James Nicoll Reviews

Tomas Härenstam’s¹ 2023’s Dragonbane: Mirth and Mayhem Roleplaying is the English language edition of the most recent edition of the venerable Swedish tabletop fantasy roleplaying game, Drakar och Demoner (DoD).

Dragonbane began as the Swedish translation of Chaosium’s Basic Roleplaying and the Magic World supplement from Worlds of Wonder. It has evolved greatly over the decades and I am not sure how many editions it has had (have fun working out which versions were true new editions and which were merely variants!).

What waits the modern player inside the hefty, sturdy shipping box?

WARNING: Excessively Long Review Follows

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2022’s Blade Runner the Roleplaying Game Core Rules is an alternate-near-future/science-fiction/police-procedural roleplaying game. Tomas Härenstam was lead designer, Joe LeFavi was lead setting writer, with additional writing by Nils Karlén and Gareth Mugridge¹.

As one might expect from the title, this is an adaptation of the film Blade Runner … from a certain point of view. It is put out by Swedish game company Fria Ligan (Free League).

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Fria Ligan’s 2017 Tales from the Loop is an alternative history tabletop roleplaying game, set in a retro futuristic world beautifully evoked by Simon Stålenhag’s art. Nils Hintze was lead game designer and Tomas Härenstam was editor and project manager¹.

Tales from the Loop is a mystery-solving roleplaying game in which Kids aged ten to fifteen are confronted by and solve (or fail to solve, for which there are always consequences) the mysteries that the adults around them are determined to ignore. 

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