The makers of Shadowrun are producing a cooperative deckbuilder with the Dungeons & Dragons licence. Dragonfire aims to bridge the gap between tabletop games and RPGs, a sometimes tricky task.
The game – which doesn’t yet have a release date — is based on the core engine of Shadowrun: Crossfire, though makers Catalyst Game Labs say it’s made extensive changes to better fit the D&D world. Their description is “You’ll recognize it but it’ll be a fresh, fun experience to enjoy on its own.”
It’s set in the Forgotten Realms world that will be familiar to D&D lovers, with the base game set in the Sword Coast. Future expansions will move the story on to other locations, but these will be optional extra adventures rather than it being a collectible card game.
The $60 base game includes:
- Dungeon 1 Encounters Deck
- Dungeon 2 Encounters Deck
- Wilderness 1 Encounters Deck
- City 1 Encounters Deck
- Adventurers 2 Encounter Deck
- Market Deck
- Magic Items Deck
- Character cards
- Adventure cards
- Adventure booklet
- Sticker Sheets
- Tokens
- Plastic Clips
- Rulebook
It appears the base game will be more of a traditional deckbuilder where you start from scratch every time you play. There’ll be multiple expansions available at launch, some of which will simply be additional cards, and some of which will include “a new adventure that will advance the storyline.” In the long term, there’ll be “campaign boxes that will not only provide additional materials to enjoy, but will move forward the meta-plot adventure that will weave through Dragonfire.”
That suggests characters could be carried over from one game to another and suffer long-term effects from game to game, though the precise mechanism hasn’t been unveiled. One possibility would be for players to literally keep the same deck from one game to another, which could be unwieldy. Another is that players could maintain character sheets and track characters improving stats, as in a traditional RPG, then have those stats affect the size and balance of the starting deck they draw in the next game.
As with D&D, players will select a race and class for their character. It’s not yet known if that will simply affect starting stars and special powers, or if it will affect the makeup of the starting deck.
[Dragonfire Deck Building Game]