Drakar och Demoner (Dragons & Demons), originally published in 1982, serves as a cultural reference point for role-playing in Sweden, and many people encountered it in some form as their first-ever introduction to the activity.
I’ve been looking into playing for a while but it’s been slow due to the plethora of versions and variety of personal reference points for what it “is.” I’ve also been inclined to find the earliest text possible, and only recently a friend has loaned me his very old, I think second-ever version. I’ve been working my way through the Swedish to learn its details, which are a smidge away from Basic Role Playing as the original version was produced under that license. Casual conversations have revealed a disturbing collective desire, shared by me, to play all-ducks.
But that’s not what we’re playing here, although barnyard fowl still figure heavily into the events. This game is the 2024 version, effectively a full reboot using the name, published by Fria Ligan, also available in English as Dragonbane. I’m playing with Yaroslav (first role-played about a year ago), Jessica (first role-played about a month ago), Natte (same), Nisse (played decades ago but not since), and Valfrid (first time playing). We have both the Swedish and English texts available at the table, and although I’d hoped to try playing mainly in Swedish, we are evenly split between native and non-native speakers and I don’t think the group is ready for that as a whole.
We made the characters as instructed. The process seemed a bit sterile to me at first, until we hit the last step, Weaknesses. It was beautiful. Everyone chose to roll rather than select an option, and in every case, the character leaped up into “this guy” and “let’s play.”
- Freja the elf hunter (Jessica), gullible
- Sykes the wolfling artisan (Nisse), child of the wild (won’t sleep indoors)
- Worked up into a rather complex ethnic-tensions character, being rather assimilated for a wolfling but apparently not happy about it
- Hjalti Half-Ear the human thief (Natte), intolerant (giants, goblins, related beings)
- The only one who’s really in it for the glory and treasures
- Lothar the human mage (Valfrid), gluttonous
- Also notable as an old guy
- Darf the dwarf fighter (Yaroslav), fearful of magic
Situation and its discontents
Bluntly, this is an egregiously dishonest text in the classic reverse mullet mode:
- In the front, the party: introductory instruction to set up scenarios but not to control them (obligatory modern rhetoric like “play to find out” lifted wholesale from Vincent’s Fprge-born phrasings, or from Luke’s somewhat parroted versions after that)
- In the back, i.e., as actual scenario deign, it’s a straight-up railroad from hell, including the typical fake sandbox to choose your second through fifth adventures in whatever order to assemble the statuette, then it’s time to meet Bobby G and get into the programmed showdown.
So with weary familiarity, I set to the task of actually preparing for anything we might call play.
Fortunately the general backstory for the adventures is functional. It includes an “evil cult!!” which, although it’s an especially thin version, I have no grounds to object considering my own extensive use of the concept; see Pear pimples for hairy fishnuts for that discussion.
I haven’t managed to recast Outskirt (the town) into something at least partly understandable as a community instead of an inventory-information bank, so that’s a work in progress
I decided to jump right into the mini-adventure called Dead Eye Cave, which I judged to be the most amenable actually to play. It still definitely needs some better grounding besides “I guess we’ll travel across the wilderness to help one lady we’ve never met and fight a terrible monster for some reason.”
- I simply decreed that Lothar is related to Hildy and is visiting her, and also shoehorned his gluttony, which Waldred really enjoys playing, into the significant presence of certain creatures in the situation.
- Specifically, and working from important textual details, I am GMing the whole thing from the chickens’ perspective, so pay attention to anything I mention about them – it adds up fast.
- This also entails shifting around the time-stamps for the events in the textual scenario, so it’s pretty different in content if similar in details.
- I asked the others players for some justification for coming along, however thin, and got it, and received enough to work with, or rather, for them to work with.
It’s a solid “we are here, doing this, no debates” beginning, basically a cold open as they approach the mountains’ foothills. The only way for it not to be a railroad, now, is to open up whatever happens to whatever they do, and to make sure that from this point forward I make no decisions for them and play “my guys” hard for their own sakes, chickens and all.
At the table
It’s audio only due to Valfrid’s age, but I decided to use video to include many pictures, captions, and maps.
I rolled no encounters along the way, which I pointed out as a disappointment during play, but in retrospect, it’s fortunate as I could focus on the prepared active elements and avoided the tendency toward “ooh, a bear! we have to kill it now, then, moving on …”
I’m making sure that skill rolls matter. Noticing the escaped chickens is no small thing given my general preparation. Hjalti’s Demon roll for his glance down the side cave permitted the ambushers to gather behind them, and therefore Freyja’s Dragon roll to notice them creeping up later is the only way they could have been prevented from a sudden surprise attack with Boons. Different characters’ myths & legends outcomes in two different instances are really the only way the whole situation could have taken clear shape in the group’s collective understanding, and I intend to begin every session with a “the situation as we know it” review baed on exactly these outcomes.
Events hit a combat conflict due partly to the cultists’ circumstances, having lost one of their crew to the basilisk and ambiguous about what to do next.
- I love the initiative cards and I wonder why we haven’t been using similar things for the last forty-plus years.
- I’d collected the improvised weapons cards designated for caves, but forgot to lay them out as we moved through spaces – kind of spitballed it in when needed, but from now on I’ll be sure to lay them down first
- I hadn’t examined the cards themselves and was as surprised as anyone to discover how wonderful a sudden stalactite was.
- It seems weird that Evade and Parry are just straight-up cancel rolls vs. one’s personal target number, rather than opposed vs. the attack roll.
- They had some damned good luck
- Freja and Darf understandably shined as stone killers given their weapon optimization, but they needed those serious roll results, as the circumstances were pretty dire, and Sykes’ quick thinking permitted Freja’s final arrow-shot.
- I’m not thrilled about the ease of moving through friendlies’ squares with absolute freedom. It seems really generous, especially in a dim, irregular rock corridor like that.
I confused myself about the magic several times during play, likely because I’m preparing and playing for D&D B/X at the same time (The architecture in this town). I finally figured it out and we’ll review for play.
- it’s like RuneQuest: you have limited mental storage from a possibly wider bank of spells, and you power the spells with points.
- Being old and smart, Lothar can actually hold more spells in his mind than he has in his book at present
- It seems cruel that you can’t even carry your dagger on your belt and cast spells, it has to be packed away. I snipped out a sequence where we hunted all over the text expecting to find a way to permit that, but no, no ready shiv for the mage.
Finally, systemically, play is all about the conditions.
- I lost my way a bit regarding time, e.g., that Freja and Lothar would have had half a day at the farm, thus working from a shift (long rest) and the others would have gained only a stretch. So I’ll be more careful about that, continuing.
- I need to remind them about pushing failed rolls, which is the most formal way to gain conditions if you don’t have a monster handy to nail them.
- As far as I can tell, it’s fine for me simply to impose them when the fictional circumstances make sense, as I did for Exhaustion during play, e.g., I should be hitting Lothar with Hungry by now
- Related to that, I think anyone who survives a fight should be at least Exhausted afterwards.
In the next session just a few hours from this writing, we’ll continue the fight. It’s time to consider my characters quite carefully: certainly the remaining cultists are certainly reconsidering their life-choices at this point, but of course, also, the important, as yet unseen NPCs in the cavern just past the pit and in the side cave where the cultists have set up their little camp.
7 responses to “Chicken counting”
SESSION TWO
Direct link into the playlist
In this session, characters began to form into faces, not fully yet, but coming together. I’m chafing a bit for my chance to play the NPCs I’m most invested in, and also accepting the task of investing more than expected upon being landed with two more cultists in an encounter check.
That latter might be debatable, as coming up with “more cultists” after the ones I knew were all killed or fled might have been handled as “no result” or “roll again.” However, I never have liked instructions like “as many as the player-characters,” which is what this text says, so I think I may have taken the rolled result as an opportunity to defy it a little.
Speaking of rolled results, the session provides some doozies of Dragons (1: critical success) and Demons (20: critical failure), ending with a spectacular reversal for our characters at the end. I think it may even prove to be the saving grace for our fiction-as-such, insofar as they have effectively done everything on their own terms until now. The real systemic virtue here is found in the Conditions, which as I wanted, I applied very hard as outcomes or circumstances, and as it happened, were also self-applied with enthusiasm as the players quite liked the pushing rolls, and in result each character’s profile of resulting conditions. It’s a lot more fun, and easier, to play a fearful, angry dwarf and a sickly, hungry wizard than merely a dwarf and a wizard.
Finally, to paraphrase a classic: “The curious thing is where the chickens are.” “But Ron, they saw no chickens.” “That’s right, Watson, they did not.”
It is nice to see how well Conditions are not only embraced but an integral part of play. In the D&D 5E, conditions are something that are dreaded, but Dragonbane seems to have made it a normal, expected part of play.
They are unquestionably brutal in our game. To what extent how much of it “is” Dragonbane and how much arises from my generous use of them (just hitting them with Conditions when I think I can, e.g.) as well as my usual harsh implementation of failed rolls, I can’t say.
I do like the way the cave itself is almost a character, as long as we remember to place the Improvised Weapons, to implement various Conditions, and to honor the light sources’ presence and absence.
Well from my listening it does appear you are doing it “right” in terms of the spirit of their use. Pushing is supposed to be consequential as in other Fria Ligan games where the mechanic is in play.
I also noted the reminders about light sources and distance. Like a system touchstone reminding players about the constraints in play.
I have a question / clarification about parrying, but let me know if your not interested in me rules lawyering.
Please do! I was and am completely confused. Specifically, that apparently eiither an Evade or a Parry cancels your upcoming action, and if it’s after your action, you can’t do either. Therefore, if you Parry with your shield, you lose your upcoming attack, which seems kind of ridiculous because the shield is now just arm candy if you want to defeat your foe.
I must be misunderstanding something. Everything else in the system is rather clearly-stated and effectively-made.
So i don’t know if I can be loads of help, as I haven’t played and only ready the quick start. But with the throat clearing out the way my question was going to be exactly about what you said – that reactions – parrying and dodge – use up your characters action for a round, which didn’t seem to be how you were playing in the recordings.
In terms of this making sense, I’d been going to suggest it seems a bit like Champions in this way, maybe that helps think about it? Worth remembering also that the rule applies to monsters and npcs too, so everyone is having to make the decisions about trying to avoid damage now verses getting your own attack in later, potentially with the knowledge that they won’t be able to parry.
Also I think you make the decision about parrying after you know you’ve been hit but before damage dice are rolled – so if the attacker missed entirely you get your window to strike back, again knowing they can’t parry. Or you decide to parry their successful attack, not risking the damage, and ensuring you stay in the fight till the next round. But note the risk that you parry an attack but your weapon might break though.
My guess would be this then interacts interestingly with the randomised initiative, but probably you need to see more play to get an idea of how. One thing to note though, there are rules for trading initiative cards with other players or npcs / monsters – but only so you go later in the round. So maybe the Wizard wants to trade with the Fighter, letting them make an attack first, maybe using up the enemy’s reaction then have the wizard try and hit them with a power 3 fireball they can’t dodge and hopefully take them out in one go. Or have the Knight stand in the narrow corridor parrying attacks and absorbing the damage they can’t parry and that gets through their armour, while their less armoured Hunter ally picks off the enemies with arrows from a distance. Or of course have all these plans get upset by bad luck, the initiative draw, and enemy strategy. So maybe “the shield is now just arm candy if you want to defeat your foe.” but less so if we want to defeat our foes? (Also in the quickstart rules it looks like once everyone has their initiative cards for the round these get turned face up so everyone knows who’s going when, at least until characters start delaying).
I think that this might also look different in a fight with a monster, where the players more likely have a single opponent, but with maybe two or more attacks / ferocity. That probably invites different tactics compared to the equal numbers of npcs fight. Can the PCs get the monster to focus on the better protected character? Maybe they still need to parry but that lets the thief get a sneak attack in? What attack does the monster roll, maybe something everyone wants to dodge? Seems like there’s potentially a lot of space for strategy while keeping the rules fairly simple, but breaking up the stereotypical I hit you, you hit me, grind down of hp. But like I say I haven’t had a chance to play it.