Alright, folks, let’s finish it.

So, the next section is titled “Becoming a Better Adventure Master.” It introduces some new advice and additional optional rules that are intended to be used after a few games, once you’re confident enough in your role.

It starts well enough with an advice to build team spirit, which basically amounts to giving players a common goal to reach and to demonstrate that it’s easier to do together than separately. The underlying principle is actually fine. Not for every game, obviously, but in general sticking together against the world is not a bad idea. You’d get more enjoyment out of interacting with your party members anyway.

Some suggestions, however, are rather iffy. For example, to make PCs dependable on each other, the game suggests poisoning half of them and slowly drain their HP unless they’re treated by other PCs once a day. That’s an obviously artificial situation that’s just going to make players resentful at your manipulations. Don’t do it.

It also has a major focus on Christian teachings. It’s to be expected from this game, of course, but the previous advises were pretty general and non-religious when they didn’t directly deal with the issues of faith, so it still managed to catch me off-guard.

After they are ready to work as a team, help players understand that this is the OverLord’s desire for His people. Jesus Christ formed a group of disciples whom He instructed to work as a team, for He knew that there was great strength in a group.

Judas was That Guy who betrayed the party to the villains because “that makes sense for his character to do.” Well, at least he got rid of the GMPC.

Anyway, next we have AM self-evaluation. For the most part, it consists of pretty standard post-game question: did you have fun? What was the best thing that happened in the game? Et cetera, et cetera. It’s not a bad list of questions, actually, but there is one thing that troubles me. You’ve noticed that it’s a self-evaluation, yes? Well, normally it’s not how it works in TRPGs. Such questions are typically asked by the GM to the players. As I’ve said before, playing TRPG is a collaborative process, and it’s important to get players’ input. It’s kinda weird that the game sometimes gets it (like when recommending to discuss new or unclear rules with the players) but drops the ball other times, like here. Asking yourself these questions is useful, but it will only get you so far. External criticism is crucial if you want to grow as any kind of artist (or a person in general, really), and your players are in the best position to tell you what’s wrong with you. And even if you disagree with them, you’re still playing together. What they don’t like may not be objectively bad, but they still don’t like it, so some kind of compromise or change is in order.

I think it’s a consequence of the game being targeted to Sunday school teachers and concerned parents to play with their kids. In this setup, the players often wouldn’t be capable of formulating a concise opinion of what worked and what didn’t work in the game beyond “this part was boring, that part was cool,” so the responsibility of improving the game lies mostly on the AM’s shoulders.

Still, asking your players for an opinion never harts even if they’re not that eloquent about it, so I would consider it an oversight.

Next we have an interesting section about the responses to the conversion attempt.

Players must be so familiar with the salvation message that they will not be stumped by arguments the Once Born often use to resist rescue (thus teaching them how to deal with such questions in real life). Listed below are common excuses and arguments along with several Scriptures to refute each.

1. “I am too great a sinner. I have been following the dragons too long, and I have done many terrible things.”
Isaiah 1:18; Romans 5:6,8; 1 Timothy 1:15.
2. “I will have to stop doing wicked things and become a better person before I can become a member of the TwiceBorn.”
Matthew 9:12,13; Luke 15.
3. “My life has been such a failure. I’m afraid I couldn’t remain a loyal member of the TwiceBorn very long.”
John 10:28,29; 2 Timothy 1:12; Jude 24.

And so on, with 20 responses in total.

Honestly, it’s not a bad selection, it covers a lot of various types of arguments. There are, however, still gaps.

First of all, most arguments are really not dismissive enough. They sound like the recipient of the conversion attempt is actually interested in worshiping Overlord but has something preventing them from joining Light Raiders right away. As pretty much anyone with real experience in missionary work (on either side) knows, the most common response to it is “Uh… Yeah, that’s nice. Oh, look at the time! Must be going!” Or something along these lines.

But, judging by the reaction of that woman from the test adventure, I guess being known as a Light Raider gives dragon slaves an… incentive… to be more talkative and attempt to reason with you.

Another notable gap is the appeal to other religions. I get that in DragonRaid cosmology Overlord is the One True Ring, but, if nothing else, golden calves are actual monsters around there (which is actually quite clever and funny) and they spread false religions, so where are all the “Athe is the one true god! Your false idol won’t deceive me!” arguments?

Speaking of Athe, atheism is notably absent as well. I can’t be too peeved by that since in DragonRaid supernal stuff is obviously real, so not believing in the existence of Overlord is kinda silly, but you can still have an approximation of atheistic argument by questioning his nature. I mean, who’s to say that Overlord is truly the One True God and not, say, a rival dragon to Abaddon? Who’s to say that his promises of a better life are real and not deceitful? A breastplate that outright prevents you from engaging in “impure acts” certainly sounds awfully close to dragons’ mind speech in function if not in intent (and who’s to say it doesn’t have other effects?)… Light Raiders may know better, sure, but it’s an argument that can be pretty compelling for people who’ve never been in the Liberated Land and never communicated with Overlord or his servants before.

The closest argument to it we get is as follows:

“The OverLord seems too cruel and unjust for me to serve Him.”

That’s a good argument. Certainly, his behavior can often be seen as pretty dickish if nothing else.

What does the book have to say to it?
Luke 19:41,42; Romans 9:20.

(For those who don’t have their Internet Bible copy handily open, the two quotes are as follows:

Luke: As he approached Jerusalem and saw the city, he wept over it ⁴² and said, “If you, even you, had only known on this day what would bring you peace—but now it is hidden from your eyes.

Romans: But who are you, a human being, to talk back to God? “Shall what is formed say to the one who formed it, ‘Why did you make me like this?’”)

And here we move from gaps in arguments against Overlord to the inadequacy of counterarguments. It may come as a shock to you, but the thing is, using Bible quotes to prove that Bible speaks is the truth is not actually a good idea. Someone who believes Overlord to be cruel and unjust is not going to be swayed by “Just who are you to talk to me like that?” argument.

It comes down to what Farla talked about in her comment on one of the earlier reviews: either the devs are so insular that they can’t even conceive an idea of a person disagreeing with the Bible after being quoted a relevant line, or they’re intentionally setting people up for a fall and create a sense that there must be something wrong with nonbelievers to reject an obvious truth. Could be both, I guess, I’ve heard that it’s a popular unspoken idea in certain Christian circles that everyone instinctively accepts the truth of God once told it, but some people pretend otherwise for malicious reasons (because they don’t want to change or because Satan).

The book does acknowledge that such rebukes, along with the general conversion prayer are not an instant miracle and not everyone would accept Overlord instantly, but it still insists that simply quoting appropriate lines and doing nothing more is sufficient. You do that, the rest is in God’s hands.

That certainly feels more like magic to me than actual human interaction, just not a very reliable magic.

Also:

“I’m already going to the Everlasting Kingdom because I’ve lived a good life.”
1 Samuel 16:7; Isaiah 64:6; Luke 16:15; James 2:10; Galatians 2:16.

I see the devs are not big fans of the Virtuous Pagan doctrine.

But enough theology, let’s talk gameplay. Next we have an optional reward and penalty system.

Basically, when you act in accordance with character strengths (Love, Joy, etc.), you get maturity points (exp). If you go against them, you’re penalized. Rewards and penalties range from 1 to 3 points, generally less than sin enchantments. Higher rewards go to characters who act in accordance with their low strengths (so a player with Love 1 would receive 3 points for acting selflessly while a character with Love 9 would receive only 1), for penalties it’s reversed. The idea is that characters with high strengths should be expected to live up to them while characters with low strengths could be given more leeway.

And, well, how to put it? It’s bullshit.

If you think about it, the system directly penalizes you for role-playing. You have low Love? In theory, that means you’re a somewhat selfish person and have trouble helping people at your expense. In practice, it means you should totally be as selfless as you can because then you’d get a lot of exp. Acting on your high strengths, meanwhile, is not as profitable, so you shouldn’t go out of your way to role-play them, just don’t outright contradict them and you’ll be fine.

And yes, I know that the purpose of the game is to teach players moral lessons, which involve acting in accordance with all nine virtues, that still doesn’t change the fact that the game actively punishes you for role-playing a flawed character despite its insistence that role-playing is A-OK and fun.

And then there is this:

Note that the penalties and rewards may be applied to either character or player behavior.

Well, no wonder they’re not concerned about supporting role-playing, they simply don’t care about characters. That rule pretty much ignores the line between you and your character, making your behavior responsible for their loss.

You know, I disliked the personality attributes from the start, but they could have been just bad design or even simply my tastes. This rule, however, really drives the point home: DragonRaid is not a role-playing game. You’re not allowed to assume a role to play. You merely get a mask that might make you more susceptible to certain temptations in order to teach you a lesson and resistant to others, but ultimately you’re held accountable for everything you do under that mask.

And that deprives the game of narrative potential, breaks immersion and generates RL drama.

Suffice it to say, I don’t recommend using such a rule in your games. I’m a firm believer that people problems should be resolved with people, not with their toys. Doing otherwise is childish and often ineffective.

After that abysmal showing, the section actually improves with simple but practical advices on how to liven up the game: have the battle grid ready at all times with PC figures already present in an established marching order to save time and potentially surprise players with an ambush, use miniatures, on the first turn of a sudden encounter ask players to write out their actions rather than speaking them so they can’t coordinate (the book tells to do it only once in a while, which is sensible) and inform players of whether or not they’ve managed to resist a sin enchantment with a note rather than speaking it aloud so the rest of the players won’t know for sure (which does feel like a setup for some delightful paranoia).

The advises are fine enough, not much to say.

The next section is game aids. It contains word runes, battle prayer chart, dark creatures abilities (no dragon slaves for some reason, the game could certainly do with some stat blocks for standard NPCs), etc.

The only thing of note here is a plethora of prerolled characters because I think even the devs knew that generating a character is a tedious process. Charsheets do confirm my suspicion: you get flat distribution on character strengths, leaving you with some really high and some really low stats, while your abilities trend towards average.

The book ends once again with a five-steps instruction for conversion of non-Christians.

In the Great Rescue WordRunes section on page 143, Five steps are presented for attempting to convert dragon slaves. This same outline can be translated into real-life terms and used for witnessing to unbelievers today.
These steps cannot be recited as a sort of magical formula, nor can they be expected to work in the same way every time. The Bible says that God’s Word does not return to Him void; it does not promise that those who use His Word will always see the outcome themselves. The Christian’s only responsibility is to present the message faithfully and accurately. Every response to a gospel invitation depends upon the Holy Spirit’s working in a person’s life.

So, yeah, it cannot be recited like a magic spell, but it totally is a magic spell in a sense that it’s a black box: you recite it, and then everything is out of your hands. You can’t be expected to actually reason with nonbelievers or persuade them. Just recite the Bible, God would take care of the rest in due time.

And that is DragonRaid.

So, what do I think about it, overall? Allow me to look back and summarize.

The good:

• aside from the personality traits, the system is solid if unremarkable. It should do its job well enough without getting in the way too much;
• dragon fights are really cool in concept if not execution;
• the focus on mind control and struggle against it is interesting if not particularly well-executed;
• the Armor of God concept and powerset is remarkably close to Mahou Shoujo setup, which is funny and is a plus in my book;
• the setting has a lot of inspirational potential. Farla and alice have outlined two ideas that can be done with it: Overlord as a bad guy and a game revolving around exploring specific virtues unique to each character. Both can work, though of course they would require massive changes in the game.

The bad:

• personality traits are way to stiffing and demanding. They’re generated randomly, thus taking away a good measure of player’s control over the character, and the rolls against just abandoning the adventure (and other similar situations: other reviews mentioned an encounter with a troll who promises to take you to a village to buy pretty clothes, an offer that hardly would be tempting to a warrior of God on a holy mission) impressively produce results nonsensical from both in-game and meta perspectives;
• iffy remnants of theology confusing the narrative like how Overlord is totally able to end all conflict instantly but doesn’t do it for reasons. The relationships between enchantments and sins, free will and mind control go here as well;
• some morals that I think reflect game design more than theology but are still questionable, like it being A-OK to kill dark creatures;
• outright offensive shit like fluster beasts;
• word runes. Quite aside from their source, memorizing magical incantations is just not something I would enjoy. I have nothing against reciting UBW mantra from time to time, but not every time I want to cast projection. Many word runes are comparable in length to it, and many are even longer, and I think that would be off-putting to many people;
• combining fantasy with science fiction for no good reason;
• capitalization. Just why?

Overall, I would say that the game does have a potential. It could have been great. But the devs’ agenda shines through every aspect of it, and I guess I prefer the darkness of secular games, thanks.

Is it salvageable? Well, yes. I was actually thinking about cutting off the personality traits mechanic and replace it with FATE aspects (perhaps change the bonus they give from 2 to 3 or even 4), add a point-by system for skills, some rules for starting Armor ratings, alternative rules for sin enchantments that would just slap you with temporary aspects from which you can recover via something similar to rescue rules but more poignant and personal… It is actually tempting to fix this mess because I do like the core ideas not directly related to Christianity.

The thing is, though it’s not really the game’s fault, its age is showing. By now there are games that do something similar way better (The Sorcerer would be the most prominent among them, I think) or can do pretty much everything it does with less fuss (FATE is more or less perfect for it). Hell, there is even a Christian (well, Mormon) game that does the whole “warrior of God in unrighteous land” concept better (Dogs in the Vineyard). And these games are more elegant, more engaging and generally more well-designed than DragonRaid.

DragonRaid has a potential, but that’s all it has. Turning it into something worth my time would require far more effort than creating a new game and just stealing concepts I like.

As a result, I can only recommend to read it as a source of inspiration if you find yourself intrigued by the concepts outlined in these reviews.

In conclusion, have some more reviews if you feel like reading alternative opinions:

Negative

Positive

And that’s it. Thank you for reading. Hail Satan!