It’s refreshing to finally play a game I’m invested in instead of running it. Yesterday, one of my friends ran a session of Dragonbane in Drakborgen. Dragonbane is the latest edition of Sweden’s national fantasy RPG, Drakar och Demoner¹. Drakborgen is a third-party module for Dragonbane based on a classic Swedish dungeon-crawler board game of the same name². We dusted off last year’s pregens we used for another Dragonbane one-shot, and I pulled another pregen for myself, so our party ended up with Aodhan, the human elementalist; Sir Dagobert, the mallard knight; Jürgen, the human fighter (that’s me!); Krisanna, the halfling thief; and Orla, the elf huntress.

We arrived at the dungeon’s gates after a short detour to a nearby village, a trek through the wilderness, a failed attempt at building a camp, and surviving the mandatory warm-up wolf ambush. According to the locals, the gates are only open for one day, and when one re-enters the dungeon the layout changes, so we decided to risk a single long excursion and hope for the best.

Right after the entrance, we found an intersection with the skeleton of an adventurer lying against the wall. He had a creepy diary in one hand and a magic ring on one finger that casts light and causes fear. We went to the right and stepped into a canteen. Next to it was a kitchen, where a troll was humming in a jolly good mood while chopping an orc into a boiling cauldron. Being a racist bastard, the elf wanted to kill him, and since we couldn’t persuade her to give up on it, I offered my help in the surprise attack. I started charging, she rolled a fumble, shot me in the back for 16 fucking points of damage³, so when I finally reached the kitchen, I was 4 HP from dying and in a more diplomatic mood. Turned out if the troll got two more orcs, he wouldn’t cook us. Guess what we found in the pantry, cowering in fear? Two orcs. They didn’t stand a chance.

In the next room, a pressure plate stood between us and a room with a pile of moving junk in the middle. After an arrow, the pile turned out to be another troll—one we actually defeated. The party found a potion and a bracer too⁴.

We ended up in a room with a statue holding a diamond in the middle. Around the statue were four black and four white floor tiles, and two skeletons that somehow merged into one. After beating them, four of us stepped on four of the white tiles. The entire room dropped into the caverns below. Two of us successfully jumped to safety; two of us fell to their almost-doom. Jürgen almost died, but in the end got his shit together and stood up on 2 HP⁵. We were fed up with the statue’s bullshit and asked Aodhan to topple it with a Pillar spell. Worked like a charm.

The next door we checked out was burnt. We looked for traps but found none—instead, some flaming guy who pulled the mallard into a fiery whirlwind, set half of the party on fire, but in the end died to an axe to his face by yours truly. Aodhan found a ring that can open doors, but it also made him Gollum-level creepy about it and always hungry. Like, one ration per hour hungry. So hungry, he even ate orcs later…

We managed to get to a window, where we saw the sun was setting, so we decided to leave. We did kill the cooking troll on the way out, and looked into one literally bone-chilling room that we ended up leaving behind with a big “Nope!” after someone started cackling. We returned to the village, sold whatever we could, and walked off into the sunset.

Overall, we had a good time and achieved a lot despite having only three and a half hours of playtime. Can’t wait to give Drakborgen a proper read finally.