Dragon Strike (in Depth)

Posted by MortiS-the-Lost on May 11, 2010; 4:33pm
URL: http://the-lost-and-the-damned.71.s1.nabble.com/Dragon-Strike-in-Depth-tp5036968.html

Feeling brave tonight?



... Hmm ... actually that's probably the worst way I could have started this article, I've been meaning to write about DragonStrike properly for a while now and this has taken the better part of a week (on and off) to write, so hopefully I've covered everything I want to talk about in the way of DragonStrike.
The thing is that all people remember DragonStrike for is the VHS tape. Pretty much every review I've seen just talks about the video, how stupid the effects look these days, how lousy the acting is and dumb the plot is.
And yes the video is very cheesy and it's a good for a laugh, but there's more to the Dragon Strike game than 33 minuets of bad acting, ridiculous costumes, cheap CG, green screen and shoddy looking sets.

Dragon Strike is a board-game/role-play game and was at the time of release intended to compete for the same market as GW/MB's runaway success HeroQuest. So I think it's only fair that through-out my ramblings I shall be constantly comparing Dragon Strike to HeroQuest.
Now as everyone will know Dragon Strike never did anywhere near as well as HeroQuest and I think the VHS tape might be partly to blame for that. Besides just being plain awful, the inclusion of the VHS tape made Dragon Strike more expensive than HeroQuest (any information anyone has on the original retail  price of DragonStrike would be helpful in confirming this point). Who knows? Maybe without the VHS tape driving the price up Dragon Strike might have sold a lot better than it did, then again maybe without the VHS tape Dragon Strike might not have been remembered so well these days. (TSR's other introductory adventure game DragonQuest is almost unheard of  these days and the same goes for Parker Brothers's abysmally bad HeroQuest clone DarkWorld) The sad thing is DragonStrike tried really hard to be better than HeroQuest, but failed on most counts. But I suppose things could have been worse ... TSR could have decided to put a Betamax tape in with game instead!

One of the first things anyone will notice is that the so-called Video Tutorial (apart from the occasional mention of  “Roll the Die” and “Look at your card”) doesn't explain the rules at all. Yea the 2 minute 'Dragon Masters Only' bit on the end of the tape gives some vague pointers on the subject of DM-ing, but even that isn't particularity helpful and some of the advice is just terrible.
So what's the tape even for? Well a lot of people claim it's to 'set the mood' and get people wanting to play the game, but all it really does is show snippets of people playing the game between laughably bad action sequences, so in essence it's just a poorly-made half-hour-long advert for the game which you only get to see after you've bought it. Note that HeroQuest (and later it's sister-game Space Crusade) had an equally hammy and inaccurate 30-second-long TV advert.

Some notable differences between what you see on the VHS tape and the game are as follows:

The video was either filmed before the final production of the game components or TSR didn't think the miniatures from the game looked good enough to put in the video because the miniatures used in the video are metal Ral Partha miniatures painted the same colours as the game's plastics.      

There are no rules for the Owlbear or Minotaur in the game. Interestingly if you look at the map for the 'Sunstone' adventure (the one they play in the video) the tower than the heroes climb if they choose not to storm the front gates is guarded by 2 Bugbears, maybe it was a mis-understanding between the people who designed the game and the people who made the video. But that still doesn't explain the Minotaur.
   
Despite the Sunstone adventure being entirely set on the 'Castle' board, some clips show miniatures being moved around portions of the 'Cavern' board  

Shortly after the "brave" warrior decides not to fight the Minotaur, it walks into a trap and gets killed. Page 10 of the rules clearly states “Monsters never get caught in traps – even if they step on one”. Last minuet rule change? It seems doubtful as monsters not triggering traps is a general rule of most D&D type games.

Anyway I think that's enough talk about the video for now, lets get onto the rest of the game.



The Dragon Strike box contains 3 books, the Instructions book contains all the main rules and is about the same size and thickness as the HeroQuest Rulebook, the similar sized Adventures book contains the special rules for each of the 16 quests that come with the game, but strangely the maps for each quest come in a separate A4 sized 'Map Book'. I'm not entirely sure what the reason behind this is as the maps aren't really detailed enough to warrant a larger page format, the Instructions book mentions something about placing monsters and treasures on the adventure maps (presumably so the GM/DM can decide which rooms he wants them in beforehand) but the maps in the A4 book are not anywhere near as large as the boards. This is made all the more strange by the fact that the blank  'photocopy and make your own adventures' maps are printed in a much smaller format in the back of the Instructions book.

The rules themselves are pretty well thought out, fairly fast playing and the basic combat is very much like the modern D&D Board Game (and Space Crusade). The main 'meat' of the rules is a targeted dice-rolling mechanic using D8s, D10s and D12s. Different dice are assigned to a character's or monster's attributes, D8 being the weakest and D12 being the strongest.



^the Warrior's Hero Card

Combat works as follows: to Attack you roll your Attack Dice  and attempt to roll higher than your opponent's Armor Class. A successful roll will knock 1 hit point off your opponent. Only being able to knock off 1 Hit Point at a time means DragonStrike doesn't play quite as fast as HeroQuest. Knocking all 5 Hit Points off a Man-scorpion or 6 off a giant can take quite a few turns, not to mention the titular Dragon's 8 Hit Points (this wouldn't be such a problem if it weren't for the fact the adventures are played with a turn limit)

Other Actions are performed by rolling over 6 with the relevant dice for the attribute in question.
As you can see from the Hero Card above, DragonStrike's attributes work in a similar way to HeroQuest's: Speed is the equivalent of Movement, Attack is obviously Attack, Armor Class is the equivalent of Defend, Hit Points are Body Points and Save Vs Magic fore-fills a similar function to Mind Points. Unlike HeroQuest dice are rolled for Finding Secret Passages and Finding/Disarming Traps, but what makes the Dragon Strike rules stand out from HeroQuest (and many other dungeon crawlers) are the Feats.
The inclusion of the Feat of Dexterity and Feat of Strength is a very simple and clever idea which means DragonStrike plays a lot more like a real roleplaying game, like the other attributes in Dragon Strike  Feat of Dexterity and Feat of Strength have dice assigned to them and to perform a Feat players need to roll over 6 to succeed. Suggested Feats from the Instructions Book include: Climbing, Throwing light-weight objects, Swinging on ropes, Leaping over things and Sneaking past a sleeping monster (all of which are Dexterity based) and Pushing heavy objects, Lifting heavy thing, Kicking in doors and Bending bars (which are of course Strength based). The Thief can also use Dexterity to Pick Locks and Steal things off monsters. The rules also encourage players to come up with their own Feats they wish to perform in-game and provide a few guide lines for doing so, this means Heros can perform pretty much any action (within reason) the players can think up, meaning DragonStike plays in a very D&D type fashion which I quite like. But personally I think the Feats rules could do with a few tweaks such as higher rolls being required for more difficult tasks (as the rules stand such diverse actions as Pushing a monster out of your way, Breaking a door-lock and Bending metal bars are all equally easy!)

Unlike HeroQuest, DragonStrike doesn't really have Character Sheets and other such 'paperwork', Heros play entirely using their 'Hero Card' keeping track of their Hit Points by sliding a plastic clip down the side of the card and the DM keeps track of the monsters Hit Point using clips at each end of the DM's screen. This means you'll be using a lot less pencils and erasers, but you can't name and 'keep' your character, your just playing a  generic Warrior, Wizard, Elf, Thief or Dwarf. Also the Heroes in DragonStike never get any gold to spend (the treasure chests in the game contain random potions and wands, ect or quest items, but no gold) nor do they have anything to spend it on (the game lacks a price chart and thus the opportunity to for the Heroes to upgrade their equipment). Predictably DragonStrike also lacks any kind of levelling/advancement system for the Heroes. The modern D&D Board Game at least pretends it has a levelling system by telling the players they've levelled up after every few adventures and giving them extra spell and equipment.
 
So altogether everything I've mentioned in the above paragraph means Dragon Strike has no scope for even a short campaign and all the adventures are just one-offs, even if you do decide to play through them in order (not that there really is an order to the adventures, they are just labelled Easy, Avarage, Difficult and Very Difficult)

Talking of Levels, it's about time I mentioned the Magic system. Like HeroQuest, Dragon Strike has a card-based 'cast and discard' spell system, but the method of choosing spells is closely based on the D&D system (as are the spell names and effects). The spells come in 3 levels and the Wizard chooses 4 first level, 3 second level and 2 third level spells, then the Elf chooses 2 first level and 1 second level spell. Interestingly cross-referencing this with the spell charts from a D&D manual from the same era indicates the Elf would be about Level 3, where as the Wizard would be level 7 if you go by the number spells they can choose (I have no idea if this is what the writers of Dragon Strike intended or not though). Teraptus (the Evil Wizard) however chooses 6 spells from a separate deck that has nothing to indicate what levels they are.

While we're on the subject of cards I'll give a quick run down of the other cards the game has:



Treasure: although at first glance they would seem to work in the same way as the cards of the same name in HeroQuest, the Treasure cards in Dragon Strike are only used to determine the random treasure found in chests or on some monsters, the deck mostly consists of potions and other one-use magic item.
Monster: like the Monster cards in HeroQuest these detail the characteristics of the various monsters from the game, however they pretty pointless as these same characteristics are printed on the DM's screen (along with pretty much everything else you need to know to play)
Trap: in a similar way to the Treasure cards, these card are used to determine which random trap type is triggered when a hero moves over certain spaces on the board. The more juvenile among you maybe entertained to see that due to a poor choice of font, the T looks a bit like a C from a distance and seems to read 'Crap' instead of Trap.
Sneak Attack: these card detail 1-off special attacks the thief can use in combat
There are also reference cards with basic character information on them, which would be better off being printed on the Hero Cards

Over all the rules are pretty good and cover a few things that HeroQuest doesn't, but at the same time lack a few basic things that most other dungeon crawlers (incuding HQ) do cover. It's not quite as fast playing as HeroQuest but just as easy to learn, also the fact it uses standard polyhedral dice (as opposed to the special dice used in HeroQuest, Descent and the D&D board game) makes it a far easier to get extra/replacement dice for. With a little work the Dragon Strike rules could be turned into a very nice home brew dungeon based role-play game and I'd recommend them for that reason.

In what I suspect to be a bit of one-up-man-ship on the part of TSR DragonStrike comes 2 double sided boards covered with artwork which make the HeroQuest board look a little plain by comparison. Every inch of the boards is decorated with everything from dungeon dressings and furniture to decorative monsters around the edge of the boards, however all this artwork has little-to-no effect on game play. In fact on the castle board the artwork just seems to be filling up space that could have been used for more (or larger) rooms and corridors. Also the boards have no constancy of scale or perspective, very few of the 'squares' are the same size (or even square) 1 square does not equal 5 feet (in some places it appears 1 square might equal 10 feet, but that's at odds with the size of other features on the board – some in the same rooms). One thing on the board that dose make difference to game play is the Time Track down one edge of the board, I briefly mentioned earlier that adventurers are played on a turn limit, this is what keeps track of it, a line of 20 squares with a dragon-symbol at one end, an hour glass marker is placed some where along the track according to what adventure is being played and is moved along at the beginning of the DM/GM's turn (in a similar way to the day-light track in DungeonQuest) once it reaches the dragon-symbol the Dragon  (lamely-named Darkfyre) appears at a pre-determined spot on the board and the DM/GM's aim becomes that of killing off the Heroes.


^ the Caverns board with the Time Track running along the bottom

As I've said before the Dragon Strike boards (with their out of scale details and monster artwork around the edges) kinda remind me of those illuminated medieval maps with all the buildings and people drawn in and dragons and sea serpents around the edges. The boards look nice but that doesn't necessarily make them good for gaming and they certainly don't have the flexibility of layout even the basic HeroQuest board on it's own gives you. Of course I prefer the even greater flexibility of a modular dungeon.


^ a montage of the decorative monsters from the Dragon Strike boards

and finally the miniatures, DragonStrike contains 24 plastic miniatures which range from average to terrible in quality. The individual details of the miniatures are quite good in places, but over all they seem to suffer from the same inconstancy of scale and proportion as the artwork on the boards, plus the poses range from stiff and odd to awkward and deformed, not to mention the problems caused by the limitations of plastic casting at the time (especially for companies that didn't have access to Citadel's plastic casting technology).

Here's a random selection of Dragon Strike Plastics I had to hand while writing, due to the miniatures general lack of quality and detail very few of my Dragon Strike plastics are actually painted because ... well, I've got much nicer miniatures to paint (lots of them).


^ the man-scorpion is the worst miniature in the box (and a contender for the worst miniature in my collection)


^ a Death Knight and a Gargoyle, note the number 'tags' designed to help the DM/GM identify multiples of the same creature on the board ... it doesn't work because most of the time you have to pick up the miniatures to see the little numbers


^ a Bugbear, the Evil Wizard and an Orc. In case you're wondering the thing in the Orc's left hand is supposed to be a crossbow


^ The Elf, The Thief, The Warrior, The Wizard and The Female Thief

As you can see the plastics from the DragonStrike box are pretty dire, but I am lucky enough to own one of the box-sets of metal miniatures Ral Partha made for Dragon Strike, which are in fact very nicely sculpted miniatures. One of the things that makes the metal Ral Partha miniatures really nice is that rather than being metal version of the plastics from the game box, they are based on the characters from the video (I believe there was also a second box-set with the Dragon Strike monsters in it) and as cheesy as the video was these miniatures are in fact very nice


^ The box (and a goblin guard)
     

^ The Cleric, The Dwarf and The Wizard. (note that despite one appearing in the video there were never any official rules for a Cleric in DragonStrike


^ The Warrior, The Thief and The Elf


^ Teraptus


^ The Multi-part Dragon, DarkFyre. When assembled the dragon looks like a classic 2nd edition Red Dragon and bears a close resemblance to one of Ral Partha's limited edition dragons

well I think that just about it for now, in a follow up article I will be explaining how to convert monsters between HeroQuest and Dragon Strike

++UP DATE++

you can find my article on converting HeroQuest Monsters to Dragon Strike here:
http://the-lost-and-the-damned.664610.n2.nabble.com/Converting-HeroQuest-Monsters-to-DragonStrike-td5059566.html#a5059566