Now or Never or Over the Next Few Days at Least
This column is a reprint from Unwinnable Monthly #193. If you like what you see, grab the magazine for less than ten dollars, or subscribe and get all future magazines for half price.
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Wide but shallow.
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As I write this column, a scrappy fellowship of starving adventurers are facing the near-immortal herald of a demonic king who already reigns over a realm of broken physics and impossible angles. Per evil extra-planar demagogues however, this tyrant hungers to for more realities, including the Misty Vale that was once the home of the Dragon Empire.
We are in the final battle of the core set campaign for Dragonbane, Free League Publishing’s resurrection of the Swedish Drakar och Demoner role-playing game, first released in 1982. It’s been published in English with a few different names, but as “Dragonbane” the system has been really picking up steam across the English-speaking gaming world, or at least, with my math rock crew. For us, life has been making it harder and harder for us to get together even online, but the powers of various chat apps and virtual tabletops offered an opportunity to play-by-post with ducks and wolfkin and the rest.
Though I may have been tempted to make this a true postcard trading endeavor, we opted for the use of technology. As the referee running the game, I do my best to check in every day depending on the whims of work and chores and nudge the action along, and have done so for nearly two years. Our crew is a mix of familiar role-players steeped in the dense flavors of Pathfinder with a few sips of other systems and games, no slouches to be certain. Some picked up pre-generated characters and others opted to roll up their own, and through a bundle from one of the bundle websites I scooped up a pre-made VTT campaign for the entire set. We hit the server running from there.
Dragonbane is a kind of inverse d20 system, where the lower the roll the better for the roller. A 20 is a “demon” and a one is a “dragon”, the diametrically opposed forces of Dragonbane (or at least the boxed set). This fundamental flip of good/bad numbers wasn’t much of a hurdle and is the backbone of a set of rules that pushes the fun of pulp power fantasy while refusing to entertain unlimited godhood status. Your heroes are stronger than the average schmuck, but a good roll from even a moderate threat will put you in the ground, from beginning to end. Armor, magic, weapons mix up the odds but all friends and foes have access to these tools, safety is not guaranteed. The dice always have power.
This isn’t to say there’s no growth for the players. They have plenty of opportunities to learn new skills and abilities, if they remember to take advantage of these opportunities, with the ref regularly pointing this out, but I digress. And the core box and campaign are bursting with these chances, full of magic items and spells and chances to make the most of even the most regrettably-rolled player characters. Heroism is all the more satisfying when accomplished under the heat of uncertainty.
That said, while Dragonbane is not as tactically demanding as Pathfinder or the like (despite growing out of the wargaming scene initially), it’s still a little gnarlier than a play by post session may allow for. Popping between a Discord server and Roll20 on one’s work computer is a privilege not everyone can take advantage of, and the mobile Roll20 experience is thin soup to say the least. As the ref and the one with the easiest access to these tools during the working day, it was up to me (and as such my honor and my joy) to update player sheets, share art and info, take screenshots of the map to post into Discord, etc. This wasn’t a dealbreaker, but it does have me wondering how much playing my players did, where so much of the joy is managing all that bullshit. Perhaps a more theater-of-the-mind, Mothership app experience might be a better way of playing by post after Dragonbane.
Because we all really dug Dragonbane, the last thing I want is for us to feel like we had a watered-down time with the system. I’m hoping to keep it going with the many, many old-school-based adventures, one shots and campaigns that I’ve collected the past few years, and it’s such an understandable and pliant system to fit all this in. Despite owning many books that offer all sorts of juicy tables and system neutral stats for a variety of creatures and treasure I’ve always been hesitant to try and crowbar that stuff into a game, but Dragonbane has given me plenty of time to use The Monster Overhaul, and daydreams for playing the various scenarios in Reach of the Roach God.
But before any of that, this final battle must be settled. Just now I have granted my players with shorter characters boons for cover by a crypt bed, making calls on the fly, as we do. It may not matter, as they let their pack mule go perhaps too soon and have not had any food for the past few days, making this their last stand. Now or never, or over the next few days at least.
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Levi Rubeck is a critic and poet currently living in the Boston area. Check his links at levirubeck.com.
