DragonBane Review

DragonBane is a classic swords and sorcery style role playing game. It combines a vintage nostalgic vibe with modern mechanics and execution. Coming from Free League it is a remaster of a classic roleplaying game that seems to have been the quintessential Dungeons and Dragons if you were in Sweden at the time. It also does some neat things with quest generation and some interesting world building choices.

All your classic archetypes are here. You pick a profession and a race. This is your standard fare with two notable additions. So you have your dwarves, half elves, humans etc but you also have Mallards and Wolfkin. The former resembling large anthropomorphic ducks and the latter being the same but wolves instead of ducks. The professions also has some interesting choices as beyond your expected classes you get ones such as artisans and mariners. Both race and profession provide you with abilities but beyond the character creation nothing is tied down to a specific character/class so you have a very broad scope for developing your character exactly how you want to. There is also the classic Free League level of depth on the character creation so you have goals, allies, motivations etc that help to flesh out your pc. So far so good, the character creation is clear and straightforward without restricting any creativity.

Core Mechanics

As this game doesn’t use the Mutant engine like most Free League games it instead uses a D20 roll-under mechanic whereby you need to score under your skill value to pass a test. Critical successes and failures also getting some attention. A natural 1 scoring a ‘dragon’ that usually provides some useful additional benefit. There are also mechanics for magic, combat and your standard roleplaying fantasy features. The combat also has a good twist in that enemy creatures will use a randomly determined attack from a chart so you get some nice randomness and more flavourful combat which is self automating to an extent. Combat is also a lot more lethal than you might expect. Characters have a good chance of being knocked out from a single attack even from a relatively low level enemy. It forces you to play more tactfully than other systems and has a real sense of gravity to encounters. Then finally for the core rules you have the attribute and conditions system. You have six core attributes and any of them has a corresponding negative condition that can be applied which then confers disadvantage to any roles within that wheelhouse until healed.

Advancing

A mechanic for advancing characters is also present through the core skill rolling. If you pass a skilltest during a session then you mark that skill on your sheet. Then at the end of the session you roll again for a chance to improve that skill. This feels a lot more natural as a way to develop skills and makes thematic sense. e.g if you use a skill a lot then you will inherently get better at using that skill. You can also develop characters by unlocking feats and abilities. Magic also falling into this category. Magic is done in a similar system to Forbidden lands whereby it is quite dangerous and has a high potential for going awry and hitting the caster instead. The magical mishaps table is however less severe than the one in Forbidden lands and you get a modest selection of spells with varied effects to choose from.

In terms of skills you have a good selection which caters to both combat and non combat characters. You can learn advanced combat or more develop more nuanced skills such as crafting and hunting. Beyond the core skills you also have heroic abilities which are granted by your chosen profession although you can learn more later. This covers ability style actions which you can activate using willpower which is granted though gameplay and at the start of each session(similar to mutations from Mutant Year Zero). These cover a broad range of more specific scenarios such as Master Blacksmithing, gaining magical ability, dual wielding and playing music to boost your allies. These abilities have skill requirements so it works as a natural specialisation of a skill. e.g. if you are good at bluffing then you can learn disguise as a heroic ability.

Contents

Beyond the core rules which is the meat of the product you get some supporting elements in the box. You get dice, treasure/adventure cards and several standees along with battle maps to use them on. It is nicely presented and helps to streamline a session while providing useful tools for the gm and players. The rules are also split over three different documents. You have the core rules, adventure guide, and a shorter document on playing solo. The core rules covers most all of how to play while the adventure book of a similar size covers some of the games master specific rules such as monsters and an entire module to run as an example adventure. It is well fleshed out and contains a lot of useful tidbits that make running the introductory adventure pretty easy. The solo rules do feel a little lacking. They come across almost as a work in progress but they cover the core fundamentals of solo roleplaying and have enough charts/tables to satisfy for a short time. The remaining materials however are all excellent and have good production values. It would have been nice to have the core rules in hardback but given this is a starter set it is reasonable to assume a soft back was the case. This is likely one where the forbidden lands starter box spoils you for book quality!

Downsides

As mentioned above some of the elements feel half baked and there are a few areas where this feels like a limited experience. Namely in terms of magic abilities and artifacts. For a longer campaign you would need to create a fair amount more content to keep players engaged. But given this is a starter set is might be unfair to judge that against it. Given there is not much additional content you will need to put in some considerable effort to make it into a more robust system and as a result this product is best used for some shorter campaigns and one shot style adventures. This will hopefully be expanded on in the future as the core mechanics are solid and there are some great features that set it apart from other systems.

Final Thoughts

Dragonbane is instantly nostalgic in a way that is hard to pin down. It has that Nordic charm that Free League seem to exude and it presents what could be a crunchy system in a very easy to understand and clean way. The book is dripping with theme appropriate artwork that instantly puts you in the right headspace for the type of game it is trying to create and the additional features were enough to immediately engage my rpg group and get them on board for a game. The Mallard in particular seems to be a great selling point and was the thing that most of my players picked up on. The only downsides that exist for it at the moment is the lack of official content but depending on your approach to gm’ing this will be mitigate-able and it is still a very competent game with some excellent formatting and unique parts. If you are looking for something to recreate the older dnd editions without so much of the mechanical slog and way more freedom for character creation then this might just hit that itch.