Bought this because of the @everyone ping on the osr discord. It's actually a really good read.

Book layout A+, art A++, rules are A+ as well. Quick easy ruleset to explore a realm full of dungeons, monsters to be slain, treasure to loot...if you survived the traps. Only book you need, but GGs Barrowmaze is A++ as well.

I struggled with giving this 4 or 5 stars and eventually decided on 5 with a caveat (below). As a product - an old school adventure "megadungeon" I give it a 5. Personally, I love the geomorphs and being able to easily insert my own sections to the base campaign... so that's a plus for me. The caveat is with the PoD version. I suspect this product is at the upper edge of page count for what DriveThurRPG can produce. My print hardcover does not have good binding - it started with 3 places in the book where there was a noticeable gap in the binding - I can see the glue used and there is a crack between the pages... and with extremely minor use (it's stat on the shelf for all but a handful of openings) these breaks in the spine have increased to 5, so the physical version is not up to long term use (or even any short term use) beyond looking nice on your gaming shelf.

I have a question: I traveling from Helix to Barrowmaze is 2 hexes, that is 5 miles each, and wich are doubled because of swamp, how can that add up to 20 miles? It should be 40miles and impossible to travel back and forth in a day.

I purchased the PDF for this and very much liked this. It is a Moria inspired mega-dungeon that has a well done old school feel. I like making adventure I purchase my own, and the unmapped secondary locations gives me the ability to easily do that.

My complaints are minor. I would have liked unlabeled maps for use with VTT. Items unique to this product, such as Seachad Board's, Gungathol Trumpets, or Longpoint Daggers for example, should have been all listed in a new items section but are easy enough to find using ctrl-F.

Another great piece of world created by Gillespie, the fantastically curated really helping you get inside the world. Love it.

Ich sage es nur sehr ungerne, aber dieses Buch ist in meinen Augen eines der schlechtesten Monsterhandbücher, die ich bisher in der Hand hatte...

Speaking as a DM this has been the core "thing" of the longest-running and most successful tabletop campaign I've been involved with. The book excels in clean/easy presentation for both the main town of Helix and the dungeon itself--those elements have been astonishingly easy to run. The dungeon is surprisingly varied for as uniform as it appears on the surface. Great art throughout.

I find the "story" of the module very thin and the pantheon details are quite weak, but it's malleable and easy enough for a DM to flesh out. Small random encounter tables, particularly on the barrow moor, are a bigger issue to me. I find the complete lack of detail given to the nearby "big city" Ironguard Motte pretty nonsensical. As a physical product, especially an "anniversary special edition," I think a fold-out poster map of the Barrowmaze would have made a lot of sense.

The best blend of basic and 1e I have tried yet. I have already been using it for my main group for two sessions now and everyone enjoys the changes to their classes.

I have a big library of retro clones. I've read them all and run several. There is a lot of great indie design in that space. I say that to lend some weight to my statement that Dragonslayer is the best mashup of AD&D and B/X on the market today.

Gillespie can be a controversial figure in gaming, but it's hard to argue that he isn't a great game designer. Barrowmaze is one of the best known megadungeons and his other campaigns (Dwarrowdeep, Highfell, etc) are also very good. Dragonslayer is the RPG he plays and tests those campaigns with.

Dragonslayer features excellent production quality as well. The rules are lean and mean, with an emphasis on stuff you can use at the table. The art work is plentiful and old-school without being amateurish.

This really should be a five star product but it needs a good set of free quick start rules to help GMs bring in new players, especially online. It also would have been nice to have a premium edition available with sewn binding and offset printing.

A lot of noise gets made about the $80 price point but I think the value is there. Art work and presentation aren't free, and this thing is a labor of love. Gillespie isn't getting rich off an indie OSR game. If we want this kind of quality, we should be willing to pay for it. One nice thing I'm happy to report is that the PDF is fully bookmarked, a feature Gillespie 's megadungeons lack (btw, I've made my own bookmarked version of Barrowmaze and I will happily send it to the author if he wants to distribute it.)

In short, Dragonslayer is a great game and I wholeheartedly recommend it for your OSR group. It should be compatible out of the box with all B/X, OSE, and Labyrinth Lord material, and should work with Swords and Wizardry adventures with minimal conversion.

Best OSR so far. has a nice mix of the new and old. Works great for Experienced GMs. Think it would need a noob guide for a beginner to make it work.

This book a nostalgia trip, and and an excellently done one. It is a love letter to the roots of tabletop RPGs, a reflection on how things were, and a rekindling of that spirit. Anyone looking to have some fun playing in a style that is very different from the games of the 21st century would do well with this book.

The book flows like a story. It starts with an explanation of the state of the game, the attitude you should approach it if you want to have fun, then the standard races/classes section, a brief section on equipment, combat, spells, and then a very condensed section for game masters (there is a lot of it in a very short area). The book itself has good art, with a style harkening back to the late 1970s. The monster manual section is well appropriated with variety and plenty of enemies for players to contend with (and die to). The only criticism I can fairly level at the book is organisation, it feels like the sections run together, and a little more separation could help.

What I really liked about Dungeonslayer were the FAQ and Magic User 101 at the end, the take on the Monk and 2/3 of the art. But I am disappointed nevertheless...

Yes some of the art is good, a few pictures are outstanding. But some of the illustrations are not. This is just another retroclone, you get a generic BX plus Advanced set of rules, with Ability Scores modified by Race. Race and Class are separate, everything is pretty standard. All in all - there is nothing special about this book and the system. Everything is pretty generic, besides some of the pleasant art.

Among the points that disappointed me:

• unclear layout in the Magic Items section when it comes to sub-items. Like in the Figurines of Wondrous Power-section which fills almost a whole page. The next item is Filangee’s Propeller Beanie, but the typeset is identical; so the subitems and the new entry look the same.
• Wilderness Random Tables according to level, sorted by alphabet? Sorry, this does not make sense at all to me. By terrain, by climate, special regions etc. has been standard forever. Different character levels can be incorporated by rolling different dice for example, or adding a number. But does make adding character levels into wilderness exploration sense? I don't think so.
• I understand the game simulates medieval fantasy or swords&sorcery, but especially the Hyborian Age goes far beyond Europe. The Conan stories are set in Asia and Africa. Why not mention Human characters can be from there too? What about science fantasy games, planetary romance etc.
• I miss a bit of a setting - at least in broad strokes. This book has to compete with the Rules Cyclopedia and ACKS, which have this. Even the thin D&D BX Expert Set has a tiny sniplet of the Known World.
• at least a bit about Domain Play and what happens after Expert Levels would have been nice,
• instead we get silly and immature carousing rules.
• Why elves should not be able to wield a two handed swords doesn't make sense to me. According to the rules they are to "lithe" for it. OK, maybe they don't use Mauls or Two Handed Battle Axes, but this would be a cultural thing. But never mind, this is just a minor point, just like among the Figurines of Wondrous Power table: There is an entry for Onyx Wolf, but in the text it is an Onyx Dog (and mentioning a panther...)

Conclusion: 299 pages of an All in One rulebook for a price of 80$ including PDF. This is the very upper end.

How does it compete against other games? One can get their Core Rules PLUS a whole campaign/Hexcrawl/several modules/setting for that price. ACKS, Osric, Swords&Wizardry, Basic D&D, AD&D (1e or 2e, the latter perfect bound), (Advanced) Labyrinth Lord etc. have way better deals. Some even have the premium color print options for example.

Dragonslayer does not offer this, it is B&W standard print, you get nothing on top of it for 80$. Some are arguing OSE or Hyperboria cost the same. Well, yes, they do. But they have hard cover quality, linen sewn offset print. For only a few more bucks you get DCC plus a full retail boxed set (Lankhmar or Dying Earth, classic game worlds and campaign settings). These games aren't its competitors though. Dragonslayer is overpriced, it has substancial flaws when it comes to gamedesign (encounter tables, commonplaces concerning building a setting) and layout, childish rules about carousing my group would have come up with at the age of 16.

Dragonslayer is - JARC. I do not know who needed this, esp. while there are differend BX Clones on the market which are better deals. This book was kickstarted, so the publisher already got the artists payed. Art is expensive, but other games have Otus covers for example. I do not know which niche this book fits in. If it wasn't for the authors pupular megadungeons, I would not know, but they are perfectly useable with other OSR or original games.

Fairly OK, not bad (2.8 points of 5)

(because of the encounter tables and game design flaws, layout flaws, "lack of meat", like no setting, not even implied and no domain play, cost/performance ratio)

The pdf is well worth the purchase price. The conciseness is almost alarming. I checked the same spell or item in AD&D or BX and found a more verbose description. Most of this book will be found spread across more pages in a variety of OSR games. This has random dungeons, hex maps for the wilderness and charts for encounters. The rules seem geared to the individual table. How long is a round? I don’t think the book says. It depends on how you want to play it. The tables may make some of the choices, or I can’t read. There are four great Megadungeons to draw from if you want to play the dungeons it was designed for.

Oh, the font is easy for old eyes to read. The book has just the right amount of white space. You can color the illustrations to your heart’s content, or just take notes on the margins. If I get tired reading the book it is because I am old, not from an orange font on a blue background.

There may or may not be some holes in the rules. Rounds do not seem to be defined, neither is magic resistance. This may be due to the author preferring for people to decide which side of the BX/AD&D they wish to play in.

Highly recommended!

Awesome! Fits the bill for a nicely rounded blend of basic and 1st.