Dragonbane general thread

[dbm]

In case anyone didn’t notice and is interested, the cloth maps from previous Dragonbane Kickstarters are available as an add-on to this one. I added them to my pledge as I came in late to the system.

 

[Von Ether]

I probably comletely wrong here but I feel like Dragon Magic is one of those things where the designers know the fans want it but secretly dread designing it so they make it the final highly unlikely stretch goal.
"Okay, they took us over the line, we at least owe it to them. Darn it."

 

[dbm]

According to other posters Dragon Magic was in the original Drakar och Demoner, so I suspect more a case of ‘save the best for the final push’.

 

[Aldarc]

I probably comletely wrong here but I feel like Dragon Magic is one of those things where the designers know the fans want it but secretly dread designing it so they make it the final highly unlikely stretch goal.
"Okay, they took us over the line, we at least owe it to them. Darn it."

I think that the trick will be making Dragon Magic unique from the other spell schools. From what I heard about older editions, Dragon Magic sounds almost too similar to Mentalism. But "manipulating the fabric of existence itself" sounds like they may be shifting Dragon Magic to something else. I like the idea that it's equivalent of magic dealing with cosmic order and creation, a sort of thematic counterbalance to demonic magic and chaos.

 

[Von Ether]

I think that the trick will be making Dragon Magic unique from the other spell schools. From what I heard about older editions, Dragon Magic sounds almost too similar to Mentalism. But "manipulating the fabric of existence itself" sounds like they may be shifting Dragon Magic to something else. I like the idea that it's equivalent of magic dealing with cosmic order and creation, a sort of thematic counterbalance to demonic magic and chaos.

Not disagreeing but I'd feel like it would be less about creation as the dragons seem more about order and control. Both sides seem to manipulate others as compared to creating new things or ideas.

That is the beauty of having a new bare bones setting, the designers can tweak things as you want - or need. One of the things I enjoy about Dragonbane it that it is wrapped up in decades of history and a different gaming culture. The different takes I see intrigues me.

 

[Aldarc]

Not disagreeing but I'd feel like it would be less about creation as the dragons seem more about order and control. Both sides seem to manipulate others as compared to creating new things or ideas.

That is the beauty of having a new bare bones setting, the designers can tweak things as you want - or need. One of the things I enjoy about Dragonbane it that it is wrapped up in decades of history and a different gaming culture. The different takes I see intrigues me.

I tend to see order about creation as a result of my own familiarity with the Chaoskampf motif in mythology.

But I like the idea of Dragon Magic being some form of cosmic magic.

 

[Bill Zebub]

Now if somebody would write a great online character generator, sort of like Shadowdarklings.

 

[Staffan]

I think that the trick will be making Dragon Magic unique from the other spell schools. From what I heard about older editions, Dragon Magic sounds almost too similar to Mentalism. But "manipulating the fabric of existence itself" sounds like they may be shifting Dragon Magic to something else. I like the idea that it's equivalent of magic dealing with cosmic order and creation, a sort of thematic counterbalance to demonic magic and chaos.

OG Dragon Magic was fairly similar to mentalism, yes (and the 80s Magic box had Mentalism as one of the schools descended from dragon magic – I believe the others were Illusionism and Symbolism, but I'm not 100%). You needed to speak Draconic fluently to be able to learn it, and unlike other magic casting it was an entirely mental activity – no need to chant or wave or stuff like that. The intent was to represent "draconic hypnotism" which is a thing in some worlds.

The Doylist origin is that back in the day, a frequent contributor to Äventyrsspel's gaming magazine was Dag Stålhandske, at one point wrote a few articles about an NPC called Dragonmaster Gadirm ("master" should in this case be read as "expert", not "lord"). To make this NPC cooler, he also invented a special type of magic that was super rare and almost impossible to learn if you weren't either a dragon or a dragonmaster.