Dragonbane, D&D’s more attractive Swedish cousin, inspired Helldivers 2

Earlier this year, Helldiver 2’s grip on gaming culture was unmatched. For at least a month, every corner of social media was brimming with memes created from or inspired by absurd gameplay from the smash-hit by Arrowhead Games. And that’s not a fluke, comedic play was built into the bones of the game, all the way down to the tabletop role-playing game that inspired it: Drakar och Demoner, or as it’s more commonly known in the English-speaking world, Dragonbane — a Swedish take on Dungeons & Dragons that you can play right now.

First reported on by PCGamer earlier this year, Arrowhead Games’ CEO and creative director Johan Pilestedt said his game design tends to lean towards comedy because of his experience with tabletop games, “where the players manage to turn everything into a farce.” On Monday, in an interview with the New York Times, Pilestedt specified that it was his childhood games of Drakar och Demoner that influenced the collaborative, long-form narrative approach Helldivers 2 would become known for.

Drakar och Demoner (which directly translates to Dragons and Demons) was first published in 1982 by Target Games. While then eight-year-old Dungeons & Dragons had begun to grow in popularity, the barrier between the English-language game and the Swedish-speaking player base offered an opportunity for Target Games to make their own fantasy tabletop RPG using the Basic Role-Playing system, the brainchild of Call of Cthulu publisher Chaosium.

Since its initial conception, the game has gone through six editions and almost as many publishers, most recently landing with Free League — the Swedish tabletop publisher known for games like The Lord of the Rings Roleplaying, Mork Borg, The Electric State, and Alien: The Role-Playing Game among others. In 2022, for the game’s 40th anniversary, Free League ran a Kickstarter for an English-language edition of Drakar och Demoner’s, which raised over $700,000. The full history of Drakar och Demoner is a long one, which can be read in a book by Orvar Säfström and Jimmy Wilhelmsson… though unfortunately it’s only available in Swedish.

Dragonbane, according to Free League’s site, aims to cultivate a playstyle it calls “mirth and mayhem roleplaying.” The game’s high fantasy design prioritizes minimal pre-session preparation with big, absurd swings during play. Players choose professions — which unlike D&D classes only impact starting stats and don’t restrict advancement to pre-determined skill paths — and species, which include standard fantasy dwarves and elves as well as more out-there choices like the iconic mallards, also known as duck-people. The central mechanic of the game utilizes a familiar skill-based d20 system, but instead of rolling high to succeed like in D&D, players want to roll low. If you’re interested in Dragonbane’s specific mechanics, actual player Jasmine Bhullar (Dimension 20, DesiQuest, Acquisitions Incorporated) made a video breaking down how Dragonbane compares to D&D and what, in her opinion, it does better.

While it’s not quite the same game Helldiver 2’s development team played nearly 40 years ago, the impact of Dragonbane (or more accurately Drakar och Demoner) is undeniable. Every time you see a Helldiver meme, remember, you have a Swedish tabletop game to thank.