The Games

Mask of the Pharaoh

Mask of the Pharaoh is an outlier compared to the other games that I have on the list for unboxing. It isn’t a big and epic game. In fact, the box is quite small. But there is one thing that made me want to buy it. And that is that it uses an app. But it isn’t just that it uses an app, but how it uses the app.

Originally a game called Mask of Anubis coming out in 2016, it was picked up by Hasbro as Mask of the Pharaoh. The game uses an app, not as something to assist the game but as a core piece to the game. One person is navigating and looking around a tomb via the app. They give directions to the other players how to set it up. This is just novel for a board game, so I wanted to try it. Chronicles of Crime uses an app in a similar way, and I want to try it as well.

ISS Vanguard

Now onto the bigger games. ISS Vanguard is certainly that. I didn’t get everything you could in wave one, and I’m okay with that. Everything I didn’t get is not as important for game play. I received the core box, the miniatures, which look cool but also not important and the Personnel Files.

ISS Vanguard is an epic space adventure game. That premise is a signal was sent to Eartha and hidden within the DNA of humanity. It is discovered and uncoded. That leads humanity on a mission using and alien ship to find these coordinates. There, well, that is where the game begins.

There is a lot going on in the game. From exploring planets, flying to different solar systems, and unraveling the mystery. I like that you don’t play as a specific character, but as a specific part of the crew. You might be recon or engineering or security, but you get to pick. I also enjoy that you encounter a planet, but you also encounter things as you maintain your ship or upgrade your landing vessels.

Chronicles of Drunagor

Final game getting unboxed is Chronicles of Drunagor. Chronicles of Drunagor didn’t show up as recently, it has been on my shelf for a little bit. But it is one that I’m going to be playing soon for Malts and Meeples. In fact, it should get started next week. I just need your help figuring out who to play. See the section below to vote.

But Chronicles of Drunagor is an epic fantasy game where you build out 3D maps, unlock doors, fight monsters, and level up the characters. Two things stand out to me as really interesting in this game. The first being darkness. The idea of the darkness is that it pushes you forward in the dungeon. As you explore and fight, darkness is filling in behind you. So you can’t take too long, because if you do, it catches you and bad things happen.

And then the character game play. The game uses a cube system for what you are doing. You play with certain powers, which certain color of cubes needed to activate those various powers. For example, I might have a healing power that needs a yellow cube. I can only activate that if there isn’t already a yellow cube on there and I have a yellow cube. So it is a puzzle of when to activate things, when to not, or when to spend a turn to pull back cubes. But when I do that, I lose access to an ability and I pick which. Seems like an amazing puzzle to me.

Picking a Chronicles of Drunagor Character

Like I said, this is the game I’m playing next on Malts and Meeples. There are 12 different classes and 23 different characters. Help me pick two classes.

Upcoming Streams

So, next week, I will not be streaming on Monday. A week off from my Top 100 games because, well, next Monday is Halloween. So I am going to be busy with that. And then probably relaxing or editing podcast after that. But the following Monday, November 7th, at 8:30 PM, join me for a stream of 40 through 31 in my Top 100 Games (of all time) 2022 Edition.

And then of course, on Wednesday, it is diving into the dungeons of the Chronicles of Drunagor. I likely will play the tutorial scenario first to learn the game. So that might be on camera, or I might try and play that myself so I can delve into the bigger campaign with you all. To be determined with that. But 8 PM on Wednesday for that stream.

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The Game

Aeon’s End is a cooperative deck building game with a couple of twists that I will talk about. In the game you are taking a group of mages (though you can play true solo if you want) up against a nemesis who is threatening the town of Gravehold. You have a few ways to lose, if your mages die or if Gravehold ends up at 0 points. But you also have two ways to win. You can either defeat the nemesis or outlast the nemesis.

It is a pretty traditional deck building game in a lot of ways, but there are two unique things that I want to talk about. First is how you build your deck. Now, I just said it was fairly normal, and well, it is minus the fact that you don’t shuffle your deck. You have a fixed market, meaning you know what will be available, and you buy from that. But as you use cards on your turn, you determine the order they go into the discard pile. That means that you can kind of guess the hand that you are going to be getting when you flip the deck.

The other thing is the turn order. Normally games have you go in a set turn order. If I go first the person to the left of me goes next. Or, the person who is furthest back gets the next turn. Here, it is truly random. In a two player game you have two player one cards, two player two, and two nemesis cards that make up the deck. With a bad shuffle you could have the nemesis going 4 turns in a row as you reshuffle every time you go through all six cards. It gives you some great runs of turns and some bad.

The Beer

Of course there was a beer last night. This time from Tin Whiskers in St. Paul, MN. A Pink Lemonade Dream State, a cream ale with pink lemonade and vanilla. I think that it’s okay, when I bought it, I bought it for the Pink Lemonade in the title, however, it tends to lean more into the vanilla. That works well with a cream ale, but really it’s too sweet for what I want. Cream ales already lean a little bit sweeter than I like in general.

Upcoming Streams

So next Monday we are back at 8:30 Central Time. The plan is to stream the Top 10 Games I Haven’t Played on my game shelf. The goal will to then get these games to the table this summer, or this year at least.

Then on next Wednesday we’ll be doing some more gaming. If people liked Aeon’s End, I might use the streams as an excuse to get in a lot of Aeon’s End and really dive into the variety of nemesis that are in the game and the different mages to eventually start streaming Aeon’s End Legacy, the legacy game version. Let me know what you think in the comments below.

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Secondly, I am going to be using more comparisons, most likely, in this post. My plan is to compare and contrast it against Dungeons and Dragons in particular and probably will compare it against the Fantasy Flight Star Wars game that I’ve run as well. The reason for doing this is to better be able to highlight what I do and don’t like about the Dragon Age RPG. It’s also to be able to highlight what I prefer so that you can make a more informed decision and see where my hang-ups with the system are more clearly.

Dragon Age RPG

Let me set-up the reason that I was running this game. With Dungeons and Flagons, and having tweeted about running Curse of Strahd, I clearly am most comfortable running Dungeons and Dragons. However, Kristen and I have some friends, a couple of whom hadn’t played many if any RPG’s before. They are big fans of the Dragons Age video game series, as am I, and the thought was that this would be a good introduction to RPG’s for them. I agreed to run this game, going through an introductory scenario, over a few sessions.

So, let me start right there. I was running a free module put out by Green Ronin Press. The module itself was laid out pretty nicely, and having the monster stat blocks easily available was nice. However, I don’t like running modules all that well. My reason for that, even with Dungeons and Dragons, is because it limits my creativity as you do need to follow the story fairly well or at least verify that on the fly I’m not changing a major plot point for no reason. This mean the game generally runs with less of a flow. The Dragon Age module actually runs pretty smoothly, but a lot of that was because it was a very simple straight forward module. I also felt like I couldn’t go off script because I know a little Dragon Age lore, but it’s just from the game, other players knew way more than I did. The one issue that wasn’t my personal preference about not running modules that I have was that there were a ton of NPC’s, and a lot of NPC’s with stat blocks. The issue with that is that it means those NPC’s are supposed to be in combat. So we had 4 players, 6 monsters and 4 NPC’s in the final combat, and it could have been five NPC’s. Any time I see a module doing that it makes me sad, because it’s taking focus off of the players. However, the module is balanced for that, so it’s risky to remove those NPC’s.

The game itself has a well written book. I’ve heard, but we didn’t get to high levels yet, that the balancing of the various classes is all over the board and that eventually rogues tank just as well as fighters. The information is laid out nicely and it gives you a ton of options. Literally a ton, the book is giant. However, it combines the Dungeon Master’s Guide, the Players Handbook, and Monster Manual all into one. While Dragon Age only has 3 different classes, Rogue, Mage, and Wizard, the classes from the video games; it gives you a ton of variability within the class. A rogue can be ranged or sneaky or stabby, a fighter can fight with a bow if you wanted or with a great two handed sword or a sword and shield and mages have a plethora of different magic options to diversify into. I think the biggest way the game let’s you diversify is with the races as you have various different Dalish elves (the elves in the computer game) that you can play depending on what you want your backstory to be and what class you want to play. The downside to this is that you need to know the world of Dragon Age some before selecting a character, otherwise the options don’t mean all that much. This compared to either Dungeons and Dragons or the Star Wars RPG that plays with more common character types that people are more familiar with, so it makes it easier for people to pick up.

The biggest feature and issue that I have with the game comes mechanically. Instead of a Dungeons and Dragons style die system like a lot of games have where you roll a D20 (twenty sided die) and add something, in Dragon Age, you roll three D6’s (six sided dice). This means that the math is slightly different from other games, which isn’t a big deal while running a module. Two of the dice are supposed to be the same looking, and one should look different. The different die is known as your “dragon die”. If you get doubles on any of your dice when doing an attack or casting a spell, you stunt. You then get stunt points equal to what is facing up on your dragon die. Stunting allows you to do cool extra things, like ignore half an enemies defense or deal extra damage. As compared to a critical hit in Dungeons and Dragons or a triumph in the Star Wars RPG, stunts happen a lot more often. How often they happen is and isn’t my issue with them. It isn’t an issue because it’s still exciting for players when they happen and you still feel a little bit like you’ve just had a critical hit. The issue with it is that picking out and spending your stunt points is not a fast process. There are multiple stunts all at varying point levels, so do you want to spend two points on these two things or three points on that one thing and then do something less with your last point? With the monsters they at least tell you what the  monsters favorite stunts are in order so it goes fast for them, but as players and as often as stunts happen, it slows down the game and combat.

In our game, we just used stunting in combat. And in the module there was a lot of combat. In Dragon Age, combat itself is quite brutal in terms of resource management which is similar to D&D and other games. The reason I call out just using stunting in battle is that you can technically choose to use stunts for more mundane activities as well. This takes away from the role playing aspect of the game and makes it into a roll playing game instead. As compared to D&D, Dragon Age focuses a to more on the dice, but a more apt game to compare it to is the Fantasy Flight Star Wars game which has you rolling a handful of dice at all times. In my opinion, while the Star Wars game can bog down with the dice as well at times, it does so less. There’s one major reason, in Dragon Age, the extra time spent on the dice is mechanical. In the Star Wars game, it’s much more focused on adding to the story. So even in the Star Wars game where eventually you’re doing less story and more mechanical things because you don’t know what to do with all the advantages and disadvantages, it’s still allowing for story based things and out of combat it allows for that as compared to out of combat stunts which are still more mechanically focused.

So, I’ve hit on the big things with the Dragon Age RPG, how well do I like it overall? I think it’s a fine system that feels like it tries to emulate a video game RPG a fair amount. While it isn’t my cup of tea as much as a more free form system like Dungeons and Dragons 5th Edition or most definitely the Star Wars RPG from Fantasy Flight is, some of that comes from me having run a module. There’s just too much busy work for me to really want to run a game in the world. I would be interested in trying Fantasy Age, also from Green Ronin, which is using the Dragon Age system but is more generic. The reason for that is it gives more world flexibility and the freedom to play wherever you want without worrying about messing up cannon. I also think that I can run a game with more interesting characters in the Dragon Age world with a Dungeons and Dragons rule set than I could with Dragon Age RPG. But as a way to get someone to try out a pen and paper RPG who wouldn’t normally otherwise, but would try Dragon Age because of the video games, it’s not a bad spot to jump in.

Have you played/run either the Dragon Age RPG or the Fantasy Age RPG based off of the same system? How well have you liked it?

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DA:O was released by BioWare all the way back in 2009, but that was midway through college for me, and I had neither the time nor the means to give it anything other than a passing thought. But at long last, I’ve found myself in simultaneous possession of an Xbox 360 and enough random blocks of free time to actually play some video games for once. And since Peder recently played through the game again, further inspiring me to start it once he was done, conditions were perfect to finally find out what the fuss was about. So far, DA:O has not disappointed–in fact, it’s often exceeded my hyped-up expectations.

For those who aren’t familiar with the game, DA:O is set in a high-concept fantasy land called Ferelden (one of countless examples of really great names within the game). You play as a hero who must leave their home (the reason varies depending on the type of character you choose) and join the Grey Wardens. The Grey Wardens are special forces whose job it is to protect the world from Darkspawn, demonic beings who threaten to overrun Ferelden. Early on, you find that you will one day be tasked with facing and defeating the Archdemon, leader of the oncoming Darkspawn horde causing an event known as the Blight. But first, you’ll have to travel Ferelden with a motley band of fellow heroes, rallying support for your cause and slaying monsters of all kinds along the way (in between seemingly hundreds of side quests, of course).

You have the option to play as a male or female character who is either a mage or rogue. You can play as a human, a dwarf, or as one of two sorts of elves–a city-dweller or a nomadic Dalish. The character I created is a female Dalish elf rogue, and as the story begins, she is tainted by Darkspawn sickness and must become a Grey Warden both to save herself and to protect her people and her realm from the Blight.

So far, I’m absolutely loving both the story and the general feel of the gameplay. In essence, it has all the stuff I loved from my brief foray into the world of Skyrim, and none of the stuff I didn’t. A highlight for me is the character interactions–in particular, I find the “approval” mechanic to be a lot of fun. DA:O allows you the option to get to know your fellow characters both through idle conversations between quests and during discussions that happen at key moments in the plot. In general it’s a good idea to chat with your fellow party members whenever there’s a lull–if you don’t, you might miss out on some really interesting dialogue.

Through these conversations, your party members’ “approval” meter in relation to your character will go up or down depending on the dialogue options you choose. You can even romance a fellow character–to do so, each time you interact with the party member you wish to form such a relationship with, you’ll need to choose the dialogue options that you think they will respond best to. After their approval of you reaches a certain point, you then have the option to initiate a romance with them. I highly recommend it, as it adds another layer of depth to the story that you wouldn’t get otherwise.

Another main component of the game is your ability as a player to influence the direction of the story based on the choices you make, from creating your character to speaking with your party members to the way you interact with key characters who are introduced along the way. Much like similar choice-based games, like the Mass Effect series, you can play your character in such a way that they are more virtuous and heroic or more villainous and chaotic, depending on your preference. I’m one of those people who feels terrible whenever I make my character do something mean, so I go pretty aggressively toward the virtuous side of things (why yes, I do know I’m a goody-two-shoes, thank you very much), but no matter what, the way you play your character has a big impact on the story at large. In my opinion, this makes the game highly replayable. Being both indecisive and a completionist, I have to admit that I find the choice-making element to be stressful at times, and I’ve already made a number of choices that I immediately regretted. Overall, though, I really like the choice aspect of the game, and I wouldn’t have it any other way, neuroses notwithstanding.

Like other fantasy RPGs, DA:O is rife with side quest opportunities. Here’s where my completionist side gets the better of me again…I find myself helping townspeople and hunting for rare items until I’ve all but forgotten what I was supposed to be doing in the first place. This is one of the reasons I quit playing Skyrim; however, unlike Skyrim, finishing all (or most) of the side quests in DA:O and still playing through the game in a reasonable amount of time is actually an attainable goal, so while this side of it trips me up a little from time to time, it’s not really a problem. In general, it makes the story feel richer rather than making the gameplay feel burdensome.

Another of my favorite aspects of this game is how rich the world of the game is. The visual aspect is stunning, and the graphics hold up surprisingly well for a game that’s nearly 10 years old. The characters feel as well-rounded as any fictional characters I could hope to meet, and they’re voiced by a host of talented voice actors. Throughout the game, there is a TON of dialogue, as well as a wealth of cut scenes both short and long. Some players may find this annoying if they’re ready to get into the action, but for my part, I really enjoy it.

Beyond that, I love how well-developed the history and the political climate of DA:O are. And though you can really dive into those elements if they interest you, it’s not forced upon you, so it doesn’t feel overwhelming or overwrought the way it so easily could. From the stories the characters tell you to the contextual codices you pick up throughout your adventures, it’s easy to see that the game creators put a lot of thought into developing a rich, realistic world.

As far as the combat aspect of the game is concerned, I can’t speak to it with much authority–I set the game on super-duper easy mode, since I care a lot more about the story of the game than I do about defeating monsters (not that that isn’t fun too). If combat’s your thing, just raising the difficulty level will give you the chance to focus on it more and work on honing your skills and strategically leveling up your characters. Thus far, the combat mechanic feels a little muddy to me, though I’m not sure whether this is due more to the way it’s set up or because I’m fervently button-mashing my way through each and every battle. Regardless of the reason, I’d say that the story side of the game is stronger than the combat side overall, but I think there’s plenty of room to lean in to either (or both), depending on your gaming style.

In short, this game is everything I’ve been looking for but not finding in other RPG-style video games I’ve played up until now, and it makes for an immensely satisfying gaming experience. I can’t wait to keep playing through this game and eventually move on to the next installments in the series, Dragon Age II and Dragon Age: Inquisition!

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