One of the things that impressed me the most about Dragonbane is the boxed set.
I remember many years ago I approached several different game companies and asked why they weren’t making boxed set TTRPG games. We had just come off of an era of five or six of the best boxed sets in TTRPG history and suddenly everyone in the USA TTRPG industry stopped making boxed sets and switched to hardcover or softcover books. Allegedly they were too expensive to produce.
If a TTRPG boxed set is comparable to a minis game, then the average boxed set would have run upwards of $60 in the late 1990s-early 2000s. The price of a premium miniatures game (Warhammer 40,000) has steadily increased over the years and now runs $112 USD for the basic set. (You can get simpler or more deluxe boxes at different prices.)
Disclaimer: Statements expressed in this article are strictly my opinion. If you disagree or have a different opinion, that’s okay. I’m not an expert on everything. I’m not always right. I’m just writing from my experience as I know it. Your mileage may vary.
The nice folks at Games Workshop give the customer a pretty okay pile of swag for the money. There are enough (unpainted) minis to get started on a Tyranid or Space Marine army. Then there is the play mat, dice, rulers, rulebook and army cards. Compare that to a TTRPG now.
The last boxed set I remember seeing from Wizards of the Coast was the latest Starter.
Dragons of Stormwrack Isle was the latest starter set for official Dungeons & Dragons. As starter sets go, it’s pretty okay. You get a rulebook for characters 1-3, an adventure, maps, and the 7 standard polyhedral dice. I’m not going to link to D&D Beyond because I can find it in the clearance section at Target for way cheaper. (I will not start the WotC rant…) It’s pretty decent for character levels 1-3 just like the good old days.
Realizing that’s also intended to rope new players and Dungeon Masters into buying one to three $50+ hardcover books. The price of those books skyrocketed even more since the 2020 plandemic. What gets me is the price of the physical books went up, but then many of them end up on clearance somewhere or go cheaper on Amazon. The same can be said for boxed sets.
So, what changed?
Personally, I think the advent of German board games in the USA brought a lot of changes with it. Settlers of Catan, Carcassonne, Pandemic, Power Grid, and others brought better quality components, nicer printing, and wooden meeples. It also acted as a wake up call for Hasbro/WotC. Suddenly Monopoly wasn’t the only game in town any more.
That also led to a resurgence of games such as HeroQuest and more recently Axis & Allies as well as Heroscape. I see Talisman made a comeback as well. HeroQuest and Talisman were games that closely emulated TTRPGs but within the confines of a boardgame.
I also see games such as Gloomhaven and Mansions of Madness taking some of the credit for a push toward a resurgence of American TTRPG boxed sets. I can think of about a dozen similar boardgames that might not be TTRPGs by name, but definitely have that man vs monster fantasy game feel to them. (As a side note, I miss Legions of Steel, Mutant Chronicles, and Space Hulk.) Yes, even my favorite boardgames involve some TTRPG elements.
Enter our friends at Free League Publishing.
I knew from my days selling board games and some of my gaming friends that Europe’s gaming culture is a lot different than it is in the United States. Europe in general is arguably better when it comes to games of any kind and way friendlier when it comes to TTRPGs. Maybe it’s the strong sense of community. Maybe it’s the three block walk to the corner pub where almost everyone around shows up at least once per day. Maybe it’s that the locals are used to hanging out and being sociable/communal.
(*Have I mentioned that part of me really wants to move to Europe? Yeah. I’m still learning Swedish, though. It’s gonna be a while.)
My German friends especially told me that boardgames really are kind of a serious pub sport and finding a pickup game most nights was pretty easy. I also got the impression they were good at sussing out the cheap junk from the games with quality parts and solid rules. That’s where games with wood components and laminated chipboard come in. Ravensburger, Rio Grande Games, and Asmodee are all well known and loved brands from Europe that we all love around here. I don’t think they would have made it over to the US had they been bad in Europe.
Free League Publishing (aka Fria Ligan) still takes the prize.
Then we come to Free League Publishing. Dragonbane has far and away one of the best darn core boxed sets I’ve ever seen in my 40+ years of TTRPGs. It’s not just a couple of sickly rulebooks, a pamphlet adventure and dice. Free League went all out on Dragonbane from the quality of the box itself to the paper on the rulebooks and adventures.
The best physical part(s), in my opinion, is the standees. These things come printed on some pretty stout cardboard like I’m used to seeing in a lot of European boardgames. I feel like $25 for the Dragonbane Bestiary standees is not too outrageous. These guys could probably build a miniatures wargame with these pieces, and I would play it. My only note for improvement would have been some sort of tokens for Large and Huge Monster bases to go under the standee to tell where exactly the thing is standing. Not all of us own tons of old GW WH Fantasy and 40K bases or anything.
The rest of the Dragonbane boxed components are pretty sweet, too. They gave us custom d20s with a Dragon for the 1 and a Demon for the 20. There are also 4d6 for generating characters and one each of the rest of the usual seven for damage and random tables. They’re pretty clear green dice.
There’s also a world map. I’m not sure I’ll use it for my regular campaign, but it’s great for new GMs who don’t have campaign after campaign ready to go complete with cartography. There’s also a series of adventures that could easily constitute a short campaign. Free League even went the extra mile and gave us a solid solo adventure book. (I can’t imagine WotC ever doing that for D&D.)
I’m a bit sad I didn’t back the Kickstarter for this when I had the chance. That cloth map is amazeballs. The GM screen looks pretty sweet, too. I’m probably going to end up making my own screen, though.
My luck with softcover rulebooks has not always been the best, but I understand not putting a hardback in the box. I like the hardcover book to pass around to players. I use the softcover to mark with Post-It tabs and bookmarks for session prep. I think hardcover books look classier, though.
Free League has also produced Starter Boxed sets for some of their other games and I hope I get a chance to dig into some of them in the near future. I hear good things about Alien, Twilight 2000, Forbidden Lands, and The Walking Dead Universe boxes. Ironically, Forbidden Lands actually has hardcover books within its box. I’m also surprised that T2K kept the cardboard counters for troops, vehicles, etc.
I’ll take any of the Free League boxed sets over most American games. Our friends from Sweden seem to have a much more solid grasp on how to do games well. If nothing else, the Dragonbane boxed set is just so much better than D&D. We haven’t even heard if there is one for the new edition yet. (One would think that should be one of the first products out of the gate, plus one for the 50th Anniversary, but…)
Thank you for being here today with me. I appreciate you. Please embrace the things that bring you the most joy.
Jeff's Game Box 