A couple of weekends ago I ran my first game of Dragonbane from Free League. It was with my 9 year-old daughter and her two friends (girl power was the rallying cry!), and they were all beginners. They laughed, they rolled dice, they bit their nails in anxiety, they cheered and they shouted in glee with crit and flying decapitated head at just the right moment.

All in all, the game was a great success, and I can recommend the rules that are simpler than D&D but still provides the vanilla fantasy game experience. We will play again.

We played in our native language, Danish, and the Dragon Bane rules have been translated (to Drager & Dæmoner which means Dragons & Demons in Danish). It is a sweet bonus that Dragon Bane is a revision of the ‘expert’ rules I played myself 37 years ago (see photo). I’m very pleased that the Danish publisher will continue to translate the future supplements.

This will not be a full review of the game. Instead, I will highlight a few things that made it particularly good for beginners, and a some other observations, also on GM’ing for kids.

*Because I own the Danish rules, the term I use may differ from the actual game set.

Why is Dragon Bane good for beginners?

• To accomplish anything, you simply roll a D20 equal or under your attribute or skill. It is simpler than roll a d20 and add something, plus maybe another thing, to achieve a number you don’t know.
• Skills are less abstract. If you want to hit someone with your sword, find the sword skill. Oh, you want to sneak up on someone, find the sneak skill… Easy.
• Armor reduces damage. It is simply more intuitive. Always has been.
• Character sheets in their native language was one of the reasons why I picked this game – that would also go for Swedish, or Polish etc.
• Characters are fairly competent from the start. A character will typically have 60-70% chance of succeeding at skills they are competent in. That is higher than most games. And there is a ‘push mechanic’ which makes it even more likely.

What did I do to make it work for young kids?

• I made characters in advance. I asked my daughters about what types she thought were interesting and made those. I made 4 for 3 players, so there were choices to make. But a narrow set.
• We picked a character (and a mini), I also gave them 10-15 lines of ‘backstory’, which also gave them some sense of what they were good at.
• Then I explained the dice, how skills worked and kicked off the game to get started quickly.
• We had two 45-60 minutes breaks for lunch and LEGO. That was super important.

Delian Tomb for Dragonbane

They ended up playing human fighter, elf animist (a wizard, but feels like a druid in D&D), and a halfling treasure hunter (thief).

For the game, I ran Matt Coleville’s Delian Tomb, which is free online in its original version (they have made a new, more expansive version, for their cool and interesting Draw Steel RPG). I modified it so they met a faerie in the woods, who could show them the way (and provide a social encounter), I placed the tomb in the middle of a small marsh, and I cut the patrol.

We got through the whole adventure in 3 hours – excluding breaks. It was great fun, and the girls loved rescuing a boy!

System Changes I made

• I only introduced the more complex aspects of the game as they were needed, like heroic abilities and armor, and ignored things like weapons taking damage or breaking.
• I don’t want to have a fumble in combat on a natural 20. A 5% chance is very high, and with only 3 players, the consequences of a serious fumble can be devastating. A miss is harsh enough. They are fun though! The girls loved it, when it happened to a goblin… I might introduce a ‘confirmation roll’ so if they fumble, they need to test the skill again, and on a failure it is a fumble.

Other thoughts about Dragonbane

• The original Dragonbane game from 1985 was based on RuneQuest (argueably an 80% copy). But whereas today RuneQuest remains quite a complex game (but deep and beautiful), Dragonbane has been modernized and simplified. There are no hit locations, for example, which it had in its original version.
• The push mechanic is excellent – and used in most Free League games. To use it, you need to pick a ‘condition’, such as angry or scared, which both carries a mechanical penalty and is evocative for role-playing – also for kids.
• The rules are super easy to read
• It seems quite lethal, where characters typically have 10-15 hit points, but weapons easily do 2d8+d4 damage…
• The campaign for the box set is big and solid and very playable

If you want to check out other Free League games – they are really good! – I’ve written a guide to most of them.