Hallo,

after installing DAO and clicking through some dialogs, it now seems to me that the game expects me to support the story-flow by accepting shortcomings in dialog-options.

Given that we've seen so many stupid games already, the easiest way of dealing with this situation would probably be to just deinstall (no prob with that!), but maybe I've just not searched throughly enough to find a builtin workaround.

I've chosen a human mage. If I get it correctly, mages live in a prison, and are sla(y/v)ed as soon as they become obviously risky or useless. That might be an interesting setting for a game. Dealing with this situation means having to live with what "they" do to you, not to do whatever they want.

And it appears "they" [or the story-flow] expect my mage to make another prisoner run into such a forementioned proof.

Deeper search for workaround or deinstall?

I am not exactly sure, what do you expect to hear (read) etc. ...

Neither of the origins in DAO is what you would describe as a "nice story", there is a reason, why those characters end up as Grey Wardens.

Rest assured, that while Grey Wardens face their fair share of problems, Grey Wardens are in fact "above the law" (at least during the Blight), so as a Grey Warden, you will face different issues.

I have literally no idea what the OP is even talking about.

Hmn, maybe the german translation of the game is very diffrent.

According to the in-game books, children that turn out to have magic skills become arrested in the mage tower. They continue to live as scholars for some time. There are 2 kinds of rituals that to end scholar life: One that intentionally takes away the magic skills by also taking away free will (forever). And another, dangerous one that probably leads to become an accepted mage.

My char just made it through the latter.

Furthermore, when children get arrested in the mage tower, a blood sample (IIRC) of them is taken. To make hunting them easier in case they should manage to flee.

My char met a scholar, that for good reasons assumes he'll be forced to the first kind of ritual soon, and obviously doesn't want that. There's also another NPC (in love with him) that doesn't want him be taken to that ritual. So they have the idea of "stealing" back their blood-sample and flee.

One of the teacher mages already knows about that plan, and instructed my char to help them. But for the purpose of making a violation of rules obvious, so that noone would complain about forcing the scholar to the first kind of ritual, he said (IIRC).

I'm missing the dialog option: "No, I won't help them out."

As felixed alludes to, each of the six origin stories contains some plot device that is used to explain why the PC leaves the relative safety and comfort of their old life to embark on the path of a Grey Warden, and ultimately become the hero of the story. For the mage origin, the Jowan plotline is that hook. Your options are to assist him out of altruistic reasons or to assist him as an informer for the Magi. You cannot refuse to assist him. If you could, your character would have no reason to leave the tower unless the developers chose to write an alternate plot path, which they did not. Similarly, you cannot later refuse to leave with Duncan or refuse to become a Grey Warden, as that's an integral part of the PC's identity. That's the game; accept it, or move on to something else.

Every story-driven RPG ever made contains some degree of railroading in the interest of moving the story along. If you're expecting complete agency to do whatever you want, whenever you want, then this is not the type of game for you. A sandbox game such as Mount and Blade may be more to your liking.

Note that each of the origin stories is tied into the main plot in some fashion. For the mage origin, this story also explains why you later meet Jowan during the main game and why he is in the predicament that he is in at that time. You will then have multiple options for how you ultimately deal with him.

I will just add one thing - magic system of Thedas is fairly specific and takes some time to get used to and it is also central to the overarching DA series plot as a whole (DAO+A, DA2, DAI).
Btw. templar Cullen, who is present in Mage origin already, is one of the central characters appearing in all three games.

Suffice to say, that Fereldan magi have definitelly gottten the shorter straw compared to Tevinter magi (though compared to Kirkwall circle the Lake Calenhad circle is still pretty liberal) and therefore, novice mage in Ferelden in practically at the bottom of the food chain and has to do what is told to do - with practically no free will at all.

Btw. human mage (Amell) is related to Hawke from DA2 (they are cousins) and it is in later games recognized as such, provided Hero of Ferelden was a human mage, of course.

Simply from the metagaming perspective, the origins with with biggest impact are Human Noble (either warrior or rogue) or Human Mage.

While other origins are pretty interesting as well (and I highly recommend playing all of them! - in order to see different perspectives), their impact is somewhat lessened by the simple fact, that neither dwarven nor elven people fail to play any significant role in the politics of Thedas.