Green Ronin Announce Fantasy AGE 2nd Edition RPG
January 18, 2023 by brennon
Born out of the Adventure Game Engine used in 2008 for the Dragon Age RPG, Green Ronin has had great success with the easy-to-use rules present with their Fantasy AGE roleplaying game. Well, a 2nd Edition of Fantasy AGE is coming in February to level up your experiences at the tabletop.
Fantasy AGE: Core Rulebook // Green Ronin
Fantasy AGE is a system that I've really enjoyed, especially because of the heroic manoeuvres that you can do in-game using the Stunt System. Not only is it a great system for allowing new players to expand the ways in which they approach situations but it's also helpful for veteran roleplayers who can use these Stunts to pull off impressive watercooler moment-like moves in the middle of your session. They also take away from the binary pass/fail that you can get in some roleplaying games.
Fantasy AGE comes with core classes like the Envoy, Mage, Rogue and Warrior and each is immediately customisable from the very start. The Core Rulebook for Fantasy AGE also comes with everything in one place. It acts as a Player's Handbook, Dungeon Master's Guide and Monster Manual all in one. There are, of course, additional books in the range that can be used to expand your options but you can get going with just one book and three six-sided dice.
An important note about the 2nd Edition of the game is that it doesn't totally invalidate the books that you might have picked up for the previous version of the game. As they said in their announcement...
"You can use stat blocks from the Bestiary and adventures with little tweaking required. While much material from the Fantasy AGE Companion has been updated and incorporated into the new Core Rulebook, Lairs and the Campaign Builders Guide remain quite useful for the Game Master."
I've played two big campaigns using the Adventure Game Engine system and it's really good fun. My Dragon Age RPG campaign was the biggest and most successful one I've ever run, partly down to the system and how easy it was to use. I would heartily recommend giving the AGE system a go. Is it perfect? No. But, it's a solid alternative to the likes of Dungeons & Dragons.
Could you be tempted by Fantasy AGE 2nd Edition?
"I've played two big campaigns using the Adventure Game Engine system and it's really good fun..."
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I bought Dragon Age and later Modern Age, Fantasy Age and companions.
It’s a fun system, but the stunts happen too often and you get one of two things happening…
1) Some players just pick the same stunts every time…
2) Others spend too long trying to decide what stunt to do…
This means it either gets repetitive, or slows play to a crawl.
I felt like it was actually pretty decent balance-wise when we played Dragon Age back in the day but it did lead to some initial analysis paralysis when we moved to Fantasy AGE later down the line.
Having the reference sheets on the table helped a lot for each player and once they (and I) had nailed down what they do it took away a bit of that slow crawl.
I would agree that it’s the biggest sticking point with the system. It’s good fun though as you say and very flexible.
I’m assuming Envoy is something new and a ‘bard like’ character as I don’t recall that from the first edition.
It’s curious how the bard has evolved in RPG’s over the years. In AD&D I believe you had be fighter and thief before you became a bard and multiclassing back then was hard core… when you started again you couldn’t use previous classes skills while you trained in new one.
In ‘Dorkness Rising’ the bard was constanlty killed and used a comic relief.
In later editions they became a class of their own and gained some useful abilities.
Yeah, Envoy is their “social” class so sort of fits into the Bard-like role.
I did like the “hide behind the mound of dead bards” bit in The Gamers.
I enjoyed the Nodwick cameo and the confused sorcerer who kept forgetting that he was playing a female character.
Need to watch the Gamers Trilogy again.
Get your pack, We’re going on a adventure.