Once again I emerge from the depths to begin the year with....*waggles fingers* a review! One that is quite late, as it's delivery was delayed by the canadian post office worker's strike by about six weeks. The wait is over! Kharaz! Bazngir! It's time to inform people about this game, that I think is pretty damned good.
Dungeon Crawl Classics:
I don't like Dungeon Crawl Classics. It's a fine system, but a fairly incomplete one, more interested in writing lengthy spell entries that spill haphazardly across pages and has the absolute audacity to put "dungeon crawl" in the name, and then have no actual dungeon crawling procedures and rules, mostly just muttering that you already know what those are and how to do them.
Dragonslayer feels like an RPG written by someone who set out to write Dungeon Crawl Classics but had a bit more thought and care into how exactly how the game would play for lengthy campaigns and be a good, nostalgic DnD-esque game without quite being just, well, ADND or B/X.
Funions:
The game has a very good approach to writing a TTRPG I haven't seen in awhile, and I am going to sound insane when I type this, but it actually attempts to teach you how to play the game and offer best practices. A lot of these games don't. Some are well meaning but not great (play examples that offer a generic battle and/or dungeon crawling procedure) some are neutral (a list of procedures, random outcome tables with no real context to string them together) and then some are just worthless (anything that tries to write vibe-based poetic language, ie "How to run a DarkMurder RPG game? Be the call in the dark, the laugh of a harlot, the grin of a killer slitting throats for copper", garbage like that). Dragonslayer isn't really doing any of that, and instead provides some humorous and useful advice on how to play and run the game. It comes up in a variety of sections, the first being it's own admonishments:
DnD as War:
There's an interesting idea that the purpose the GM is supposed to kill you and as a player, its specifically your job to prevent yourself from being murdered. You are flat out told to set yourself up in ways that make it hard for the GM to kill you, like you're playing a strange wargame. Dragonslayer is part of the "DnD as War" school of GMing, in the sense that learning how to conduct a war intelligently is as useful as reading the manual, so denying engagement when you can, scouting correctly, supplies/logistics etc are all equally as necessary as being able to pull off a good tactic. Tricking orcs into blundering into their own traps, making alliances with various factions in the dungeons and making sure that at the end of the day, your characters are assuming the least risk and shooting for the most reward is what you want to do.
Easily some of the best advice I've ever read on how to play lower levels. None of this is actually new, but it's rarely codified.
However, for some reason, there doesn't appear to be a reaction table provided, so there's a breaking here from older-schools of DnD: you are expected to get a lot of killing done. I will be running with reaction tables, but it's a baffling omission, especially since the game tells you this:
Despite this, a reaction table is easily added in. Still. Why? Why why why why?
"Hardcore":
The game isn't that brutal, despite it's as-war philosophy. Scores are 3d6 - but not down the line, arranged as you please, and with seven generated and the lowest discarded, making character creation somewhat easier. No race-as-class, but also no "reroll your character if their modifiers are terrible". Greg gives you more chances to make a better barbarian, but would like you to at least try to roll with the crappy guy you got if you do roll one, as he says, there's always the fighter option, and he is pretty damned good:
That cleave ability, seen in other games like ACKS really does give the fighting/martial classes an extra punch, and make it so that, alongside incredible saves, they're genuinely valuable in the in early, middle, and late game.
There are 'fast packs', which are just objectively good ideas for starting equipment, something I noticed in 5e and don't really have an issue with. You don't need to do this but it makes making new characters easier. Some other things are that the new race provided - the cyclopsman, is a pretty interesting idea. Not great for archery - their lack of a second eye causes depth perception issues, unsurprisingly, they have other things to help with it - darkvision, immunity to poison gas but drop dead from drinking booze(with a save, as is right). Otherwise, the races provided do the 'standard' - Dwarves are hardy with huge boosts to saves, Elves are quick and good with magic, and humans can do everything. Again, it provided a "role-play" quick guide on how a member of that race would act - not new, but useful to the new.
Magic users are much more different than I expected, with them starting with six possible spells(!), three of the same spells that are useful spells, then you roll for the other three in offensive, defensive and utility categories. You still only get one spell/day(higher int gives you an extra) but still, you get much more stuff to think about when memorizing your spell for the day. There's a hard limit on spell memorization - without magical items, you may memorize one(1) spell of each type for the day, so you must bring a varied toolbox, and not multiple casts of sleep or magic missile. I like this. It makes for varied play.
Onward:
The adventuring rules are pretty standard b/x procedural play, they even come with an adorable pinwheel time tracker if you so wish. The game incorporates a critical hit and miss system, but it's very restrained:
I dunno guys, maybe this should have 1d30 entries, each less usable at the table than the last!
Otherwise, combat is not that punishing: there's an optional death + dying table a lot of these games add in to make the game less about the meatgrinder and there's a wound-binding mechanic for after battles, so again make healing much easier instead of the normal taking multiple days to heal oh later game. There are miniature rules. They're fine. They get the job done, but this is not a miniatures game, and while I plan to personally use miniatures for occasional big setpieces and such, these are merely competent miniature battle rules. Still, it's nice to have them at all, if I recall correctly, certain companies have written similar rules then charged full price(!) for guidance on how to use them.
The tl;dr is you basically already know how to use them.
Now to finish up there's some generally useful GM stuff in here - there are great rules for stocking dungeons, generating dungeons, placing dungeons, a quick and dirty tutorial on hexcrawling and how to design your own small adventuring zones. Very telling this is not ACKS - you are shown how to generate a 5x5 hex zone and given the same general guidance that Gygax did - put a hamlet or base or castle or village for the PCs to rest and recuperate and sell loot in, and then put the dungeon a hex or two away. It's good advice - again, not new, but useful for the new - and that's a problem a lot of these B/X clones struggle with. The worksheets provided for the dungeon are especially fantastic - but that leads me into the final observations of the game...
It's What Worked Already:
Dragonslayer isn't doing a lot of very new stuff, just being good and decent at what it is. A lot of the great rules I really enjoyed are just rules that were in his megadungeon projects already. Runestones, spellstones, etc are all there from Dwarrowdeep and they were a good series of ideas, and wouldn't you know they're good enough to add in here. The dungeon generator is fantastic but it's just a buffed up crypt generator from Barrowmaze. This isn't a critique, by the way - these are just good things that are already out there. It's not the ur-OSR, it's just Gygax codifying what Arneson had already written, but it's Greg doing it for Greg. I guess that's a weird comparison, but this feels much more...authentic than some other games. I guess that's probably why it came out and people just gave it a big shrug. It's good stuff but this Good Stuff isn't new, the stuff that is, is the tips and tricks stuff peppered throughout the book. The Wizard 101 section is good enough that I'd honestly be willing to pay for a booklet of these for every class, and honestly, it's refreshing to see people provide, well, a lot of concrete examples on how to correctly adventure in an adventure game.
Final Thoughts: It's good. It's not super new, but very reliable, and will provide a deeper game than something like OSE while not being as punishing. An excellent game that really only suffers from missing the reaction table (????) and 'suffers' from being a really good game with decent art. I guess people were wanting more fanciful layouts and such. Oh well.
