It seems like an obvious connection, pairing the most up-to-date iteration of Drakar och Demoner, Free League’s Dragonbane, to the rich game world of Riot Mind’s previous system expression, Trudvang Chronicles. I have wanted to explore the Trudvang setting for some time, and had managed to get the base game out for a short convention run. Although fiddly, I was happy enough with it, and could see that, with extended campaign play, players would settle down with the proliferation of skills and somewhat involved action point economy. However, Free League have knocked it out of the park (again) with Dragonbane, an instantly accessible nouveau BRP-alike game laced with their customary design flourishes. It’s too good not to play.
It probably helps that the Foundry VTT Dragonbane system is an elegant and attractive implementation of a smooth game system. This makes online play so attractive. However, to get the system and setting to talk to each other I had to make some basic design decisions of my own. Do you just plonk Dragonbane wholesale on top of Trudvang? How much of the Trudvang setting flavour, expressed in game mechanical terms, do you bring into Dragonbane? After some thought, I have decided to bring the Vitner Weaving magic, and Dimwalker divine powers over to Dragonbane pretty much wholesale, as they are imbued with setting flavour. By far this was the biggest part of the melding process, at least so far.
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| Creating Trudvang powers using the Dragonbane system framework |
The Foundry Dragonbane system is extremely accommodating to extension in new directions, adding new ‘spells’, secondary skills, professions, and probably just about anything else. My conversion watchword was to stick to the simplicity of the Dragonbane game, watchfull not to bring over copious and unnecessary Trudvang skills and detailed power point spends. So, a blend of Trudvang flavour, with extended Dragonbane simplicity. So far, this seems to look OK.
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| Dragonbane: Trudvang characters ready to play |
In some ways my conversion has been character led. Taking my six iconic Trudvang Chronicles characters, I converted them each across to Dragonbane, picking up the secondary skills and magic powers as I went. I have six Dragonbane characters ready to go.
Of course, the watchwords are ‘actual play’, so the next step is to put together a game where all these elements can be tested out. In my digital vault of Trudvang, I have a few nice scenarios, including a few that were prepared for D&D5e. One of these is ‘Wyrmtongue’ a self contained aventure of 1-2 sessions that conveys the setting and tells an epic tale.
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| Wyrmtongue in preparation |
This adventure is now all loaded in and ready to go. I hope to stream this game in the near future. It should prove a useful test bed in preparation for ‘Snowsaga’ a longer epic saga, that will need some structural work to be enjoyable. The adventure as written has a lazy railroad undercurrent, that needs stomping on from a great height by a suitably grumpy Hrim Troll. There’s lots to like about it, but after my Conan 2D20 ‘Shadow of the Sorcerer’ experience, I’m wary of these set piece A-B-C-D-Inevitable End structures. I shall weave some magic around it to bring out the fun, for players then to reconstruct as they wish.
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| Trudvang Journaling |
One of the real delights in this process has been the underpinning support of Foundry VTT. At present, I am developing accessible Trudvang world lore using Foundry’s powerful Journal system. In particular, being able to drag and drop journal entries onto maps to seamlessly create links between the visual and the written is just wonderful. Another week of this and I will be ready to bring Snowsaga itself into the VTT and make it ready for play.
There will be some tweaking to do once play commences. I’m sure some of the new spells will need some editing as we go, but the combination of sleek system and rich setting is quite intoxicating.
I just need to find some people who would like to explore this with me…