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thedanster7000
2016-06-25, 05:40 AM
Does anyone know of any systems that'll run Dragon Quest (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon_Quest) well without ridiculously heavy homebrew?

KillianHawkeye
2016-06-27, 04:01 PM
Well........ the original Dragon Quest was balanced around a single character fighting one enemy at a time, which isn't the typical structure of a "pen and paper" roleplaying game, although later games increased the numbers on both sides.

I think that most editions of D&D could service the kinds of adventures that the DQ series normally tells (high fantasy genre), although you would have to make or find homebrew versions of the classic DQ monsters if you wanted to include them. Most of them are just anime versions of classic fantasy monsters, though, so that probably isn't even necessary unless you want to make the Dragon Quest connection painfully obvious. Same goes for spells and other abilities, and maybe even classes depending on how closely you want to recreate the Dragon Quest experience. You might want to avoid using any of the really D&D-only original monsters like mindflayers and owlbears, but oozes and dragons and golems and skeletons are all pretty par for the course. Personally, I'm more inclined to make subtler references rather than blatantly copying the source material (just because I don't want my players to figure things out too early), but to each their own I suppose.

If you're looking for some kind of actual Dragon Quest rpg, with DQ-style classes and monsters and everything all ready to go, I don't know of any. I have seen a couple different ones for Final Fantasy-style games, so there probably is a DQ one out there somewhere.

KillingAScarab
2016-06-28, 09:25 AM
A Google search turned up this (https://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?506732-Do-you-know-of-a-Dragon-Warrior-Quest-Tabletop-RPG) RPG.net thread from 2010. One of the recommendations is OVA (http://www.wiseturtle.com/products.html), which I hadn't heard of before. From the Auren PDF, it looks like it can support the sort of gish character the Descendent of Erdrick was in the first Dragon Quest. You might not level-up in that one, though. There was also an attempt to pretty much just play DQ1 at the table (http://www.dragon-warrior.com/Fan-Made_Games/Dice_RPG/).

My experiences with the Dragon Quest series are somewhat limited. DQ1, some DQ2 and DQ3 (favorite I haven't finished, so far) and far too much (but still not finished) of DQ7. So, one of the things which is definitely a part of the series and would need to be represented in a tabletop game in my mind: combat must allow for enemies with bizarre numbers of attacks in a turn. Bosses should be able to attack twice as often as you can. Would that be interesting at the game table? In a system where you get one attack per turn, yes. D&D 4th edition would allow for this through action points, but focuses too much on placement. I'm having a difficult time thinking of a system which would allow for StopSpell...

thedanster7000
2016-06-28, 09:48 AM
My original idea was to either do an amazingly realistic and detailed homebrew with an appropriate game, or a simpler one with the same classes/monsters as DQ (D&D, WHFRP).

D&D works very well because it would be easy and effective to port the classes, items, and spells into while still being balanced, and WHFRP because it's percentile and frankly a little different.

Also, whilst they're all very similar, I was going for a DQ9 feel here.

KillingAScarab
2016-06-29, 12:33 AM
Also, whilst they're all very similar, I was going for a DQ9 feel here.Could you expand on that a bit? I know that DQ9 had an online component, with people trading treasure maps and whatnot, but I don't really know much about the gameplay. Was there a class system? If so, was it closer to DQ3 (equipment is mostly tied to class), DQ7 (equipment is tied to the character :smallfrown: )or something much different?

thedanster7000
2016-06-29, 01:44 AM
Could you expand on that a bit? I know that DQ9 had an online component, with people trading treasure maps and whatnot, but I don't really know much about the gameplay. Was there a class system? If so, was it closer to DQ3 (equipment is mostly tied to class), DQ7 (equipment is tied to the character :smallfrown: )or something much different?

There was multiclassing, and if you got a weapon skill to max with one class, you could use it with any, so it was encouraged for optimisation. However, I think multiclassing should be left as-is in 5e because it works and makes more sense (maybe you can level almost indefinitley, putting levels over 20 into different classes, that's more like what DQ was like. There were no two-handed weapons, which is important, so either two-handing gives no benefit or shields give extra protection that is indispensable.