Dragon Age in 2014

Good news, everyone—Dragon Age Set 3 is finished and we’ll be releasing the PDF and putting it up for pre-order shortly. This has been a long time coming, as fans of the game know only too well. So long, in fact, that we’ve been put in a difficult position. Allow me to explain.

As I’m sure you know, the next video game, Dragon Age: Inquisition, is coming out in October. At our last summit we agreed that this would be a good time to release a core rulebook that compiled the rules from Sets 1-3. It is something people have been asking about since the day Set 1 came out and this seemed an opportune time to launch it. Inquisition is going to spike Dragon Age excitement and what better time to release an all-in-one core rulebook for the RPG, right?

At the time, we did not expect that Set 3 would take so very long to release. So here we are looking at a Set 3 release in August and then a core rulebook release in November. That is far from ideal! We know there are people who want to complete the collection they began with Sets 1 and 2 and won’t necessarily want to buy much of the same material gain in a core rulebook. We also know there are people who will want to skip Set 3 and just get the core rulebook later. We don’t want to disappoint anybody. So what to do?

Our solution is that we’re going to print Set 3 and then the core rulebook, so you can get whichever you prefer (or both!). The Set 3 print run is going to be limited to 2,000 though so if you want a copy, you should get one this summer. We will not be reprinting Sets 1 and 2 (as the core rulebook will be taking the place of the boxed sets). However, the PDFs will remain available and we are exploring some print on demand options as well.

The core rulebook, which is tentatively titled Dragon Age: Ultimate Edition, is scheduled to release in November. It will compile the core rules from all three sets, but it is taking a different approach to the setting. The original game assumed you would be campaigning through the Fifth Blight. Since Set 1 came out, Thedas has been expanded quite a bit through more video games, comics, and novels. Thus the Ultimate Edition will present you with a number of campaign frameworks to choose from. The Fifth Blight will be one of them, but the game will not assume you are running that campaign per se. We’ll present several options, and of course you are always free to come up with your own. You can thus expect some new material in the Ultimate Edition, including a new intro adventure (we won’t be reprinting the Set 1 adventure “The Dalish Curse,” as that’s the most played DA adventure out there).

So that’s the skinny on Dragon Age in 2014. I thought it best to just lay it all out for you, so you understand the situation and can make the best decision for you. Whatever you choose, I hope you play some Dragon Age this year! Thank you for your patience and your continued support of the Dragon Age RPG.

Chris Pramas
President
Green Ronin Publishing