Other D&D Variant Dragonsbane Vs Shadowdark

Shadowdark is descended from BX D&D and related games - Your character is defined by their Class and Attributes. Your character is largely randomly generated and broadly competent. The ideal playstyle is classic d&d dungeoneering, with lots of the gameplay handled through GM rulings.

Dragonbane is descended from Runequest and related games - Your character is defined by their Skills and do not really have "classes". You customize your character by picking skills and feats and there is "niche protection" through the long skill list. The game can handle a variety of fantasy adventuring scenarios and generally requires less rulings by the GM.

Whizbang Dustyboots said:

This really made me want to get into a Dragonbane game. And yes, as a duck.

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For me, with Dragonbane being more low level fantasy and having BRP/RQ/Pendragon style mechanics, I feel that I can steal from both the OSR and BRP/RQ material.

For off the cuff conversions, OSR to DB, an orc is an orc and for RQ, a creature can be converted into NPCs by dividing skills by five.

I've run two DB campaigns and my players and I have had a blast. That said, I'd like to give Shadowdark a go.

Von Ether said:

For me, with Dragonbane being more low level fantasy and having BRP/RQ/Pendragon style mechanics, I feel that I can steal from both the OSR and BRP/RQ material.

For off the cuff conversions, OSR to DB, an orc is an orc and for RQ, a creature can be converted into NPCs skills by five.

I've run two DB campaigns and my players and I have had a blast. That said, I'd like to give Shadowdark a go.

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Exactly. The ease of conversion opens up a lot of games for use as Dragonbane sources. WFRP and Call of Cthulhu among them. Converting OSR material to either Shadowdark or Dragonbane are about the same amount of work, so that’s a wash.

I lean towards Dragonbane currently for one and only one reason.

Lone Wolf recently had a Kickstarter for a new RPG. That RPG system is Dragonbane. The new Lone Wolf RPG is basically going to be an expansion of Dragonbane. No idea how they will do it in relation to how Lone Wolf and the Kai Lords increase in power, but there it is.