Sponsored.  Drakar och Demoner is Scandinavia’s first and biggest tabletop RPG, originally launched in 1982.  Later this year, Free League Publishing will release a brand new and reimagined edition under the English title Dragonbane – a fun and fast D20-based fantasy RPG that is great for long campaigns but also perfect for a one-shot if you just want to have some quick fun at your table for a night.

"Sitting by a fireplace in an old house by a lake in the woods, as dusk turned to night outside, listening intently to my older brother vividly describing the fierce orcs facing me.  Grabbing the strange and magical polyhedral dice, getting ready to fight – or die.

That's the earliest memory I can recollect of playing Drakar och Demoner, a game that was synonymous with roleplaying games for a generation of Swedish kids.  It was the summer of 1985, and little did I know what lasting impact that moment would have on my life.

There has been talk about the "Swedish wave" in the RPG world in the last few years, with award-winning titles like Tales From the Loop, Symbaroum, Forbidden Lands, and MÖRK BORG. Drakar och Demoner is the game that started it all.

In spite of what its name might suggest, the origins of this game are found in the early Chaosium titles.  Its' very first edition in 1982 was a direct translation of Magic World.  The game soon took a life of its own, evolving through a dozen various editions in Sweden over the decades.

Now, returning a reimagined Drakar och Demoner to an international audience under the title Dragonbane, we had to ask ourselves - what is this game, really?

For us, and many others in the Swedish roleplaying community, Drakar och Demoner is a touchstone of our hobby and needs no definition or explanation.  For the rest of the roleplaying world, this game is, so far, completely unknown.

Our quest was to journey far and wide into four decades of Nordic roleplaying history and find the essential elements of this game.  What truly made it great.  Then, to bring those pieces of legacy back to life and mold them into a new game for the 2020s, using four decades of evolution in game design and our own decade of creating Free League RPGs.

The end result is a fantasy roleplaying game full of magic, mystery, and adventure – designed from the ground up to facilitate fast and furious play, with very little prep time and adventures that are a breeze to run.

Though a toolbox allowing you to tell fantasy stories of all kinds, Dragonbane is a game with room for laughs at the table and even a pinch of silliness at times – while at the same time offering brutal challenges for the adventurers.  We call this playstyle mirth and mayhem roleplaying.

Dragonbane has art by acclaimed illustrator Johan Egerkrans (Vaesen – Nordic Horror Roleplaying) and game design by the award-winning team behind Mutant: Year Zero, Forbidden Lands, the ALIEN RPG, and the Blade Runner RPG.  It will be released in printed format in August this year."

–Tomas Härenstam, CEO, Free League Publishing

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This coverage is part of RPG Week, celebrating all things RPG at ICv2.  For more ICv2 RPG Week articles, click here.