RPG and board game reviews and discussion presented from a game-design perspective. We review and discuss modern role-playing games, classics, tabletop gaming, old school games, and everything in-between. We also randomly fall in and out of different games, so what we are playing and covering from week-to-week will change.
SBRPG is gaming with a focus on storytelling, simplicity, player-created content, sandboxing, and modding.
If you follow the dungeon turn, everything will work, the universe shall keep its logical order, resources will tick down naturally, wandering monster rolls shall be made, and you will not need to endlessly listen to bad YouTube advice for 5E. The more of these 5E "advice" videos from YouTube creators that I watch, the less I want to play:
How to Roleplay
How to Write a Backstory
Speeding Up Combat
Don't Use Alignment to Roleplay
Quick Dungeon Prep in Under 4 Hours
Just looking at the titles makes me want to poke D&D with a 10-foot pole and set the trap off from a distance. Some of them mention mechanics removed from 5.5E and present themselves as current topics. All of them are a terrible waste of time that makes me dislike 5E more than I should. They make 5E sound like the worst game ever written, since it seems like so much help is needed to play it correctly.
Terrible advice videos spread negativity and confusion for the game.
I now block, unsub, or steer far away from these videos in my suggestions.
D&D YouTube is infamous for spreading negativity and confusion for views. The vast majority of people hate-watch the negative coverage of the Wizards, just like the majority of Star Wars viewers hate-watch to see the franchise crash and burn. I stay away from most of the negativity since it is addictive like booze; you can get drunk on hate, and you need to abstain from it just to have a clear head and enjoy life again.
All of it hurts D&D, even the older editions. And the confusion and horrible advice drive people from the hobby.
How do you play the game?
By playing the game.
Back in the day, roleplaying was optional! You were not forced to, nor did you have to, come up with a backstory, declare a character goal and motivation, or layer a weak narrative inspiration-dicing system on top of the game. Due to the inspiration system, you are now forced to roleplay to gain a mechanical advantage in combat.
In BX, you do not need to engage with roleplaying to play the game, and many did not even start gaming with backstories or psychological profiles. The game gives you no benefit from roleplaying.
If you just wanted to play "dwarf," you picked "dwarf" and played "dwarf."
That was your "playing piece," like the shoe or dog in Monopoly.
If "dwarf" survived, maybe you gave him a name. Maybe you gave him some background. It was not required, nor did it give you a mechanical benefit. We usually figured it out by level 3, sometimes 5. Until then, it was just "dwarf."
In fact, that "feature" let us get new people into the game more easily, since it reduced the pain of losing a character and the number of decisions needed before play began.
Want to play with us? Want to play an "elf"? Sure!
You did not need to think about roleplay to play BX D&D.
You just "played."
And prep? The modules were typically 16 pages long, shorter than a single high-level character sheet, and you could read them during lunch break. This 6-hour fallacy for session prep is alien and not D&D. Most games needed no prep. Flub a room description or miss something? Most of the time, it didn't matter, and we put whatever was missed in the next room. The dungeons were meant to be expanded, so you could always make a new room and put it in there.
I get the feeling mixing D&D with a narrative game was a mistake. Writing "roleplay rules" into the game complicates play, creates a barrier for new players, and makes the game less accessible. Giving mechanical advantage to an out-of-game roleplaying reward cheapens storytelling and investment. Are you really playing your paladin as chivalrous, or are you just trying to gain inspiration for a combat benefit?
BX was a clean, simple, and straightforward game.
Let the narrative games be narrative games.
Mixing the game with a storytelling system was a misstep, and it ended up hurting our ability to tell stories with the game, since it linked mechanical benefits to something done naturally and for no benefit.
I had a friend who played MMOs with those who also played D&D but wanted to play pen-and-paper games together, "inside" the MMO as the characters. So, she pulled out her copy of Shadowdark and started "just playing" inside the in-game MMO chat window - by the rules, minus a map and torch timers, but 100% doing this by the rules.
It took her zero time to "start playing" - no session zero, just the sample characters from the free starter set, and there were no long pauses to figure out what happened during a turn. One move, one action - next character in the initiative order. The tables in the book covered even the "after combat" stuff like treasure rolls and other random events.
The player (on the other side of the MMO chat window) did not need anything, just a passing knowledge of 5E. If the player had the free starter set, that is all they need to play with someone who owns the whole book or PDF. Most of the time, the referee is the only one who needs to own a book.
The concepts and language used were all very straightforward, and no knowledge of special actions or rules was needed. The D&D game has become like the Blackberry keyboard phone of the 2000s versus Shadowdark's iPhone. Shadowdark is the D&D that Wizards should be selling as D&D.
If this were D&D, let's log into D&D Beyond, create characters, buy books, and set a date and time to learn a VTT. Realistically, with people's schedules and budgets these days, it would take a week and lots of hard-to-commit-to, out-of-game commitments. This game would likely fall apart and never happen if this were D&D.
With Shadowdark, this was the difference between "playing something right now" versus "selling someone on D&D plus the D&D Beyond subscription, learning a VTT, not owning books, setting up a time, lengthy character creation, and reading through and understanding hundreds of pages of rules and character options, and so much other "pre-game" stuff that it makes "instant play" impossible.
She just started playing after one or two setup sentences.
Everything was very easily grasped and understood.
The numbers were under control and smaller.
The game played fast, with full "stunting" support to allow for various player actions.
She "added spice" in her descriptions like a great old-school game master, so the attacks, action, and tension were compelling. The "spice" mattered, too, so if a monster got hit in the arm, it could drop its weapon. No rules are needed for that; this is the "spice" that matters and affects the game.
The game can also be modded quickly and can support different settings, classes, and races.
I keep a torch lit for the more complicated games, but her experience "playing right now" inside an MMO chat window, with self-apparent rules and the action happening right now, makes all the difference in the world. This sort of "ultra-low commitment" and "play can start anytime" is enormous, and it also mirrors people's time, commitment level, and hesitancy to join a game in the real world. Shadowdark is killing many of my more complicated games, even though I see those games as "better" and more complete experiences.
I can't beat this "instant play" capability. Her experience validates it.
D&D does not have "instant play."
The MMO chat window is a terrible way to play a game, but Shadowdark does it quickly. The game can be played well, by the rules, with instant action, or in the one of the worst ways (second only to playing in IMs), and it provides a high level of enjoyment and satisfaction—with nearly zero buy-in.
Shadowdark is far easier to play with others than any other game. The gameplay is instant and viral. You just want to keep playing. This is crushing D&D and Pathfinder 2 for me, because the game is insanely easy to play with others, and play with those who have a high resistance to trying something new. And it can be played in a heartbeat, and using the worst ways to play.
Stop talking about your books; play the darn game.
This is one huge problem with a lot of content creators; they talk about a lot of games, but they never actually play them. I played a month of A5E last summer, so I can speak to the game. This time, I am coming back with a new set of characters in the old-school Lost Lands world.
So I was creating characters tonight, and it took me about 30 minutes per character to create them by hand using the walkthrough on the A5E tools site. I like doing characters by hand, I am reading the rules, making choices, understanding a class, and making all the choices the rules tell me to make. Too often, with programs like Hero Lab or Pathbuilder, I will click through, make a character, and know nothing about the class or how it plays.
Is it tedious? Yes. But I am learning a lot more and reading the books.
Can I make mistakes? Yes. Who cares? This character was unique.
Do I have the freedom to pull in any 3rd party content I want? Yes.
Can I make tweaks to characters depending on unique backgrounds? Yes.
Are characters supposed to follow the exact letter of the rules? Yes and no. The secret is it doesn't matter as long as most of them are correct, and you get better every time as you learn and evolve your understanding of the game.
Doing characters by hand beats web or app-based character creation considerably. If your game, character sheet, and math are so complicated, you need a program to create a character - fix your game. I am not playing it. I know, and I play GURPS. Truth be told, I am rethinking GURPS these days.
Did I need 30 expansion books to create a character with so many options I need to scroll through substantial drop-down dialog controls? No. The basic books are fine here, and since A5E has more detail per character, I don't need to make up for flat, uninteresting character choices with tons of options. A5E lets you make five choices per character - plus more when you finally pick a class. So, the build-diversity and granular depth are very high, like in Pathfinder 2.
A5E gives you 8-12 special abilities based on your choices, spread across combat, social, and exploration pillars. The roleplaying aspects of many of the options give these characters incredible depth. My stock D&D 5E characters built with Hero Lab seem more like "combat characters" with zero social and exploration abilities. They fall very flat. They feel like they don't have any tools to work with outside of combat.
5E has too much combat focus; the characters feel flat, hurting the game. I opened up Hero Lab and built the same characters, and it took me about 3 minutes to do each one - ten times faster. When I was done, I printed them out and looked them over. Same abilities, gear, and spells - okay. I could play with this, but it seems thin.
The skills? No specialties and expertise dice. Do you mean I can't have a character specializing in a skill area? A background can't give one of my skills expertise dice? Well, that sucks.
Are connections, mementos, and backstories coded in with character creation? Bleh.
No Destiny system? The entire inspiration mechanic in A5E is tied into inspiration, and you can achieve your goals and gain a unique ability! Do you mean I am back to having the players get nothing for completing their backstory character arcs beyond a "good job" from the GM? Does the inspiration system have nothing to do with character goals? Ugh. Bland.
Do my exploration-focused characters have unique knacks for creating shelters, tracking, or finding food? Are the resting mechanics tied into having a safe place to rest to regain everything? Can rangers build those safe places? No? Wow, the ranger class sucks again.
Martial characters can't train in fighting styles and learn special moves? Fighters and other non-magic martial characters will be boring during combat again. Magic characters have all the fun again. Ugh. Why play martials?
Where is my list of special abilities my heritage, culture, and background give me? All the cool roleplaying bonuses like half training time, expertise dice in particular situations, cantrips gained, rules tweaks, minimum rolls for activities, advantage on some rolls, and allowed rerolls for some tasks? I usually have 9-12 of these to write down for each character, and they fuel roleplaying and give me benefits in all of the game systems, like exploration?
This is a massive part of A5E vs. 5E; all my characters have a list of special abilities gained through their choices in character creation. Tales of the Valiant also does this (about half the number A5E gives you). This is a massive part of "modern 5E" for me; having these game and roleplaying abilities adds so much to the game that I can't play without them.
Plan 2014 and 2024 5E are boring compared to this, with very shallow, combat-focused characters where players need to bring in "pages of backstory" to justify arguing a benefit to the GM. If you don't write a backstory novella, good luck being anything other than a boring wargame miniature - a generic soldier or tank like any other on the board. This is what D&D is missing; it does not look like we are getting anything as in-depth as this. Wizards are pushing backward compatibility to a flavorless base system with broken expansion books. This will not end well.
With A5E, the character creation system allows you to merge templates of backstory benefits and list those on your character sheet for use during play, directly affecting the rules. Every character's mechanical interactions with the rules are different.
Yes, it takes me 30 minutes to create a character here, but I am saving three days of writing a novella for my character story. I still could write that backstory, using my abilities as a guide and framework, but that is optional. Here, I will have something to base that story on, and in-game effects will be tied to that special ability list.
I have an idea of the adventure I want to play, an amazing one from Frog God set in the Lost Lands setting, Splinters of Faith. Frog God has been delivering some fantastic 500-page hardcover 5E adventures with an old-school feeling that should not be missed. The cover alone on this is fantastic.
I may be an old-school fan where anything goes, but this book has a place.
This is a free download over at Monte Cook Games, and it goes through many topics that may upset people at a gaming table. I heard some criticism of this book along the lines of, "This is not needed," or "Sit at my table, and you consent to anything!"
I wish I had this checklist at a few of my games in the past, it would have set the tone for the game, and we would have avoided many problems. You can laugh at "needing a book like this" all day, but after you know all the trouble this game agreement saves you from - you will know.
In short, this is an informal agreement the group makes of what everyone expects at the table. Everyone fills them out, and it can be anonymous, and the GM goes through them and sets the game's parameters. This can also be used for world design and what players can expect from the world's history and events.
The book also has advice on resolving problems and includes a few good suggestions on apologizing and checking in later with both sides of a disagreement to ensure the "later feelings" are all right.
I also look at a book like this as an enabler. If you plan to play a "Friday the 13th" style game, and everyone accepts what happens in those movies, this pre-game checklist is good. This sort of understanding can enable handling a lot of sensitive topics that you are not 100% sure everyone at the table may be comfortable with. You never know if Bob from Accounting is a horror movie fan, and this sort of discussion is good to have just an ice-breaker. This applies to sex as well and includes the smart "fade to black" way of handling things many games recommend, and this technique can also be applied to too-violent scenes.
The killer raises the axe, and...
Fade to black.
It works, and in some games, this is a far more potent and effective tool for horror than rolling 1d6 damage plus STR mod and realizing the blow wasn't that deadly.
I do not see this as a "tool for wussies" but as a good starting point to set expectations and also "clear the way" for allowing even more sensitive topics at a table that most games would sweep under the carpet because, by default, most all games are made for a younger audience. Having a tool to "open the door" to mature topics for a group of mature players is a good thing, and it can expand your game more than the typical "sanitized out of the book" settings and adventures we get these days.
This is a good thing for more reasons than avoiding hurt feelings, but that is where this book starts, and you can take it so far from there and have a better game that fits your group's expectations as a result.
A massive part of B/X punishes you for not correctly taking shopping seriously. I kid, but it is true. Whenever I get out of my Cypher System narrative haze and settle down to play B/X, most of my time is spent managing inventories.
What is not in that backpack could kill you.
You don't have a rope and spikes? A tinderbox? Bandages? Enough torches? Chalk? Waterskins? A mirror? A walking stick? Oil? A bedroll? Food? A sharpening stone? Soap? A washcloth? A knife?
I can think of a dozen ways not having one of those items could doom an adventurer.
Some games make you "play by the pound" and carefully craft your loads. I can get into it when I am into those and have the tools to streamline the process. Without a computer, it is painful. With GURPS Character Assistant, I can get my load down to 0.25 pounds, have a droppable backpack that will get me into the next-lowest encumbrance category, and I am all set.
This is one of the reasons why I like playing old-school dungeons in GURPS Dungeon Fantasy; the software makes inventory management more effortless. Not painless, but it is much easier than doing it by hand. The characters are 100 times more complex, but if you are going to go whole-hog, I prefer to do a complete simulation. Middle-grounds, where the stats are simple, but the gear management is old-school, feel a little off to me.
Some games, such as Castles & Crusades, standardize the "backpack" per class and give you loaded pre-set grab-and-go packs. ACKS even has equipment packages; a few OSR B/X style supplements do gear packages. C&C also does a simplified encumbrance system where you aren't tracking pounds, and ACKS does something like this. You can still die from a bad shopping trip, but it is a little more painless (to shop, not to die).
Some games only list encumbrance for treasure (like OSE) and assume the first 10 pounds carried is "adventuring stuff." It is a fair compromise and simplification. You can still die from a bad shopping trip.
Many sold-school games wander into this "gear trap" trope, where the novel solution to problems relies on MacGyvering backpack items to problems. There are times when I am not in the mood, so I will play a narrative game and ignore the gear game for the most part. In Cypher System, need a mirror to peek around a corner? Spend an XP, do a player intrusion, and make it a more significant part of the story.
Solo Play is Different
You need to ask yourself, why do I play? And this answer for solo players will differ from when you play with others. When I play the OSR solo, I manage equipment I never use. This takes time and feels like a waste since gear use and problem-solving rarely arise in my solo play. I will spend an hour crafting a perfect loadout for a character, and only 5% of the time is it necessary.
In a group, yes, there has to be something outside of "math and the rules" that players can have creative input on. Creative gear use is one of the ways players "break the game" or "solve problems outside of the box" and is a critical part of the play experience.
This is where Cypher System really shines for me, is solo play. The limits on carrying and using "cyphers" and the random nature of finding them and gaming their use changed the solo-play gear game for me dramatically. This system is a game where you could get away with buying "an adventure's backpack" or "a clockwork toolbox" as an expensive item and have it filled with all sorts of exciting goodies. I wouldn't even require a player to list them and handle it one of two ways:
As an asset to a roll, the item should be in the pack (iron spikes, rope, chalk, a flask of oil).
As something a player could use to trigger a player intrusion, such as, "I pull out a spare gear from my toolbox and see if it fits the machine."
It is fair since the player gives up an expensive item (or whatever level you want it to be, depending on contents) and gets the "backpack" as a "bag of tricks." I would limit this by type to prevent it from becoming too powerful, and an inexpensive bag would only have ubiquitous and cheap items inside, while an expensive one would have better stuff.
I would also limit this by "type of item" to prevent abuse, such as adventuring gear, clockwork toolbox, automotive toolbox, priest's bag, soldier's backpack, EVA tools, cowboy rucksack, vampire hunter's bag, etc. Be careful of the generic "backpack of stuff," and force players to be specific. The more specific and narrow the description, the more situations it will be helpful in related to the use, and the better benefits the bag will give. A "modern soldier's medical backpack" will have far better medicine and uses for treating wounds than a generic "modern soldier backpack."
It is like requiring a few "descriptors" to be chosen for one of these "universal backpacks" in the game, which helps balance and prevent abuse.
The Survival Game
Other times, I like building a complete loadout for a character. That survivalist game is going on, and it is fun to shop and anticipate gear needs while balancing the weight carried. This is where complete equipment lists can kill a game for me. I am happy if the game's gear list is simple and boils down to only the best and most useful stuff. If I have to sort through a Sears Catalog for every character and buy extra lute strings, I will end up cursing the completist and list-based "more is better" game design.
And yes, I know that is GURPS too, but I still like the game.
The backpack game reminds me of old-school survival games such as Aftermath! I have seven 0.45 bullets in my right pocket, a swiss army tool, two batteries, a spool of fishing line, and three disposable glow sticks. The storage containers and where you wore them mattered, and fetching things stored in different locations took differing amounts of actions. This is much like GURPS; you can get this detailed there too. It is also a big part of the play in Pathfinder 2 - putting something in a backpack when needed will cost you.
Shopping Can Be Fun
The backpack and shopping game feels like a part of old-school gaming. I like it when not everything needed is available, the moment you assume every small town has a "fantasy Walmart" stock of goods, then shopping loses its fun.
Looking for candles in a small village? There may be some at a shop (if it is open), or you may have to trade with locals. Looking for rope? It may not be easy to find, and you may have to barter with a farm or other tradesperson who may have a stock of some. Good luck getting a suspicious small-town blacksmith to craft a few replacement lockpicks.
If shopping and finding gear is a bit of luck and a game, I like it much more.
Picking from lists and shopping at superstore-sized catalogs where everything is always available bores me and pushes me back into my narrative games. Part of the default "modern-world 5E/PF2" assumptions with "Amazon.com gear lists" of many campaigns turn me off.
Massive games with too much choice are not games since there is little thought into the design and how things work together. They feel list lists with rules holding them together.
There was a Youtube video I watched recently where Traveller was discussed, and especially the feeling of "this being real" versus something that did not. I am still searching for that and will post it if I find it.
I found it interesting because they said they played Traveller before and it felt like a surface experience, where they were not really involved in the game. The parts looked cool, they could run through the rules and put together a game - but something was missing.
The person's favorite game was GURPS, so when they played GURPS Traveller, they all of a sudden felt like they were in the world - that this was real - and things took on an entirely new perspective. This could happen with any game, and I admit it happened to us when we started using Aftermath for a lot of our campaigns growing up, even D&D games. For different people this happens with different games, and in different ways.
It was fun listening to their description of being inside a Scout-Courier, like this was somehow all of a sudden a first-person perspective in a 3d game, like the world went from a 2d top down view of a triangle to a fully detailed starship cockpit in a 3d VR game. Can you do that same intimate feeling it Traveller? I suppose they could, but since they knew GURPS, and they felt that game was somehow more 'real' - the feeling transposed itself on the new setting and changed their view of it.
Granted, the GURPS Space rules are wonderful, even on their own, and make a great addition as a toolkit piece in any sci-fi game. I would even use the book creating planets and star systems in a B/X or Alien game, and they would fit in perfectly. It would change the nature of the system, all of a sudden the star systems would open up and become incredibly detailed, but that is a good thing if you are shooting for that realism. Even better if you are invested in GURPS and love that hyperrealism.
We also played Battletech using Aftermath rules and had that same feeling happen, like all of a sudden, the mechs got a whole lot more massive and cantankerous, and lower-level combat became more important and gritty. The mechs in a way became less important, which may be a bad thing, but the focus on characters grew to an incredible level and we had some great adventures in that universe using the Aftermath rules. Everything got bigger, more immediate, and more personal. It felt real.
To others they would probably play Aftermath with GURPS rules and say the same thing, that the base rules felt shallow while the system that they know and love expands the world for them and puts them in the universe in a way other games and experiences can't. So this is not a "one game fits all" thing, this is a very personal thing that deals with our upbringings, experiences, and view of the world in a more personal sense. Different people can see the same game and have a completely different view of it. Someone who played D&D all their life gets Traveller and sees it as the most realistic and detailed sci-fi game ever, and then someone else could take Traveller and use GURPS to play it and see it in an entirely different way.
It is an interesting experience with perspective and the investment it gives to you when playing, and also changes the focus of the game and how you see the pieces inside of it. It is a fascinating thing to see happening and it changes your perspective on games and worlds through a different light.
A perspective you are not used to, and one outside your experience.
I stumbled across this article about Overwatch team balance and how there has developed an entire roster of 'less desirable' characters. And them "meta" which is the current play-style intended to maximize the chances of winning. An example of that? this is a good one: http://www.dorkly.com/post/82360/overwatch-characters-ranked-from-best-to-worst
And then I got to thinking of Pathfinder and character builds. I run a game where "you play what you want" and if you pick some non-optimized, my-favorite, sort of 'free love' build where you are a fan of a non-optimal class - you can play that. I will adjust the adventure so you have a chance to shine, like if you want to play a shape-shifting druid and have a chance to make your animal form matter in the adventure. Things will be cool. Build what you want. I can adjust.
It is the power-gamers that I have more of a problem with, to be honest. Especially in a group comprised of new and experienced players. You know, the ones who come in expecting to do MAX DPS and build a character off a forum post, and then have their character swagger in with the PWN-age confidence of that same forum post into my world.
I can do 250 hit points of damage per turn with this build!
My first reaction, as a dungeon master, to that sort of attitude is to knock them down a little. I am sorry, I just can't stand it, and I am probably a worse DM for feeling and saying that. In a pen-and-paper game, I can find a million ways to kill off a single-trick pony build, because the character build is typically only good at one thing.
Sure, your mage or archer or whatever can do sick amounts of damage, and then the evil gnome living in the back of my dungeon master's mind is going to say, "hit them with a poison trap behind an illusion, and then drop in a monster into the party's rear rank where LoS is going to be blocked."
And a part of me hates that feeling of playing against some of the players. I really do because it is ultimately unfair and targets someone for their rules knowledge or design skills (versus the rest of the group). But if I present everything as a straight up fight to a group of mew-players and min-max'ers, you know what is going to happen. The min-max'ers are going to absolutely own the encounter, that archer is going to finish off the encounter in two or three turns, and the rest of the party will be sitting there feeling the following:
My character sucks
I could not contribute
I love min-max'ing too myself in games, especially in video games where there isn't other people to upset - just the computer and me, But when there is other people involved, I get this feeling that min-max'ing is just being selfish and hurts the group more than it does the monsters. As a player in a group, I would rather design a well-rounded character when I play with others, especailly in a group of new players. I don't want to show off or outshine them, because all that does is make them feel bad and make me look good. I feel selfish when my character blows through the encounter and the other players are all sitting there wondering why their characters couldn't contribute.
Hardcore Play
There is a special case when you get a group of players that are entirely min-maxers, and you get into this death-match mentality with them that (as a DM) I find as a different level of enjoyment. If they are all min-max-ing - then all bets are off. I am going to find a weakness in your defenses and exploit it, because that is what you are trying to do to my adventure. And that is what, frankly, is what a player rolling a min-max'ed character is going to expect.
As a min-max'er myself, at times, I want to be challenged. I want my build's weaknesses exposed and take advantage of. I want my 'perfect build' to fail spectacularly against the evil dungeon master. I want it tough, and I am betting my character can survive your worst. As a player, I love that feeling, and it is a thrill to me.
There is, and I am not ashamed to say this, a fun in that style of play. Using the rules to your advantage. Knowing a rule better than the DM, and then as a DM, admitting defeat and saying "I have learned something," letting the player have that victory, and getting on with the next encounter. You know, really hardcore, competitive play that absolutely uses 100% of the rules to their limit, deadly traps, unfair encounters, the rules matter, and seat-of-your pants play.
And then smiling and thanking the players for dropping by today, and realizing we all love this hobby so much that we appreciate every chance we get to play together. Even in the "hardcore" style of play I like sometimes where players and the DM are in this hyper-competitive state, I like the thrill and the competition of the game. I want new players, if they so choose, to be able to join us in that elite club.
But not an elitist club.
If you played Warhammer Fantasy Battle or 40K competitively you know what I mean. There is this expectation, "When you come to the table, bring it." A good opponent with a great army is hard to find, and it is a joy playing against them. Someone who knows the rules well is a treat to fight, and especially one who takes the time to explain things to a newer player - despite the match taking longer than it should. I respect those players and love fighting them, since they bring out the best in me. My best build, my best sportsmanship, and the best fights on the table no matter who wins or loses.
But I feel there is a time to tone it down.
With new players at the table just looking to experience an adventure, I can shift gears and adjust to casual play. A good min-max player can sense this too and relax, build a whatever never-tried before fantasy character, and have fun as well in that setting. It is the players who continue to min-max in a mixed casual-hardcore group like that, who have no sense of toning it down, who tend to get on my nerves. Sometimes we are all here to have fun and not try to outwit each other, because we have some people playing that don't know the game as well. Chill. Tone it down. Have fun and play something you never would.
Maybe some of those new players will start to get the itch, and want to play in a hardcore game. We can move them up to that level later, and foster another elite player out of them. Welcome to the club, and I will do my best to challenge you.
Pen-and-paper games have breaking points, and these usually involve the "throw more people at it" strategy. A lot of games are very sensitive to the amount of people in an "adventuring party." We found when dungeon-ing, five people is a good practical limit and it gives everyone a chance to shine. We have run eight-person groups, and it feels inevitable that a queue starts forming behind the front rank members, as in most dungeons eight is a lot of people to run a game for, and more importantly - balance.
Area-of-effect attacks multiply party strength, and going from five to eight party members typically allows one or two extra AoE attacks on the board during a battle per turn. In strategy-type games this is a huge deal, at least in our experience, as those extra, well-placed area attacks can cause havoc with even an enemy force that is scaled to equal the party's ability to fight.
Let's say you design an encounter for five adventurers, two orc tanks, a controller, and two ranged attackers. Five-on-five seems pretty balanced. When you go to eight, you may throw in an extra tank and two more ranged DPS to bring this up to an eight-on-eight.
Well, this is where the problem lies. When you start to scale up encounters, you get into the problem of "more is better" and you get these strange "force multiplier" issues when you keep adding more of the same type of enemy.
Tanking in Confined Spaces
Tanks tend to lose power in large groups, because in many tactical dungeon battles, space is limited. When you scale up a dungeon designed for five players to ten players, you often don't think about increasing the size of rooms and halls, and you get these theme-park style lines of people waiting to fight while the actual space for the "front lines" is typically a 10-wide hallway with room enough for two fighters, side-by-side. Even though both the party and the orcs can field three or four tanks each, the dungeon often does not have the space to let everyone fight one-on-one.
So some of the tanks sit there unused, and their power is reduced. This does happen to ranged units as well, since line-of-sight is often blocked by other characters and simply being forced to the back of the group.
Limited Space? AoE Rules the Battle
One of the rules of wart is if your enemy has limited room to maneuver, hit them with artillery. If you scale up a dungeon encounter and don't scale up the terrain, you are naturally forcing more combatants into a smaller space, and multiplying the effect of area-of-effect spells, powers, and attacks. A sleep spell that would have hit two or three in the original encounter is now hitting six. A swipe feat that would have only come into play once or twice during the battle is now used almost every turn as monsters jam the front lines to get an attack in.
Area-of-effect attackers love scaled encounters, and you typically see their effectiveness go through the roof. Single target attackers either have to mass attacks or focus on picking off stragglers, and therefore see their contributions reduced. Single-target controllers of de-buff experts suffer the worst, since in a smaller encounter putting a -2 to-hit on the other side's tank or ranged attacker would have been a huge deal, but now that -2 is just one in a crowd, and that damage that would have been severely affected by a de-buff is still getting through with other attackers.
When you scale an encounter you are giving AoE powers a huge buff.
Ranged Attackers
With four ranged attackers, the orcs can single out and really put the hurt on one of the party members. With two ranged attackers, everyone is taking some damage, and things feel balanced. With four, you are taking out one party member a turn (and it feels unfair). If your ranged attackers can all see one target and attack, you typically "alpha attack" one target at a time with your ranged assets instead of spreading damage. This works on both sides, and ranged power is affected by the terrain.
In open terrain such as large caverns, outdoor maps, and huge chambers; increasing the amount of ranged attackers increases your combat power greatly - even more so than on a one-to-one ratio. You double one side's archers and all let them attack during a turn? You can bet they will coordinate and fire at one target, and this really is the thing to do. Those squishy mages in the back ranks better watch out.
In closed terrain the ranged attackers lose a lot of their effectiveness, such as a 10' wide hall that only allows two tanks to fight side-by-side. Your archers will be sitting in the back of the line taking a smoke break and browsing on their smartphones.
The same goes with monsters, if you are scaling up an encounter in a small room don't go for ranged attackers. You are better off making the individual monsters tougher by a couple levels and leaving them the same number.
The Problem With Tougher
There is a problem with making monsters tougher and leaving their numbers the same. Let's say you decide with your encounter to leave their numbers the same, but double up their strength. You are going to be creating a meat-grinder situation where in close quarters the tanks of the party will take a lot of damage and the encounter will be tougher than it should have been. In open-field battle it may work a little better, because you are letting everyone contribute, but the number of attacks on each side may push the battle in favor of the larger side. The terrain starts to matter a lot when you "toughen up" an encounter instead of scale, because the number of attacks matters, and not forcing one or two players to take the brunt of everything also matters.
The Problem With More
Some games just do not scale well. If a party size doubles from four to eight, you would think that encounter size or CR should be doubled, right? We have run into this many times and felt some game's balancing systems started to fall apart when larger groups were thrown at the system. What about a party size of twenty or thirty? We have played games this large, and while the system theoretically 'works' there is a point where the game starts to break down. The multiplicative power of twenty individual players making decisions far outweighs the game's balancing systems (or even a GM making one-to-one fights) because of a number of design factors unique to each game and the power set.
It's like a superhero game, and you go from a nicely-balanced group of four or five Justice League or Avengers caliber player characters and you double that to eight or ten - a situation that is not that uncommon in comic books and comic book lore, as big fights are popular. You will notice two trends, some characters will become very weak and inconsequential, while others will massively over-contribute. The ones that over-contribute will fight at two or three times their strength because of the over abundance of healing, protective powers, buffs, and coordination from the rest of the group. These over-performers will either be tanks, direct damage, or AoE experts, or a combination of these types.
In a more balanced game with less players, you have more equal contributions and players being forced to fill roles they may not be 100% proficient at, just because someone need to cover this hall or hold the sudden attack off. The AoE, DD, or tank may not get a chance to do what they do best, because there is no one else to capture an objective or perform a story-goal, so they have to step in. With less players, everyone has to share responsibilities in the group, and you have less of the "single purpose" over-performing characters purely focused on pouring out one attack type every turn for maximum damage.
Special Units
It isn't hopeless. If you know the game well enough, special units may make the difference and allow you to balance a larger party without resorting to scaling or toughening up. Let's say the goblins have a pet fire beetle that can spit fire and take a lot of damage. That instantly become a tough nut to crack, and it has some interesting fight dynamics and utility for the goblins. Adding the beetle does "toughen up" the goblin side by one unit, but you aren't doubling up or raising their level to make up for the difference. You may need to add another special unit in there if there are more, but be careful that you aren't just increasing numbers to match.
Special Tactics and Gear
Or, give the goblins a falling rock trap they can trigger when several of the party members are underneath a part of the chamber, flaming arrows, heavy armor, or other combat enhancements in order to compensate for the larger party. Let one stay hidden up near the roof in a small cave with a crossbow, or add a small force that rushes in from a secret trapdoor or "spider hole" in the floor when the party fights their way past it. If you make one side fight smarter, that can add challenge without scaling or toughening up, and it also makes the fight more memorable.
Or Just Say No to Scaling or Splitting
Or just focus on smaller groups where the game was naturally designed to play. There is a point where every game breaks and you have added too many players. More isn't always more fun, imagine a Monopoly game with fifty players. Everybody would be waiting for their turn to come up, and the board would be crowded so badly that only the small group of "first movers" would do well. You will find this pattern in tabletop RPGs as well ,and even in non-tactical story type games, the "first movers" and the most vocal of the group will have the most fun, and determine the direction of the game.
If you break them into groups, you can get some of that original balance back (but not in resource management games, two parties will not be challenged if the adventure was designed around the resource management of one party) - but you are also telling half of the players to wait while the other half has fun. You see this in "story games" where the group of investigators creaks apart to investigate a mystery - the more active and forceful personalities will dominate the play time if the party splits apart.
"Pilot player, sit in the starship, guard it, and be ready to go! We are going to go out and take all the session time in the starport now getting into all sorts of fun and interesting trouble."
It is something you have to think of when planning games, and also use creativity to resolve. You don't want to tell someone who wants to join your group "no" and have them sit out, but you also don't want too many people to join where the game is too easy, too slow, or you end up scaling things up that the game breaks and the adventure falls apart. There is that point where the game breaks, and you need to be conscious of that point - especially when it comes to party size, the type of game you are playing, and adventure design.
A dungeon is the classic example of linear play. You are presented with a choice, left or right. You don't have that much information to go on, except maybe if the referee is smart and drops hints about "a strange smell coming from the right" or "the sounds of shuffling and scratching from the left." At least you have something to go on, but you are still limited to two directions. Go left or right, and you are presented with a similar choice, go through the door or down the hallway further.
You aren't really thinking, you are reacting here. You are trapped in a maze. Your freedom to make decisions and alter the course of the adventure is blocked off by cold stone walls. You are expected to be the rat in the maze, wander around, and fight against oppressive limitations to show some individuality. There is the illusion of choice, but there really isn't much choice except for, "where do we go next?" Watch this:
That is a fun video and I recommend watching all of the ones dealing with torches and roleplaying. Good stuff, and it touches on the sort of "real world tombs and crawlspaces" feeling with cramped corridors, vaulted ceilings, and cool-looking pulp-inspired places. Pulp-inspired kind of veers off the historical-realism track (for fun's sake), but again, pulp-inspired isn't "100 rooms with twisty corridors" either.
Contrast this with non-linear play. You are a cowboy walking into an Old West town. Go from there. Do you rob the stagecoach? Do you wander into the saloon and look for trouble? Do you respond to that "help wanted" poster on the sheriff's office? Do you stand up for that lanky prospector being ruffled up by the local ruffians? Do you watch as the two gunfighters stare each other down?
You are only limited by the hooks and opportunities the referee presents to you. You area free agent, and you are free to chase down whatever hare-brained idea or silly course of action you can imagine. Like an open-world sandbox game, whatever you do is fine. A great referee will improvise and wing it for the whole session, and react to whatever the players come up with on the fly.
Dungeons are easy, and they focus the group's attention on one situation and location. They are useful and create tension, but after a while, they begin to feel artificial and limiting. There are no other options but "door A" and "hall B." Our group has done them to the point where dungeon based modules elicit groans from my players.
So in our Savage Worlds: Pathfinder game, we are banning dungeons. No more holes in the ground, we are tired of them. There still can be lost tombs, ancient ruins, or similar pulp-inspired sites of mystery and wonder - but not to the extent where being a mouse wandering the maze is the point of the game. If it has more than a handful of rooms or passages, forget it, we are not interested. It isn't like historically, here on Earth, there have been great examples of massive underground dungeon complexes.
Still, a pulp-inspired underground massive ritual chamber is fine. A giant maze where you have to map and wander around aimlessly is not. A lost tomb with a central corridor and adjoining chambers (for mummies to break out of) is fine, a tomb that takes up an entire piece of graph paper where the entire session is spent lost in the corridors is not. Pulp-adventure means classic action-movie inspired sets and locations, real Temple of Doom stuff, and fun and dynamic locations.
Like the stuff you see in the books, and exactly like the above. I admit, the Paizo team does a good job trying to make their adventures and world exciting, action-inspired, and fun looking - but I get this sense the d20 tactical dungeon rules fight them. The rules drag the world down. What looks fun on the cover in reality, at least when we play, is a mess of stat-blocks, slow-playing rules, tracking conditions, slow combat, and slogging through a rules system that should be "fast, fun and easy to play" but isn't. Especially now with all the books and additions to the core system.
I want the game to play like the pictures. I do not care about supporting rules which get in the way of fun. A fighter is a someone who knows how to use a sword. A mage knows magic. A thief is sneaky. Powers are powers. People learn the things they choose to learn. The people in the artwork do not have leg shackles on them chained to large iron d20s. They are "adventurers" in any game system. That mage above? Just casting a spell, and in my game, something from the Savage Worlds rules. And something not converted over, and no-one in this world speaks of levels, alignment, classes, or magic missile.
It seems dictatorial, but conversions like this are notoriously weak-legged, with that feeling of "lets go back" to the original rules hanging over the game. Being clear on "what this game is going to be like" helps a referee keep it on track, helps players know what they are getting into and how to act, and it sets expectations on how much of the original source material from the rules is going to be used. You don't want to be playing, have a player expecting to play a specific "mesmerist" or some other in-the-game class, and have that player expecting one thing while the game is doing another.
In this case, none of it. The Inner Sea World Guide is the game's bible for "what the world is" and "who lives there." That cover sets the tone for the game. The pictures of adventures and battles inside also set the tone. The peoples and places inside exist in this world.
And then the Savage Worlds rulebook is thrown down, right on top. These are the rules. This is how this world works. You should be good from here. This is how the game works, how it will be run, and other Pathfinder rules-focused books will be ignored.
End. Stop. No new books needed. Except maybe...
...and here is where the tricky part comes in. I am going to put up a yellow light when the question of "monsters" comes up. You may want to go with the standard monster list. It's easy. You may want to crack open the bestiary book to pull in some foes, and then find yourself converting monsters over. And then the slow drag of "it would be easier to go back" starts to be felt.
My advice? Don't do it. It's a trap! Stick with the monsters with in the Fantasy Companion. "Re-skin" them, if needed to look and act like the monsters you need. Remember, you are going for "pulp-adventure" not a "d20 simulator." You absolutely do not need a complete monster list to run this game; some orcs, skeletons, zombies, and a big boss beast is fine and will get your adventure through many nights. Most players probably won't notice your monster list isn't the "complete Pathfinder approved" monster list. As long as you have one or two of the recognizable "fantasy monster types" you are fine.
You are fine.
And here is where you can have some fun. You can invent new monsters now. If you reject the "standard" list, you can invent cool new monsters like a fire-elemental mummy that vomits lava and is immune to fire magic, and all of a sudden - no one knows what to expect next. Your game goes from the familiar classic-rock playlist of the d20 "greatest hits" monsters to something cool, all yours, and unique. You can mix in the old standards once and a while, mod them, or make new monsters based on your imagination.
It's like that monster on the cover of the Bestiary, the "giant troll" thing in the background. I don't care to go and look that up in the Bestiary, I will say that is a giant troll and I will go and find some stat-block for a giant in the Fantasy Companion and give it regeneration and a weakness to fire, and blammo, you are done. A giant that regenerates? Color me terrified as a player in this game and trying to deal with a beast like this. If you were a slave to the "official monster list" your mind will not be thinking like this, and you will lose all of your creativity and imagination.
Do that. Look at the pictures in the books, and come up with your own creations. That flaming dog in that picture is an "inferno hound" and then go wild giving it powers and weaknesses based on what it looks like. Your imagination and silly creations will make this game special. Refusing to be a slave to the "official lists and rules" will be your freedom. Don't go too wild, a normal griffon is still a griffon fro mthe book, but for the special and memorable monsters, have fun.
Same with magic. Same with powers. Same with magic items. Same with heroes. Same with everything. You are free to be inspired by the pictures, not ruled by the words.
Your players are not grading you on how well your conversion looks like the source material. They will not judge you that a "giant troll" doesn't exist in the Bestiary and "you obviously made something up." Gasp! The horror of doing something not by the official rules! Your game is invalid! You obviously aren't as creative as the books you paid for. You will never be able to play in a store or convention game again. Really? Sarcasm over, but honestly, these feelings come up when you dare to be creative and do your own thing. It's a byproduct of companies wanting to sell you more books, and that is their right, but never let the fear of an "official seal of approval" stop you from doing anything.
It's your game. Players are here to have fun. They will judge you if your game was interesting, fast paced, fun, and it provided a great night of entertainment.
The more input you have in your world, the better it will be. But the number one thing getting in your way of having fun is yourself and your slavish loyalty to a stack of books. You need to break those chains for this to be fun. So go ahead and break them.
I picked up my hardcover copy of Basic Fantasy Role-Playing Game 3rd Edition the other day and I am still impressed by this game. The simplicity and streamlined approach just makes me want to play. This is something that game designers, and especially the ones Nintendo and other companies get, the fact a game can have depth, but it must be infinitely easy and simple to get into.
You push the stick around and the guy moves on the screen. You push a button and he jumps. You hold another button down and he picks something up. You let that button go and he throws it. Maybe you have a running move, and possibly a slide after running. That's it.
Past that setup, a million things can happen. The difficulty can be easy or hard. You can combo together moves for advanced strategies. the level determines how you need to use your simple and easy to use collection of powers, but how and when you use them makes the difference between a novice and an expert. This is the beauty of a well-designed Mario game or level. Simplicity, but a wealth of depth in the situations presented to you and how you choose to use your iconic set of powers.
But more is better! Or is more, really better? Does wading through a thousand pages of rules make a game better? I am not convinced, really, and while I love the work and craftsmanship put into games like Pathfinder and others, the simple games keep calling to me. Just because a game fills up a shelf does not mean it is a great game.
We had this problem with Fantasy Flight's Star Wars RPG, we bought all the expansion books, and the game fell apart on us. The expansion classes felt like reshuffles of the original book's iconic classes. Too much was added, and the game sat there. We ended up saying if we just stuck to the original three books we would have probably had a better time with the game. Granted, the original three books are a large enough affair, but at least things worked well, and once you understood one book the rest were just options. The later Star Wars books felt like they added more basic choices without adding depth, and the game felt heavy for us.
Pathfinder feels similar in a way, but later books do add a true sense of depth and options. I admit the game does feel and play better with some of the fixes introduced in the later books as well. Dealing with the game though requires a good knowledge of a library of books, a tablet and PDFs for on-the-go-play, and a lot of time and brainpower to manage.
And then, that copy of Basic Fantasy sits on my table, and those Mario thoughts hit me again. One button to jump. One to run. Another to pick things up. How you use a limited set of abilities is your key to success. The game takes about a minute to toss some dice and build a character, with no computer program needed. You are playing the moment you sit down and the referee beings to describe the room you are in.
The game is simple for both players and referees. Ascending AC. A good set of monsters. Treasure tables. Classic classes. An old-school design more focused on the interaction between the referee and players than the players and the rules. There is not much there compared to other games, but what is there is the good stuff. The best of dungeon-game play.
It's that Mario feeling again.
Yes, I love my big-box rules, and I am bought in and love Pathfinder and other games. I love the options in big-box games. It feels like playing Skyrim with 100's of mods, or even Fallout 4. Anything can happen. I have the freedom to build any character I want. The world is my sandbox, and I do not know what to expect. this is why we play big-box games.
But big-box computer games have their price of requiring a beefy computer to play them in all their glory, and big-box tabletop RPGs need a lot of books and mental effort to get going. Modding Skyrim and getting everything to work together is almost as complicated as game programming. Creating an adventure for a thirty-book system is just as involved, but it is just as rewarding as that finely-tuned set of Skyrim mods.
Part of the appeal of D&D 5 to me was the reset of that complexity. I could have a Pathfinder-like experience with less books. I ended up appreciating Pathfinder's design and richness afterwards, while still appreciating what Wizards did with D&D and that move towards simplicity. In the end, for us at least, we still like the Skyrim style mess and pile of wonderful big-box options that is Pathfinder than we do D&D 5's reboot. It's a good reboot, but one we find in the middle of a bunch of other games and limited time to play them all. It is also a game with a middling complexity for us, so we find ourselves drawn to the simpler games, or the more complex - since the payouts for time to fun feel better with the extremes rather than the middle.
But I have simple moods at other times. Mario games are not Skyrim, yet I still appreciate their simplicity and design. They still call to me, and I still am a fan of that infinite playground mentality. The promise of a few simple pieces adding up to unlimited fun. The promise the game doesn't take all that much effort to get into, and the rewards for playing feel like a big-box game. That sense of accomplishment for having excelled at my creativity with my moves and actions rather than my knowledge of the rules and ability to wade through complexity.
It is that simplicity thing and finding a game that fits that mood for you.
Yeah, I bet you know what part of the game we got to. It is shortly after you lose all that stuff when you started, and then the real game begins.
Yeah, wow, that is a long intro part. I am wondering if the story wouldn't have been better served by cutting out a majority of that introduction and getting right to the good part. You know, cutting to the chase, and starting in the middle of the good part?
Yes, there was a reason to set everything up, and to let you get your sea legs under you, but the problem is now it feels like a huge reset button was hit and now the real game begins. Some of the NPCs have new power trees, and our core party feels etched in stone anyways. There are really only three we like taking along, and the rest of the group feels like castle bench warmers.
I miss the Shining Force series again, where everyone meant something. I am also missing the "split the party" moments in Final Fantasy 3/VI where you had to keep every character active and current because you just did not know if they were going to be called on later. Something feels wrong here when the majority of your team is on the benches, either increase the party size or reduce the number of characters, because we can't stand ignoring them.
Yes, it is us ignoring them, but laziness wins here. There doesn't feel like a need to use anybody else but our favorites, and the ones that work best in 90% of the fights. We are going with two tanks, a mage, and an archer. Other parties felt like they had sever problems with survival, and having too many squishies in the party just got too many people knocked out. When in doubt, take big iron. There are no healers in this game, so make those potions count with steel.
We are hoping things pick up, and I am forcing myself to forget that long intro and get around to enjoying the game again. It felt (to me) that things were dragging a bit, and you were being forced down a path where choices did not matter, and the endpoint was the same no matter what you did. I am hoping things break out now and we get some real world-changing stuff.
The game does feel like it is picking up though, more is open, more is happening, and the main map is coming alive. I am hopeful, and hopefully things start to get interesting from this point forward.
We hadn't got around to playing through the latest Dragon Age game, so DarkgarX and I decided to play through Inquisition to get us up to speed on the latest lore, and more importantly, the feel of the game.
I can feel this was worth it, because one comment DarkgarX had about the pen-and-paper game was that, "I want a game I can care about, that feels real to me and is serious."
Bioware does great work, and we have been playing their games a while and can spot some of the campy and somewhat 'Bioware' things they do in the games, such as the multi-cultural approach, some of the twisted fiction plot-lines, and they have their own unique 'take' on fantasy in general that is say different than, Game of Thrones. If you can imagine a Bioware-made Game of Thrones game you know what we mean, things wouldn't be 'Martin' they would take on a distinctively Bioware feeling and approach. It's not a bad thing, it is just different and sometime a mix of campy and serious.
Tyrion Lannister may be talking about his chest hair in the Bioware version, if you know what I mean. I love the tounge-in-cheek aspects of the Bioware games, and I also feel they have a more balanced approach when it comes to presenting a more-inclusive variety of fantasy that doesn't focus as much on angry white men as history and pop-culture has the past 2,000 years. Don't take that the wrong way, but you know what I mean, and I like things a little different in my entertainment and gaming.
I thought it would be fun to highlight the more campy, Bioware-y, and multi-cultural aspects of the videogame, but he felt otherwise, like he wanted a more serious and dramatic approach. Watch the video and you'll get what I mean. This was an interesting shift in what he wants from a game, and as a good game master, I picked up on that and will be running the game a little differently than I had planned.
We will get back to that later, but there is another facet to this discussion I wanted to bring in. Dungeons and Dragons is a lot like comic books and what I would like to call "tribute fiction." Tribute fiction works like this, if Hollywood comes out with a new Alien movie and it does a blockbuster summer, you can bet three months later comic books will have Alien-like creatures rampaging through them, roleplaying games will have xenomorphs in them, and video games that give you the Alien-like experience will start to appear. It isn't bad, it is just the normal echo of pop-culture through itself over and over again, and it is the reason D&D 4 warlocks were teleporting Nightcrawler-like heroes out of the X-Men. It isn't really original, it is just like a best-of remix of various pieces of pop-culture in fantasy and also cool things people like.
But really, all fiction is a form of tribute fiction, since everything borrows off the consciousness of what came before. Some fiction though, is more tribute than others.
It is like Dragon Age versus D&D. Dragon Age does borrow from pop-culture, and so does D&D, as they are both part of the fantasy pop-culture continuum. Dragon Age is a specific implementation of a fantasy idea, where D&D is more generic. Watch the trailer again, but this time think of it two ways:
This is something that makes me want to play Dragon Age.
This is something that makes me want to play D&D.
It works as a generic D&D trailer as well, in that you have medieval trappings, magic, dragons, castles, and "things you see in fantasy gaming." It works better as a Dragon Age trailer, because the trailer is tightly tied into the specific implementation of the Dragon Age idea. If Dragon Age is the Southwestern restaurant, D&D is the generic buffet where you can also get Mexican food. It is the reason why D&D pulls in a huge list of inspirations in the 5th Edition DMG, such as Game of Thrones and Middle Earth, and really any other fantasy source material. It is by its nature, more tribute fiction than is either of those specific implementations of the fantasy idea.
If I want to play Dragon Age or have a group of people who love Dragon Age, I will either play the pen-and-paper game or the videogames, because I will get the full experience.
If I have a group of people that want a more generic experience, I will play Pathfinder or D&D, because they do a lot more different and varied things. They are not the best at doing a specific thing, they just do a lot of things well enough that people can hook their idea of 'fantasy gaming' on the D&D train and ride along.
Now, D&D has specific settings in the form of Grayhawk, Faerun, Dark Sun, and other places. To those who read the Faerun novels in the 90's, that place is as much of a Dragon Age as Dragon Age is to people that are fans of that setting. It is unfortunate that D&D has gone under such seismic shifts in rules and setting lore, because there was a real feeling that Faerun and other settings could have broken out from D&D's shadow and 3rd through 5th Edition rules-turmoil and been stronger worlds with a more Middle Earth feeling to the lore than just as 'settings to play D&D in.'
Again, it is an interesting comparison with Dragon Age in focus, presentation, and feeling. With Dragon Age, it feels like the world comes first, and the rules are a secondary concern. With D&D, it feels like the rules come first, and the settings are secondary concerns.
It is a good thing to know as a game master, does my group like the lore of a specific world better, or are they fans of a specific set of rules? This is part of the appeal of Pathfinder admittedly as well. In any case, finding out what players want and focusing on that will get you a better sense of enjoyment and fun, and success for your gaming time.
