Dragon And Warrior
A downloadable tabletop story game
You can now order physical copies from Drive Thru RPG!
The Warrior stands before the king who tells them that they are the next in a long line of warriors of legend tasked with fighting off an evil tyrant. That is how every game begins, but from then on the players shape the setting, scenery, and the story itself through gameplay.
Four roles craft the narrative: the Warrior, the Villain, the Ally, and Treasure. The Warrior controls the actions of the story's protagonist. The Villain invents conflicts, monsters, and characters who stand in the Warrior's way. The Ally steers the townsfolk, shopkeepers, and the Warrior’s friends—all whom aid the Warrior’s journey and send them on quests. Lastly, Treasure describes the world itself, breathing life into setting and scenery, as well as whatever items the Warrior finds on their journey.
Players are encouraged to ask provocative questions about the parts of the story the other players’ roles control, allowing everyone to push the story towards what piques their curiosity. Players frequently switch roles during the game, giving everyone a chance to say what the Warrior does next. Questions serve a double purpose of useful prompts to jumpstart one another’s imaginations.
Drawing is a meaningful part of the gameplay as well. Depending on their role, players might draw maps of towns and dungeons they explore, or sketch the monsters and challenges that lie in wait for the Warrior. When the players switch roles, so do the drawings they were working on, allowing other players to fill in details, or introduce characters and settings based on someone else's art.
There are just enough stats and strategy to give Dragon and Warrior the feel of a turn-based RPG video game battle without having so many rules that they hinder player creativity. Conflict is quick and exciting—a back and forth card game of attacking, blocking, and maneuvering for the right opening. Characters can be built to focus on powerful strikes, quick agility, or magic spells, and they will slowly grow in power throughout the campaign—as will their enemies.
Dragon and Warrior is based on old school JRPG video games, combining strategic turn-based battles with the play-to-find-out style of indie RPGs. It is a stand alone game that can be played as a campaign or a one shot, for 2-6+ players.
Purchase
In order to download this tabletop story game you must purchase it at or above the minimum price of $5.99 USD. You will get access to the following files:
Download demo
Development log
- Dragon And Warrior PDF now availableJul 13, 2019
Comments
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This is a crazy interesting idea, and I'm looking forward to reading through this game, maybe running it some time!
Thanks! Do I know you?
I suppose it’s possible! I don’t recognize your name, though.
Haven’t had a chance to run this yet, and not certain when I will, but gosh what a fun way to emulate a single-player JRPG. It feels like roles might switch a little too fast, but of course I’d have to play to be sure. It’s all just so novel, and pretty solidly elegant.
The gear treadmill is, imo, well-made, as someone who doesn’t love tabletop gear treadmills, and I’m really stoked to inflict this game on some children because gosh dang do I want to try it.
Definitely works with kids. Thanks so much, hope you get to play it soon!
This is very cute! I like the idea of re-vamping classic RPGs to not have a GM and instead rotate the main character around. Also the fact that is not based on a particular setting opens up a lot of playing possibilities :)
The idea of map creation is super interesting! Can't wait to have a map that is completely in comprehensive except for those that have been playing, haha. If our game has anything like your drawings I'm sure we will have fun! Also, the simplicity of it and the focus on collective play makes it perfect to play with kids, so I may do that.
However, when seeing the roles, I can't help but think that the enjoyment of the "Treasure" person has some degrees of separation from the rest of the group (as in, they are the ones that make the map, they do not really interact in battles, etc.) I may actually hack it to be a third person game in which we all take the role of Treasure when it is needed, to see if that sounds better. Oh, relatedly, I really your "healstuff" example -- a chewy ring that heals you up is so cool!
A thing I don't really like is the EXP mechanic. I understand why it is there (this is based on classic RPGs after all) but I felt as if your game was more conductive to have a "milestone" advancement system, you know?
Regardless, I really liked reading through it. Thank you for sharing!
Thanks so much for the feedback, I really appreciate it! It's always interesting to see where people take the setting whenever I run this and that openness is a huge part of the fun. I also love drawing in games, and having those artifacts left over as a sort of memorabilia of the story we made.
The fun of treasure should be in describing the non living aspects of the world, they are in charge of describing and answering questions about buildings, locations, and scenery. Also making up items and treasure can be fun. I have seen people struggle with the role and it might not be for everyone, but once you get the hang of it, interjecting description of objects and location in the middle of a scene can really help build atmosphere and immersion, even affect and inform the choices characters are making. Sensory description can also help (you smell burning, you feel the cold prickle of snowflakes landing on your nose, and so forth).
In battle scenes the strong move for treasure is to give the players something to interact with, some sort of action set piece, like a forbidden temple with strange trap mechanisms, a steep hill full of loose boulders over a deep chasm, or a damaged airship losing altitude. Ideally asking of questions should drive a lot of this, so The Warrior might ask Treasure, "What's the fastest way out of here?" and Treasure could respond "You see a rope tied to giant chandelier, you could cut the rope and swing on it."
There's also a rules variant on page 20 for a three player game, where treasure and allies are controlled by the same player. But I'd be interested in seeing if your hack works better, letting people take on treasure as needed might be an improvement.
I do sometimes feel like dropping some of the pretense of trying to emulate a videogame RPG would make this game work more smoothly, by further simplifying some of the crunch and making it more purely narrative focused, so I feel you there. Maybe some later version of it will end up going in that direction, if I get around to revising it and doing another printing...
Again, I really appreciate you taking the time to read and give me some feedback. If you run the game I'd love to hear how it goes. You're the best!