Cover art by Charlotte Laskowski, Title design by Luna P. Design not final.
Dragon Reactor is a mythopoetic mech tragedy game about conflict on a grand scale. It’s about warring governments, rising rebellions, slowly-waking god-machines, and the effects forever-wars have on those involved. It’s about the ever-turning wheel of time, and how we’re always racing against it. It’s about wanting to do the right thing, but having to pull the trigger instead.
Players take on the role of pilots who have fallen into possession of the most powerful war machines in the world.
Build your world, then fight for it. Rather than building something you’ve seen time and time again, Dragon Reactor guides you through the creation of your own unique setting for stories that hit home for your group. No matter when or where you are, war is coming.
Dragons, Rivals, and Anchors. From the giant war machine you pilot to the people who drive you forward, the connections your Pilots have to other characters in the world are not just key to your stories, but also to your character advancement and every single session of play.
Manage your resources as you push for victory. Each mechanic is a finely-tuned machine that strikes a delicate balance between crunchy inter-connected systems, lighter mechanics inspired by story games, and resource management that makes every decision matter.
Fight against inevitable DOOM. Every story ends, and in Dragon Reactor that end is given a strict countdown. Once the DOOM clock fills, your story’s unique end comes to pass. Will you be able to stop it?
To play Dragon Reactor, you'll need:
2+ players, with one acting as the game master
A handful of six-sided dice per player.
Index cards or digital equivalent
A single session of Dragon Reactor may take 2-3 hours to play and typically involves playing through a single Conflict. A full campaign is made of multiple Conflicts, and varies in length.
Layout sample, design not final. Layout by Luna P. and art by Emma Harvey.
Dragon Reactor deals with themes of war, violence, and their consequences. While it's meant to be enjoyed, it’s also built around telling intense stories. Players (and their characters) will have to make tough decisions, sometimes leading to tragedy. The clocks are always ticking, and it’s up to everyone to make their actions count.
The Poet is the game master, responsible for controlling the world at large, including any non-player characters.
The Pilots are the players, responsible for controlling their personal character and narrating their actions as they try to shape the world.
Dragon Reactor runs on a d6 dice pool system with tiered successes, and the bigger the action you're taking the harder it is to succeed. Pilots gain dice based on their stats and have various resources at their disposal to increase their chances.
Thanks to the Magnitude and Burden/Boon systems, something big happens every time you roll the dice- though it may not be in your favor. Pilots determine the Magnitude of their action based on what they're trying to do: taking out a small squad may be Magnitude 2 (needing 2 dice to roll 4 or higher), but shooting down a fleet of capital ships would be a Magnitude 4 (the highest it goes). Based on the result, the Poet and Pilot each get to pick a number of positive and negative outcomes from a crafted selection.
It's a satisfying resolution system that lets you immediately know if something good or bad is about to happen, then gives you room to tactically pick the outcomes that best suit your goal (or throw wrenches into the players' plans).
To learn more about this system, and to try it out for yourself, you should pick up our free demo!
Layout sample, design not final. Layout by Luna P.
“Tactile resource management and juicy story-forward mechanics that perfectly encapsulate you in the mech cockpit. A perfect system for episodic mecha melodrama with big fights and bigger feelings.”
“The worldbuilding rules do SO MUCH in such little space. We ended up with a compelling world none of us could have dreamt up alone. Dragon Reactor knows its themes perfectly. I know what kind of story I'm playing, and I have all the space I want to fill in the details. This game fucks.”
“Dragon Reactor finally made me excited about mechs! The game promises to tell stories on the scale of Homerian epics and it absolutely delivers. The innovative countdown mechanics alone are worth the price of admission, and that barely scratches the surface about what makes me excited to running this game.”
Can't wait to get your big robot hands on Dragon Reactor? Every returning backer, and everyone who pledges within the first 48 hours will get access to an in-development version of the game, a special role in the Dinoberry Discord, and early access to a Dragon Reactor channel to talk about the project!
Should we reach our funding goal, a small survey will go out so we can provide access.
The goal for this crowdfunding campaign is to fund the final development, art, and production stages for Dragon Reactor. This includes paying our team (and ourselves) for our work, covering basic operating costs, and putting some gas in the tank for both Dinoberry Press and 200-Proof Games to keep doing what we're doing!
Dragon Reactor is a project very close to our hearts, and something we've been working on for a few years now. The excitement it brings us is second only to the passion we feel for the continued development & release of the project, and we need your help to cross the finish line.
Despite the smaller scope of this campaign, we firmly believe that Dragon Reactor ranks with all of our previous projects, and we know it's something you'll love just as much as we do. We're excited to add it to our list of crowdfunding successes like Little Wolves, Any%, GUN&SLINGER, You're In Space And Everything's Fucked, and all the rest.
As for the budget, here's the breakdown:
$1,669 - Game design and final editing passes
$2,450 - Art and layout
$810 - Print and production
$400 - Packing materials and "just in case" coverage
For now, our primary focus is on getting Dragon Reactor across the finish line and paying our incredible team what they're worth. To that end, our stretch goal structure is simple:
For every $1,000 we raise above our initial goal, everyone on the team will get a bonus!
This project is a sum of the work of our incredible team, and this will let us keep the focus on making Dragon Reactor as good as it can possibly be while making sure everyone working on the project shares in this campaign's success- all thanks to your support!
What about the future of Dragon Reactor?
We have some very fun plans for future expansions and additional ways to play Dragon Reactor, ranging from tools to tell different kinds of mech stories to our own hacks of the system we've built for this project. We hope to bring in more artists and writers for those future expansions, and your support for this crowdfunding campaign directly affects our ability to do it. So, thank you!
Nevyn (they/she) is a nonbinary game designer that loves making weird, experimental designs. Designer of GUN&SLINGER, You're In Space And Everything's Fucked, and co-founded Dinoberry Press. Their main goal in game design is to create projects that focus on feeling, story, and using the medium in fresh ways.
Samuel Quinn Morris (he/they) is a non-binary game designer inspired by the words of Bigweld: “see a need, fill a need.” You might have heard of ANY% and the 1E Manifesto, and there’s a lot more in the tank that they’re excited to share with you. For Quinn, game design is all about giving players the right choices and embracing the big, fun feelings that art gives us
Samantha Leigh (they/she) is a tabletop game designer & editor and the owner of Blinking Birch Games. They are best known for their solo game, Anamnesis, and their short-form videos about indie TTRPGs. Their previous editing work includes ARKYVR, The Lost Bay, and A Fool's Errand, among others.
Luna P. (she/her) is a graphic designer specializing in games and editorial, mostly tabletop rpgs. Her work spans multiple genres both visually and technically, and will soon become the last thing keeping the divided ttrpg subcultures from mutually assured destruction. Other than making stuff up for her bio, she likes cooking, 3d modelling and doing research on historic typography and design practices.
Emma Harvey (she/her) is a trans traditional illustrator who focuses on raw, unpolished, emotional art in graphite and ink. Emma has worked on Dinoberry's GUN&SLINGER as well as other published works and comics. She aims to convey a striking musical and half-remembered style with a variety of subjects.
Charlotte Laskowski (she/any) is an illustrator who uses tabletop games as an excuse to make more illustrations. She’s done the covers of Songbirds 3e and has made things like Daisy Chainsaw, Rosethorn Keep, and Celestial Bodies.
Julie-Anne "Jam" Muñoz (she/they) is a queer, Latine artist with a passion for colorful design. She's known for her ARPIA award-winning layout work on Logan and for Dinocar, IGDN winner for best art and nominee for most innovative. She's an illustrator, layout artist, game designer, and co-founder of Dinoberry Press
Exact shipping costs for this project are not yet known. Due to the ongoing worldwide pandemic & tariff fluctuations, shipping costs range widely and delivery schedules for both manufactured goods and fulfilled orders are very volatile.
In order to make sure nobody is over-charged, shipping will be collected after the campaign, closer to fulfillment via Backerkit.
Domestic shipping is usually fairly straightforward thanks to media mail (on book-only orders), but international shipping can be anywhere from $10 USD to $40 USD (and sometimes more), depending on what's being shipped and where it's going.
As such, shipping will be collected post-campaign via Backerkit. Surveys will go out first, and once we're ready to begin fulfillment a few months later we'll send out reminders a couple of weeks before shipping gets charged, once the prices are in the system and accurate rates are set up globally.
