Fantasy Comfort Food
DRAGONBANE
Designer: Tomas Härenstam | Publisher: Free League
If you want to get an idea of Dragonbane’s general vibe, you need look no further than the title.
Dragonbane is the kind of name you’d use if you wanted to reference Dungeons & Dragons on your TV show, but were afraid of incurring the wrath of Hasbro’s lawyers. It plays all the typical fantasy game tropes utterly straight, from mapping dungeons on graph paper to battling evil cults and rampaging orcs. This is good, because that’s exactly what Dragonbane wants to be.
This is the latest iteration of Drakar och Demoner, which literally translates from Swedish to Dragons & Demons (not hard to see why Free League tweaked the title), a game that defined Sweden’s fantasy roleplaying scene in the 1980s.
It’s hard for me to tell how close this rework sticks to the original, not being alive when it first released and sadly lacking Swedish comprehension skills. However, if its aim was to capture the essence of traditional fantasy roleplaying, this interpretation certainly hits the mark.
Dragonbane is a slim, streamlined system that nails the dungeoncrawling, orc-stabbing action that most people imagine roleplaying to be. It’s occasionally rather silly (such as the race of sentient duckpeople called “the Mallard” which are available as playable characters) but never tries to hide behind a veil of irony or parody, nor does it attempt to be coy with its influences.
The ruleset’s moment-to-moment action borrows heavily from old-school D&D, while character progression from Call of Cthulhu and its Basic Roleplaying cousins. The designers of this edition have unabashedly included what they like from among already-successful rulesets, which can sometimes leave Dragonbane feeling a shade derivative. For example, the Boons & Banes system is a slightly tweaked take on D&D 5e’s Advantage/ Disadvantage rule, while its nifty card-based initiative minigame pulls from Free League’s own successful Alien RPG.
I appreciate that the game often allows you to pick your own level of complexity, with the slim rulebook including green boxes near key rules that offer up optional rules, such as the ability to reroll failed attempts by taking a status ailment. It’s a nice touch that lets you tailor your campaign to your playgroup’s preferred level of complexity, without taking too much away from the core experience.
Dragonbane’s combat isn’t quite as murderous other old-school RPGs (looking at you, MÖRK BORG) but it’s certainly a step up from more mainstream RPGs. A decent wallop from a two-handed battle axe has a good chance of flooring even the mightiest warrior, whilst many of the game’s monsters can throw around some utterly terrifying powers.
Whilst characters become more powerful, their raw stats will rarely change. A hero that starts and end a campaign with 12 HP, maybe 14 if they pick up the ‘Robust’ heroic ability. You can level up all you like, but the whopping 4d10 auto-hitting damage from a dragon’s bite will never stop being cuisse-wettingly terrifying.
Whilst it isn’t “hardcore” enough to vie with the likes of Old School Essentials, nor modern enough to attract devotees of D&D 5e, it caters to those who want something in the middle; A traditional fantasy, delivered in an efficient, angst-free package with minimal fuss. If all you want from your gaming is an uncomplicated platform for battling orcs and raiding ancient tombs, you could do a hell of a lot worse than picking up a copy of Dragonbane.
RICHARD JANSEN-PARKES
WE SAY
Classic fantasy fun in a modern shell.
TRY THIS IF YOU LIKED D&D 5E
If you like the idea of D&D but find it all too sprawling and fiddy, Dragonbane might be just what you’re after.