Sweden’s ‘Dragonbane’ TTRPG Takes Flight In A U.S. Release

Welcome to the table,

I’m so excited about Dragonbane. The art, the lore, the setting… Everything about this is amazing.

First and foremost for those of you who don’t know what Dragonbane is, it’s Sweden’s first and arguably biggest TTRPG. Known in Sweden as Drakar och Demoner it has been reborn in English as the epic new fantasy RPG Dragonbane, now available for pre-order on the Free League website, with immediate access to the complete PDF package, ahead of the boxed edition release later this year.

The core set includes the full rule book and an adventures book with a bunch of connected adventures that can fit into one larger ongoing campaign or be used as small one-shot adventures, or story-seeds for your own homebrew games.

You also get five pre-generated characters, over 70 custom cards for loot, adventures, initiatives, and other assorted stuff, and a stunning map of the Misty Vale setting, created by the cartographer Francesca Baerald. What’s a HUGE selling point in my opinion, aside from how great this whole set is from the art to the concepts to the mechanics of the game, is that you also get a 48-page quickstart PDF completely free.

The game setting feels like it’s lifted from the pages of a pulp sword and sorcery novel, but it has a ton of safety tools and considerations that showcase why Free League is an industry leader.

Players will be exploring misty forests, deep ravines, and forgotten caves as they encounter demons, ghosts, and strange monsters in the pursuit of adventure, fame, and hidden treasures. Dragonbane is full of all these really rad idea seeds that allow Storytellers to develop their own adventures for their players, but it provides enough of a framework that you never feel lost for an anchor point to grab onto and build onto for the next encounter or story moment.

There is also mention of future modules that will explore even more of the game world with dedicated stories, but even those will still be open in a way that allows creators to have the freedom to create their own adventures.

The team on this project is also amazing, pulling from some of the biggest who’s-who of the Swedish RPG scene. Tomas Härenstam (Forbidden Lands, ALIEN TTRPG), one of the most respected names in tabletop design, lends his skills to the written word while the dizzyingly talented Johan Egerkrans (Vaesen) is the game’s illustrator. Between these two titans of the industry, the tone of Dragonbane comes together in such a way that it’s sure to become a mainstay at most tables going forward.

I’m going to be taking a deeper dive into Dragonbane over the weeks to come, so get ready for lots more content coming soon.

Until next time, go… pre-order this book. This is not sponsored, this is just a really rad project I backed myself and think is a wonderful addition to the gaming space.