Hob’s Dell. I mean, the name says it all. When was the last time you set an adventure in a Dell?
Remember when maps came in just two colours – black and white – and weren’t marked in squares? Remember when players could go anywhere (at their own peril!) rather than follow Corridor 1 to Room A then onto Corridor 2 to Room B? Yep, so do I – and Dragon Warriors has maps by the bucket-load that do just that. Each adventure is fully mapped out, and across the six Books there’s enough maps to driven even the most hardened cartography addict (Alex, I’m looking at you) into a lustful frenzy.
It culminates with Book Six which covers the Lands of Legend, a complete (-ish) game-world that’s roughly modeled after Medeival Europe. There’s Albion nudging the coastline alongside Chaubrette. We’ve Algandy and Kurland, the Caliphate of Zhenir and the Nomad Khanates. Pure, wonderful Old School names that perfectly evoke all those maps you scrawled in the back of your exercise books with a biro during those boring Geography lessons. Admit it. There’s no shame.
Whether it’s one of Dragon Warriors‘ scenario maps, or one of the wonderful hand-drawn maps of Legend, they’re all places you ache to visit. The stark black-and-white pulls you in a way that today’s full-colour computerized sanitized maps just….. don’t. Pouring over these kittens feels like you’re the first (ok, second) person to see them, and they call out to the adventurer in us all.
And that, let’s face it, is what role-playing is all about.
Dragon Warriors is a classic role-playing game released in 1985 as 6 trade paperback books. It is now available for free download. Happy Dragon Warriors Week!
Dear Fellow Bloggists,
I’m sending out a mass e-mail to everyone on my blog roll in hopes that we could do a little link exchange and help our respective pages connect a little better and therefore bring more new readers to our blogs. If you’re receiving this e-mail, then you’re already on my blog roll for everyone to see and all I’m hoping for is that my blog could be included on your’s as well. If you don’t have a blog roll, then I mashed together a little bit of code for a small clicky link thingy that you can put any old where on your page.
Here it is…
In return, I’d be happy to post one of yours on my page as well. No problemo!
If I’ve already approached you about a link trade, then my apologies for being redundant. And if you are the type that’s not real big into trading links, then no sweat, no one is obligated to do anything. Also, some of you may be receiving this message via one of your comments, if so, so sorry for coming off all spammy, but it’s probably because I couldn’t find an e-mail link for which to contact you. You can always delete this from your comments, my feelings won’t be hurt.
I look forward to doing a little link trading with you all and thanks for giving me a bit of your time. My blog can be seen HERE.
Thanks again, and I look forward to to reading your blogs!
-Reis O’Brien
High Priest of Geek Orthodox
Oops! Please ignore that last comment, I accidentally hit paste! My bad!
Anyway, i just wanted to say thanks for posting that link to the downloads for these books. I had never heard of them until now and they’re awesome. Thanks again!
Lol! :D No problem, Reis.
Dragon Warriors is one of the great undiscovered gems of role-playing, especially if you’re not from the UK. It’s well worth me spending a week giving it some love in preparation for the new release in October.
You are right about the adventure maps, but one map was alays missing from the game – that of the city of Rathurbosk (Book Six: The World of Legend).
So I did my own, and incuded that city one way or another in every fantasy campaign or one-shot ever since.
Dragon Warriors is surely “in the air”, because that map was published just a few days ago in the new German fanzine, “Abenteuer.”, a fanzine that was created to celebrate old school, btw.
Here’s the link to the homepage:
http://www.abenteuerpunkt.ch/eins.html
Direct link to the Rathurbosk map:
http://www.abenteuerpunkt.ch/rathurbosk.jpg
Dirk
Wow! Thanks for that, Dirk :D
Yeah, I loved Ratherbosk too, from the first time I read about it.
I have to say, I agree with all your hperbole about Dragon Warriors. It was my first RPG, and still the one that has provided the most pleasure. I found it accidentally in a bookshop in the Blue Mountains in Australia, and quickly learnt hat a bunch of other people had too.
For some reason though Book 5 never turned up there.
@Jerwold Dragon Warriors was unfortunately beset with distribution problems. Different parts of the world only received some of the books and not others meaning it was all-but-impossible to get a complete set. Sad, considering it was a system so far ahead of it’s time.
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