Earlier this 12 months, Helldiver 2’s grip on gaming tradition was unmatched. For a minimum of a month, each nook of social media was brimming with memes created from or impressed by absurd gameplay from the smash-hit by Arrowhead Games. And that’s not a fluke, comedic play was constructed into the bones of the sport, all the way in which right down to the tabletop role-playing sport that impressed it: Drakar och Demoner, or because it’s extra generally identified within the English-speaking world, Dragonbane — a Swedish tackle Dungeons & Dragons that you could play proper now.
First reported on by PCGamer earlier this 12 months, Arrowhead Games’ CEO and artistic director Johan Pilestedt stated his sport design tends to lean in the direction of comedy due to his expertise with tabletop video games, “the place the gamers handle to show all the pieces right into a farce.” On Monday, in an interview with the New York Times, Pilestedt specified that it was his childhood video games of Drakar och Demoner that influenced the collaborative, long-form narrative method Helldivers 2 would grow to be identified for.
Drakar och Demoner (which straight interprets to Dragons and Demons) was first printed in 1982 by Target Games. While then eight-year-old Dungeons & Dragons had begun to develop in recognition, the barrier between the English-language sport and the Swedish-speaking participant base provided a possibility for Target Games to make their very own fantasy tabletop RPG utilizing the Basic Role-Playing system, the brainchild of Call of Cthulu writer Chaosium.
Since its preliminary conception, the sport has gone by way of six editions and virtually as many publishers, most lately touchdown with Free League — the Swedish tabletop writer identified for video games like The Lord of the Rings Roleplaying, Mork Borg, The Electric State, and Alien: The Role-Playing Game amongst others. In 2022, for the sport’s fortieth anniversary, Free League ran a Kickstarter for an English-language version of Drakar och Demoner’s, which raised over $700,000. The full historical past of Drakar och Demoner is a protracted one, which could be learn in a ebook by Orvar Säfström and Jimmy Wilhelmsson… although sadly it’s solely obtainable in Swedish.
Dragonbane, in accordance with Free League’s web site, goals to domesticate a playstyle it calls “mirth and mayhem roleplaying.” The sport’s excessive fantasy design prioritizes minimal pre-session preparation with large, absurd swings throughout play. Players select professions — which not like D&D courses solely impression beginning stats and don’t prohibit development to pre-determined ability paths — and species, which embody customary fantasy dwarves and elves in addition to extra out-there selections like the long-lasting mallards, often known as duck-people. The central mechanic of the sport makes use of a well-recognized skill-based d20 system, however as an alternative of rolling excessive to succeed like in D&D, gamers need to roll low. If you’re eager about Dragonbane’s particular mechanics, precise participant Jasmine Bhullar (Dimension 20, DesiQuest, Acquisitions Incorporated) made a video breaking down how Dragonbane compares to D&D and what, in her opinion, it does higher.
While it’s not fairly the identical sport Helldiver 2’s growth staff performed almost 40 years in the past, the impression of Dragonbane (or extra precisely Drakar och Demoner) is plain. Every time you see a Helldiver meme, bear in mind, you’ve got a Swedish tabletop sport to thank.
