Shadis #27: The Edge: Dragonlance: The Fifth Age

Dragonlance:
The Fifth Age

Roleplaying with TSR's new "SAGA" System

Published by TSR, Inc.
Written by William W. Connors
128p rulebook, 96p worldbook, 48p adventure, color map, 82 Fate Cards, 18 character cards
$25.00
Reviewed by Matt Staroscik

OK, I know what you're thinking — because I was thinking it too. "An RPG run with cards. From TSR. Ooh. Pinch me." I'll admit I was less than enthusiastic upon receiving my preview copy of the upcoming Dragonlance: The Fifth Age RPG. But, not being one to make snap judgements, I decided to give the "Saga" rules system a chance. Let me tell you, I am glad I did. D:T5A has a lot going for it.

The game mechanics are dirt simple, and revolve around the 82-card Fate Deck as well as the GM's creativity. Each card has a portrait of a charater from the Dragonlance world, one or more of their personality traits, a suit, desciptive text, and a value from 1 to 10. Cards also have color codes and an "aura," which is something like a "good, neutral, evil" rating. Even though the cards have Dragonlance characters on them, any fantasy fan should feel right at home with them.

Now that you've got a handle on the deck, let's look at creating a character. Each player is given 12 cards, and they must decide how to allocate their values among their character's stats. Besides Strength, Endurance, Agility, and the other physical and mental stats you'd expect to find, you also have to assign values to your Wealth & Social Status, Quests (starting level), Nature, and Demeanor. Nature and Demeanor are personality stats, and as such aren't numeric; you use the traits that appear on each Fate Card to assign these values.

Personally, I didn't like being confined to choosing my character's personality in this way. I'd rather be dealt 10 cards and choose my Nature and Demeanor on my own. Fortunately that kind of free thinking is encouraged in the Saga System. The rules are constantly helping you to find new, imaginitive ways of using the cards, which is a nice change from the lockstep of AD&D.

Each of the nine suits in the deck corresponds to one of the physical or mental character stats, except for the suit of Dragons, which is something like a suit of jokers. The trick to character creation is to spend Dragon cards on things where suit doesn't matter, like Wealth & Social Status or Quests. You also want to try and match card suits to stat suits as closely as possible. For example, the suit that corresponds to Strength is Swords; it's best if you can assign a Swords card to your character's Strength stat. If you can't, try to at least use a card whose suit relates to another physical stat, like Helms or Arrows.

Using a mental stat suit like Orbs to buy Strength will limit your character's abilities. Based on how closely the suits match, each stat gets a "code" of A, B, C, D, or X, in addition to the card's numerical value. High codes indicate ability to use a larger variety of weapons, armor, spells, and whatnot. I hope you're sitting comfortably, because it gets weirder.

There are no character classes. There are also no skills. Everything you do is based on your character's stats. For example, if you have a high Reason code, you can use sorcery; you don't have to forsake your armor and sword for it, either. Your character's level is equal to the number of adventures ("Quests") they have completed. The more Quests you have under your belt, the more cards you can keep in your hand, which brings us to the next topic — task resolution.

When a character tries to do something, like pick a lock, the Narrator secretly determines a difficulty rating for the task. The player then bids a card from their hand. If the sum of the card bid and the relevant stat (Dexterity for picking a lock) meets or exceeds the Narrator's target number, the task succeeds. If the total isn't high enough you fail, and if you fail after having bid a Dragon card you can have an unpleasant mishap. In any case, you immediately draw a card to replace the one you bid.

To make things more interesting, if the player bids a card of the same suit as the action's relevant stat (such as Swords for a Strength action, like bashing in a door), they get to draw the top card off the deck and add that to the total. Also, some actions are "opposed," which means that the opponent's relevant defense stat is added to the base difficulty. Combat is conducted as a series of opposed actions of different sorts. (If players try to spend cards on silly actions to "load" their hand for a future combat, the Narrator is encouraged to make them draw off the top of the deck until they knock it off.)

You might be wondering how this could possibly be less like AD&D. I've got two words for you — "spell points." Say goodbye to traditional magic-users, clerics, spell lists and memorization, and say hello to improvised spells. The improvisation rules are well-done, being neither too strict nor too ambiguous. This is one of the best parts of the game.

As you can see, the Saga System is a huge departure from TSR's usual fare. It's worth a look even if you aren't familiar with the Dragonlance novels, so don't shy away on that count. My only real complaint is that there isn't any kind of skill system; I don't think adding a simple one would have bogged down the game's graceful mechanics. That aside, this is a top-notch, innovative product, and I hope it catches on.