Dragonbane by Free League

GothmogIV said:

I'm running my first game Tuesday, but I am going to nerf the monsters a bit. Characters have HP that don't change (there is no leveling) so if that goblin hits you twice, you are in trouble. That's not a complaint: I've been playing BPR games for 40+ years, but this system makes combat very deadly.

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Goblins are not monsters.
They're NPCs. NPCs don't auto-hit.

I meant monsters in a metaphorical sense.

aramis erak said:

Are you sure you're talking about Dragonbane? After all, Dragonbane is Hit Points, no loss of capability until 0.
Tho' many Monsters can inflict conditions, those just apply a bane to a particular attribute, they don't change the number.

(Noting that Forbidden Lands DOES do attribute damage)

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Yes. You push rolls and take damage to ability scores. For example, if you take damage to Intelligence, you become Angry which bestows disadvantage (2d20 and take worse result) on all Intelligence tests. This is in addition to HP damage.

Retreater said:

Yes. You push rolls and take damage to ability scores. For example, if you take damage to Intelligence, you become Angry which bestows disadvantage (2d20 and take worse result) on all Intelligence tests. This is in addition to HP damage.

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No, you don't take damage to them - the numbers don't change, and it's quite possible to have other boons that cancel or outweigh that. It's not damage because it doesn't meet the game's definition of damage, and doesn't match the common conception of "damage to attributes" where the numbers go down and come back up.

Further, death spiral? Hardly. 5 States a spiral doesn't make; each condition can only be taken once, and only two of them have direct combat relevance (STR & AGL), you have only three relevant states other than unimpaired by conditions that are relevant: str down, agl down, both down, and all filled +1 more taken, which is KO. There's also little lingering effect, no HP loss penalties.
SO not really a spiral, especially since only a subset do conditions.

This is the English translation of a development of the Swedish RPG Drakar & Demoner from the 80, which is in turn derived from Chaosium's Basic Role Play- a simplified Rune Quest. I played early editions of Drakar & Demoner and was friends with the managers at the time. The Drakar & Demoner that Dragonbane is based on is later than the one I played, but I did read those rules back in the day.

I tried Dragonbane at a games con, and it carries the Drakar & Demoner tradition well. It is gritty and deadly, encouraging planned ambushes rather than frontal assaults. Characters do improve over time, but nowhere near as quickly as in DnD. You go from Mark the Militiaman to Marcus the Reliable warrior, not to Krull the Destroyer.

All Fria Ligan games have some kind of hero point/reroll mechanic tied to the setting. So in their Alien game, you take stress, which might make you lose your cool and do the things people do in horror movies. In Dragonbane, the mechanic is tied to your abilities. You put a dot next to an ability score of your choice, giving you penalties with that ability and related skills. This means you pick which things to penalize. Since adventures generally progress from an exploration phase to a combat phase, this means you can penalize skills you've already used. It also distinguishes different roles, a wizard is likely to penalize Strength and a warrior Intelligence. And yes, you do recover "spent" abilities.

I didn't fall in love with the system, but it is solid enough if you wand a more grounded low fantasy experience.

aramis erak said:

No, you don't take damage to them - the numbers don't change, and it's quite possible to have other boons that cancel or outweigh that. It's not damage because it doesn't meet the game's definition of damage, and doesn't match the common conception of "damage to attributes" where the numbers go down and come back up.

Further, death spiral? Hardly. 5 States a spiral doesn't make; each condition can only be taken once, and only two of them have direct combat relevance (STR & AGL), you have only three relevant states other than unimpaired by conditions that are relevant: str down, agl down, both down, and all filled +1 more taken, which is KO. There's also little lingering effect, no HP loss penalties.
SO not really a spiral, especially since only a subset do conditions.

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You're being extremely pedantic. My explanation was for the benefit of a person asking about the system who is not likely familiar with the jargon from Dragonbane. Thus I was explaining with the comparative terminology from more popular systems, such as D&D.
Yes. The numbers to ability scores do not change. That doesn't mean that a negative condition placed on them cannot reflect "damage." Statistically, the disadvantage feature is the same as a -5 penalty.
A "death spiral" doesn't have to be hit point loss. These ability conditions can lead to that, easily. They affect your ability to fight off poisons, hit with your weapon, stave off mental effects, cast spells, evade attacks, etc. Essentially, if you lose access to your attributes, you can be -5 to EVERYTHING. If that's not a death spiral, I don't know what is.

Word-of-mouth finally reached critical mass for me last week, and so I ordered the boxed set through Amazon. It arrived Monday afternoon.

Only thing close to BRP that I have played is some Call of Cthulhu games, so the basic structure of this is new to me.

Likes so far:
Just one action per turn
Actual professions which make freaking sense. Further, at least four of the professions (Artisan, Bard, Merchant, and Scholar) aren’t built to be dungeon-explorers by default. This gels more with fantasy fiction (outside of D&D) that I’ve encountered in my life.
The skills make sense.
This thing is beautifully written. Very easy to understand. It’s a masterclass in communicating design IMO.


Will share more thoughts as I go. Only in final chapter of rule book.

deganawida said:

Word-of-mouth finally reached critical mass for me last week, and so I ordered the boxed set through Amazon. It arrived Monday afternoon.

Only thing close to BRP that I have played is some Call of Cthulhu games, so the basic structure of this is new to me.

Likes so far:
Just one action per turn
Actual professions which make freaking sense. Further, at least four of the professions (Artisan, Bard, Merchant, and Scholar) aren’t built to be dungeon-explorers by default. This gels more with fantasy fiction (outside of D&D) that I’ve encountered in my life.
The skills make sense.
This thing is beautifully written. Very easy to understand. It’s a masterclass in communicating design IMO.


Will share more thoughts as I go. Only in final chapter of rule book.

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I picked up the PDF and Roll20 bundle super cheap earlier in the year, but just recently ordered a physical copy of the core rules boxed set. I love it so much. I think it is going to replace Sahdowdark for me.

Now all i need to do is force some people to play at an actual table with me, or learn how to use Roll20.

Reynard said:

I picked up the PDF and Roll20 bundle super cheap earlier in the year, but just recently ordered a physical copy of the core rules boxed set. I love it so much. I think it is going to replace Sahdowdark for me.

Now all i need to do is force some people to play at an actual table with me, or learn how to use Roll20.

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Yeah, that boxed set is the nicest I’ve ever owned. Even the character sheets are super high quality! My family all agreed that we’re going to keep those cherry and just print out sheets for our use.

Oh, I’d also like to add that the nature of the professions, the limitations on HP, and the skill setup change the tenor of the game from high octane dungeon delving of D&D into something more like exploration and interaction, at least from my very cursory analysis.