Dragon Pass/White Bear & Red Moon

[Jeff Richard]

Who still plays an occasional game of Dragon Pass or White Bear & Red Moon? I managed to get my wife and a few of our regular Berlin players to play a game over the holidays, and will be trying again. Even though the rules are clunky, I still find it a useful tool for looking at some of the Hero Wars related events.

And with the new maps, you can now greatly expand the game map….

[Kuningas]

I bought Dragon Pass (unpunched!) last year, and have played a couple of games since. I think it is the Avalon Hill version. The map is gorgeus, but I find it really frustrating to try to wrap my head around the combat rules.

I do intend to learn, bit by bit.

I’ve also toyed with the idea of devising a Dragon Pass / Warrior Knights / Cosmic Encounter hybrid, but haven’t thought it very far yet.

[Keith Nellist]

It is a great game but I haven’t played a full game for a long time. I’m looking forward to using the maps from the guide to explore a few more scenarios. The Nights of Horror was my most recent game but I used the rules during RPG campaigns for the Blood Kings War, for the Dara Happan rebellion. for some events in 2nd Age Prax and for the Plunder of Teshnos. I think there are possibilities for a Garangordos and the Conquest of Fonrit, perhaps continuing after his death. Lake Felster is just about the right size for a multiplayer game of about the same scale too.

[Vile Traveller]

Never managed to get hold of a copy.

[Simon Phipp]

I do try, but finding fellow players is extremely difficult. It also takes so long to play a proper game.

I’ve forgotten most of the rules, as well, even though I have the games and the PDF rules.

[David Scott]

For those unable to play and or find a copy, perhaps we could get some of the conventions to start running tournament games again. When I was one of the committee of Convulsion in Leicester, UK, we had Nomad Gods knockout tournaments. We got permission from the copyright holder to reproduce a number of sets. The winner got to keep the set. Perhaps this could be done with Dragon Pass at Continuum or Eternal Con next year. Any committee members here?

[Simon Phipp]

Whilst I’d love to play at a convention, the games just take too long. A proper NG/DP game would take the best part of a day to play properly and do it justice. In that time, you could play a freeform and a tabletop game, at the very least.
It might work in the evening, though, starting at 4pm and finishing at midnight.

[Jeff Richard]

Quote:

Quote from David Scott on September 7, 2013, 11:22
For those unable to play and or find a copy, perhaps we could get some of the conventions to start running tournament games again. When I was one of the committee of Convulsion in Leicester, UK, we had Nomad Gods knockout tournaments. We got permission from the copyright holder to reproduce a number of sets. The winner got to keep the set. Perhaps this could be done with Dragon Pass at Continuum or Eternal Con next year. Any committee members here?

I’d be up for that!

[RippedShirtKirk]

Jeff, are there any plans to release an updated Moon Design edition of Dragon Pass and/or Nomad Gods? (even in a small print run, maybe via Kickstarter? hint hint…)

[Styopa]

Pretty much every time a game comes out with an editor or construction set, from Battle for Wesnoth to Civ5, I always get it in my head to try to kludge up a Dragon Pass Scenario.

(I’ll tell you, manually converting a big hex board map to a computer game’s map five or six times will do wonders for burning the details of that think into your memory…)

It usually works in a basic fashion, but I’m neither ambitious enough nor blessed with the focus needed to learn how to actually code MODS that would allow any of these games to really play like DP.

[Jeff Richard]

Yes, but more on that later.

[Duncan]

Sorry for the necromancy but I don’t know how I ever missed this thread. My heart practically leaps out of my chest at the thought of a new Dragon Pass (though I would prefer the game stay a hex-and-counter game).

Part of the reason Dragon Pass is kludgey is that a lot of the text was copy & pasted from White Bear/Red Moon even though that uses a completely different set of rules. The combat rules need a little tweaking and clarification (the first couple of times we played we only let units participate in one of the combat phases (so if a unit fired in archery that was all it could do) rather than letting it participate in every phase for which it qualifies). Our most recent change was to implement the stacking limitations from WB/RM back into the game. Otherwise, people just turtle in cities and the game gets very boring.

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