Dragonbane Discussion Thread [+]

Spellslinging Sellsword · May 30, 2026

If you are interested in checking out Dragonbane, but haven't pulled the trigger yet, good time to grab it via Humble Bundle:

Humble RPG Bundle: The Free League RPG Collection

Freshen up your tabletop role-playing (TTRPG) collection with core rulebooks and more for Mutant: Year Zero, Dragonbane, and more by Free League Publishing!

www.humblebundle.com

Blackbrrd · Monday at 7:35 PM

I see you get both the core set which has it's own adventure and the Path of Glory.

I am getting closer to finishing the Core set's adventure, 118 pages and it's one of the best adventures I have run. Very easy to run, good variation, very few gotchas.

One more thing I found that I love about the system is the leveling. Typically you get 3-5 chances of a skill gain per session. It's a very gradual increase in power. The core set adventure has 10 locations you can visit in any order. Then it has one "finishing" location. I haven't had to adjust anything regarding the difficulty to keep things interesting. At the same time, the players have had real progression to their characters.

It's very refreshing vs D&D where you would normally have leveled multiple times, going from maybe level 2 to level 6 in the time we have played. I would have either had to dynamically adjust the difficulty of the locations or the adventure creators would have had to more or less fix the order.

Much of this flexibility comes from the limited hp of the characters in Dragonbane. The characters in my campaign started with 9-17 hp and they still have it. I am assuming some of the characters will get the heroic ability that increases hp by 2, but it isn't exactly mind shattering.

dbm · Monday at 9:52 PM

I just my physical books from the crowdfunding campaign - and four cloth maps too. I love cloth maps!

The Soloist · Monday at 9:56 PM

dbm said:
I just my physical books from the crowdfunding campaign - and four cloth maps too. I love cloth maps!

The two new books? Can you share pictures?

SlyFlourish · Monday at 10:12 PM

I'm excited to see that my city and magic books both shipped, unfortunately just after I finished my Dragonbane campaign.

I really liked Dragonbane! Here are some of my favorite parts:

I loved roll under and so did my players. Knowing immediately if you passed or failed without any math is great.
I loved how monsters worked with either rolling or choosing options.
The art is fantastic. I loved the art and so did my players.
The players and I loved how you "leveled up". I do recommend taking it slower if your sessions are shorter. I did it every session and people maxed out a bunch of skills earlier than I'd recommend.
The theme of the adventures fits that 80s style gaming. I wouldn't call this an OSR game but it captured a classic feeling I think.
The boxed set is still one of the best values I've ever seen in RPGs. One of my players thought the standees were cool and asked where he could get them. I said "you already have them. They're in your box!" and he said "no way" and then dug further and found them and was amazed. The boxed set really is the Mary Poppins carpet bag of RPG goodness.

The Soloist · Monday at 11:38 PM

SlyFlourish said:
I'm excited to see that my city and magic books both shipped, unfortunately just after I finished my Dragonbane campaign.

I really liked Dragonbane! Here are some of my favorite parts:

I loved roll under and so did my players. Knowing immediately if you passed or failed without any math is great.

I loved how monsters worked with either rolling or choosing options.

The art is fantastic. I loved the art and so did my players.

The players and I loved how you "leveled up". I do recommend taking it slower if your sessions are shorter. I did it every session and people maxed out a bunch of skills earlier than I'd recommend.

The theme of the adventures fits that 80s style gaming. I wouldn't call this an OSR game but it captured a classic feeling I think.

The boxed set is still one of the best values I've ever seen in RPGs. One of my players thought the standees were cool and asked where he could get them. I said "you already have them. They're in your box!" and he said "no way" and then dug further and found them and was amazed. The boxed set really is the Mary Poppins carpet bag of RPG goodness.

My players adopted it too, for the same reasons. I doubt we would go back to any edition of D&D, even for a one-shot.

dbm · Tuesday at 9:22 PM

The Soloist said:
The two new books? Can you share pictures?

Here’s the books (and standee pack)

And the cloth maps!

The maps are a bit suede-like to touch and thicker material than I expected - very nice.

The Soloist · Tuesday at 9:27 PM

Cool! I didn't know there was a standee set for Arkand. Need to grab a copy.

Blackbrrd · Wednesday at 7:35 AM

SlyFlourish said:
The players and I loved how you "leveled up". I do recommend taking it slower if your sessions are shorter. I did it every session and people maxed out a bunch of skills earlier than I'd recommend.

I was thinking about the same thing. I have 5 players and at a typical session, I usually only have 2-4, so for me it kind of worked out, they leveled a bit slower. How did the game feel with multiple heroic abilities? I would assume the heroic abilities that add more hp/wp would be taken. Which isn't too bad. How many "xp" did you usually give out? At my table the average is probably 4.