Dragons, Demons... and Ducks

 I've posted before about how my route into wargaming started with role-playing games.  My 1st game was the 'Holmes Edition' D&D set back in about 78-79, quickly followed by AD&D and assorted other games (Gamma World, Call of Cthulhu, Space Opera, Traveller and more).

After I moved down south, role-playing went on the back burner apart from a brief spell when I lived out in the wilds of Surrey and we dabbled with the less well known Fantasy Hero.

During Covid a friend from my uni days decided to run an online campaign for a little while, to keep us all occupied during lockdown.  6 years later we're still playing.  We started with his own game, a variation (kind of) of Chivalry & Sorcery which he was keen to test-play. My Halfling thief/bard spent most weeks being lowered down assorted wells on the end of a rope... it seemed to be the default solution to most things!  We've also run a mini-campaign of the 1980s Steve Jackson Games The Fantasy Trip and eventually dragged ourselves out of the 1980s and played Dragonbane.  I'll come back to this in a minute.  

Also this year my regular gaming group at Eric the Shed's launched ourselves on a nostalgia-heavy 1st edition AD&D campaign.  This has been masterminded by Eric and has been great fun with a hugely detailed backstory.  From 40 years on, it's easy to see some of the flaws in AD&D but it's been enormous fun and my Paladin is having a great time trying to save the world while also keeping an eye on the definitely dodgy halfling thief that is one of his colleagues.  This halfling has also been regularly dangled on a rope! Oh, and we have a magical pig....

So, back to Dragonbane...this game started back in the 1980s in Sweden as Drakar och Demoner (Dragons and Demons), using some mechanics from Chaosium games. Apparently it was huge in Sweden in the 80s and 90s! It's been through assorted variations, but was re-launched in 2023 by Free League Publishing

Its a fairly simple system with the usual character classes, races and stats.  Generally you need to roll under your skill or characteristic to succeed... rolling a 1 (a Dragon) is a good thing, rolling a 20 (a Demon) is bad, although either result does give you an opportunity to try to improve your skill... I guess doing something well or badly is always a learning opportunity!  Despite being simple, it's great fun and very flexible.

The game describes itself as Mirth and Mayhem and I think that sums up our experiences with the recent campaign we played through.  None of us take it too seriously and the emphasis is always on having a fun evening.  Our group includes folk from Scotland, England and Costa Rica so managing to get the gang all together online isn't always easy but we've been pretty good at managing a game every other week.

As the last campaign drew to a close and neither of our 2 regular GMs fancied running the next campaign (both for very good reasons), I somehow found myself volunteering to give it a go!  I haven't run anything like this for about 40 years so it was a bit daunting.  Luckily there was a new supplement hot off the presses for Dragonbane... Arkand, City of Waves and Flames.  It's a great resource with huge amounts of detail and ideas for campaigns and scenarios set in a city with Dragons and Demons definitely part of the back story.  It's also just a lovely book... lots of great reading and lovely illustrations.

It's been tricky navigating my way through the book... it is very non-linear and GMs are encouraged to use it as a resource rather a straight series of scripted scenarios.  Apart from a suggested opening encounter, everything else is a series of descriptions and 'adventure seeds' which require quite a bit of fleshing out.  This part has been fun but I have to confess I've stooped to AI to help structure things and to design the maps.  We use Roll20 as a platform to share maps, character sheets etc and that's been another steep learning-curve!  It's one thing using it as a player but once you peek behind the curtain as a GM there's a whole load of new things to learn!

So far we've had one evening's play.  The party have captured a Manticore and delivered it to the city's mysterious menagerie (and named it 'Buttercup'... I suspect we haven't heard the last of Buttercup...), fought some rabid (possibly poisoned?) dogs and safely arrived at an ominously named inn: Death in the Deep.  I have the next couple of sessions mapped out and maps prepped for next weeks game.  I must admit I'd forgotten how much fun GM'ing can be

Oh, and yes... ducks are available as characters (nicked from Runequest I guess!)