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Retroclone Dragonlance Fifth Age

Posted: Thu Sep 05, 2019 4:17 pm
by sycarion

Has anyone done this before? My google-fu revealed talk of it, and I even found an 8 page summary, but that's about it. I will take any thoughts/advice from folks that played Fifth Age.

I am not attempting to perfectly re-create Fifth Age. I want to get close to fifth age, but I have my own twist on magic. Here is what I have so far:

I use BODY (Hearts), DEX (Clubs), and MIND (Diamonds) as stats. I have a fourth stat, FATE (no suit) that is used for casting spells. As you would imagine, Melee = BODY + Played Cards >= Target Number, Missile uses DEX, and casting Spells uses FATE.

The big difference is that players avoid attacks instead of the GM rolling/drawing cards. It is a saving throw, DEX + Played Cards for melee and missile defense, and MIND + Played Cards for magic defense.

Just like Fifth Age, playing a card with the associated suit (playing a Club for a DEX test) allows you to take a card from the draw pile and add it to the card you played. Playing a Spade on a failure allows 'something bad to happen'.

I plan to convert the spell building system, but I'm working on sample spells as the original game only provided two examples. Spell building would be a separate document, I just want a grimoire for the rules for now.

Again, any thoughts are welcome.


Re: Retroclone Dragonlance Fifth Age

Posted: Fri Sep 06, 2019 9:12 am
by randalls
sycarion wrote:
Thu Sep 05, 2019 4:17 pm

Has anyone done this before? My google-fu revealed talk of it, and I even found an 8 page summary, but that's about it. I will take any thoughts/advice from folks that played Fifth Age.

I don't believe I've seen any retroclones of DL5A. Which is a shame because it is any interesting game -- actually the best rendition of the Dragonlance world in game form (IMHO, of course). I never was a fan of the Dragonlance novels or the railroad style Dragonlance AD&D adventures, but playing in the world itself was interesting.

Again, any thoughts are welcome.

It sounds interesting, but I'd have to see more concrete stuff to really comment intelligently. I do like the fact that you are using regular playing cards. The special deck SAGA games used was nice, but annoying. Lose a die and its easy to replace. Lose/damage a SAGA deck card and you needed a new deck.