Alright, kids, fluff is over. It’s time for crunch. Today we’re starting on the DragonRaid rulebook. I hope you like math because, hoo-boy, do I have a lot of it for you.

Let’s go over the first three sections quickly.

The first one is glossary, which seems useful enough unlike the one in the introduction guide. It defines mechanical terms this time around.

Next is “Game Equipment,” which lists everything that you can find in the DragonRaid boxset: the three books plus pamphlet I’m reviewing here, two adventures, supplies like battle grid and charsheets, dice, counters, cardboard figures and an introductory cassette (in the actual boxset I can see on the official site, the cassette was replaced with CD and a new adventure added). All in all, a pretty nice set priced at $30. Not a bad deal in other circumstances.

I should point out, however, that this section really feels like it should be in the introductory pamphlet. I would have probably read the rulebook first if it was mentioned there since Light Raider Handbook contains references to mechanic without context.

Next section explains how to use dice to get various ranges of results (1-10, 1-5 and 1-100 using d10, adding and subscribing modifiers, multiplying results, etc.). Those of you with any experience in TRPG would find it familiar, for the rest it’s not important.

In the next section we finally come to the heart of the game, resolution mechanic. The game was made back in 80s, so it should come as no surprise that it uses a bog-standard task resolution. For those who don’t know, task resolution mechanics focus on determining whether or not a given character succeeds in a specific narrow task. An example given in the game illustrates it well: your character hears a noise ahead, so you roll a dice checking your Listening ability to determine whether you can get any info out of it. Determine the nature of the noise, estimate how far ahead its source is, hear words if the noise is voices, etc.

The opposite of it is conflict resolution mechanics, which focus on determining whether or not a character  succeeds in a broad challenge. For example, let’s say you want sneak into king’s treasury. Using a task resolution mechanic, you would roll to see whether you’ve managed to sneak past the first guard, then the second, etc., whether you’ve managed to detect a trap and whether you managed to disable it, and so on. If you want to attempt something clever, like the old good “throw a rock in the direction opposite of you to attract guards’ attention,” that, too, would require a roll. Using a conflict resolution mechanic, you would roll once to determine whether or not you’ve managed to sneak into the treasury. Whether you did it by carefully sneaking around, distracting guards with noises or killing them all would likely be irrelevant, it’s still one roll.

The rise of conflict resolution mechanics is connected to the rise of narrative games. The idea behind such mechanics is that the rules shouldn’t attempt to simulate the fictional reality but rather guide the game narrative since what would realistically happen in a given situation and what would make for a good story are often two very different things. In our example, it simply wouldn’t be very dramatic to sneak past one guard only to be noticed by the next one instead of, say, failing just before the treasury or failing to penetrate the security at all (which would lead to a different plan). As such, conflict resolution skips all this and instead focuses on what kind of story it’s going to be: a tale of a skillful thief managing to get into the treasury, a story of a thief who managed to get into the treasury only to raise alarm and being forced to fight their way back, or perhaps some other story where sneaking into the treasury is proven to be impossible, so force or diplomacy are called upon instead.

There are, of course, upsides and downsides to both approaches. While the conflict resolution generally offers more control over the flow of the game and allows to skip the boring parts more easily, it also tends to be less immersive since players are less actors and more directors in this scenario, deliberately crafting the narrative for their characters. It also offers more freedom of expression to players in exchange of being more vulnerable to abuse. Conflict resolution mechanics rarely place exact limits on what characters can do, often they don’t have skills or even character attributes as most people know them from CRPG, so mechanically nothing prevents a ten year old kid from fighting a hardened veteran soldier on equal footing. Stuff like this is often left for players to regulate, so even more than usual you need to play in a good company you can trust to be serious about the game in order to have fun and not break the narrative.

Task resolution, on the other hand, is more immersive: it puts you directly in the position of your character, with only tools and capabilities available to them at your disposal. It’s also good at creating an illusion of objectivity. While the GM is always free to fudge the situation against or in favor of the characters, it just feels more fair to die when your HP run out then when someone simply declares the consequence of your failure is death. It comes at a cost of generally being more rigid. Task resolution goes hand-in-hand with detailed (at least to some degree) rules since it needs to define the tasks it’s going to resolve. As a consequence, doing something the devs didn’t think about can be tricky. It’s trivial to create a new type of magic in DRYH (you simply describe it as you would describe magic from a book), while doing the same in D&D would take a lot of effort.

Of course, the two mechanics have a lot of overlap. It’s possible to break any given conflict into smaller conflicts, and most conflict resolution mechanics do allow you to roll to see whether you’ve managed to land a single hit or climb a wall or whatever if you really feel it’s important. Likewise, tasks can be defined pretty broadly. Most crafting systems and scientific research and the like typically resolve in a one-two rolls a lot of tasks rolled into one to determine the end result. DragonRaid, however, is very firmly on the end spectrum of task resolution: all character abilities have concrete near-instant applications (Listening, Hearing, Climbing, weapon abilities, etc.), and the rolls are made to determine the immediate results.

So, is the task resolution a good choice here? Well, yes and no. Yes, because it’s a good choice for beginner players, especially kids. You don’t need to think about character arcs or narrative flow, you just need to imagine yourself in place of your character and think what makes sense to do. The results of your action are immediately apparent, giving you a good grounding in the game world: even if your knowledge of the rules is shaky, it’s easy to learn as you go along.

No, because an allegorical game about resisting temptations really calls for a narrative-focused game. It’s a game about human nature, and it’s something that’s pretty damn hard to express in rigid rules. You need a human factor and you need the freedom to evolve your characters in ways you see as appropriate rather than the way the rules tell you they evolve. I’ve talked before about how I think the personality traits lock your character into a box and leave you with little control, and the task resolution here locks morality itself in a box, reducing a complex issue to a series of checks.

Though I guess the devs would see it as a feature since it’s much easier to present the rules as the way the world really works when the human factor is hidden behind the illusory objectivity.

(For the sake of clarity, I don’t think it was a conscious decision on their part because, well, there weren’t any conflict resolution mechanics back in 80s. The first narrative game, The Sorcerer, was published in 1999, and it actually didn’t have a pure conflict resolution mechanic either, just paved the way to the games that did. Amusingly enough, it was also a game about resisting demonic temptations and holding onto your humanity, though you were the one summoning demons in the first place.)

Anyway, I’ve rambled for long enough and didn’t even get to the the actual mechanic yet. To determine the success or failure of an ability check, the game uses success grid:

The rank of ability relevant to the task is cross-referenced with the difficulty level of the task, which gives you a number from 10 to 90. You must then roll d100 (well, 2 d10, one for each digit). If your result is equal or higher than the target number, you succeed. If less, you fail.

Abilities average at 5 (and technically cap at 10, but you can increase them temporarily with a buff), so 1-2 difficulty is for easy tasks where you usually succeed, 3-4 for standard tasks where the chances of success and failure are close to equal, and higher difficulty is for hard tasks.

I’m rather ambivalent about it, to be honest. I much prefer clear formulas like d20 + modifiers vs d20 + modifiers, whoever rolls the highest wins. Using such formulas generally results in less busywork when you know the system.

On the other hand, the grid does provide you with clear odds of success, which is nice.

Well, overall the foundation is serviceable if not optimal. Let’s see how it’s used.

Next section is character creation, and I have Things to say about it.

So, as I’ve mentioned before, the first step is to determine your Character Strengths: Love, Joy, Peace, Gentleness, Goodness, Faithfulness, Patience, Kindness and Self-Control. It’s a simple process: you roll d10 for each attribute, the result is your score. No customization.

I’ve talked before about my issues with personality attributes in general, and now it’s time to talk about randomly generating them. To put it simple, it’s batshit.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t mind random generation in principle. Dark Heresy, for example, is not my favorite game, but it has a pretty cool random generation that almost functions like a separate mini-game, and it’s pretty fun to roll new characters and see what quirks they have. Random generation can give you a character you wouldn’t consider playing otherwise, and it can be an interesting challenge.

However, I do believe it should be an option, not a requirement. Random characters are all well and good, but often I have a specific concept I want to explore, and random attributes would just get in the way. And as a GM, I often have a specific scenario in mind, so I’d like for my players to create character who would actually fit the plot. Then, of course, there is a possibility of everyone rolling characters with the same strengths and weaknesses, which does a number on the party balance.

Even D&D understood it eventually, adding an optional rule allowing you to swap two attribute scores, another rule allowing you to assign the rolled scores as you wish and, eventually, a full point-buy system.

It is especially important in the context of personality traits since they tie directly into role-playing. Your Strength or Constitution score may affect your choice of the character and how you play them, but their personality would still be up to you. They can be cruel or kind, bold or fearful, greedy or generous, whatever you chose.

Not so in this game. Character Strength cover a lot of ground, so by the time you determine them all and trace the relationships between them, figuring out how your character should behave, there won’t be much room for anything else. The personality of your character, the core of many TRPGs, is almost completely defined by random, which means you can easily find yourself stuck with a character who bores you or whom you simply can’t play because it’s too hard to do the necessary mental gymnastic is tense situations.

More than that, the game uses generation method with flat distribution. For those who don’t know, there is a reason why D&D uses 3d6 to determine an attribute score rather than d20, despite the latter being more elegant while giving close enough range of results. The reasons is that rolling multiple dice and adding the results creates a probability curve with middle numbers being much more common than extremes. For D&D, most of your attributes would be close to 10-11, give or take two points, plus one or two outlier numbers (that, in turn, maps nicely into D&D class system, since most classes depended only on one or two attributes, with the rest being useful but not necessary).

Simply rolling d10 for each attribute results in the numbers being all over the scale. You’re likely to get some very good results and some very bad ones, making determining just what the personality of your character is a pretty daunting task.

Overall, I would say that the system simply doesn’t work for traditional purposes of role-playing. You have zero control over creating your own character, figuring out who they are is difficult on top of that, and then the attributes are going to change independently of any character arc you may have in mind, so all your work would be for nothing.

What it is good for is a tool for positive/negative reinforcement. If you see attribute scores not as descriptors of your character’s personality but as arbitrary numbers to be increased, everything falls into place. It’s our old friend Skinner’s Box, the same concept that keeps MMO players in place long after all joy was sucked out of them: see the pretty numbers go up when you do a thing correctly, get a brief release of endorphins; see the numbers go down when you fail, feel disappointment driving you to get your high score back.

And, indeed, increasing attributes involves quoting Bible and behaving in accordance with what is deemed right by the AM and adventure writers, though I’ll talk about it in detail later.

From that perspective, if you assume that the attributes are not a description of your character but scores to increase or maintain (need more LOVE, must kill for God), I guess the game does succeed in its goal. It presents you with a challenge to get the perfect 10 in each attribute, and it tells you that the way to do it is by behaving in the right way, memorizing the right words, doing the right things. And, of course, what is right is defined by the AM and the devs.

So, yeah, I don’t like this aspect of the system at all. Let’s move on.

Next are physical attributes, Strength and Agility. They’re exactly what you think they are, and, like the rest of the attributes, they’re determined with the roll of d10. Honestly, I’m not really sure why they’re needed. The rest of abilities are derived from the nine personality attributes, including physical stuff like HP, endurance, climbing and swimming. Strength and Agility don’t factor in them, the only place where they’re used in a formula is weapon abilities (and even then, some weapons don’t require them. Your skill with a war hammer is calculated as (Hope + Courage + Endurance + Hatred of Evil)/4, for example). So why not tie them to the prime attributes as well? Strikes me as a rather inelegant design decision.

As I said, the rest of abilities are derived from the prime attributes via calculating a sum average of 3-9 chosen attributes. The formulas are actually not that hard, even kids who just learned division should be able to do them, but there is 20 of them at minimum, and it’s also often hard to estimate the results, so you won’t be able to pick optional and weapon abilities with the highest score without calculating all of them, bringing the total number of calculations to 39.

Abilities also grow with the corresponding attributes, which means you’d have to redo some of the formulas each time your ability increases or decreases. That is sure to become pretty annoying the longer you play.

To be fair, however, I do understand why they went with this formula. Calculating the sum average creates a probability curve much like adding the results, with middle results being much more common than extremes. As such, most of your abilities would be around 5 unless you rolled really well or really poorly, with some outliers here and there creating your personal strengths and weaknesses.

So there is that for good design choices.

Next is the Armor of God. I’ve covered it already, but there are still some things left to say.

The Belt of Truth stops sin enchantment stone cold if the rating is high enough. Each enchantment produced by a dark creature has the necessary Belt score listed, though I’m not sure if it works against dragons as well. Eh, it’s not a bad idea. With high enough stats you probably don’t want to deal with trivial issues.

Breastplate of Righteousness is…

The Breastplate of Righteousness represents the extent to which the OverLord’s righteousness has been worked out in the LightRaider’s life by obedience to Him. It enables him to resist invitations to impure acts.

Well, that sure sounds ominous. You know, I don’t really have problems with characters resisting enchantments with the holy power (especially now that I’ve read the rules – dragons’ mind speech is actually handled better than I thought before) because it’s clearly mind control directly warping your personality, so supernatural protection is in order.

Here, though, it sure sounds like the breastplate controls you, preventing you from accepting a regular invitation to activity God considers sinful out of your free will.

I don’t know, maybe my interpretation is wrong, but there is no elaboration on the subject beyond that either here or in the AM manual, and it mentions neither sin enchantment nor mind speech, two forms of mind control that were established in the game, so…

Also worth noting that it’s the only part of the Armor which depends on a single attribute: Goodness. Which means your score in it is utterly random.

Then there is the Helmet of Salvation.

The Helmet of Salvation gives LightRaiders their hope of eternal life in the Everlasting Kingdom. This hope in the OverLord assures them that they are indeed members of the TwiceBorn.

Still no clue about what it means mechanically. I kinda suspect that you can roll it in place of Hope or something along those lines, but there is no elaboration either here or in the AM manual, so IDK. I guess it might be a really cool helmet.

Same deal with the Boots of the Gospel of Peace. I suspect you roll them in place of Courage or something, but again, no clue.

Actually, it’s also true for the Belt, but I’ve got how it works from context in the Light Raider Handbook. Overall, it strikes me as a very weird oversight, like rules simply weren’t completed here.

I’ve covered the Sword of the Spirit already, and the Shield of Faith would be relevant in the combat section.

So, that’s it for the character creation. As you can see, I have no love for it as it goes against pretty much everything I generally enjoy in TRPGs.

Next section is “Battling Sin Enchantments.” It’s pretty brief.

So, your character can be exposed to enchantments in various ways: goblin bites, fighting with orcs, touching stuff belonging to a cave troll, etc. Once that happens, the AM rolls d8 to determine the difficulty level of the enchantment.

That strikes me as a bad idea. Roll too low, and there would be no drama. Roll too high, and you’d get a bizarre TPK with the whole party abandoning their God-appointed mission to serve a troll. I guess that’s when Bear Kotomine comes in handy.

Anyway, each enchantment targets a specific character strength. The same strength is used to resist it most of the time (though sometimes another strength is substituted, with the idea that, say, greed enchantment would damage your Joy, but resisting it requires Love). It is done by using the appropriate strength as an ability score in the success grid and rolling d100.

If the roll is successful, the character is unaffected. In case of failure the enchantment takes hold, and the character now acts in accordance with it.

Next is the spiritual damage roll. If the enchantment was successful, the player of the affected character makes another roll against the same difficulty level using their Shield of Faith score for the ability rating. If the roll is successful, no damage to the attributes is done. If it’s a failure, the number of murder mature points (exp, basically, but assigned to specific attributes right away) equal to the difficulty rating is subtracted from the targeted character strength.

Well, it’s not bad in principle, I must say, despite being tied to the whole personality attributes deal. You resist the enchantment by pitting who you are against it, with the supernatural stuff merely preventing it from twisting the core of your personality (or preventing weak enchantments from working in case of the Belt, but I’m mostly OK with it), which is a nice concept. There are no shortcuts with Bible quotes, either, the best they do is decrease the difficulty rating.

Overall, it’s a vast improvement over the previous section, and-

Wait. The enchantments decrease the maturity points in attributes and… *reads ahead* …yeah, it’s permanent.

In other words, a basic attack that every monster in the game has drains your exp and directly lowers your attributes.

Holy shit!

When did this game become a horror?! I did not sign for this!

Well, I guess the devs found the one way to make the D&D crowd want to memorize Bible. Congratulations, and may Gygax have mercy on your souls, you sorry bastards.

On that cheerful note, let us end this post. Hope you’d be able to sleep well tonight, because I know I won’t. Tune in next time for a motherfucking miracle.

 

 

 

(Just for the sake of clarity, the last few paragraphs were mostly meant in jest. I actually don’t have problems with character attributes decreasing over time to reflect character evolution. Some games, like Polaris and DRYH, do it pretty well. Of course, neither of them makes getting perfect score in said attributes their goal. That is another difference between a narrative game concerned with telling a good story about people and a teaching tool designed to impart the right lessons. In the former, any outcome is acceptable. Even if your character loses their sanity or succumbs to despair, that, too, can serve as a powerful end to their story. In the latter, it just creates unnecessary pressure for the players, which is detrimental to having fun.

As such, while I don’t truly have a problem with mind pollution causing your virtues to drop, I do question the overall framing of it as something players – as opposed to characters – must avoid.

Still, the joke was hard to pass.

The motherfucking miracle is real, though.)