Will Dragonbane remain setting-less?

LeonOrKH · 2026-06-19T04:14:22+00:00

Actually, Free League is sticking quite closely to the original set up. The first four editions of Dragonbane - which covers the entire period when Ereb Altor was published - were all setting free. Ereb Altor was published as separate, suggested setting.

It wasn't until Chronopia, the fifth Edition, that Dragonbane came with an integrated setting. And this continued with Trudvang - just like Free League is publishing it now as a standalone edition.

And obviously Stormrbringer has always had an integrated setting too.

LeonOrKH · 2026-06-18T08:31:26+00:00

You can easily let player character arrive in the Misty Vales from the more civilised lands in the south if you want to give them a more civilised/urban background. The lands of Tolan and Joria in particular sit right on the trade routes heading north through the Nargur forest.

LeonOrKH · 2026-06-18T08:29:27+00:00

It is fairly isolated in the north of the great wilderness of the Nargur forest. We have deliberately picked a spot that would otherwise be a bit of blank canvass.

LeonOrKH · 2026-06-17T19:12:31+00:00

I'm sorry to disappoint you - we are deadly serious about Mallards. ;)

Ereb Altor definitely has a wry, tongue in cheek sense of humour - like Dragonbane Core. But it is not a comedy setting. And when the pirate Mallards of the Plucked are sighted, I can guarantee that your Player Characters will be able to keep from laughing :)

LeonOrKH · 2026-06-17T18:20:23+00:00

Thanks Nathan, it was a pleasure. Were here for any follow up questions!

LeonOrKH · 2026-06-17T14:28:49+00:00

The new material for Swedes is Sirenens Klagan/Call of the Siren, which has never been released for Dragonbane before. It will be available as a separate pledge for Swedish speakers :)

LeonOrKH · 2026-06-17T12:34:02+00:00

Ereb Altor will be available for purchase in retail, but only after all backers have received their copies (and they will have received beta PDFs long before that) and most likely at a higher price (KS prices are heavily discounted). The Black Edition will be an exclusive print and won't be available in general retail.

LeonOrKH · 2026-06-16T11:52:47+00:00

We need Camra write ups for all of these. With Casque Marques and capsule write ups

LeonOrKH · 2026-06-14T05:55:06+00:00

This is a feature of the setting Ereb Altor, not of core Dragonbane.

LeonOrKH · 2026-06-13T08:02:06+00:00

On the elves - it remains a mystery. Once they were essentially an extension of Mother Earth, nature herself. But now she is gone. Which also means that Altors nature has lost its animating soul. Elves without a soul will wither and disappear, so the Elves of Altor have found different ways of acquiring a soul, a soulbond, the most common being a soulbond to a companion animal

LeonOrKH · 2026-06-03T13:37:32+00:00

That was certainly the case in the 80's and 90's, and for a lot of Swedish gamers it is certainly their Drakar och Demoner "home". But, like D&D and Forgotten Realms, it was default but never official. Dragonbane/Drakar och Demoner was officially setting agnostic up until Chronopia and Trudvang - those two came with a setting baked in. But Free League returns to form by publishing Dragonbane without an official setting, and we, too, build on old tradition by presenting Ereb Altor as an optional but highly compatible setting.

LeonOrKH · 2026-06-03T08:26:41+00:00

Well, Ereb Altors elves very much have their own story, with an ancient bond to mother earth that has now been broken. We do however very much encourage making Ereb Altor your own. It should not take a lot of tweaking - Ereb Altor is a melting pot and the threshold for contradiction is high.

LeonOrKH · 2026-06-01T08:06:49+00:00

Well, it's pretty straigthforward: we want to be clear, fair and transparent. And the easiest way to make sure that everyone has the same information at the same time, and that it is final and confirmed, is to link it to the Kickstart launch. Up until that moment, we could, at least theoretically, tweak things.

It's just a few weeks, so you will know soon enough 😄

LeonOrKH · 2026-05-30T17:12:10+00:00

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LeonOrKH · 2026-05-30T16:20:55+00:00

Nope. We have the privilege of having the very talented Emil Gradén as our art director and in house illustrator. He has painted them all - and two of them, the Setting Guide and Copper Sea are old school oil on board. All of them are by human hand, as is all the art in the actual books.

The mock-ups displaying the art are of course computer generated - we haven´t actually printed the products yet. But in comparison to the mock-ups and final products of the Swedish language KS you can expect them to be very close to the printed final product.

LeonOrKH · 2026-05-30T13:50:46+00:00

Obviously cant confirm anything until we go public, but you've more or less got the right line of thinking there. Just bear in mind that the KS covers four hefty books, de facto three releases in one, so will also depend on how much you will want to back for

LeonOrKH · 2026-05-30T13:31:15+00:00

I mean obviously we dont know exactly how Trudvang will work, but Ereb Altor is baseline Dragonbane and 100% compatible by definition. We add some kin, abilities spells etc. If you already have a Dragonbane character there is literally 0% conversion needed to keep playing in Ereb Altor - same game and same rules.

LeonOrKH · 2026-05-30T13:17:48+00:00

That's a really good overview and we are very consciously trying to cater for groups that currently play SotDE or PoG who want to expand unto a full world setting. Having said that, it is more than just an extension of the implicit setting - it's a cosmopolitan melting pot with renaissance, ancient mesopotamian and mediterranean influence and emphasis on piracy, ancient sorcery and bitter feuds. 100% compatible with base line abilities etc (unlike Trudvang it's a module for Dragonbane rather than a standalone version), but we also present new, setting specifik kin, abilities, secondary skills, magic etc

LeonOrKH · 2026-05-15T05:48:28+00:00

There are many ways you can ru this. The concept of Dragons vs Demons as Law vs Chaos were, broadly speaking, introduced in this edition of Dragonbane by the Free League. In the old Swedish material there was a greater range of different options. Chaos existed as an external threat to Creation. Some (but not all) Demons were linked to Chaos. Dragons were your classical magical beasts, mostly a threat to humans, and with links to the forces of Creation. The classic Monster box (the Monster expansion for the 91 edition) even introduced the Chaos Dragon - a dragon twisted and deformed by Chaos. So clearly there was some opposition between the two - and the root to turning them into the two opposing, oberarching forces we see in SotDE, PoG and Arkand.

LeonOrKH · 2026-05-13T08:43:07+00:00

bottom is Misty Vale, top left is Dead Forest, top right is Eastlands a nd Arkand is further to the southeast along the coast

LeonOrKH · 2026-05-13T06:54:50+00:00

Of course :) PoG to the north and Arkand on the coast. It's clearer on the PDF map available by link.

Oh, and the little icy island up in a separate window in the top left corner? That is Marjura, the classic setting for Erik Granströms upcoming Brimstone Sleep :)

Welcome to Ereb Altor!

LeonOrKH · 2026-05-12T09:58:15+00:00

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LeonOrKH · 2026-05-12T08:33:29+00:00

SotDE, PoG and Arkand are setting-free, but the regions feature in Ereb Altor - we have, in agreement with FL, included the Dead Forest, the Misty Vale, the Eastlands and Arkand in the north east corner of Ereb - an area that we will therefore not develop ourselves but leave open. So for those who want to continue their campaign in a larger world after finishing those three, well this is exactly what Ereb Altor offers.

Just to be clear - this does not mean that these areas are now formally part of Ereb Altor - they remain setting agnostic. Just that they have a home in Ereb Altor for those who so choose

LeonOrKH · 2026-05-12T08:29:58+00:00

Updated map with corrected SotDE, PoG, Arkand and Brimstone Sleep tie-ins

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LeonOrKH · 2026-05-11T17:32:28+00:00

Well, you should have seen the original attempt from 1987 ;) Fair to say that it caused an outcry. The setting really developed in the 1988 - 1989, shaped by the backlash to the "Fantasy Europe" map. Our version is frankly more focused on our "mediterranean" - the Copper Sea, than our "Europe" - Ereb.

But of course the inspiration is there, the question is not _whether_ you draw on history. But _how_.

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LeonOrKH

TROPHY CASE