Dragon Age Set 1 - Have I finally found my fantasy RPG? (Part 2)

Yesterday, in part 1 of this article series, I discussed where I was in regards to the current state of my GM'ing. Things look kind of grim long-term, but short-term I have several one-shots that I could run with about 20 minutes of prep time. My Savage Worlds campaign is lagging (mostly due to my own lagging interest). I've never ran a fantasy game before, but I've always wanted to.

Dragon Age came into my life almost exactly a year ago. We had just picked up our PS3 at Wal-Mart for Black Friday and were heading to Best Buy to see which new PS3 games we could get for on the cheap. Dragon Age: Origins was one of those games. It was the first game I tried out for my new system and was gorgeous in HD. It was a fantastic setting with extremely rich characters and a richer storyline, but you don't have to take my word for it. The only problem is that I didn't like the actual game play of the game. Soon after I traded it away and left the situation with a sad face.

Then the Dragon Age tabletop game was announced by Green Ronin and my hopes soared that I'd play a game that worked for me, regardless of video vs. tabletop. For some reason I lost track of it, but a couple of months ago Chuck tells me that he's picked up the boxset for someone else in the group to run. He's sold enough on the concept that he'll pay to play it. The good news is that three of our five regulars were obsessed with the video game for a while there and would be an easy buy-in. The better news is that the three of them don't include Chuck or me.

So last weekend I finally catch the bug to run Dragon Age and found something I could finally get in a trade from Chuck for my copy of Vade Mecum (completing his Cthulhutech line). I picked the boxset up this past Wednesday and am already working my way through the second book in the set - the Game Master's Guide. I'm eating this stuff up. I've pitched it to three out of the four regular players I can expect to be there weekly, and it's gone over well.

Check back on Wednesday where I go into more details on the system itself and what my plans are moving forward with my Dragon Age campaign.