If your favorite part of Dungeons and Dragons is chilling with friends, chatting with NPCs, and resolving conflict and puzzles as peacefully as possible, then upcoming supplement ‘Draconis: Call of Adventure’ could be perfect for you. Made by artist Chane and French developer Studio Agate, the book aims to enable games “centered on the pleasure of discovery, understanding others, and pacifism” – and making friends with dragons.
Combat core to the experience of Dungeons and Dragons; most of the powers on your DnD character sheet are tools for bashing, zapping, or mauling your enemies. Draconis offers a variety of alternate ways to play DnD 5e, with different levels of pacifism, including the totally non-violent ‘Innocence’ mode. A new system of dramatic locks and keys shifts conflicts away from violence by providing different ways to make progress.
There are 30 new creatures in Call to Adventure, including over 20 dragons. While they have full stat blocks as DnD monsters, they also have their own ‘dramatic keys’. Each key reflects the specific needs and wants of the dragon, and can be used both in regular DnD, or as the core way you’ll resolve conflicts in a non-violent game.
The book contains five adventures that together make “a complete feel-good campaign” lasting five to ten play sessions, set within the valley of Mieriga. An “unearthly gloom” is gradually taking hold of the village, and the village headwoman has mysteriously disappeared. But violence “isn’t the universal solution to all situations, and often not a solution at all.”
There are also three new DnD classes: the Dracamicis, a spellcaster “who draws their magic from their friendship with dragons” and can summon “dracona” avatars; the Guide, a variant DnD Ranger with a specialism in (you guessed it) dragon lore; and a Scholar, a non-magical character based around the Intelligence DnD stat who can inspire the other characters with their bright ideas.
The book contains a host of other features, including five new draconic familiars, 10 DnD magic items and 39 new spells. Draconis is currently crowdfunding on Kickstarter, with pledges starting at $25 (£20) for a PDF and $50 (£40) for a print edition. A 250 page physical book is slated to deliver in Summer 2025, while a PDF will arrive at the end of the campaign.
Fundamentally, playing DnD non-violently means ignoring or replacing a lot of its game systems. As our guide to the best tabletop RPGs highlights, there are a lot of great RPGs besides DnD that might be more tailor made for that task. But there’s no denying that DnD is a framework most people recognise, and a lot of GMs feel comfortable running. We’re all in favor of people customising their games to work the way they want.
We’re also big fans of dungeon ecology (watching Netflix’s Delicious in Dungeon did a number on us), and in our experience there’s always one player who wants to tame every monster they see. Even in a violent game, creature stat blocks containing extra information about how the players can interact with the monster outside of the initiative sequence rewards players for lateral thinking, and makes their skills matter more.
Got a sudden urge to go tame some dragons? Check out Wargamer’s guides to DnD races and the new, more important DnD backgrounds.
Source: Wargamer
