One minor error here that I noticed. You generate stunt points if you roll doubles on ANY of the three dice rolled. It's not limited to rolling doubles on the two "non stunt" dice. Otherwise, great review of one of my favorite rulesets, and 2e has only made an already great game even better!
Important math fact here: the way the numbers check out, any given 3d6 roll has a 4/9 chance* to roll doubles, so nearly half of your rolls will result in stunts. * We calculate this by taking the odds of no two dice matching and subtracting that from 1. The first die doesn't have anything to match with, so it will always roll a unique value, with a chance of 1/1. The second die now has a 5/6 chance of not rolling whatever the first die rolled, and then the third die has a 2/3 chance of not rolling whatever either of the first two dice rolled. That gives us this formula: 1 - (1/1 x 5/6 x 2/3) = 1 - 10/18 = 1 - 5/9 = 4/9
I really enjoy Fantasy AGE’s Stunt mechanic-that’s the rule that really made the system shine for me. I ran a few games of Dragon Age when the game first came out (back when it was in boxed sets) and got the Core Rules later due to my love of the video games. The issue I had with it was that battles tended to drag out a bit longer than D&D combats did. I’m any case, I’m glad that 2nd Edition is a collection of options rather than a system replacement, as I’ve always wanted to get more mileage out of my Core Rulebook than I have.
Always love to see folks giving one of my favorite TTRPGs some love! You really nailed a bunch of the things I would have brought up! Thanks for the excellent review!
This is a very good review! I appreciate you pointing out the focus throughout on soft skills, I feel like that's the advice that people need more than anything for their Tabletop games nowadays. A very slight error: You can roll doubles on any three of the dice rolled, not just on the two non-stunt die dice. You stunt about 44% of the time on paper (less in practice because you have to succeed the test too), which means the dynamism of stunting is pretty frequent!
I love the AGE System. Wish they had added a multiclass mechanic or gone classless like MAGE. But it will still be picking this up. Green Ronin make nothing but quality games.
Hm, how would you do multiclassing? From my experience with the system in 1e and reading this book, the Specialisations can almost replicate that feeling of multiclassing power without sacrificing main class powers. Kinda like Pathfinder, but Lite.
@@PickledRage That's fair. It's been a while since I played FAGE and I just remember a few times wishing it was Classless, but at the same time I still think its a great game.
Yeah I've felt like if you want to wiggle, the specializations and feats really allow for a feeling of multiclass, even if full multiclass isn't a thing. Personally if they were going to do that, I agree with what somebody else commented that they should just go with the classless approach that Modern Age or the expanse took.
Honestly, the class system is so loose you can basically build however you want as is. Biggest difficulty is the restrictions if you want to dip into magic as a non spell caster which you can do, but definitely very limited. You can lift the class restrictions on specializations and talents like some tables used to houserule in dragon age and you pretty much have it all right there. Maybe add a talent that allows you to gain half the magic a mage would on level up and that's about all you need.
I have had the original Fantasy Age book on my shelf after Wil Wheaton ran that Titans Grave (also have that) campaign. Never got around to using it, though. Might just have to jump on 2nd edition and try to get my players into it!
This video and the game needs to be spread around. I'm not much of a player but I love watching streams of TRPGs and this seems like a good one to show stories and cool moments.
Ive been playing fantasy age for years now and I like it best for getting people into ttrpg's. it is easy to understand and convert into any type of style of play your players are looking for.
Nice review of 2nd edition. The AGE system is a favorite of mine and I have yet to introduce a player to AGE that doesn't like it. The Stunt mechanic is always an immediate appeal. Appreciation for the magic system and class options takes a little more time. AGE really does adapt well to a variety of settings. As GM, I enjoy world-building and prefer to run games set in worlds I design over learning and running published ones. The problem I have with AGE is that everyone I play with enjoys a variety of games, so Fantasy AGE and Dragon AGE (my 2 personal favorite flavors of AGE) are on a rotation with other games.
Honestly, the only major issue with fantasy age 2 is that too many abilities deal with very specific areas of effect or ranges which really only works well on a battle map, but they say in the first chapter that it’s primarily a theater of the mind system. There’s also a lot of forced movement abilities which are either useless or tricky to arbitrate without a grid. (For example, the polearms talent enables a player to attack targets 4 yards away. What’s the point of that? How should that be adjudicated? How should a table track yards between characters? How does that benefit the game or narrative?)
Only critique of your review is that the stunt system is designed so if any two dice from the 3 dice come up as doubles, you earn stunt points equal to the value on the stunt die. In your review it was incorrectly stated that it needed to be doubles on the non-stunt dice and that would limit the number of times you roll stunts. In fact, the probability of rolling a stunt is 4 out of 9 or 44.4%. Otherwise, great review!
I haven't watched yet, but I am 100% in the camp that Fantasy AGE is the better RPG. It just feels like it does everything D&D does, but better. I've been sour on D&D for a while because of mechanics I'm not a fan of and Fantasy AGE addresses all my complaints.
I’m big into the narrators helper. I separate the jobs of narrator and game master with new and younger players so the narrator can focus on stories and the nearest rules lawyer becomes something of a referee with the narrator having the final say.
Another minor correction is than when "Pushing a Spell" you do not try again, you just spend additional magic point to make up the shortfall on the roll at a 1 for 1 basis.
I love that FAGE is further differentiating themselves from the obvious D&D influences on the first edition. This is by far the best option, imho, to people looking to shift from D&D but PF is too confusing or just overly complicated for their taste Edit: I mean 1e... obviously 2e is not here yet
Interesting magic system, have you seen Deathbringer which eliminates spell slots and instead uses a DC or EZD6 which has no spell descriptions, instead the player rolls and determines effects, power is limited by the number of creatures or power of the effect.
I've always liked "soft" magic systems which provide more room for creativeness ever since discovering Ars Magicka over 30 years ago. Although they do add more GM moderation calls compared to long lists of specifically detailed spells. I'd say Barbarians Of Lemuria is probably the simplest and most straightforward free-form I've seen, with only a handful of power ranks delineated by what mundane tools/equipment and number of people it would take to achieve the equivalent effect. Makes it easy for the GM to moderate the power of magic without having to hack anything.
FAGE was the first TTRPG that I bought myself and what got me into the hobby in the first place. After exploring multiple different systems I have now come back to what started it all. Thank you for the video! Are there plans to release more FAGE content? I'm dying to see more content from Roll4Initiative. :D
First time seeing your channel, but I will definitely be checking out some more, because you were very clear, balanced, and informative. Also, +1 for covering something other than D&D
Excellent review. By the way when I was watching the video my partner asked me what the little thing sticking out of your blanket. Is it a little arm? They said "what is that thing! I've been looking at it for the entire video!"
Thanks for the video! So you said that you can use some of the 1st edition stuff. Does that mean you could use the Fantasy Age Companion stuff, eg the Orean ancestry with the 2nd edition rules? Thanks.
Not sure if you can answer this, but how different is Second Edition from the First? I ran a campaign in the First Edition for about a year, but we kept trying to apply D&D 5e's mechanics to it, until we ultimately switched.
I like game rules that are direct and easy to read. I have tried to read some systems (recent editions of Shadowrun) that seem so opaque and have so many steps for just basic combat that it puts me off.
2nd edition Shadowrun was the easiest version to learn. Still crunchier than some games, but more succinct than later SR editions which became far more bloated and obsessed with rules for every miniscule thing.
I would not mind a map. Even just a larger side of medium sized map, where it would goes into detail about the settlements, including a map of every city and village, and at least to some extent some of the inhabitants. I get that having all 10000 of the people living in a city accounted for is way too much in a lot of ways. But say 80 people or 25 families. Include where they work or at least what they work as, their name and gender, their age and family members. This would be a mess in a book. However today we have all sorts of tools that could make for a really great interactive package. Hell, you could even in theory go so far as to have 'the average day' thing where you would have an idea where the characters move though the average day. Following them from they wake up, go to work, shop and go home. You could have guards, street kids, beggars, fishermen, tavern owners and wenches, shop keepers, the lord of the city. I would not just want this for the big city though I would really like it for pretty much every city in the game. Perhaps even some enemy villages/camps around the map. Like orc camps, with orc lords, with captured prisoners and more. Goblin/Kobold villages with slaves working in the local mines, the overseer going on her patrol. Perhaps even people can then edit the version of the map they buy as they adventure. Adding new people, new locations, or remove old once. Edit a variety of stuff. One would think such a tool would be of interest to more than just me. So I do wonder why it is not a thing. I can see similar stuff but not nearly detailed enough to scratch what I would want.
Honestly, I don't think it would be too hard to implement multi-classing in Fantasy AGE 2e. You can simply acquire a new class at 1st-level and get its features instead of leveling up your main class.
This sounds like great stuff for smooth peanut butter lovers. If that was the direction I wanted to go in, I would take your advice and try it. But I like crunchy. PF2e is where I have landed. Enough mechanics to guide the game, enough freedom to run as free as one could wish. There is plenty of room in the TTRPG space for both, but I only have enough onboard RAM to learn one for purposes of running games. But AGE sounds like a system I could play in, and I wouldn't turn down the opportunity to play in a game if I get the offer. Cool, clear video review. Thank you! 🎓
The Stunts really are the best part of AGE. It really makes a Crit feel special. There's a lot of options that can seem daunting at first, but a player will quickly pick their favorites to use most of the time
Oh I get only having the memory space to know one system well enough to run. But if you ever get a chance, definitely give Fantasy AGE a try! It's quick to pick up and the stunts make it so much fun
I liked the Stunt System at first when we played the Dragon Age game. But it became our BANE. Maybe we used the rules wrong but our game master used the stunt system for the NPCs as the same for the PCs. This quickly made things in the GM's favor. I mean if you stunt every three rolls then the player does it once every three turns, the GM does it every turn if they have 3 mobs. Maybe we had it wrong, I dunno. But it was a meat-grinder for us. On paper our PCs were far more powerful but just by sheer number of opponents having so many more roll chances per turn than we did, we just got smashed every battle. Far too much randomness. Again, we might have just played it wrong. One thing was for sure, our GM was merciless and used every advantage. Sure most of his attacks were misses but if there's enough little mobs in combat you're getting a crit hit on you every round.
Been awhile since I read the 1e rules, so I don't know if this was suggested in them, but only using Stunts for individual bosses/lieutenants was my preference. I can only imagine how much a game would slow down when having to spend stunt points on every little grunt in a trash mob. Even beside the increased lethality issue.
There is a lot to like in Fantasy Age….however…it’s pretty much an auto-hit system in combat, which wasn’t to my taste. For any but the most inept warriors it’s super hard to miss when you make an attack. I went through the Bestiary and the odds of missing all but only a handful of the monsters are tiny. Otherwise it’s a pretty fun game 👍
But do you need to have some clue what Dragon Age is all about in terms of race and culture/history? Some quick breakdown video taught me that elves are actually oppressed and that the plot centers around some hero who basically poisons themselves like what I hear Witchers do in their franchise. (I really only know D&D.) Also I really like my one color of dice. So, having multiple colors would be odd for me.
Maybe if you're playing Dragon AGE (which is it's own setting/system book that uses the AGE system) but Fantasy AGE is generic so they give some details about races but leave the rest vague so you can fill that in based on what setting you're playing. So yes, elves could be oppressed if you're playing in the Dragon Age setting, but not if you're playing in a setting like Titansgrave.
