Designer and Midgard project patron Joshua Jarman blogs about the intersection of the AGE System ruleset and the support that the second rules set is getting during design. :
[Designing as a patron] is a fun, creative process, and the collaborative nature leads to the development of the best ideas presented.
As far as Dragon Age, Wolfgang … has made a definite commitment to be the leader in third party Dragon Age support. Kobold Quarterly #13 was the first place to carry an article by Chris Pramas on alternative Dragon Age backgrounds that could be used to play the Dragon Age system with Green Ronin’s Freeport setting. And there have been Dragon Age support articles in almost every Kobold Quarterly since, including an excellent recent article by Jeff Tidball about using the ridiculously fun Stunt system from Dragon Age in other game systems.
Check out the full post, A Match Made in Adventure.
Of course, the fact that Midgard has multi-system support (primarily Pathfinder RPG, though 4E D&D is getting some love from a patron side project as well) is sort of the point. With fans taking Midgard campaign setting into their favorite rules sets, it’s easy to find the resources to run the setting with the rules you favor.
What do you think of multi-system settings? The Forgotten Realms, Dragonlance, Star Wars have all been released under many sets of rules….
I think it was a smart move for the Midgard project to be developed from the ground up to include two systems at launch. As surprised as I was to see Dragon Age chosen as the second system, it makes sense because of the game’s rules-light format. That certainly makes it easier to fit what’s needed into an appendix for players and game masters to reference while building campaigns.
That said, players will always find a way to bring their favorite games to their favorite worlds, and patrons already are furiously working on 4E conversions for much of the Midgard content. In the end, I think what matters is making the game world stand-alone awesome, and the players will bring whatever rules they want to it because they fall in love with the world and not a particular system.
I would say that philosophy seems to be embraced by my fellow patrons who are knocking it out of the park with a lot of the current game design.
Yep, the Dragon Age audience is definitely looking for more material, and I think Midgard is a good fit (dark fantasy, and classic adventure style).
I suspect that the 4E elements will continue to grow as well.
It appears that it’s been some time since there’s been some discussion about playing in Midgard using AGE system rules. For anyone interested, I’m now into six months of running a weekly campaign in Midgard using the Fantasy AGE ruleset. I’ve used several of the modules ‘statted’ for 5e/Pathfinder as well as the Dragon AGE material. Our players prefer the Fantasy AGE system to Dragon AGE, but the conversion from Dragon AGE is quite straight-forward. Pathfinder is a bit more problematic, but with the increasing amount of FAGE material out there, it’s pretty easy to find equivalents for most of the Pathfinder/5e monsters and NPC. Our players particularly love the rich setting. Kudos to Kobold Press!