by PzVIE

That would be the correct translation of the original title. Maybe because they feared being ambushed by a horde of lawyers, they changed it to the rather bland name “DRAGONBANE”. Just to play it safe! Anyway, I really like Drakar och Demoner and usually, I call it that. (Even if my Swedish is more or less non-existent.)

Anyway, taking a break from our regular Pathfinder 1 campaigns, one of my RPG group decided to guide us through the introductory adventure of the Dragonbane starter box, named “Secret of the Dragon Emperor”. It’s bigger than you would expect for a starter set adventure – we played eight sessions all in all. And it’s really good too. But that would be a topic for another review.

Here’s an impression of the rules of Drakar och Demoner. Or Dragonbane. Whatever you prefer. If you want me to classify it, I’d say a mixture of D&D and Call of Cthulhu. But definitely on the easier side.

Character Generation

Simply roll 4d6 six times, drop the lowest and record the score for each of your six attributes (Strength, Constitution, Agility, Intelligence, Willpower, and Charisma). After you have done this in order, you are allowed to exchange two attributes. If you rolled badly, beg the GM to be allowed to do it again. If you rolled extraordinary good … well, good for you. This alone begs for some houseruling, otherwise it likely happens that you have very different power levels in your party.

Then you have to choose a race and a class. Available races – or kin as they call it here – are the usual fantasy troupe (human, elf, dwarf, halfling), plus wolfkin and … (drumroll) … ducks! Or Mallards, using the correct term. That’s an odd race; they are described as ill- and short tempered. Look at the image in this review and you get the idea. I guess they might be fun to play if you can identify yourself with some kind of a Darkwing Duck character.

Anyway, basically it doesn’t matter what race you play. They are all the same. Oh yes. That is what I call an unimaginative design. They only thing that differs here is a small feat that each race has exclusively. Which doesn’t affect game play much. So, play whatever you want. Furry, short, ducky, with pointed-ears, or hairy feet … it really doesn’t make much difference.

Then you have to chose a class (called profession), which features the same flaw – again, it differs only in one feat tied to the class you choose. Plus six class skills, which you can select from a list for your selected class. Your hit points are equal to your Toughness score, and your willpower points are equal to your Willpower. Hit points are used in the normal way, while you need willpower to execute your special feats and use magic (if you choose a magic using profession).

Now derived from the other four of the six abilities, are your skills. And here comes the first big surprise: Your character has 20 different standard skills (the usual, from Acrobatics to Swimming), but also 10 weapon skills! Ten! From Axes to Swords; nearly one for every type of weapon. An interesting ratio; you might wonder if this is an extremely combat-heavy RPG. Surprise – it is not. Combat is quite deadly and usually you try to avoid it. Anyway, depending on your ability score, you get a skill score between 3 and 7 in each of your skills. Double that if that skill is on your class list.

Voila – your character is now ready to play!

Skill Tests

No big surprises here. For every test, you roll a d20; to be successful, you have to roll equal or lower than your skill score. Advantages and disadvantages (boons and banes) are handled with two d20, dropping the higher (boon) or lower (bane) one. In certain situations opposed rolls are allowed too. Just roll low.

Whenever you roll a dragon (a “1”), you succeed critically, and when you roll a demon (a “20”) you fail spectacularly. In both cases, you are allowed to mark that specific skill for a possible advancement at the end of the session. See below.

If you fail your roll, you are allowed to “push” it, meaning roll it again. Regardless of that outcome, from now on all your skill tests with skills deriving from the used attribute are now done with a bane. That is called as “having a condition” in that ability. (And it prevents you from further pushing rolls in that skill category until a rest makes the condition go away.)

Combat

Attacks are done the same way: roll under the fitting weapon skill, then roll for damage. Subtract any armor the opponent has and deduct the result from his hit points. A high ability score in Strength (melee) or Dexterity (ranged) gives you a bonus of an added d4 or a d6 to the damage roll. Now given that your average hit points are around 12 or 13 (often lower), damage adds up quickly – it usually takes two successful hits to knock your character out; then you start doing “death rolls” until you stabilize or die. So generally, this system is pretty deadly. But I said that before.

Initiative in combat is handled via a simple card draw – draw a low numbered card and you act before the higher numbered cards. You are allowed to swap cards with your allies. On your turn, you can move and attack. You can also defend against an attack out of your turn, although if you do that, you lose your attack for that round. (If you already have attacked in this round, this is no longer an option for you.)

The system comes with rules for battlemaps, but most of the time, because of the simplicity of combat, it’s not necessary to use them. Whatever your group prefers: the game works with and without them.

There are a few rules to complicate that basically easy system (armor types, weapon damage types, shields), but nothing too fancy. And you can easily leave them out.

Resting / Recovering

Resting is allowed after a fight (you recover 1d6 willpower) and once during a day (recover 1d6 hit points and 1d6 will power; you also get rid of one condition). Your best bet here is using magic of course. If available. A good night's sleep is otherwise your best option to recover.

Feats or “Heroic Abilities”

These little features come from your race and your class, but in rare circumstances you can also get new ones during play. Nearly all of them offer you a nice little trick, and you to pay for them with your willpower points. Chose wisely when to use them. (Although as I found out in our games, if you don’t play a mage, use them whenever possible.)

Those heroic abilities come from a somewhat limited list in the rulebook … I would wish for more here. Maybe in upcoming supplements? But there are enough to get you started and they are the only thing where your character really differs from the other members of your party.

Magic

Magic is a “secondary skill”. When you play a magic user, you have to choose a school of magic. The basic rules come with four of them: animism, elementalism, mentalism or universal. Then you add that school as a secondary skill to your skill list. You also have a grimoire where you record all your known spells, and you have to prepare your spells for the day each morning. You can also cast non-prepared spells spontaneously, but that takes more time. Each spell costs you a number of willpower points, and if you use powerful spells, you will quickly run out of those … the spells are similar to those from your average OSR game. Not many surprises here.

Daily Routine

The game has a strict routine implemented in its basic rules. Traveling is always done in shifts (a quarter of a day) and for each shift you travel through the wilderness, you need to have one character roll for the skill Bushcraft to make progress or suffer a mishap during your travels.

When you make camp outside a city, another Bushcraft roll is needed to find a good spot, otherwise, the party is pretty fatigued the next day.

Food is gathered with Hunting, Fishing, or Foraging rolls and if you botch your rolls, the party goes hungry.

In all those circumstances, certain items can be bought to get boons on those rolls. A fine way to spend your money. But talking about items: you can only carry a limited selection of these … find a few gold coins in your adventures and you might have a problem carrying them without penalties.

Opponents

Your average monster comes with an absolute minimum of stats, making handling them easy for the GM. Basically, the monster draws an initiative card like all other combat participants, and when the monster attacks, the GM rolls 1d6 on a behavior table unique for each monster and acts accordingly. E.g., a troll may vomit onto you on a roll of 1, claws you on a 2, bites you on a 3, throws you away on a 4, hits multiple enemies with a sweep of his arms on a 5, and does a mangling smash on 6. Ouch! Your average humanoid opponent behaves just like your character does.

Leveling Up

As said above, whenever you roll a dragon or demon (“1” or “20”) during play, mark that skill. After the session, you are allowed to increase your skill rank by 1 in each marked skill, if you manage to roll higher than your current rank on a d20. The GM will also give out free rolls for everyone, depending on achievements in the session. This generally leads to three or four additional improvement rolls. If you ever manage to raise a skill to 18, you are also allowed to add a Heroic Ability to your character sheet.

Summary / TL;DR

This is an easy and quick system. The rules are not really complicated and the prep work for the GM is very low. All you need to play this game is the core rule book and this is neatly organized and fairly priced. Even the starter box comes with a complete rulebook – it only differs from the regular rulebook by having a soft cover and it misses a short introductory adventure. Fria Ligan has done a good job here.

So, what’s not to like?

Basically this is a very quick and extremely playable RPG. There isn't much to nag on. But in the end, I found out that I'm not motivated to use this game for long and epic campaigns. Here's why.

First, all characters, regardless of race and class, feel (and more or less) are the same. It doesn’t matter if you play a duck thief or a dwarven knight … basically, they are all the same. Rolling good stats is the key to a successful character here.

The GM needs to improvise a lot, handling all the ideas of the players and translating them into sparsely existent rules. You need a consequent ruling (or a consequent GM) here – it might happen often that in one session the GM rules positively on a certain action, and in the next session he disallows it – discussions will pop up for sure. But on the other hand, with so few rules, the system is very easy to learn.

The skill list is a bit lacking. The skill list for weapon skills is over the top. And talking about skills: the players want to roll! Badly! For every little situation! Because for each dragon or demon rolled, they get a free chance for advancement at the end of the session. I very much dislike such systems, so as a GM, be sure to be fair to your characters and let each of them roll equally often, otherwise this might lead to frustrations. Or simply drop that rule and allow each player to make a fixed number of advancement rolls at the end of each session. Five seems to be a good number here.

All in all I enjoyed playing this one for a small campaign. But if you ask me to play more than 10 sessions with it, I’d very much prefer a different game. With a little more meat on its bones.

Thank you for reading.

A new episode has been added to the database: Elliot Davis (The Time We Have) ep 282

A new episode has been added to the database: The Company of the Light (Vaesen) 13: ‘Old Meg...’

A new episode has been added to the database: Episode 217: Cleanse The Flame

A new episode has been added to the database: 408 | Dark Sun! Warcraft! Star Wars! Death Saves! All the big news out of Gen Con

by Eric R.

Now, I'm not posting this song because it's all that special. It's ok, that's about it. But I had to find something tolerable from Livvi Franc to post after I made a discovery. I previously posted Nobody Loves Me by Bella, only I've just recently discovered it was first written and recorded by LIvvi Franc. Then I discovered the Brooke Candy song that sounds nothing like a Brooke Candy song (and that's why I like it) Study in Dualty/Happy Days is like that because it's written by Livvi Franc. Apparently she never really broke out herself but has instead written songs for dozens of artists. So I started going through it looking for anything else I'd like but it wasn't much. Well if you're writing for a dozen different artists you've got to be able to sound like pretty much anyone. But at least I can try and give her her due.

Youtube Video

A new episode has been added to the database: Schism Part 10 - Making an Exit (Ep 62)

A new episode has been added to the database: The Final Rules: Chaos | Beheld (S3E8)

A new episode has been added to the database: “SPINE” by Asa Donald

A new episode has been added to the database: S5 Ep. 33: Your Worst Nightmare

A new episode has been added to the database: 96 – Barthes – Camera Lucida

A new episode has been added to the database: The Legacy