Uncaring Cosmos

Arthur over at the most excellent Refereeing and Reflection blog recently wrote about revisiting the Dragon Warriors RPG. This was in response to my gushing about it a couple of months back. He’s given it a second shake, and has reassessed it somewhat more positively.

He says:

“So, I’ll give Uncaring Cosmos their due: they’ve certainly made me sit up and take notice of Dragon Warriors again, and I think there’s something of a case to be made for the game having a significant place in the history of British RPGs.”

I accept a big part of the appeal for me is nostalgia. Back in the early 1990s, Dragon Warriors was such a puzzle to me. It was the first tabletop RPG I’d ever encountered, before I even knew what RPGs were (Games Workshop, which was the most visible pre-internet manifestation of the hobby in Britain, was by then solely focused on wargaming).

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Righto, the new British Old-School campaign is coming together. Last night, ahead of a rather boozy Delta Green game, I pitched the campaign to my players and, I’m happy to report, it was received with enthusiasm. The basic idea is a kind of sword & sorcery “Pratchettesque pirates” setup that I’m tentatively calling Blacksand Nights.

Basically, the game will be a medieval pirate sandbox, with players taking on the role of budding freebooters. They won’t start with pirate ships, however, and will probably have to loot Firetop Mountain (or win the Deathtrap Dungeon prize money) to afford their first cog. The system will be a modified version of the Dragon Warriors RPG. The setting will be Titan from the Fighting Fantasy gamebooks (specifically Northern Allansia, Port Blacksand and environs).

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How’s this for a deep cut? Does anyone remember the Last Legionary books by Canadian sci-fi author Douglas Hill? Because I don’t. Or, at least, I didn’t until last night.

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Luther left me a comment under my last post asking if I planned to publish play reports from my upcoming British Old-School campaign. He’s interested in seeing how B-OSR games differ from A-OSR games in practice.

The answer is: yes, I’d love to. I don’t want to bore people with lengthy sagas [Then how about you stop writing here, eh? – Ed.], but a couple of brief write-ups might be acceptable.

However, it got me thinking. How would a B-OSR game feel different from an A-OSR game?

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I’ve made a character sheet for Dragon Warriors. You can get a copy here (though you’ll need a Google account to access it). It’s not my finest work, but it will get the job done.

I’ve decided to use the Dragon Warriors RPG by Dave Morris and Oliver Johnson as system of choice for my upcoming “British Old-School” campaign. After reading it through again, it really is about as close to B/X D&D as any British RPG published in the 1970s or ’80s ever came. Hopefully I can put together some Basic D&D / Dragon Warriors conversion notes at some point so that OSR content can be ported in relatively easily.

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