About the game:
Hearken back to the Golden Age of Role-playing Games!
Journey into a realm of myth and magic, where ancient legends and terrifying monsters come to life, and adventure awaits…
Inspired by the timeles role-playing tradition of the 1980s, this ruleset seamlessly integrates the simplicity of B/X with the chrome of First Edition. The book includes everything you need: races, classes spell, monsters, and treasure, combined in a single volume.
In its simplest form, Dragonslayer mimics BX in gameplay. Moldvay Basic is a finely tuned machine. It’s the best, most internally consistent edition ever created. However, Gary Gygax’s siren song of First Edition still echoes in our heads and the races, classes, magic items, monsters, and spells, drip with texture and flavour for fantasy campaigns.
Having said that, Dragonslayer uses the engine of BX with the chrome of First Edition. What does that mean? It means the combat engine, casting, and initiative reflect the former, and the cool stuff reflects the latter. There were also issues with 1E that needed to be addressed. For example, dragons were too weak, demon and devil types were internally inconsistent, druids were hosed, the monk was non-western, thrown weapon bonuses/damage was never really addressed to satisfaction. There were lots of lame rules that needed to go like weapon-speed factors and counting segments. Just because a rule existed to keep Arneson from getting royalties doesn’t make it a good rule.
At the end of the day, Dragonslayer presents like a honed version of 1E but with the firm commitment to the iterative elegance of Moldvay Basic.
Think of Dragonslayer as halfway between the two or .75
