I’m not generally a fan of heartbreaker roleplaying games. When I’ve sat down to read them I’ve always had this little voice in the back of my head telling me that what I’m about to experience is, quite simply, the game I already own with material added by some house rules, and some changes or additions to address the writer’s vision of how the game should have been. It’s not a fair way to approach books such as these, I know, but it’s always a nagging doubt that sits there and skews my view of the game.

In all honesty, I pretty much ignored ZWEIHÄNDER when it first came up on my Warhammer radar. It was a few changes by gamers who loved the old-school Warhammer RPG, a fan edit of the game, nothing more than a few house rules thrown out into the ether to attract attention. However, the more it hung around the more it intrigued me, and when the Kickstarter began I then began to give it more than casual attention.

Actually, I was probably even more purposefully ignorant of this project than I have been with any other OSR-style game of this type. You see, I’m a huge Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 1st Edition fan. Huge. It is, without doubt, my favourite roleplaying game of them all. I bought the re-released softback in the late 1980s and I have had countless hours of adventures in this world. Even after 2nd Edition came out, with much cleaner and balanced rules, I still went back to the 1st Edition. It was unbalanced, with arguably the worst and most unmanageble magic system ever put into a rulebook, and it took quite a bit of work to get a handle on the rules (for myself, at any rate).

It was clunky and annoying at times, but, by the Blood God, I loved it. It wasn’t my first gaming system, and there have been better ones since then, but it’s the one that made the biggest impact on me creatively. And this was because the rulebook not only oozed atmosphere, it had everything I needed to run roleplaying games for years. The book had a wonderful dark-but-fun feel to it that was very me, and it contained full rules for everything, world details, a full bestiary and an adventure. It was everything I could have wanted in a single, weighty volume.

So, when someone on the internet has a go at creating their own version of it and not not only aims to redo what has come before but also create a full game in the ‘spirit’ of old Warhammer? Well… they’d better bring their A-game, because for 30 years I’ve not needed anything else for my Warhammer FRP games but that 1st Edition rulebook.

The more I read about ZWEIHÄNDER the more intrigued I became. I didn’t know much about the changes, but the artwork that started to appear was wonderful and really evocative of the setting as well as the original rulebook. Still, that wasn’t enough to sway me – after all, all they could do was emulate the Warhammer rules, so it wasn’t really Warhammer, was it? Unless I could travel the Reik avoiding that death, have a beer in Altdorf and headbutt mutants in the face in the Border Princes then what was the point?

But then I read more, and then I started to read the feedback from the early access Beta version of the rules. And my curiosity turned into suprise, then excitement. Then I started asking questions and before I knew what was happening a copy was being winged to me and it landed on my desk with an almighty thump. And I stared at it long and hard. Then I slowly opened the book and, with a deep nervous breath, I got stuck in.

The damn thing is huge! Huge I tell you! A single volume of almost 700 pages, hardback, with a full-colour cover and a black-and-white interior. It was so heavy the delivery man who dropped it off has been sending me his physiotherapy bills. Calling it ZWEIHÄNDER is accurate; you could wield this tome with two hands and beat someone to death with it.

It’s a gorgeous book, with a nice red page-marking ribbon that just about sticks out at the bottom. This is the version with the Kickstarter edition cover; in the dank sewers of some dark place, a mage summons fire, a hammer-wielding warrior takes a swing at some rat-men, a scarred elf attacks a larger rat, a soldier aims a musket and a dwarf attends to a wounded fellow, all while being guarded by a small but vicious dog. It’s action packed and a lot of fun, really getting across the action-packed darkness of the setting.

The Drivethrurpg print-on-demand has a different cover depicting four grim soldiers posing, as if for a photograph, all watching you, the reader, with accusing eyes. In all honesty, I prefer the Drivethrurpg print-on-demand cover. As fun as the Kickstarter one is, I feel the POD cover is much more atmospheric and it appeals to me more. Either way, each cover has wonderful art, the Kickstarter cover is by Dejan Mandic (who also does the interior art) and the POD is by Jussi Alarauhio.

And the interior art – wow. Dejan Mandic has produced some amazing work that captures the atmosphere of the game wonderfully. The number of illustrations is staggering, from small page-fillers to depictions of races, monsters and careers, to full-page chapter introductions and images. It’s all done in an old-fashioned way and it suits the book perfectly, meeting the design halfway between old-school 1980s goodness and modern design choices with evocative borders and layout. It’s fully black-and-white but that only adds to the grimness. It’s excellent stuff and throughout it looks great, and the use of a single artist keeps the atmosphere constant.

It’s a wonderful book, and it’s bound so that it can be left open where you need it without any fear of pages falling out or the spine cracking open.

Everything I expect to find in a Warhammer RPG is here – races (Human, Dwarf, Gnome, Halfling Ogre and Elf), archetypes (Academic, Commoner, Knave, Ranger, Socialite and Warrior), and then professions which I won’t list here because, like WFRP’s careers, there’s a lot of them. It’s all well balanced and characters are much more likely to be much more equal. In original WFRP, the career system gave some players better characters than others, sometimes by a long margin. I never really cared that much for game balance – it’s part of WFRP’s appeal for me – but this makes things much more balanced and will make players feel they’re much more competent within the group.

The main attributes are Combat, Brawn, Agility, Perception, Intelligence, Willpower and Fellowship, each represented by percentile scores. These scores reflect skills, which can be increased up to three ten percent increments, so up to 30% can be added to a skill as the character advances. Different professions open up different skill opportunities, and talents give characters special abilites they can pull out if needed. The skills have been tidied up and slightly reduced in number, so there’s a huge choice to be made but they’re fairly distributed between characters and professions.

All skills are percentile based – roll under to succeed – with modifications for difficulty and with different results representing different levels and effects of success or failure. Combat is fast and brutal, as it should be in a game like this, with lasting effects. You can contract diseases, go mad, and there’s a corruption scale that determines how you lean towards order or chaos, which is adjusted as play progresses and determined by what happens to the player, how they react to certain things and how they act. Leaning too far in either direction can result in disorders or benefits. The magic system is much better, a vast improvement on 1st Edition – but, to be fair, that wouldn’t be hard. The grimoire of spells is impressive with different schools of magic to choose from, and it’s easy and quick to use, although by the nature of the game the chances are that if anyone found out that you could cast spells you’d be strung up by the neck and everything you owned would be burned.

A huge section on game mastery helps with running games, but this is more of a set of extras to help with different situations, including overland travel, rewards for players, social intrigue and campaign ideas. There’s a large section on extra combat rules in here; I’m not sure why, they would have been better served in the combat section, even if they are optional. The huge bestiary is excellent and the adventure ‘A Bitter Harvest’ is a good introduction to the game as well as the dark fantasy genre as a whole. The appendix at the back is more than welcome, especially with a book this size.

As with Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 1st Edition, everything you need to run a dark fantasy game, in the Warhammer world or any other grim setting, is here. Whether you establish your own setting or use an existing one, these rules will have you covered with minimal adjustments to the rules. The magic section may need looking at depending on the setting, but otherwise it’s a solid system that will serve a dark game exceptionally well.

So - I’ve read the book, and I’ve run some players through an adventure of my own design, with ancient devils, broken pacts, serious political problems and some straight-forward in-your-face combat. How did I get on with it? More importantly, how did the game make me feel?

What hit me square in the face with the book is the writing; the book is almost 700 pages and the text dominates the pages. It’s well written and everything is fully explained. And when I say fully explained, I mean there’s a level of detail here that some might find a little annoying. You could say that it’s overwritten, with examples and explanations of sometimes obvious things that you may have done without. It does tell me that the writers were passionate about what they were doing, and that excitement is there on the page for everyone to see, but when you’re trying to pinpoint a rule or simply get to the point it takes time. If you’re in the middle of the game that can be a problem as it slows things down, so it’s best to make sure you’ve read the book cover to cover and highlighted the areas you’ll need regularly. As it’s such a big book, that can take a lot of time. This isn’t the sort of game that you can get into quickly; from cold, learning the rules and prepping for a game will take a lot of work.

Character creation was fun but I opted to allow my players to choose from the tables. Each part of character creation, from sex to skills, has a random table and you are able to roll randomly for pretty much everything. That can make for some fun characters if you’re playing on the edge, but my players wanted to make characters they could enjoy. There are a lot of choices for players to make during generation, and this alone took us an evening’s session. I don’t mnd that; it gives the group a chance to really think about their character and we can work out a group dynamic. Like I said earlier – this is the kind of game that requires a lot of time, mainly to digest the book and prep an adventure. You can’t really hand the book to the players and say ‘crack on’, and let them create characters off their own back because that’s an entire section of the book that will have to be read by every player individually. An evening of character creation is the best route to take, I feel.

The adventure I designed was easy to set up – I didn’t have to worry about scaling the threats or designing new stats, I could take the details I need straight from the book. I just marked the page number of the creature on my design and referred to it as game progressed, and I lifted NPCs from the introductory adventure. I have had plenty of experience in adventure design so this part was easy for me, and with the level of detail in the book it was even more of a doddle.

The adventure itself was fun, but the there was a little conflict between player expectations and the game in action. There were four players, two had not played Warhammer before and the other two had experience, and it was a little easier to run the game for the new players than it was the experienced ones. During combat especially, there were assumptions made by the Warhammer players as to what rolls were made and what they meant. I had to stop play a couple of times because I went with the flow and didn’t realise that I had made judgements based on the old rulebook and not ZWEIHÄNDER. That’s not a fault of the book, but if you are an old-school Warhammer player then make sure that you’re playing ZWEIHÄNDER! It got a little confusing, but after some backtracking and corrections we were back on course; the fault was mine.

There were a few times I had to reference the book as we played but this didn’t impact play too much. I had already marked what I needed so, as I mentioned earlier, it’s best to make sure you’ve done your pre-game prep. In fact, I was happy with the way it played out for the new players. They were experienced gamers but new to this system, so after a few rolls and an encounter they got used to the system and the game progressed at a nice clip even with the pause for my ‘those aren’t the rules!’ gaff.

Combat was fun and suitably brutal – a little too much for one player who almost bit the big one in the first fight! - and the unpredictable nature of the system left us all a little breathless. The low chances to hit were a little frustrating and some of the combat resulted in a series of rolls that resulted in nothing at all, but that’s the nature of the system and it added to the fun, especially when a lucky hit by one of the players pretty much ended the fight with a single roll. Not so much for the player who got hit right before that roll; he lost an ear and spent the rest of the game nodding during character conversations, and then ending with a ‘What?’ He’ll live, with the Crop Ear drawback.

All in all it was a successful game, and the ZWEIHÄNDER rules handled the action really well. The players felt they had control over their character’s design and creation, and they felt they had some control over the game itself even with beginner’s stats. The book, options and the adventure itself recreated the dark fantasy genre really well – I set it in a horror version of Europe, on the border of the Ottoman Empire - so all in all it was a successful evening. Well, two evenings if you include the character creation session. With four players and an equal number of foes we managed to resolve a combat encounter in half an hour to forty minutes; the adventure had three combat encounters and the rest was social interaction and investigating, and the entire evening’s play came in at five hours. It would most likely have been less if there hadn’t been any confusion about the rules but that wasn’t the game’s fault, it was ours as a group. As the GM it was an excellent game to run, and the players enjoyed it.

So… the big question is; would I use this Warhammer heartbreaker in a Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay game?

No, I wouldn’t. That’s not a reflection on this book, it would handle a WFRP game exceptionally well as the content is simply Warhammer with adjustments. It would be easy to say it’s WFRP with the serial numbers filed off, but that would be a disservice to the game. It’s an unashamed Warhammer heartbreaker after all, so those comparisons are inevitable, but whether you want to use it for Warhammer or any other dark fantasy world it’s perfectly suited. It is, however, Warhammer at it’s heart.

I wouldn’t use it because I’ve been using Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 1st Edition for more than a quarter of a century, and that game is woven into my Old World in a way that makes it pointless in me trying to use any other system. In many ways all of the consecutive percentile rules after 1st Edition have been better; including ZWEIHÄNDER as I think that, despite the rulebook’s complexity, it’s a much more fluid and balanced system. However, as a Warhammer grognard I simply see no reason to use a new game system for my campaigns. That might seem to be a rather nostalgia-influenced blinkered view on my part, but if the shirt fits...

Would I use ZWEIHÄNDER for other dark fantasy games? Absolutely 100% without a doubt. Here I have an excellent set of rules designed for miserable, grim, down-and-dirty fantasy roleplaying. I can take out or adjust certain sections depending on the world I’m running, and the rules are familiar enough for me to be comfortable in running a game of that genre while keeping it seperate and identifiable from my WFRP games. I have tried to use the WFRP 1st Edition rules for other worlds, but they ended up being the same WFRP games in different clothing. ZWEIHÄNDER is far enough removed to help me run other games in other worlds more identifiable and unique.

ZWEIHÄNDER is now my go-to system for dark fantasy games. In fact, I’m looking at creating my own world and also using an existing one. My own world is a discussion for another time, but the established world I’m looking at is Robert E. Howard’s ‘Solomon Kane’. I do love the original stories but I was quite taken by the Michael J. Bassett movie from 2009 (I said at the time that it was the greatest Warhammer movie never made) so the imagery from that film makes for an excellent background. Adventuring across the world with rapier and flintlock would make for a great campaign, with enough dark gods and raving badguys to keep players on their toes. ZWEIHÄNDER’s system makes the game edgy, dangerous and somewhat unpredictable, so that’s perfect for a game where the players are kept on the edge of death and madness. I’m basically going to run my campaign as horror action games with a Call of Cthulhu-type angle of danger. I’m sure ZWEIHÄNDER will handle that easily.

It’s big, it’s a heavy read and prep time will take a while. It’s not new-player friendly and you’ll need to have some experience with roleplaying to get the most out of it, it’s a little disjointed in parts and, yes, it’s overwritten, but ZWEIHÄNDER is an incredibly satisfying game of excellent quality, and the sheer darkness, joy and excitement for the history of the system and the genre are literally crawling off the page to get under your skin. There is very little in this book that can’t fail to inspire GMs and gaming groups, and with some investment of time and effort the end result is a rewarding experience that, once the campaign gets going and everyone is on the same page, will result in many satisfying campaigns for many months and even years. All in this one, single volume.

And that’s the very thing I loved the most about Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 1st Edition. ZWEIHÄNDER has done the legacy proud.

As I get older I find myself having less and less time to design, prep, and sometimes even run roleplaying games. As a result, I try to find games that are quick and easy to run, so that I can concentrate on what I think is important (such as the story and the unfolding plot) and less on the mechanics and statistics.

Unless it's a game system that me and my group knows well I don't usually delve into my thick, comprehensive rulebooks that much these days. I have my favoured systems to introduce new players to the hobby, and these are pretty generic, but every now and then there's a group who wants to experience the system that dominates the RPG market; the D20 system. Or, to be specific, the D&D game.

Usually I'd use the starter pack, but for those quick and easy games I've found a new and even easier system, one that emulates the D20 game and addresses some of it's key features, and yet is so stripped back that it takes no effort to set a game up.

GATEWAY is an introductory game that takes the standard D20 stats and make them the key focus of the game. At 16 pages it covers everything you'll need to run a game, and not just in the fantasy genre. It's a really good little system. What stops it from being great is that it's lacking a lot of polish and some focus, and I feel a re-write and restructuring of the layout would help immensley.

It works like this; a character has the standard D20 system abilities - Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Intelligence, Wisdom and Charisma. Instead of being given scores, each is given one of three types of roll; Proficiency, Deficiency or Normal. Each ability is also given a selection of skills.

When called upon to make a roll, the player rolls D20s; if they have a Proficiency in the ability, they roll two D20s and keep the higher result, very much like the D&D 5th Edition advantage roll. If they have a Deficiency, they roll two D20 and use the lower result. A Normal ability is a straightforward D20 roll. The target number is determined by the GM, from 2 to 5 for really easy, up to 20 for impossible.

And that's it in a nutshell. There are small tables for working out Armour Class and Hit Points, but in general that is the entire game, and as it's simple to print off you can have a small sixteen page document, or you can download it as an app and keep it on your phone or tablet. In fact, with a form fillable sheet and a dice rolling app there's no need for any pencils or paper, and interested parties can download the rules and be ready to go in a very short period of time. And the greatest thing of all? It's free.

Now, I really like it. I like the idea of numberless abilities and using the proficiency angle as it just gives a dice roll and that's it, and even though you won't get an incredibly well-rounded character you will get a playable PC you can use for a few sessions. I like the simplicity of the rules and the idea that you can use it for anything, although I do feel it's more angled to fantasy games than any other genre, and I like the freeform feel of it all. It's a nice little system.

But what lets it down is the presentation, both in the free downloadable rules from the Aurican's Lair website and in the app itself. The rules are badly laid out in a very basic format, with some errors in the text, and the rules are spaced out in different areas which lends a little confusion, such as explaining how to roll against target numbers and then not having the target numbers explained until well into the rules section. There's also a lot of GM advice, but this is supposed to be a gateway into tabletop gaming so without a proper explanation of what tabletop RPGs are about these are somewhat superfluous. If the system is for existing GMs to use to introduce new gamers to the hobby, then this section is pretty pointless.

There's also a lot of attention on the saving throws covering incidents from being blinded to being unconcious, and this seems like a lot of wasted effort and betrays the focus of the game - to be simple and easy - and complicates things somewhat.

With some polish, some better imagery and layout, with a huge edit and much more focus on what and who the game is aimed at, GATEWAY could be an excellent introductory game, and may even be used for longer campaigns for experienced groups who just want to dive in and out of a game. It is a great little system, and it's one I have no problem in using on gamers who want to experience D&D or roleplaying in general for the first time, but the general presentation lacks finesse and may put some people off, and that's a shame because the core idea here is really quite good.

Recommended.

It may be difficult, sometimes, to find a gaming group. Or maybe everyone has commitments that stop them from meeting on a regular basis. There are times when you just want to game, but you’ve only got yourself for company and the last thing you want to do is sit in front of a computer screen tapping keys.

Say hello to Dungeon: A Solo Adventure Game.

Dungeon is a self contained game that enables a player to have random roleplaying adventures without the need for those pesky Gamemasters sitting at the head of the table hogging all the limelight. It has the feel of an old-school gamebook - such as the Fighting Fantasy series - but there’s no page-flipping. Every game is a random sequence of events that your hero has to fight through to win their goal and gain the treasure. All you need are some six-sided dice.

THE BOOK

The book itself is a 47 page PDF with a colour cover and black-and-white interior. The cover is quite striking, with a red leather-like background and the image of what could be a fossilised dragon splashed across it. It’s quite effective.

The interior is black-and-white with large print and small pieces of simple but effective artwork. There are nice scroll-like borders on the hero, quest and encounters pages that are quite pretty and add to the atmosphere. It would have been nice to see more artwork invoking the genre, such as warriors and monsters, and more illustrations in the bestiary would have been a good addition - I always like to see what I’m fighting. It’s all very well laid out, easy on the eye and professionally done.

You also get a sheet of Dungeons Cards you can print out with monster and encounter details on – more on this later.

THE SYSTEM

Players get to choose from four Heroes – the barbarian, the dwarf, the elf and the mage. Each of these heroes has abilities and equipment that will help them in different ways during the adventure so what you choose will make a difference.

Each hero (or monster, for that matter) has a set of simple stats – Combat Dice, which denotes how many D6 the player rolls when attacking. Armour, which indicates the target number you have to reach on the Combat Dice roll to injure your opponent; for every die that scores equal to or above this number you score a single wound. Wounds are the health score of the hero. Magic Dice, if you’re playing a mage. Speed, a form of initiative score, and Gear, what the hero is carrying.

Magic is handled in a similar fashion as combat, with scores for the difficulty in casting the spell acting in a similar fashion to the Armour score.

As you can see, the system is very simple and I’ve managed to give you an idea of how it works in the stat description above. Anything more would give away the entire system, so I won’t go into any more detail here.

The combat system is incredibly simple – you roll and damage, they roll and damage, until one of you drops down dead. It’s a nice and effective little system and plays out really well.

THE GAME

Now that you’ve got a hero, you need an adventure for him or her to go on.

Quests are a sequence of twelve random encounters, called in the game ‘Areas’, that the hero has to overcome in order to reach the ‘Final Area’, the conclusion to the Quest. In overcoming these Areas and the Final Area, the hero can increase in treasure, items and abilities. What is in each Area is decided upon randomly and can take the form of a Monster to fight, an Event to overcome or a Quest Monster to defeat. Each Quest also has a different Final Area with special goals for the Hero to reach in order to complete the Quest.

First of all, you choose one of six quests – these are the simple goals to achieve that have a possible Special Rule, which tells you how you begin or what may happen during the Quest; a Final Area which gives you the goals to overcome after surviving twelve Area; and the Quest Monster, the primary foe of the Quest.

Each Area is rolled for randomly, or you can use the cards I mentioned earlier – first, a 1D6 decides whether you encounter a foe, an event or if nothing at all happens. Upon rolling for an Encounter or an Event, the player then rolls 2D6 on the relevant Encounter or Events tables. Encounters decide what monster you will fight, including the Quest Monster, and Events tell you what other things befall your hero, such as cave-ins or finding a fountain. These Events can also have their own sub-tables to randomise effects should you decide to interact with them.

From all of these areas the hero has the chance to earn gold, potions and artefacts to help them on their Quest. All of these tables create a random variety of results that keep the game entertaining.

Upon completing the Quest, the hero can earn Experience, which increase their Wound stat, learn a skill that ups their abilities, or earn even more gold and artefacts. This is decided on randomly.

CONCLUSIONS

For two dollars what you have here is a quick, easy and simple game that will keep you entertained for quite a while. You also have the basics of a great introductory roleplaying game with simple mechanics and a form of character advancement.

It certainly looks the part – the simple colour cover is quite evocative and effective, and the interior is well laid out and easy to read. It does suffer slightly for lack of illustrations and it would have benefited from more images. I’m also a sucker for game world maps, too, so it would be nice to see where it is I‘m adventuring, but that’s a personal preference and bears no impact ion the game itself. You could quite easily set this on your favourite game world.

The game itself takes about ten minutes to fully learn and I’ve played out quests that last ten to twenty minutes, so it makes it perfect for a pick-up-and-play game if you have nothing else on or if you’re on along journey. It is fun and the random nature of the game keeps you on your toes and makes every game different. With only six quests in the book and two lots of Areas that equal 22 events it is easy to see that games will become repetitive, and in fact I have had a couple of games that have felt very similar. It does say in the book that future expansions will provide additional Quests, which is a good thing, and it would be nice to see an increased number of Encounters and Events to supplement what is already in the book. This would definitely add some longevity to the game, but they’re so easy to do then there’s nothing stopping enterprising players from creating their own. You could create them for your friends and challenge each other.

You can use the random dice for the Areas or print the cards that come with it. To be honest it’s much easier to print the whole thing out as it makes it easier to refer to the sheets you need.

I can recommend this game. It’s a great little system that you can use for its intended purpose or as an actual roleplaying game for your gaming group. If you’re looking for a rules-light system then there’s a great one right here. I would have liked to have seen more artwork, and the longevity of the initial game itself may suffer due to the repetitive nature of the rolls, but for two dollars you’re getting a great game that’ll keep you entertained for hours.

A superb introduction to a fantastic game. This little book will keep you in adventures for a while, but it's the main core book that has the real meat. Highly recommended.

The fantasy role-playing game Dragon Warriors has a healthy following and the Lands of Legend have been around for many years; as such there are a lot of stories to tell from around this vast pseudo-mediaeval land and more than enough places to visit and people to meet. With that in mind, a small group of Dragon Warriors fans - following the lead of Bill Edmunds who volunteered himself to produce the magazine - decided to produce a fanzine dedicated to the game, to include articles on locations, new professions, creatures, adventures and all sorts of stuff to support the Dragon Warriors line. Toward the end of 2009 the first issue of Ordo Draconis: The Journal of the Dragon Warriors Role-Playing Game, was released for free download.

In issue one you’ll find the very first map ever drawn of the Lands of Legend by Leo Hartas in 1984. That’s very nostalgic and quite a coup for a free fan-produced online publication. Of course, that’s improved upon later on by the interview with Dave Morris, one of the original creators of Dragon Warriors in the 1980s and James Wallis of Magnum Opus Press, the man who brings us the new Dragon Warriors in all its glory. That’s very impressive and it gives an insight into where Dragon Warriors came from, where it is now and where it’s going.

There then follows several articles that most Dragon Warriors GMs will find useful. There’s a few house rules you might want to use in your game, the Friar profession, some encounters, details of a PBM Thuland campaign, the details of the county of Anglicia in Ellesland, an essay of the Faerie in the Lands of Legend, an adventure and, finally, a detailed (but sadly incomplete – the skills section is missing!) Dragon Warriors character sheet.

Issue two follows the same design path but this time there are plenty more pages and more people contributing, so it’s hardly surprising that they’ve started charging for the 97 pages the fanzine has grown into. With another excellent cover by John Hodgson the PDF is filled with more useful articles, but this time there’s an addition to the fanzine. Now the stats presented are accompanied by their Pathfinder equivalents. That’s right, the role-playing game from Paizo Publishing is being represented in the pages of the fanzine.

The contents of issue two include a poster map of Northern Cornumbria, the Thane profession, a detailed look at the Darbon Barony, a spooky short story, a closer look at Eastmarch, the ‘Codex Cryptozoologica’ which showcases a creature of the world, more encounters, more from the Thuland PBM game, a review of the Dragon warriors supplement ‘Friends or Foes’, a new adventure, some atmospheric words and names from Cornumbria, and finally the corrected character sheet from issue one (and very functional and detailed it is, too).

So, how do these two publications measure up?

Let’s get my bias out of the way first. I play Dragon Warriors, I enjoy Dragon Warriors and I have every one of the new Dragon Warriors publications up to yet. I like the Lands of Legend and so I’m always on the lookout for new stuff to add to my collection. Ordo Draconis fills this need quite well – as a GM I’m looking for new encounters to run and new locations to game in, new ideas to inspire and new characters to use and abuse. So, this fanzine has come along at the right time for me. With that in mind let’s press on to what I thought about the publication.

The wording is clear, the font used is easy on the eye and the layout is excellent. It’s all black on white with some (but not many) illustrations. To be honest, it’s surprising that the 38-page issue one PDF is free – the John Hodgson cover is very evocative and both issues definitely appear to be something you’d see on a newsagent’s shelf. Full cover, clearly worded and professionally done. That’s a good start.

In fact, the thing that impressed me the most about these fanzines is the professional look of them both. The fact that the first one is free is a massive bonus as its laid out and presented like a product ready for purchase. All it needed was a cover price and a shelf and I would have been quite happy to buy a copy. In many respects the fact that it’s free and useful is almost too good to be true.

As with many fanzines the first issue is text heavy – it would have been nice to see more illustrations to break up the walls of text, or maybe some diversity to the page layouts as the articles are in the two-column format, as they are in both issues, all sharing the same font and style. Saying that, there are some very nice full colour maps later in the fanzine.

I found the most useful articles in issue one to be the ‘Along the Road’ encounters, and the adventure ‘The Ruins of Castle Cerreg’ as I can put these to good use. Another scoop is the article by Dragon Warriors author Dave Morris ‘Believing in Faerie’, an excellent essay about the use of the creatures and races of Fay in the game. There was some wasted space, especially at the end of articles, and the text-heavy layout wasn’t a bad thing but I found myself wanting more illustrations to help stoke the imagination. Some small sketches for the encounters would have been nice, and some more atmospheric illustrations for the adventure would have been better, but bearing in mind that the fanzine was free what you get is more than sufficient. What was highly disappointing was finding out that the detailed character sheet included at the back of the magazine did not include space for skills! This is corrected in issue two and is an excellent character sheet, but finding this out after printing twenty copies was a little disappointing. All in all, Ordo Draconis issue one is an excellent fanzine.

Then came issue two. This issue is being charged for (just to cover costs, there’s no profit involved) and at a whopping 97 pages I’m hardly surprised. With another John Hodgson cover and much more meat within the pages I delved in with high expectations.

I wasn’t disappointed. There was plenty of material in the fanzine for me to use in my games and, whilst I found the very good story entertaining but a little redundant as far as game use was concerned and the PBM game very interesting but of no real use to me, I think I’ll be able to put each and every one of the articles to use. Although once again there are large clumps of text there are now more illustrations that fill it out nicely and add a little extra depth to the fanzine.

I was surprised to find that the fanzine was now dual-statted - players of Paizo Publishing’s ‘Pathfinder’ game will find stats for the characters included. The stats take up very little space and do not intrude on those of us who use and enjoy the Dragon Warriors system and are an excellent idea as it will draw players of another highly regarded and enjoyed system to the Lands of Legend. Legend is such an atmospheric and evocative setting that it deserves all kinds of attention and this is a clever way to draw more players into the world.

Issue two, although similar in layout to issue one, is a whole new magazine. The articles are much longer and have much more detail in both the writing and the additional rules and statistics. This especially shows in the detailed look at the Darbon Barony, the Eastmarch article, the ‘Codex Cryptozoologica’ and the new adventure. The additonal details give you plenty of material and that’s what you want from a gaming fanzine – stuff you can use in your own games. Issue two has this information in abundance and just these four articles alone are well worth the asking price.

What I like most about issue two (and this can be said of issue one, too) is the fact that all the people who have worked on it have captured the flavour of Dragon Warriors really well. There are no high-fantasy influences or sudden changes of atmosphere or design to suit an author’s interpretation of the game. The articles all share the same pseudo-historical fantasy feeling of the Dragon Warriors game and this is to be highly commended as this whole thing could have easily been a cheap fan rag written as an interpretation of the game, with insane extra spells and high-fantasy creatures and locations. No, the writers have kept the content in line with the Dragon Warriors design, so much so it could easily be considered part of the official Dragon Warriors product line. Indeed, Magnum Opus Press are fully supporting the fanzine even though it is not an official publication. This is what gives Ordo Draconis its strength – the fact that you could easily believe that this has been designed for the game under the watchful editorial eye of the publishers.

I have no trouble whatsoever recommending Ordo Draconis to not only fans of Dragon Warriors and Pathfinder but of any fantasy role-playing game. It’s professionally made, well laid out, cleverly realised and there’s plenty of material to give you plenty of inspiration. What more could you want from a fanzine?