I never played Dragon Warriors as a kid.

I missed the whole phenomenon. My gaming history starts with a game of Middle Earth Role Playing in 1989, and zigzags through D&D and Call of Cthulhu from then on. I never even heard of Dragon Warriors until James Wallis brought it back through Magnum Opus.

I’m not quite sure how I managed to miss it. I was their target audience, pretty much – I played gamebooks, avidly watched Knightmare(1), I was a fan of dark fantasy(2) – but it never crossed my path. The new edition made me feel like an intruder from a parallel reality, especially as half my gamer friends were old-school DW fans. I had the same conversation over and over:

Me: Hey, ever hear of this Dragon Warriors rpg?

Them: Knights! Warlocks! Assassins! Elven Crystals(3)! Look! I have all the original books! Gaze upon the precious!

Me: That’s a ‘yes’, then.

And now, despite being a latecomer to Legend, I’m part of Serpent King Games. I hope to provide an outsider’s perspective on the game, making sure  the game’s accessible to everyone, not just the existing faithful. It also means that I’ll be playing devil’s advocate in system discussions. It’s not the first time I’ve fallen into this role – I developed Traveller for Mongoose Publishing along similar lines. The aim is not to just keep Dragon Warriors in print and rehash the supplements from the 1980s – it’s to move forward with Legend and create new adventures!

1: Buried somewhere in the attic are two of the Dave Morris books based on the series.

2: Buried somewhere in the hard drive is an old attempt to write a D&D setting that looks remarkably like Legend.

3: True story: Friends of mine were playing this campaign, and were surprised when it ended so quickly. They thought it was called the Eleven Crystals.