Dragonriders of Pern

The Book Game

Review by G. D. Swick

Designed by Al Leonardi Developed by Lee Enderlin
Nova Game Designs, Inc.
PO. Box 1178, Manchester, CT 06040
Released: December, 1984
Catalog No, 013
Price: $12.95
Complexity: Beginner
Solitaire Suitability: None

Soaring through theskies on the back of a dragon, you and your wingmate must work together to stop an invasion by an alien life form that threatens all life on your planet. The stakes are high and the time is short.

This is the premise of Nova Game Designs Inc'sDragonriders of Pern, a picture book game adaptation of Anne McCaffrey's popular fantasy novel series of the same name. A prologue to the game, written by McCaffrey, briefly explains that when a certain planet's orbit brings it close to the world of Pern, thread-like life forms drop from the skies. if they reach the ground, they will burrow in and spread quickly, choking off the native plant life. To combat this menace, a select group or Permans, known as Dragonriders, take to the skies with firebreathing dragons and roast the Threads in midair.

The dragons must eat firestone, which they can convert to a fiery breath. Periodically, they must return to their base, called a Weyr, to eat more firestone and be healed of damage from the Threads, Wingmates must work together, maneuvering their dragons to burn the falling Threads while avoiding midair collisions or burning each other.

The rules include Introductory, Basic, Short, and Campaign games. Players may create their own Dragonrider characters or role-play those from the books, using information provided in the rules. Key elements of play include deducing the pattern of Thread and learning to plan for a wingmate's maneuvers as well as your own.

The game consists of two 4 1/2 x 6 inch paperback books, each of which contains 115 views of what players see as they maneuver their dragons, and two character sheets with descriptions of the maneuvers and areas for keeping track of Threadfall, dragon damage, and turns to flame. All of this comes packaged in a thin, 6 x 9 inch box with cover art taken from the third Dragonrider novel, The White Dragon. The playing books use no cover illustrations; one book has a grey cover, the other one a black cover. The illustrations inside range from very good representations of Pern's awe-inspiring beasts to a couple of drawings reminiscent of Alley Oops brontosaurus. These help explain to a novice which direction is toward the front of a dragon when the only part shown is a wing, as on page four.

At the bottom of each page are symbols representing the maneuvers a dragon can perform. Anyone familiar with Ace of Aces, Nova's awardwinning biplane game which pioneered the picture book games, will recognize these symbols, showing turns, banks, loops, hovers, etc. Only a portion of the maneuvers may be available to a player, however. A Weyrling (novice) has 7 options to choose from while a Dragonrider has 11, a Weyrleader 15 a Weyrlingmaster 17, and and Oldtimer may use any of the 18 available options. Progression from Weyrling to higher ranks is accomplished by the accumulation of Prestige Points gained by burning Thread.

Players "impress" a dragon by rolling a die (not included); the result tells them whether they are teamed with a Green, Blue, Brown, or Bronze Dragon (Gold or white Dragons are possible in the campaign game). The Bronze Dragons are huge and can sustain a lot of damage, but the smaller Blues and Greens can maneuver better. thus, a Wehrling with a Green Dragon can perform nine possible maneuvers rather than seven.

Players then name their dragon and their characters and begin play by turning to page four, which depicts two dragons flying parallel in opposite directions with Thread failing between them. The illustrations in the books show what players see from the back of their respective dragons, for example where each dragon is in relation to the wingmate's dragon and to the Thread. Each player directs his dragon into a position to burn the Thread by selecting maneuvers using the symbols at the bottom of the page.

Each player selects a maneuver to change his dragons position and announces the page number printed below that symbol. Player A turns to the page number announced by Player B, finds the svmbol for the maneuver previously chosen, and turns to the page number printed below it. Thus both players end up on the same page which shows the current position of the dragons relative to each other and to the Thread. Players then choose from maneuvers printed at the bottom of that page and repeat the procedure until they arrive on a page that shows one or both dragons flaming Thread or until they become separated, or until the Thread reaches the ground. if the Thread reaches the ground or the dragons become separated, both players return to page four and start over. They also each lose one Prestige Point for failing to flame Thread.

Weydings have six turns to flame Thread and must flame seven Threads during a patrol or lose Prestige Points. More experienced Dragonriders have less time to burn the seven Threads, and Oldtimers are required to flame Thread on every other turn.

Notice that nowhere in their review does it say "your opponent." The Thread is your opponent. Dragonriders must work together to defeat the Thread. Prestige Points lost bv one member of a team are lost hy both members. This game requires cooperation, not competition, between players.

Fortunately, as players advance beyond Weyrling status, they can give hints as to what maneuvers they are about to perform and work more closely as a team. Some interplayer competition does exist is one player may try to flame more Thread than a wingmate does to gain more Prestige Points. However, if one player does all the flaming on a patrol, both can end up losing Prestige Points. Dragonriders have large egos, this helps to remind them that saving Pern is more important than rank.

The game is fun and plays in 10 minutes. After one game, players are eager for another "patrol." Attempting to bring to life a series of novels as popular as these is a difficult task and Nova has succeeded admirably The short time in which to flame Thread gives the feeling of urgency described in the novels. In fact, I found that I understood what it would be like to soar on a dragon, defending my homeland, better after playing this game than I did after reading the novels-and that's what a simulation game should do.

Comparisons with Nova's other picture book games are inevitable and Dragonriders holds its own as a good game and an excellent way to introduce new players to the picture book concept since it is simpler to grasp. However, it probably does not have the replay value of either Ace of Aces or Lost Worlds because it cannot be expanded as much. Still, Dragonriders offers a Campaign Game and other role-playing aspects that will continue to give it playability even after players deduce the pattern to the Threadfall.

If you enjoyed McCaffreys novels, buy this game, not just to sit on your bookshek, but to play and gain a better understanding of what Dragonriders feel. If you are unfamiliar with the novels, the game is still fun; the strategies are subtle and satisfying. On the other hand, if you strongly believe that there must be just one winner in a game and players should never cooperate, pass this one up in favor of the other picture book games.

Footnote: Within the rules, there is a partial sentence. No rules are missing-, the sentence should read, "Scoring 6 or 7 Prestige Points to your opponent's 1 is embarassing enough."

When players of different rank fly together, they have different lengths of time to flame Thread. For example, a Weyrling has six turns to flame while a Weyrmaster has only four. When flying together, alternate these turn allotments; for example both players have six turns to flame the first Thread, four turns to flame the second, six turns to flame the third, etc.

From Novel to Picturebook Game: The DragonRiders of Pern

by Lee Enderlin

One of the misconceptions among the general gaming public is that creating a game is much like writing a book. The designer takes the role of author and the developer acts as a sort of editor.

In reality, creating a game is more like making a movie. it's a team effort with its own equivalents of the director, producer, screenwriter, etc. In almost every case even the most well-known game designers submit their ideas to developers.

Not to do so courts the risk of creating a stagnant effort. A game in its formative stages is a constantly evolving test of new ideas and, as is so often the case, a fresh perspective from someone not intimately involved in design provides many of these ideas. And that's where the job of game developer begins.

It is a sort of running joke around the offices at Nova Game Designs that head designer Alfred Leonardi creates the concept and then turns it over to the developer with a gleam in his eye, and "Now make a game of it" on his lips. While that is far from the truth in many cases, it is a fairly accurate appraisal of how I became the developer for Nova newly published Dragonriders of Pern game.

My first task was a bit of research. I read the first of Anne McCaffrey's novels, Dragonflight, and large portions of the others. This gave me a good feel for her world. Nova told me to remain faithful to Anne's works.

This was part of the challenge-in one sense we didn't have the luxury of making up our own rules. We were restricted by the "rules" imposed by Anne in her original stories. For those of you not familiar with the books, a quick synopsis of the plot might be useful to see how decisions were made in the process of creating the game.

Pern is an Earth-like planet inhabited millennia ago by humans. Shortly after settling, they find that the planet suffers from a rather unique affliction. A sister planet known as The Red Star releases a type of protozoa that falls on Pern when in close enough orbit. This protozoa, called Thread for its slender appearance, has one nasty characteristic: it sets vegetation on fire. This isn't much of a problem in the desert or the arctic, but it can be quite devastating when your population is trying to perform such mundane tasks as growing crops.

After almost being destroyed, the settlers learn that an animal peculiar to Pern is able to burn the Thread in mid-air before it becomes dangerous. These animals are called dragons because they look like the legendary Earth animal.

Pern's dragons are found to be particularly attracted to certain humans with high telepathic capabilities. Matched up, they form teams that eventually turn the tide in favor of the settlers.

Anne creates a world in which cooperation to save the planet is of the utmost importance.

Ace of Aces, however, is an adversary game pitting a player against an opponent. But it would be unthought of for one dragonrider to shoot down another, Being true to Anne's stories meant creating a game of competitive cooperation. Reconciling these opposing concepts became a serious problem.

We started with a rather involved procedure for determining the winner of the game by comparing the number of Prestige Points earned. This proved to be both cumbersome and lifeless. Playtesters complained that it left them with a "So what?" feeling when the game was over. what we needed was a system that gave players something more to strive for.

So we came up with the idea of advancing in rank for destroying Thread. While this is not strictly a concept from the books, it does convey gaining prestige in the eyes of the commonfolk. This also helped us create one of the prime requisites of any game: that players get a sense of making progress (or regress!!),

But we were still missing an important link: Competitiveness.

The solution come after almost eight months of playtesting, We reworked the scoring system and made it a game of partners versus the Thread itself, No longer did one player win; now either the Thread wins or botb players win together. To make that work, we devised a scoring system that penalizes both players for failure (i.e. letting the Thread hit the ground), but rewards only one player for success. Now, it is in both players' interests to help the other to avoid the penalty, Usually, of course, one player will do better than the other (this is why we used an odd number for the number of Threads that fall during a game or patrol), so the aspect of competitiveness remained.

Another problem existed in the way the Thread itself moves. In the original system, there were times that players saw Thread falling but they could not reach it. This caused considerable confusion. We then eliminated such views. Now, players see only the Thread they can destroy, although that means your wingmate sees Thread that you don't and vice versa. This may sound odd, but it caused considerably less confusion than the first method.

These were the two biggest challenges to transforming the novels into our game. other rules like Communicating, Dragon Capabilities, and Going Between were simple to implement and added much in terms of flavor. To retain more of that flavor, we tried to use terms originated by Anne and where we weren't able to, we used terms we thought were quite close to her meanings (such as using Weyrling Master as a rank).

Suggestions for new rules and refinements came from just about everybody listed on the credits. Naturally, not all of the suggestions proved practical, but eventually, we managed to make the game work.

For instance we had decided to drop the Turns to Flame Track. This track forces the players to flame a Thread within a certain number of turns (different for each rank) before incurring the penalty Our thought was to keep the game as clean as possible, like Ace of Aces . However, blind test reports came back to us praising the idea of having to accomplish your task within a limited time. It created more excitement than it caused difficulty The decision was immediately reversed.

But because developing the game was a true team effort (as trite as that may sound), solutions were found as each problem, large or small, arose.

The people at Nova feel we've done what we set out to-create a game that is both fun and true to Anne McCaffrey's bestselling novels.

Lee Enderlin is Director of Marketing, Nova Game Designs, and President of MIC Advertising Agency.

Photo with permission of Nova Game Designers, Inc. Cover art by Michael Whelan copyright 1978.

Dragonriders of Pern is a trademark of Anne McCaffrey

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