Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Welcome Return for a Classic Game!, 4 May 2009
Dragon Warriors' originally claimed to be "the ultimate role-playing game". Well, I don't know about that bold claim, but it was wondrous way back in the summer of '85 through to the spring of '86 as we discovered role-playing games for the first time.
So what was so great about it?
Good question. It was the mid-80's in the UK. Thatcherism was in full swing. I don't know about anyone else, but my parents were unemployed, so money was really tight. Dragon Warriors arrived and it was cheap (far cheaper than D&D or AD&D). It might not sound like much now, but you could get the Dragon Warriors paperback books for about £1.50 -£1.75 each. Compare that to D&D which cost about a tenner per book and you'll see which won from a purely economic view.
I loved the game mechanic. Roll your attack, subtract the opponent's defence. You hit? Good, now roll armour bypass for the weapon and then tot up the damage if you beat the armour. Nice and simple and somewhat believable.
It got even better once the other books were published which had new character classes, adventures and in the final book "Lands of Legend", a complete campaign world (more about the lands of Legend later in this review).
That world seemed a fantastic escape from the bleak mid-80's humdrum. The game and our characters gave us a sense of empowerment. Teachers, school bullies, home life getting you down? Don't worry, Friday night's coming up soon, you can get away from it then. It'll be alright.
I'm still not sure if it was the game or, more probably, the escapism, but I'll always have a real soft-spot for Dragon Warriors. In fact, I recently ran a group of friends through the published adventures in the books.
Not an attempt at serious role-playing; oh no! My remit was to recapture the first experience of gaming, including the wandering off-topic conversations and piss-taking that went with it. I must say, the lads succeeded beyond my wildest imaginings! Thanks guys for giving me more than a few chuckles - you'll never actually know just how similar to my old group you lot were!
So, when it was that Dragon Warriors was coming back into production, all the old, dusty memories got a refreshing boost. I couldn't wait to see what James Wallis would do with my beloved game. I looked forward with great gusto to getting my grubby paws on the new book and seeing what had become of it.
The book has been put together by Magnum Opus Press' FLAMING COBRA imprint and published by Mongoose.
The core Dragon Warriors rulebook has all the characters and game rules in it that you need to play the game. Nothing has been done to taint that classic old system with a rework, or a second edition. This is purely a reworking of the old Corgi paperbacks, reorganised and finally given the decent binding they deserved.
The cover artwork has been updated for the new millennium, hearkening back to the first book, (Dragon Warriors) assuming the knight has fallen foul of some fiend from the underworld and a new group of adventurers are tackling the challenge of that particular underworld (If you look carefully, you can see all that remains of him is his rather silly winged helmet, lying in the shadows.) This new cover sums up (for me) the atmosphere of Dragon Warriors, gritty, dark and sinister; that of the low-fantasy setting, where the players are not necessarily world-saving heroes, but fighting back the darkness one foe at a time...
So, the rules are unchanged, the cover evokes nostalgia and everything's been reorganised into some sort of logical order (whereas before one had to search through the six Corgi Paperbacks to find certain rules, the game now has a pretty concise index with which to facilitate finding that nugget of information.) Why should you purchase this book?
Well, you could do a lot worse for an introductory role-playing game for your kids. The book is well produced, clear printing on crisp, white paper, dark and emotively atmospheric monochrome illustrations throughout help to set the tone of the game as you read. The rules are very easy to understand and nowhere near as complex as some other systems which utilise a twenty-sided dice as their core mechanic. A fully fleshed-out character can be produced and will be ready for adventuring in ten to twenty minutes, minimising player down-time away from the game.
The real star, however in this book (discounting the wonderfully simple game mechanics) is the campaign setting, the creatures and the background information on playing in a quasi-medieval feudal society. (In fact, I'd go so far as to say the game's educational in that respect since in over twenty years of gaming, I've never once encountered one supplement that approaches the detail that is Dragon Warriors' notes on feudal society. I certainly learned a thing or two from it.)
The world of Legend is, as other reviewers will happily tell you, based loosely upon our own medieval Europe. The history is similar, and the various nations are thinly (sometimes not very thinly) disguised versions of our own. This familiarity generally means, in my experience, that players can settle into the game world with a minimum of effort and can therefore concentrate upon having great and memorable adventures. The monsters and villains within the background information smack of the legend and mythology of our own, adding to the sense of familiar, but different.
All in all, I feel that Mr Wallis and Magnum Opus have done a marvellous job of reissuing and repackaging Dave Morris' wonderful game for a new generation. It's high time that Dragon Warriors retook its place on the gaming shelf of your local gaming stores instead of the realm of second-hand bookshops or ebay.
Okay, the game's not without its' critics or (minor) flaws, but honestly, these are simply a matter of customising the rules to your particular taste (which are surprisingly easy to do and don't require the processing power of Deep Blue to compute). So, if you are looking for a game that can meet the prerequisites of fun, fast and that leaves you with a warm, fuzzy glow of satisfaction inside, then this is the one for you!
It only remains to say "buy this book!" and also "buy another for your gaming friends".
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Return to Legend, 20 April 2009
Normally you should never judge a book by its cover but in this case it is worth a look. The picture shows an unshaven knight in battered armour and a freshly scarred barbarian. They are making their way down the steps of an abandoned temple, the scene lit only by the cold light of a sorcerer's magic.
This is what made Dragon Warriors different from its contemporaries. The world of Legend setting is much closer to medieval grime and mud than the high fantasy of D&D. More haunted barrows, forgotten gods and otherworldly fay, less hordes of orcs and jolly halflings. While every adventuring party may have its warlock or sorcerer, magic in the wider world is rare.
The new book itself sturdy and well laid out. The internal art is, for the most part, good and fits the background setting. The rules are well presented and plenty of examples given. While the contents page is pretty comprehensive the book does lack an index.
For those familiar with the original books this edition contains all the rules, character classes and world background. It has the stats of all the creatures but none of the detail (now in Dragon Warriors Bestiary). The original adventures are also absent (in Sleeping Gods).
However there is an excellent new adventure included, The Darkness Before Dawn. Very atmospheric, a good introduction to the world of Legend.
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4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Another great update of an old school classic!, 8 Dec 2008
As I've said before in another review this old school rennaissance is not just a 'nostalgia' thing for older gamers but a breath of fresh air in a market that is inundated with hefty tomes that try and establish a rule for every eventuality.
SO...Dragon Warriors is a tidying up and updating of the original paperback rules of the 80s. Although Dragon Warriors has a simpler ruleset than most modern rpgs it is, nevertheless, a comprehensive ruleset that allows the DM the freedom to use his/her own commonsense and the players the real freedom to attempt any action whilst at the same time allowing them to concentrate on their roleplaying.
But, perhaps, the real gem is the Dragon Warriors setting...a much darker and grittier setting than most fantasy rpgs with an early medieval even dark age feel to it. It is a low magic setting that is dominated by humans with players, on the whole, expected to play barbarian or knight characters with little or no need for the additional RARE classes of sorcerers, mystics, elementalists, warlocks or assassins.
If you have the old books then there is little new here...but it is still worth your while picking this up as things have been tidied up, corrected and updated and put in a high quality hardback book with some fantastic and evocative new artwork.
I can't recommend Dragon Warriors enough!!
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