Disclaimer: This series is made possible by the generosity of the fine people of Free League Publishing, who provided me with a review copy of the game. No further compensation was provided to me, and all opinions in this series are mine.
We’re hitting the GM-side chapters of Dragonbane today, with a look at the Bestiary and Adventures sections of the book!
Bestiary
One thing that Dragonbane does differently is that it classifies opposition as Monsters and NPCs. Some traditional (small “m”) monsters you encounter in dungeons are treated as NPCs, while bigger threats are the (uppercase “M”) Monsters that have some rules unique to them.
So you might have Orcs, Skeletons and Goblins that use NPC rules for combat, but things like Manticores, Giants and Minotaurs have Monster rules.
Monsters
Monsters have a Ferocity rating, which also dictates how many initiative cards they pull per round. This pretty much means that they take multiple turns in a round, making them much more dangerous.
Perhaps the more alarming part, is that Monster attacks never miss, they always succeed. These attacks are taken from a table of attack options that the GM can either choose from or roll on, but the Monster will never use the same attack twice in a row in a turn.
Put those together and you can see why running into a Monster is a terrifying proposition!
What I like here is that managing a Monster fight is something that runs itself. Sure the GM can choose a few actions to guide it along logical paths, but each Monster’s attack table has a host of terrifying ways to give your players nightmares.
Adventures
The last chapter of the Dragonbane rules are the ones that are reserved for the GM. At this point, we are presented with some quick and handy rules for managing some key components of your traditional fantasy adventures:
- Journeys – Mechanics to manage the nature of the voyage towards your intended destination. The systems here cover pathfinding, travel mishaps, difficult weather, making camp, foraging and random encounters.
- The Game Master’s Role – A quick half-page summary of what GMs do. Nothing too extensive, but handy for new players to this role.
- Non-Player Characters – This section provides mechanics for creating and playing NPCs, along with rules for creating Minion and Boss NPCs. Especially handy here are some quick tables for random NPC generation.
- Creating Adventures – This section details stringing it all together into a single quest, from the call to action, to the journey to the location and the delve itself. Here Dragonbane goes into mechanics for traps and treasures. A funny bit here is there there’s a table that the GM can roll if players decide to retreat outside of the location to rest up and come back. They might find the enemy have called for reinforcements or that another adventuring party beat them to it!
- Campaigns – This section is more of a short description of stringing Adventures together, much in the way it was presented in the core set adventure book: The Secret of the Dragon Emperor. Handling new player characters to replace dead ones is also here.
Impressions
Dragonbane continues to impress me with how much it can get done with an economy of wordcount and unique mechanics, while delivering a full “crunch” experience in play. In so many years of reviewing TTRPGs, it’s interesting and refreshing to encounter systems like this that delivers a satisfying dungeon-delve without mechanical bloat, and handwavey narrative systems that take away from the core intention of the premise of being adventurers off to raid a dungeon, let’s hope we all make it back alive.
Next up, we’ll be venturing into unknown territory for me, as I look into the next segment of the Dragonbane core set: The solo gameplay rules!
I hope this series is helpful for you. If you’re interested in getting your own copy of Dragonbane, you can buy it from the Free League Publishing Online Store or on PDF from DriveThruRPG.
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