Both games use a class system that is based off play-style preference, which is an interesting choice. The game asks you what type of player you are and then gives you a choice of three classes based on that preference, do you like to wade into combat, sneak around and cause mayhem, or fling magic?
It is an interesting system (used in both Dragon Age and Fantasy Age), because this is based off of the preference of a play style rather than it is giving a player a bunch of classes and expecting a new player to know what does what. If you like to fight, pick warrior, and at later levels you specialize into the type of warrior you would like to play. If you like magic, pick mage and then as you level you will make choices to customize your mage. If you are the sneaky or a shooty guy, pick rogue and then specialize in shooty or sneaky later (but you get a little of each to start).
Fantasy Age also makes some rules optimizations I agree with. They split some of the ability scores to force player choices and balance monsters. They give a good example in the blog post. In Dragon Age, an ogre would have one stat that handles melee to-hit and damage (Strength). In Fantasy Age, the designers split that into melee to-hit (Fighting) and damage (Strength) meaning the ogre isn't going to always hit because his strength is so high. They made similar splits to magic (dumping the Magic stat and using Intelligence as casting ability and Willpower as magic power), and also rogues (Accuracy covers to-hit for missile and light melee, and Dexterity covers defense). There aren't any "super stats" anymore that are auto-dump stats for increases, and the players need to make decisions and trade-offs on how they want their character to play.
Dragon Age is positioned to be the game that is more introductory with one stat covering all magic, one covering all fighting, and one covering most all rogue abilities. This is also an interesting design choice, because it lets new players focus on "the one stat that makes my guy better" rather than having to understand the trade offs between a pair of ability scores that affect their class and having to make choices for that every level up. Fantasy Age is the AD&D to Dragon Age's D&D.
That said, I feel Fantasy Age needs some source books covering magic items, character options, and monsters. The basic game looks fun, but naturally, I want more. the game also does not appear to have an open license, so to be fair, it needs one so the community can pick up the slack and provide add-on content.
As a starting game? It looks like a fun package. As something that can compete with the big players like Pathfinder or D&D? Here's where we get into the "what ifs"?
If I am playing with a casual group that doesn't know the rules of any of these games? Fantasy Age wins. Pathfinder is simply too heavy for a new group to grasp and play (without blowing a whole session on design and having six people pour over the same book). D&D is a close second, but still in our experiences this is either a new player who doesn't know the rules, or they are D&D veteran stuck on a previous version and a lot of differences still need to be explained.
It they are all D&D or Pathfinder fans, go with what they know and the version they love. Seriously.
But we ran a group of players new to D&D 4 through those rules, and it was a painful experience. A lot needed to be learned, sessions were wasted on character generation, and enough "how things worked before" things came up that the veterans were all of a sudden uncomfortable new players. Even D&D 5 has some of these "version change" problems where I feel it is easier to play Labyrinth Lord or Basic Fantasy with a group of old timers than it is to relearn everything.
For new players, I like the beer and pretzel experiences where the focus of the game is less in a book and more on the action happening around the table. I don't want new players pouring over combat options, feats, design decisions, or spell lists hundreds of pages long. These things suck the life out of the game and take the focus off the action.
"Is this the right decision?"
"Am I playing this right?"
"What spell do I choose?"
"Is this stat good?"
Before you know it your first four-hour session is gone and you are trying to get the same group to show up next week for when the adventure actually begins. It's harder to do than you think, especially in our age of constant distraction.
Dragon Age's free PDF quickstart set has a lot of good stuff, 12 pages of rules (I know, how did they do that), an adventure, a map, and five pregen characters. It's free. You can print out 12-page rules booklets and hand them out. There's no time wasted in character creation. In the first 15 minutes?
You are playing.
Even at the loss of character options and customization, for a group of casual or new players, I feel having a simple system with choices that are streamlined and built into the game is a better choice. I want pregen characters that rock and have everything the player needs to know printed on the sheet right there for them to study and think about between turns.
I don't want players to have to own a book to play. And if they do, it is only going to be ONE book or PDF. One. Asking six players to buy books, or hauling my set down to the game each week? Non-starter. Revise your game. I've had less-affluent players balk at the price of the D&D 4 books, and D&D 5's and Pathfinder's real-book prices are still too high for many players.
To be fair, Pathfinder's base game PDF is only ten bucks, and Fantasy Age PDF is slightly higher. Those are good options for players who can't afford to spend thirty to fifty dollars per book on a game they may only play a couple times and drop out of the group.
And I certainly don't want to need to slog through a computer program to design a character.
Compared to Pathfinder or D&D 5, both of these feel like a better game to me to kick around with a group of new players. Dragon Age feels like a better basic game focusing on players familiar to Bioware games and those type of experiences. Fantasy Age appeals to the same group, but it is more for longer-running games where more experienced players all of a sudden want character design choices and more options than what the video game world has to offer and also expect the generic "high fantasy" experience and worlds.
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