A Dragon Age Campaign in the City of Kirkwall

  ((I had ideas for this session. I was certain the party would want to (1) use the house deed to put the building in their name, and (2) head to the mason's guild to get the hole in the wall fixed. They did both of those things, just not in the way I expected.)) The party split with Deorum, Felin, and Lulia heading to Oldtown and Fisher, Revas, and Dardin'an heading to the Mason's Guild. Deorum posed as a noble interested in getting the house put in his name. He first inquired with the City Guard who to speak to, then traveled to the city Archives and waited 2 hours for documents on the house to be brought up. It turns out that about 50 years ago, the owners of the house mysteriously vanished. No next of kin was found, and the city itself had no interest in claiming the house. Deorum then traveled back to the Keep to seek an audience with the Vicount. He met Seneschal Bran , who (after some very successful roles) was willing to escalate the case to take care of the house n...

 Adapted from Ptolus: City By the Spire. Note that a lot of the names in Ptolus are middle eastern in nature, so I changed some to more fit the culture of Kirkwall. Other names I kept just because I liked them. ALBRECHT – A mercantile family that firmly believes wealth is power. They are not well regarded and serve as examples of the saying that wealth breeds contempt." Dered Albrecht is the very old head of house that many are simply waiting to die, though he has yet to name a heir. (I have decided he is bitter about his failing body and funded Quintin 's research in the hopes of restoring life to his old limps.) As the PCs rise to wealthy status (after Bartrand's Expedition), Dered may at first try to incorporate them into his Household. He would also offer investment opportunities to expand both the PC’s wealth and his. He would certainly take an interest in how their wealth. He would definitely back the Delver’s Guild (which does not yet exist), and might even be the o...

  This is the fourth campaign I've ever run, and I think I finally figured out the secret to balanced combat -- you balance it during gameplay . The Dragon AGE rpg core rulebook has advice for making adversaries tougher (adding extra health and giving them more focuses and ability points). In practice I've found these guidelines pretty useless (sorry Green Ronin) unless you are wanting to use adversary stats for quick-building NPCs. Then actually, they are great. When it comes to combat, there's only a few factors that matter: Enemy hp, defense & armor - how long can it last against the party? Enemy attack & damage - how much can it hurt the party? These are really the only factors a GM needs to keep in mind for designing an enemy for combat. If you want an enemy to last longer against the PCs, then you can up it's health (how many rounds it will last), defense (how hard it is to hit), and armor rating (how much damage it soaks - at least in the AGE system). If ...

Last we left off, our party was split with half in Hightown and half recruited to Fisher's boat. Fishing isn't going well in Kirkwall due to all the boat activity from the influx of refugees. So, Fisher goes looking for work at the end of last session and finds a couple help-wanted posters on the Chanter's Board. Fisher heads to Midtown to investigate a potentially "haunted" house. He meets with a woman named Loretta who explains there's been some unusual activity around a decades-vacant home at the end of the street. Neighborhood cats have gone missing. A neighbor, named Phineas, thought he saw movement within the house, went inside to investigate, and never came back out. People have heard strange noises - moans, screams, growling. The neighborhood boarded up the house and went to the Templars. The Templars told them animals and people disappear all the time in the city - often due to gang activity - and that strange noises and shadows are not proof enough o...

As a Blood Mage, Deorum's player requested the ability to summon demons. I really didn't care how lore accurate this ability was. It's something my player wanted to do, and as a GM, I love the Rule of Cool. Ultimately, there were 3 avenues I considered. Summoning Demons into corpses: I didn't write this up because it didn't  feel  cool to me. But it could definitely work AND is the most lore accurate. The specialization would allow a blood mage to summon a demon into a dead enemy in combat and then get to control it. The corpses would take on the stats of the Enraged Corpse (Rage Demon) and Devouring Corpse (Hunger Demon) from the Adversaries section in the rulebook. Each level of the Specialization would allow access to different demon types and the summoning of multiple demons on the field (up to three). 2.  Demons as Spell Delivery Systems : Looking at other Mage specializations in the rulebook, most of them give access to specialized spells. I decided a blood ma...

I have a player in my current game who is basically playing a female rogue version of Fenris. This has gone down a bit of rabbit hole as we've discussed Fenris's abilities and how to work them into the Dragon AGE Green Ronin RPG system . One path is to have a player simply specialize into both the Reaver and Spirit Warrior specializations, as these come close to a lot of Fenris' abilities. However, they may not quite have the flavor a player is looking for. I first made Talent rules for Fade Step . I tried to make them both Mage and non-mage friendly as I saw some people online wanting Fade Step for mages as well. It's also important to note that this version of Fade Step is only available for use during combat as the ability to turn spectral and phase through solid objects is too powerful for exploration. We then started talking about Fenris's " Spectral Grasp " ability and how it might work mechanically, so I made a talent for that. This went through a n...