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Introduction
I found Dragon Warriors, along with two other books in the DW series (The Way of Wizardry and From the Shadows) in a second hand bookstore when I was fifteen. Now, I own a lot of games, including a lot of games which I have never played. I even own It Came From the Late, Late, Late Show and Macho Women With Guns. DW is a game which we played for a good long while. Flipping through it now makes me want to fire up a campaign again. It just has a certain feel to it, which I enjoy. Published in the UK in 1985, it owes a lot to D&D and Tolkien. It manages, however, to maintain an atmosphere similar to that of the Fighting Fantasy books, and early White Dwarf. Maybe it's a British thing. I dunno - I'm an Aussie.
Rules and Stuff
As someone who hates reading rules, I found Dragon Warriors to be delightful. The combat rules are simple, and then illustrated with an awesome comic involving a knight named Sir Balin and some orcs. This book presents rules for creating the two of the four core professions of the game which fall into the Warrior sphere: the Knight and the Barbarian (the other two, Mystic and Sorceror, are delineated in The Way of Wizardry). There are five attributes: Strength, Reflexes, Intelligence, Psychic Talent and Looks. As in all good games, you roll 3d6 to determine them. Once this is done, the player chooses a profession, rolls Health Points (1d6+7 for Knights and 1d6+9 for Barbarians), and determines the Attack and Defence Ratings for the character - these are taken from a table, as are the Evasion and Magical Defence ratings. These four ratings can be modified, depending on the attribute rolls made earlier.
Initial equipment is ascribed according to profession, and we're off to adventure! Character creation takes only a few minutes, which I heartily endorse.
Combat: Hold onto your hats - you need to roll LOW on a d20 to hit your opponent! You subtract your opponent's Defence score from your Attack score. The resulting number is what you need to roll equal to or under to connect. Then you do an Armour Bypass roll based on your weapon. If this succeeds, you damage the bastard! Damage is not rolled, but rather is based on the weapon. (A standard Sword is [d8, 4pts], which means that if you roll higher than your opponent's Armour Rating on a d8, you do four hp damage to him, her or it...BAH! It's all in the comic). 0hp is unconscious, -3hp is dead.
Combat makes up most of the rules. There's a bit on climbing, falling damage, poison, light sources, and an equipment list - but what more do you need in the rules section? This is the WARRIOR book!!
...Oh yeah. Experience. Experience seems a bit disappointing to someone who has just been playing D&D. Sure, it only takes 30 points to get to the 2nd Rank, but killing a Dragon and only getting 20XP still feels a bit sad.
Monsters
Most of the rest of the book is taken up with all manner of critters, from orcs to goblins to elves (the elves look like wussy Romans). There is a decent amount of description, and rules for playing as a demihuman. All in all, there's enough here for a decent campaign. There's also some random encounter tables and stuff too.
Campaign
Speaking of which...DW has an excellent campaign setting, which really adds to the atmosphere I was talking about before. In Dragon Warriors we get an area map, plus an introductory adventure: 'The King Under the Forest', which is full of flavour, monsters, traps, puzzles, future adventure hooks and world-immersion. It forms the beginning to a campaign which runs through the other books in the series. It even introduces a recurring NPC or two, and ties the PCs to the world immediately.
The End Bit
After the adventure we have some hints for running and playing the game, with an eye to introducing new players to the magical world of role-playing. There are some adventuring tactics, ideas for combat formation - and the highlight of the book: a photocopiable spinner to use in lieu of a d10 and d20! Then there's a character sheet and some ads for Tunnels & Trolls books. But you don't care about that.
Negatives
Yeah, I thought I should talk about the bad parts of the game here. It's hard to do at the moment, because I'm feeling so damned enthusiastic. Umm, characters can become carbon copies, especially at higher levels. A Knight is a Knight is a Knight kind of thing. Also, the rules are fairly thin on the ground, so you'll have to do a lot of legwork as a GM. Trolls have two heads, which is a bit of a worry. Sorry, that's all I can come up with. If you love Rolemaster, you probably won't like this. If you love Hackmaster, I think you'll LOVE DW!
Review End: The End End Bit
Well, I may have drowned the game in praise, and some of that may be attributable to nostaglic wistfulness. There are rabid fans of this game on the interweb, and plenty of sites with information on it. If you don't mind basic rules and having to make up adjudications on the spot for non-standard actions, and if you love an old-school sense of roleplaying atmosphere, then jump on the DW love-train!
Hmmm....I may have gone a bit too far in the end there. Oh well.
