While shooting Dragon Magazines, I came across an advertisement (last slide) for Dragonraid. I had never heard of it before, but a Christian fantasy RPG released in 1984, at the height of the Satanic Panic? I had to own it. But when I turned to eBay, I found the boxes were exorbitantly expensive. After a little more looking, though, I found that current owner of the IP was still selling copies assembled 90% from the original stock. For 35 bucks. Sold! Vintage, but brand new.
Anyway, Dragonraid is the first Christian RPG and was conceived as a tool for teaching/proselytizing. We’re going to set that aside – I’m a filthy heathen and have no business evaluating it on those merits. Despite generally giving the side-eye to the Christian versions of things (toys, rock, etc.) I have to admit I think it was pretty ballsy to produce a game like this in 1984, when RPGers and evangelical sorts were bound to find common ground in hating it (which is exactly what happened).
The monstrous, 3” box is jam packed with stuff. There’s 7 books – a player primer, a rulebook, a player’s handbook, a GM’s guide and 3 adventure modules. There are pads of character sheets and game worksheet, a bunch of character counters, dice and, originally, a tape cassette (the audio is online, but I have my limits and have not listened). Its all high quality for the time. There isn’t much interior art, but the color cover illustrations by Christian artist RJ Watson are rather lovely in an old fashioned illustrator way.
The system is simple and uses what is essentially a resistance table for all contests. A more involved combat system with crits is optional. The real interesting thing is what amount to the magic system called WordRune, which are Bible quotes that can be recited to, well, create magical effects. This is easy to make fun of, but it is also a really early example of the sort of dialogue-as-mechanic ideas that would crop up in story games and more narrative based RPGs years later.
Am I going to play it? Nah. Is it way more interesting than I expected? Definitely.
