last Will and Testament, you will be given the quest.
• Head as far west as you can, then proceed northward and you should see some ruins. At the base, there is a chest containing Codex entry: Signs of the Chasind and a Hidden Cache (in the bonfire). Note that the area will be guarded by darkspawn when first discovered.
• Now you have two options:

1. Take the lockbox to give to Jetta, who is located in the chantry.
2. Open the lockbox and keep the contents, which includes: fluorspar, emerald, malachite, a note, and theBeloved Amulet, a plot-item amulet that has no particular use.

• The first part of this quest has to be completed before leaving the Korcari Wilds because after that the Korcari Wilds are no longer available

Result

If you chose to take the lockbox, bring it to Jetta in the chantry in Redcliffe. Upon giving the lockbox to her, she assumes the fate of her husband, and kindly thanks you.

Giving Jetta the lockbox grants you no money or XP, so keeping the contents is the most profitable choice. You can still inform her about her husband’s and son’s fate at the chantry, but you can’t give her the Beloved Amulet. Presumably, the decision of keeping the contents of the lockbox for yourself includes that item.

So you see, you can easily adapt this adventure to your game and run it on the tabletop.  It just takes a little work, but you’ll be following one of the main rules of GMing… stealing and borrowing from whatever you can find… only in this case, it’s from the source that inspired our favorite 3d6 game. 🙂

[Beyond Dragon Age] Eternal Shadows: Horror Role-Playing for AGE

Byron Molix, better known to Dragon Age Oracle readers as the creator of the AGE version of Mystara, has unleashed his new fan project. Behold, Eternal Shadows: Horror Role-Playing for the AGE System.

From the backcover copy:

When things go bump in the night, victims need to become survivors. Endless Shadows is a genre-specific rules variant for the Adventure Game Engine published by Green Ronin Publishing. This core book contains classes suited for play in a modern world. It contains modern gear, including firearms, and vehicles, and a magic system more suited to the uncertainty and tone of the Horror gaming genre. Also included are numerous resources for the Game Master to evoke feelings of helplessness, mortality, and horror at the game table. This includes fear and instability, monstrous opponents, and changes to the combat system for both PCs and their foes. The shadows lengthen as heroes muster up the courage to fight. Do you dare join their numbers?

[March Monster Madness] Esoterica of Thedas, Volume 2: Bestiary

Mike Evans (aka WrathOfZombie) sent me a link to this page via email and I was floored, both due to the quality of the work and to the simple fact that this awesome document was out there online and I didn’t know about it!

Behold the Esoterica of Thedas, Volume 2: Bestiary, a 76-page tome of Dragon Age monster goodness. The Esoterica covers all manner of creatures based on Dragon Age: Origins, presented for use in the tabletop roleplaying game. It also includes an 8-page Creature Creation section with tips and charts (including Size rules!), as well as nine new spells based on the videogame.

If that wasn’t enough, it then goes into a comprehensive bestiary ranging from domesticated animals to wild creatures, darkspawn to demons, constructs to dragons. Basically, if you saw it in Dragon Age: Origins, it’s probably in here.

[Beyond Dragon Age] AGE of the Rising Sun

You’ve dug deep and helped the people of Japan with your donations toward relief from the March 11 9.0 earthquake and tsunami. For that we are incredibly grateful. We hope that those donations will help the people and nation of Japan recover from this natural disaster.

As promised, in recompense, we are releasing AGE of the Rising Sun, a 13-page collection of material bringing Mythic Japan to the AGE System. Inside you will find two backgrounds and six monsters, plus notes on weapons and armors. It was written by Josh Jarman and myself, Daniel M. Perez.

[Beyond Dragon Age] The Tower of Druaga

Beyond Dragon Age is a series exploring using the AGE System for anything other than the Dragon Age RPG, whether it is differing styles of fantasy, or other genres altogether.

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Over the holiday break, I watched the anime series The Tower of Druaga, a fantasy action series set in a Babylonian/Sumerian-inspired world where a giant tower has risen from the land and adventurers set out to climb it to gain fame and fortune. Happy as I would’ve been with a popcorn sword & sorcery anime, what I got was a fairly complex dramatic story with a fantasy action backdrop. I liked the anime lots, and I’ve written a blog post about why I liked The Tower of Druaga.

As I keep watching the show, it was immediately evident that this could be an interesting setting for a roleplaying game, not surprising considering the anime is based on a Nintendo videogame from the 80s, so it has the tropes already built-in. Given that I’m lately enamored of Dragon Age and its basic approach, I knew this was the system I would want to use to create a Tower of Druaga game. Given that I have just started the new semester at the university and my time for roleplaying has now dwindled down to zero, I devised that I could still pull it off if I ran the game online via email or forum, which has since become my plan. I even went ahead and created a campaign for it at Obsidian Portal where I can keep all my notes together as I slowly develop it.

While I did talk about why I liked the anime as a series, I’d like to talk about the things that attracted me from it to want to devote time that I barely have to crafting a new world for one single game.