Free to Download: Dragonslayer quickstart

Slayer Games has one title in DrivethruRPG, and it’s Dragonslayer.

In Matt Fisher’s game, PCs are heroes imbued with the power of dragons. The TTRPG was published in the middle of last year and hasn’t picked up any reviews yet.

The same cannot be said for the Dragonslayer Quickstart Rules which came out this year, are free to download and have a star rating of 4.5/5 after a half dozen reviews.

I haven’t splashed the cash for the $25 main game but gobbled up the free download. The cover art by Khairul Sukmanudin needs a shout-out. I like it a lot, and there are a host of other human artists in the interior art credits. However, I don’t think these pieces are used very bravely, sometimes nothing more than thumbnails in Dragonslayers’ two-column format.

The quickstart offers a chapter on the basics of the rules, which has attributes, classes, experience points and levels.

There’s also a chapter on classes, and these break from typical names, even if sometimes they are only in flavour. They are;

Anima
Augmentation Slayer
Culler
Heartseeker
Hybrid Slayer
Scales
Scholar
Sights
Tongues

There are also chapters on levels and experience, skills and abilities. At its core, Dragonslayer has players make either Probability Rolls that are influenced only a little, or not at all, by a character’s stats, or Skill Checks, which use character skills.

There’s a chunky section on magic, a key part of the game since heroes have dragon-inspired abilities, and the quickstart even finds space for social combat.

Many quickstarts don’t get into adventuring and certainly not equipment, but Dragonslayer does both. The third and second-last chapters are on the world of Dragonslayer and Deities. Leaving the last one on Gamemaster help and guides.

Yes, there’s a 1981 film by Matthew Robbins, and the font used by the TTRPG certainly conjures the Paramount/Disney poster to mind. However, there’s no connection. I didn’t notice any magic amulets selecting heroes in the game. Furthermore, does this RPG have anything to do with the Dragonslayer Role-Playing Game by Greg Gillespie.

Based on the quickstart, the Dragonslayer RPG by Slayer Games is safely in the OSR model, even if it has some twists.