Dragonbane Announces Two New Books

Free League Publishing is expanding its Dragonbane line with two new books. Free League announced it will be running a BackerKit crowdfunding campaign for Arkand–City of Waves and Flames and Book of Magic, two new expansions for Dragonbane. Arkand - City of Waves and Flames is a campaign setting book set in a rich bustling city with a power struggle in the city's underworld. Book of Magic adds five new schools of magic to the game, including harmonism, demonology, necromancy, witchcraft and illusionism.

The crowdfunding campaign will go live on June 3rd. Full descriptions of both books can be found below:

Arkand–City of Waves and Flames Key Features

• A rich, bustling setting: Over a dozen adventure sites spread across five districts, along with a number of campaign seeds, and even more adventure sites available to be unlocked as stretch goals in this Kickstarter.
• Danger and intrigue: The player characters will experience a fierce power struggle in the city’s underworld, take on the role of demon hunters, and uncover secrets about Arkand’s storied past that could change the city forever.
• Award-winning creativity: Arkand–City of Waves and Flames is written by Johan Sjöberg and illustrated by Johan Egerkrans and David Brasgalla. If unlocked as a stretch goal, this book will also include a large separate432 x 558mm full-color map drawn by Francesca Baerald

Book of Magic Key Features

• More magic: TheBook of Magic adds at least five new schools of magic to your Dragonbane game, including harmonism, demonology, necromancy, witchcraft, and illusionism–with more possible to unlock as stretch goals–as well as new spells for the existing schools of general magic, animism, elementalism, and mentalism.
• More spells: All featured schools of magic come with a wide range of spells, which now come in five ranks. Each school is also described with information about their practitioners, station and reputation in the world, and what kind of spiritus familarius their members typically summon.
• More award-winning creativity: TheBook of Magic is written by Mattias Johnsson Haake and Mattias Lilja (creators of Symbaroum) with Tomas Härenstam (Dragonbane Core Set) as co-writer and editor, and illustrated by Johan Egerkrans and David Brasgalla.

 

[Von Ether]

Very excited for this Kickstarter! Even though I run Shadowdark mostly, I am always on the lookout to get a game going of Forbidden Lands or Dragonbane.

As I couldn't get my players onboard for Forbidden campaign so I used Dragonbane to run a mash up campaign using the Raven Valley map and some of the adventures along with the Misty Vale campaign - twice!

Both of the groups only used a quarter or a third of the Raven Valley map for their full campaign.

 

[Doctor Futurity]

A roll low mechanic has the advantage of creating a limited or closed range, which means you can usually have a more "realistic" result than an open-ended system. With games like Dragonbane, BRP, Runequest etc. I have noticed that the players struggle the most when they come over from D&D, where the expectations are dramatically different. If they can adjust out of that mindset then the game tends to open up dramatically. Likewise, the GM needs to not run the game like it is D&D, or everyone will tend to get killed, often.

Either way this is my preferred system (roll low) and I love Dragonbane, have been waiting patiently for the Magic book to be announced as the core system desperately needs this expansion.