It appears I spoke too soon when I wrote of the untimely demise of the Dragon Warriors role-playing game:Dragon Warriors, the classic 1980s dark-fantasy RPG recently re-released by Magnum Opus Press, is moving to new British publishing company Serpent King Games.
From 1st April the game will no longer be available from Magnum Opus, which had published Dragon Warriors through Mongoose Publishing’s Flaming Cobra imprint.
Serpent King Games will keep the existing Dragon Warriors books available, and will publish new supplements for the game. The first new release will be the Dragon Warriors Players Book, in July 2011, with another two releases planned for the first year.
It would be bad form to repost the entire announcement, so if you're interested, there's more detail at the Serpent King Games website. Considering the individuals involved, the game appears to be in very good hands, and I'm more than happy to help spread the word.
I won't directly benefit from any of it, but I would be remiss if I didn't mention that Dragon Warriors' previous publisher, Magnum Opus Press, is selling all of the PDFs of the game line at less than half-price, and that Mongoose Publishing (the game's former distributor) has also reduced the price of the hardcopy books significantly - including an "ultimate bundle" that includes all seven books released thus far for $79.99. All indications are that the new Serpent King Games material will be fully compatible, so if you're thinking of checking out one of the UK's finest old-school fantasy RPGs, now is the time.
It looks like Serpent King Games has a powerhouse of a staff. I hope the new books won't just be the previous books reprinted with new art. I would like to see a bit more organization to the rules, as well as some optional innovation as well. I think it is great that DW will live on, and I can't wait to see what SKG will do with it.
ReplyDeleteThere's nothing left to reprint from the original Corgi books, so the upcoming releases would have to be new material. The "Players Book" they're referring to is the one I mentioned in my previous Dragon Warriors post - it introduces a few new professions and optional/alternate rules.
ReplyDeleteSince the Serpent King site says that they "will keep the existing Dragon Warriors books available", I don't think you'll see a full-blown reorganized rulebook for a while yet, but that's just a guess.
If I was going to continue guessing, I'd say that the other "two releases planned for the first year" might be something along the lines of the Jewelspider Wood sourcebook and the supplement dealing with the Fey that James Wallis had mentioned were in the works.
However it all works out, good news.
By the way, I'm still very interested to see where you go with Swords Against the Outer Dark. The main draw for me was the concept, not the system.
All this sounds very cool. I will take a closer look at their site. Too bad DW will never be released with an Open Game License...
ReplyDeleteThanks for the kind words about SAtOD. You have been a great supporter of my blog since its infancy, and I appreciate it.
As for the project, I am leaning heavily toward releasing it as an OpenQuest book. Newt over at D100 Games has been great, and I love the game he has published. He has already urged me to write my own stand alone rulebook using the OQ rules, so I have pretty much decided to do just that. Now its just a matter of actually doing it.
Right now I am working on an adventure module/setting that is very much in line with my Sword & Sanity concept. I am considering the possibility of writing the creatures with both OQ and Labyrinth Lord stat blocks. I will be sharing more on this in the days to come...
I definitely need to check out OpenQuest. I'm a big BRP fan, and would be pleased to see you release something for that system.
ReplyDelete