[Let’s Study] Dragonbane by Free League, Part 1: Introduction

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.

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I’ll admit, running traditional fantasy roleplaying is my Waterloo.

There’s something about running the usual four basic food groups (Fighter, Mage, Thief, Cleric) of dungeon denizens off to another adventure that just falls flat whenever I run it.

And yet, I’m a sucker for Free League’s approach to things. Symbaroum made me fall in love with Dark Fantasy, and Mutant Year Zero still ranks among the best Post-Apocalyptic RPGs I’ve had the chance to own.

So you can imagine how intrigued I was when I heard they were coming out with a new English-language edition of Drakar och Demoner, titled Dragonbane. I’ve been fortunate enough to be given a review copy of the game so it didn’t take long for me to get started on this series. For those new to the blog, a Let’s Study series is a long-form review where I break down the various mechanics and key concepts of a game, often tackling examples of character creation and even combat mechanics before wrapping up with a review over the course of several posts.

What’s in the box?

I’m currently writing this review based on the PDF copy sent to me via DriveThruRPG. Included in this are pretty much everything from the physical box, except the dice: The rules, a solo adventure, an adventure book, files for all the pregenerated characters, standees, a battlemap, treasure cards, initiative cards and adventure cards.

It’s a LOT

Of course, getting this in physical format would be the ideal option given the amount of value you get in the core set, but if you prefer digital, there’s still incredible value here.

In The Oldest Times

The first thing I realized shortly after reading the book is that the setting history takes up all of half a page.

This is not a bad thing.

Perhaps for a lot of lorehounds, Dragonbane’s rather light touch when it comes to the history of the setting might come off as rather underwhelming, but given the focus on adventuring parties in the here and now, it seems apt. After all, if you’re in a society where adventurers go off to examine ruins of lost civilizations, then most of what matters is the here and now, and everything else is a mystery.

Welcome to Dragonbane

At this point the opening chapter goes into a discussion of what roleplaying is, and what the roles are in the game. Being a more traditional game, Dragonbane assumes a setup where one player is the Gamemaster and the rest are players who make characters. There are a few quick paragraphs here on what to expect, as well as notes on playing online as well as playing the game solo.

There’s also some notes on the basic dice rolling mechanics, which boils down to rolling equal to or below a target number on a d20.

After this, it’s immediately onto the next chapter: Building a Character, which we’ll be getting into in Part 2 of this series!

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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.