Review: Relaunched Dragon Warriors
Posted: Sun Jun 27, 2021 7:06 am
In 2008, quite some years after the original DW came out, Magnum Opus published a new version, which I've been planning on rambling about for a while now. Firstly, though, I've gone and made up a list of things that I feel should have been changed for the new version. Now, admittedly, this is after looking at the new version a bit, so knowing a lot about what has and has not been changed will have influenced this. There's a TL:DR at the bottom if you want to skip the rambling.
By changes, I'm excluding anything that basically rewrites the game. For example, I'd prefer it if to hit you rolled above the enemy's Defence minus your Attack, rather than under your Attack minus their Defence. Cause, roll high rather than roll low. But, that's a bit of a change for no mechanical advantage.
For another example, in Old DW melee fighters have the option of hitting something with their sword every turn, and magic users have the option of casting a few spells or feebly hitting something with their sword. That isn't great, but it's workable. Trying to improve that would likely make things really fiddly unless it was a ground up rewrite, and thus basically a new game. The game might be better for those changes, but it works as is.
Monsters need the same sort of stats as PCs. Now, the game says to roll 3d6 for Reflexes for every monster or group you encounter. Your undead rhyming vikings, and everything else, has have the same roll as PCs. No mention if they get Defence bonuses for having an above average Reflexes like PCs do, and it's not actually easy to find that rule if you don't know where to look. But the game works (here) as is. Other stats, like Strength and Intelligence? Nope, no rules for those. This is a problem. Poison, for example, works or not based on a roll against the victim's Str. PCs might want to use poison (making poison is one of the skills the Assassin PC has), but there's no rules for determining the Strength of anything that isn't a PC.
Also, there just needs to be more of them. Now there are technically a fair few already provided in Books 1 and 4, but the monsters in Book 4 are explicitly described as being rare, high level, Saturday Night specials, so you can mostly discount those. For example the Blue Men, undead vikings of fairly high level that sail around the icy northern seas and challenge other ships to rhyme offs. Nothing inherently wrong with them, but you are going to need to kill a lot of low level common stuff before you get to those monsters you might, might, maybe use once at most at high level in a special setting.
Sticking to one consistent Setting would help a lot. In fairness, I think the assumption is that the game will be set in not!Britain, or something like it, but there's bits and pieces from all over not!Europe, and neighbouring not!Asia and not!Africa. Especially in Book 6, which has space for a couple of paragraphs for some entire nations. You've got monsters like Pythons and Crocodiles which are appropriate for jungles, but not many, not enough to really support a campaign unless you just pop down to the jungle briefly on your way to leveling up to fight the rhyming dead vikings who hang around the part of the world the majority of the material is all about. Pick somewhere, make sure you've got everything you need and some leeway, and only then worry about other places.
On a note related to that, explaining what the creators were going for would have helped. Oh, it's about the old ways/paganism being driven back by progress/Christianity/whatever? "Fantastic creatures in Legend are the embodiment of passions and places"? That makes sense, but I found that our some decades after I first got the books when I looked up Dave Morris's blog so I could do the previous reviews. Now, nothing to stop you making it about Tolkien style Elves and Dwarfs (they are in the rules, after all, because you have to rip off LotR if you want to sell, it's a rule), and people did, but a lot of people were apparently unable to make up their own scenarios and have them really seem to be "proper" DW. That doesn't need DW rules, of course, and every now and then people make a DW setting for D&D, say. Bloodsword, which is sorta kinda Dragon Warriors, but high fantasy epic stuff, is apparently getting a 5e D&D thingy.
You really need to muck about with the PCs. I'd contend that the Linear Warrior/Quadratic Wizard thing doesn't really apply. The problem of them having different working days is how they supposed to be balanced. Ok, if your scenario is done right, I guess. But Elementalists are just useless and Warlocks almost are as good as Knights at the one thing Knights do and do their own thing on top. The effects of some spells need to be expanded upon, can you use Dragonfire to set a building on fire? Can you use it without setting a building on fire?
Oh, and the rules need to be Reorganised. They were a bit off a shambles, even before they stuck a bunch of stuff in Book 4, either because they'd ran out of room in Book 1 or they'd not realised they were important at the time.
TL;DR version:
Monsters
Setting
PCs
Reorganise stuff
So, putting aside simply reorganising stuff, I like old DW, apart from the Setting, Monsters, and how the PCs work? Um...that sounds a lot more negative than what I intended.
By changes, I'm excluding anything that basically rewrites the game. For example, I'd prefer it if to hit you rolled above the enemy's Defence minus your Attack, rather than under your Attack minus their Defence. Cause, roll high rather than roll low. But, that's a bit of a change for no mechanical advantage.
For another example, in Old DW melee fighters have the option of hitting something with their sword every turn, and magic users have the option of casting a few spells or feebly hitting something with their sword. That isn't great, but it's workable. Trying to improve that would likely make things really fiddly unless it was a ground up rewrite, and thus basically a new game. The game might be better for those changes, but it works as is.
Monsters need the same sort of stats as PCs. Now, the game says to roll 3d6 for Reflexes for every monster or group you encounter. Your undead rhyming vikings, and everything else, has have the same roll as PCs. No mention if they get Defence bonuses for having an above average Reflexes like PCs do, and it's not actually easy to find that rule if you don't know where to look. But the game works (here) as is. Other stats, like Strength and Intelligence? Nope, no rules for those. This is a problem. Poison, for example, works or not based on a roll against the victim's Str. PCs might want to use poison (making poison is one of the skills the Assassin PC has), but there's no rules for determining the Strength of anything that isn't a PC.
Also, there just needs to be more of them. Now there are technically a fair few already provided in Books 1 and 4, but the monsters in Book 4 are explicitly described as being rare, high level, Saturday Night specials, so you can mostly discount those. For example the Blue Men, undead vikings of fairly high level that sail around the icy northern seas and challenge other ships to rhyme offs. Nothing inherently wrong with them, but you are going to need to kill a lot of low level common stuff before you get to those monsters you might, might, maybe use once at most at high level in a special setting.
Sticking to one consistent Setting would help a lot. In fairness, I think the assumption is that the game will be set in not!Britain, or something like it, but there's bits and pieces from all over not!Europe, and neighbouring not!Asia and not!Africa. Especially in Book 6, which has space for a couple of paragraphs for some entire nations. You've got monsters like Pythons and Crocodiles which are appropriate for jungles, but not many, not enough to really support a campaign unless you just pop down to the jungle briefly on your way to leveling up to fight the rhyming dead vikings who hang around the part of the world the majority of the material is all about. Pick somewhere, make sure you've got everything you need and some leeway, and only then worry about other places.
On a note related to that, explaining what the creators were going for would have helped. Oh, it's about the old ways/paganism being driven back by progress/Christianity/whatever? "Fantastic creatures in Legend are the embodiment of passions and places"? That makes sense, but I found that our some decades after I first got the books when I looked up Dave Morris's blog so I could do the previous reviews. Now, nothing to stop you making it about Tolkien style Elves and Dwarfs (they are in the rules, after all, because you have to rip off LotR if you want to sell, it's a rule), and people did, but a lot of people were apparently unable to make up their own scenarios and have them really seem to be "proper" DW. That doesn't need DW rules, of course, and every now and then people make a DW setting for D&D, say. Bloodsword, which is sorta kinda Dragon Warriors, but high fantasy epic stuff, is apparently getting a 5e D&D thingy.
You really need to muck about with the PCs. I'd contend that the Linear Warrior/Quadratic Wizard thing doesn't really apply. The problem of them having different working days is how they supposed to be balanced. Ok, if your scenario is done right, I guess. But Elementalists are just useless and Warlocks almost are as good as Knights at the one thing Knights do and do their own thing on top. The effects of some spells need to be expanded upon, can you use Dragonfire to set a building on fire? Can you use it without setting a building on fire?
Oh, and the rules need to be Reorganised. They were a bit off a shambles, even before they stuck a bunch of stuff in Book 4, either because they'd ran out of room in Book 1 or they'd not realised they were important at the time.
TL;DR version:
Monsters
Setting
PCs
Reorganise stuff
So, putting aside simply reorganising stuff, I like old DW, apart from the Setting, Monsters, and how the PCs work? Um...that sounds a lot more negative than what I intended.