by Tomas Härenstam, Free League Publishing Lead Designer
As sure as night follows day, the time will come again when dragons and demons fight for power over humanity, nature, and the eternal mysteries.
Dragonbane is the next big release from Free League Publishing. Launching on Aug. 15 with a major presence at this year’s Gen Con, Dragonbane is a fantasy tabletop role playing game (RPG) full of magic, mystery, and adventure. It is designed from the ground up to facilitate fast and furious play, with very little prep time and adventures that are a breeze to run.
This is a game with room for laughs at the table, while still offering brutal challenges for the adventurers. We call this playstyle “mirth and mayhem role playing” — great for long campaigns, but also perfect for a one-shot.
“The earliest memory I can recollect of playing Drakar och Demoner is sitting by a fireplace in an old house by a lake in the woods, listening intently to my older brother vividly describing the fierce orcs facing me. Grabbing the strange and magical polyhedral dice, getting ready to fight — or die. This was the summer of 1985, and little did I know what lasting impact that moment would have on my life.”
Dragonbane is a translation of Drakar och Demoner, Scandinavia’s first and biggest tabletop RPG, which originally launched in 1982. This new and reimagined edition has one foot firmly planted in the heritage of decades of Swedish gaming and the other in the modern and innovative game design for which Free League Publishing is known worldwide.
The earliest memory I can recollect of playing Drakar och Demoner is sitting by a fireplace in an old house by a lake in the woods, listening intently to my older brother vividly describing the fierce orcs facing me. Grabbing the strange and magical polyhedral dice, getting ready to fight — or die. This was the summer of 1985, and little did I know what lasting impact that moment would have on my life. Drakar och Demoner was, and still is, synonymous with role playing games for a generation of Swedish kids.
In spite of what its name might suggest, the origins of this game are found in the early Chaosium titles. Its very first edition in 1982 was a direct translation of Magic World. The game soon took on a life of its own, evolving through a dozen various editions in Sweden over the decades.
Now, returning a reimagined Drakar och Demoner to an international audience under the title Dragonbane, we had to ask ourselves: What is this game, really? For us, and many others in the Swedish role playing community, Drakar och Demoner was a touchstone of our hobby and needed no definition or explanation. For the rest of the role playing world, this game was completely unknown.
Our quest was to journey far and wide into four decades of Nordic role playing history and find the essential elements of this game. What truly made it great. Then, to bring those pieces of legacy back to life and mold them into a new game for the 2020s, using four decades of evolution in game design and our own decade of creating Free League RPGs.
This is the next step in a journey that started more than 40 years ago. We are thrilled to have you along for the ride.
