I’m glad to see effort put into salvaging Dragonriders.  I’ve not played it, but it always seemed to me that what damned it were a couple of poor production choices.  How fun would Carabande/Rennspiel-Action/PitchCar be if the track were standard gameboard stock, and the cars were lightweight plastic discs?  >:^Þ

Bring your copy of Dragonriders to Buckeye Game Fest, and I’ll play it with you, Frank!

Anyone still playing Quake III?

Your dragons are very cool, and I’m glad to hear about the collision rule.  As for the pieces, we put a little bit of “tack-it” on the bottom of each dragon and that reduced the slipping and sliding quite a bit.  Your fix probably works better in the long run, but for the lazy among us, I thought I’d put the tack-it thing out there.

Regarding photography, I suggest two things which would make that particular set of photos better:
Use a less busy background with greater contrast. The variable brown background behind variable brown bits makes them harder to pick out.

But even more important:
Use more light! Lots of light. Preferably sunlight. Sunlight on a cloudy day is perfect, since it’s bright yet diffuse. Your eyes see a lot better than your camera does, especially if it’s a point-and-shoot digital camera. The brighter it is, the narrower the aperture you can use and thus the deeper the depth of field. There are clearly depth of field problems in this photo: some parts are in focus while other parts, closer to or further from the lens, are not.

You may be able to set the aperture on your camera, possible using an “Aperture priority” setting.

Sorry, no suggestions as to photography tutorials, but I hope those few tips help.

I’ve also used the “tack-it” fix and, while it’s not perfect, it helped a lot.

We found that the game (w/all the narrow spots) works better with 4 rather than 5 or 6.

I like the idea of those heavy bolts on the bases.  One thing I did was glue magnetic sheet to the bottom of the dragon bases to weigh them down more.  Then to that I glued a sheet of suede/leather like material to keep them from slipping on the board.  Both materials trim nicely with scissors around the base.

The idea of elevating the dragons is interesting.  Maybe if there was a mechanism like that used for the aircraft in Duel in the Dark, it could help with sliding the dragons up and down to different elevations.

I’m still playing Quake III.  My computers range in age from 1 to 7 years old, so when I want to play a LAN game, I need something older.  Plus it’s cheap, so I can own five legal copies without breaking the bank.

The other horrible rules mangling is one one of the cards. I don’t have my set handy, but I think the “magic lassoo” translation is totally wrong. It plays better correctly. The whole ruleset is a mess though.

I’ve always been a fan of Dragonriders, but it’s gotten quite mixed responses from people I’ve played with. Some have liked it, many have not. The key seems to be the course. We played it the first time with an incorrectly-assembled track and the game totally crashed and burned. Second time with the track set up right, it went over reasonably well.

I’ve never been that bothered by the fiddly Dragons. Yeah, they aren’t great. It would be better if they had more weight and if the dragons weren’t so much larger than the base. But it seems to me that it’s just not the sort of game where you worry about making sure your Dragon is in *exactly* the right spot, and if you’re careful it’s close enough, within the tolerance of the lightness of the game. Not that I don’t wish it were better.

Oh, and I agree with the comment that 4 is probably better than 5 or 6. As 6-player games go, it’s pretty good and moves briskly. But the track is crowded, and I think smaller numbers work better.

The best use for Dragonriders is as the basis for a stop-motion animation where all the dragons basically burn the track, the box, and each other into ash.  Nice job sticking the toys on sticks, though....

Nice work on Dragonriders, Frank!  Your column worked; I’d actually like to get Dragonriders on the table again soon.  I need a less intensive way of fixing the base problem, though.  I like your idea about making the dragons different heights....I wonder if I could get away with just gluing different numbers of bolts on the bottoms of the bases.  Do you think that would work? I likely still would need a way to create more space between the Dragons and the bases.  Drat! It is the only solution that pops readily into mind and I know I am not industrious enough to go the “brass rod” route.

Ugh, looks like I need an improved ruleset, too.  Let us know if you come with with good tweaks.

Incidently, Bioshock sucks (Get killed, regenerate, hit with wrench, get killed, regenerate, hit with wrench...sigh).  Mass Effect.  Now that will be the bomb.

--Kevin

I own Ben Hur, and am more interested in salvaging it rather than hopping over to Dragonriders.  In Ben Hur, the pieces are nice and chunky.  I think the course is a bit small, so I’m inclined to either make a new larger course - or possibly shorten the range-finding sticks.

Anything in Dragonriders worth porting over to Ben Hur?

Just to keep the Kevin comments going:

I’ve always liked this game, even with the light weight dragons. It never seemed that we should be so serious that a little bump here and there would ruin all our fun.

We played it once, and no one ever wanted to play it again tho.

Now if we could mount the game board to a thin sheet of metal and then put magnets on the bottom of the Dragon bases, as someone suggested. That would be cool. :)

It’s nice to know about the whole running into other dragons thing… would make the game better.  Of course, I’ve now gotten rid of the game.

Magnets would work well but you could just glue the nuts onto the bases for weight and not muck with the brass rods.

It ended up being about 2 hours of time to do the rods, brass cutting and gluing.