Nevyn here, finally getting to say something I've wanted to for over a week now:
We did it, Pilots!
Thanks to your efforts, we were able to gather enough pledges and we're i...
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Dinoberry Press
4 days ago
Conflict, sessions, and campaigns in Dragon Reactor (AND WE'RE ALMOST FUNDED!)
Good evening once again, Pilots!
Nevyn here~
I hope you've had a great Thursday! We're slowly but surely approaching our funding goal, and it's all thanks to you. We've sti...
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Dinoberry Press
5 days ago
Magnitude: the impact of rolling dice to achieve the unbelievable
Hi folks! Quinn here, the other erstwhile half of Dragon Reactor alongside the inimitable Nova. I've heard that y'all want to hear about the Magnitude system, and I'm gonna t...
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Dinoberry Press
6 days ago
Rivals: A connection borne in Conflict (last poll & funding update!)
Greetings, pilots!
Before we start talking about Rivals, I want to give huge THANK YOU to everyone who has supported this project so far! Whether you've pledged, told your f...
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Dinoberry Press
7 days ago
Anchors, Pilots, and Moments (and a new poll!)
Good morning, Pilots!
Yesterday I dove into Doom in Dragon Reactor, and the second poll's results are in so here I am to swim with some Anchors!
About halfway through devel...
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Dinoberry Press
8 days ago
Let's talk about DOOM (and the next poll!)
Good morning, Pilots!
The first system poll has ended, and y'all want to hear about DOOM, so here we go! :D
What is the worst possible thing that could happen?
That's your ...
Nevyn here, finally getting to say something I've wanted to for over a week now:
We did it, Pilots!
Thanks to your efforts, we were able to gather enough pledges and we're incredibly happy to say that Dragon Reactor: Embers, Ashes, Moments and Stars IS FUNDED!
We still have 3 weeks in the campaign, though! That's 3 weeks to keep sharing and spreading the word! Remember, for every $1,000 we raise above this goal, everyone on the team will be getting a bonus!
We want to make sure everyone involved with this project continues to share in its success, so rather than expensive stretch goals we will be making sure everyone gets something we all need: paid.
Livestreamed Q&A August 17th!
That's right! On Sunday, August 17th at 11am US Central, Quinn and I will be doing a livestreamed Q&A about Dragon Reactor on the Dinoberry Press Twitch channel! We'll also be playing co-op Armored Core 6 throughout, so you know it's gonna be a good time.
Follow the channel so you don't miss it!
What's next for Dragon Reactor?
For now, we're continuing to focus on the campaign. 3 weeks left means we're not done yet, and we're going to keep pushing for those team bonuses.
There's an interview with Quinn and myself on Talk of The Table airing August 18th, so give the fine folks over there a follow too!
Aside from that, Quinn and I are going to get back to the doc itself! We have a bit more to do so that once the funding lands in our account we can get everyone paid and make sure they have what they need to hit the ground running.
Again, thank you all for your support! We really believe that Dragon Reactor is something special, and we can't wait for it to be in your hands and at your tables.
As always, you can join the Dinoberry Discord to talk shop if you want more-regular chatter about our work~
I hope you've had a great Thursday! We're slowly but surely approaching our funding goal, and it's all thanks to you. We've still got a ways to go, and quite frankly it would be amazing to fund in the first week. Keep sharin', yellin', and pointing people our way so we can reach our goal and bring this mythopoetic game of tragic mechs to life!
Today, at long last, we're gonna talk about Conflict.
We've touched on Conflict a couple times as we worked through the systems we've talked about in these updates, but haven't really dug in. I think it's pretty fitting that this has ended up being the last of our deep dives (for now!), given that it's so core to everything else going on.
In fact, if you haven't taken a look at the demo yet, you should! It contains some starter Conflicts and (most of) the final rules for how to actually run one.
Every session in Dragon Reactor features a Conflict, and for most it takes up the bulk of play. Preparing for your first Conflict is the last thing you do during Session 0, and jumping in is the first thing that happens in Session 1. It's where almost all of the die rolling happens, and it's where heroes and villains are made.
To pull from the text again:
Conflict Conflict does not make the world a better place; it only makes it a different one.
Conflict is where players will spend most of their time during a campaign of Dragon Reactor. Every session should involve a single Conflict, with longer battles sometimes occurring over two sessions. Conflict comprises any kind of battle between two or more parties, though that usually means the skies fill with the screaming engines of war machines.
Conflicts are a race to the finish. All sides involved are trying to complete their own objective, and the first group to achieve their goal is victorious.
Conflicts only ever have one victor, and it always comes at great cost.
Structurally, a Conflict has 4 parts:
The factions involved
Your side's primary objective, put as simply as possible
What happens if you win & what happens if you lose
A 10-step Conflict clock for each side
Once you have those details, you're ready to enter the fray!
The systematic goal of a Conflict is pretty simple: fill your Clock before they do. Once a side does that, they're the victor, and play shifts into Aftermath after describing the last moments of the Conflict itself.
It's intentionally light, and very flexible.
To progress the clock, you simply need to succeed an action that has a real, material effect on the state of things and puts your side closer to your objective. This can be something like attacking the enemy, arguing with them, protecting your friends, causing distractions, taking out a leader, blowing up a key point, or anything else depending on what your goal is. The Poet ultimately decides what happens, but it's always to be discussed.
This lets the table set pretty much anything up as the Conflict. We've run rescue missions, base attacks, materiel thievery, defenses, chases, defusals, target-hunts, and even down-and-out slugfests across our campaign & playtests. Each one has been a tense race to victory, and each one has left an impact on the Pilots and their Players.
Why an even race?
We knew from the start that we wanted the core "who's gonna win" system to have a consistent structure and we pretty quickly decided on the "race" style idea of competing clocks. Thematically it works well: a fight is always about who's gonna win first, it's always a race of some sort, and bringing that in helped emphasize Dragon Reactor's themes in play.
Making it consistent took a bit of legwork. We weren't sure at first how many ticks the clock should have, but after a bunch of testing we realized that 10 resulted in a great average session length (1-2 hours on average, less or more depending on how clever or unlucky players are). One of the great, surprising parts of designing this is how creative the Poet can be with minimal actual planning for a session.
This isn't a game that cares about "balance" in a way a lot of other mech games do. You don't have to consider character level, strength of the enemies, how hard it is to do something, or anything like that. For pretty much every session I've run, I've gone in knowing what the objective is and how the opposition is gonna play dirty. I'll have a couple ideas for enemy forces that can show up, and a Rival to pull in if things need a shake-up.
I've been able to run 10 sessions of the game now with essentially no prep, and each one has been vastly different despite the mechanical goal being identical (get 10 clock ticks).
This isn't only thanks to the streamlined Conflict structure, though. It has just as much to do with Burdens and Boons.
What happens after the dice roll
In Quinn's post about Magnitudes, they briefly mentioned Burdens and Boons, and they're the last part of Conflict I want to talk about today. I'm about to talk in a lot of game terms, so again I recommend checking out the Demo for a version of this with delicious layout!
Depending on the result of a Check, the Pilot and Poet get to pick from a set list of Burdens and Boons. This is, basically, a picklist of "good" and "bad" results that affect the Conflict, Pilots, and sometimes side-characters.
As an example, let's take a Magnitude 2 Check. It needs 2 hits for a Proud result, but a single hit will still get you a Pyrrhic. If your check results is Pyrrhic, the thing you were aiming for happens (and progresses the Conflict if it should), but the Poet gets to pick a number of Burdens equal to the amount of misses rolled in the check.
If a Pilot rolls 3 dice on a Magnitude 2 Check and gets 1 hit, the Poet gets to pick 2 Burdens.
This leads to big swings, because you want to get your Hits, but if anything misses you get some pretty nasty return fire.
Burdens themselves are straightforward, but can be used very creatively. Here are some examples:
Progress an enemy Conflict clock
Mark a Negative Moment on an Anchor
Give a Pilot a Condition
The Pilot loses control and makes their next check at Magnitude 4
There are a few others, but I think these draw a pretty clear picture of what we're doing here. The Boons a Pilot can choose from if they reach Proud of Pinnacle are things like this:
Mark a Positive Moment on an Anchor
Gain 1 die on your next check
Give 1 die to a teammate on their next check
Add a word to a Refrain
Again, just some examples, but you can see the difference between these. The Poet's Burdens are as much about affecting the Pilot in a variety of ways as they are about shifting the state of the Conflict itself. On the other hand, the Pilot's Boons are about pushing themselves and preparing for their next big swing so they have a better shot at victory.
I've been asked before, "why not just constantly progress the enemy clock with burdens? Why not just keep dealing damage to the Pilots?"
To put it simply: that's not fun. Often, those are the least interesting results not just fictionally but mechanically as well. The Poet has a lot of toys to choose from, and importantly their role isn't to "beat the pilots", it's to help them tell a satisfying, dramatic story.
Like I mentioned in my discussion of Doom, this is a game about pacing. Burdens and Boons are two of the many tools the table have in their kit to play with that, and it always leads to something satisfying.
Push your luck
I've come to think of Dragon Reactor as a "push your luck" roleplaying game. It's not a new idea, but I think it's an excellent way to describe the core systems here. Pilots are going to be weighing their resources VS how badly they need to get a success and how big of a swing they want to make. You're wagering Modules and Conditions and all these things on your character sheet to hedge your bets and get that win as quickly as possible so you lose as little as possible, but it's never going to be a clean victory.
A perfect example of this is the first check made in our most recent playtest session. One of our players (Kevin Nguyen of Volley Boys and Bro Is It Gay To Dock) had missed a few sessions, and this was their first time back. Fresh character, new archetype, ready to roll and defend his home town.
He wanted to make a good impression, so as the very first action in the Conflict he aimed for a Magnitude 2 Check to find and take out an enemy commander. His odds were pretty good! He worked his way up to 7 dice with clever use of Modules and Conditions, and all he needed was 2 hits. Any 2 of those dice needed to show up with a 4, 5, or 6 and if he got more than 2 hits he'd get a Pinnacle result allowing him to really get some work done.
He rolled his dice, was silent for a moment, and said "hang on, I'm uploading a picture to Discord". And, y'all? This game's really good.
Kevin's results. Only 1 hit out of 7 dice rolled.
That's 1 hit. ONE. Out of 7 dice. Despite how bad this feels, it qualifies as a Pyrrhic result, which means he got what he wanted! Enemy target painted, knew exactly where to go, progressed the clock.
Unfortunately for him, it also meant I got to pick 6 Burdens. I could have absolutely annihilated some health bars or practically assured the enemy victory, but I played with the toys on the table and this session ended up being one of the best yet. It quite literally came down to a single die roll and the destruction of an entire town, and it was one of the best times we've had playing a TTRPG.
And that's what I'll leave you with!
Thanks again, endlessly, for hanging out and reading our long posts about some of the core systems in Dragon Reactor!
As of this post, we're right at 90% funded- so close to funding! If this game, these stories, and the work we do is something you like and want to support, then please back if you haven't already! Tell your friends, share in your TTRPG spaces, and help us cross the finish line.
Before we start talking about Rivals, I want to give huge THANK YOU to everyone who has supported this project so far! Whether you've pledged, told your friends, shouted at a bus, told the people at your local store about it, something else, or all of it- thank you!
We're getting so, so close to funding. As of writing this update, we're 72% of the way there! We have just under $2,000 left to raise- which isn't nothing, but it's also very close!
To get this project across the finish line, to enable us to actually make this game a reality, we need your help pushing just a bit further. Please, keep up the great work and help us fund!
Now, let's talk about Rivals!
The last poll actually tied(nice try at getting me to talk about two things at once!), so I took the top results (Rivals and Magnitudes) and ran a follow-up poll in the Dinoberry Discord, with Rivals winning! Here's the proof:
So, today I get to talk to you about my favorite part of any mech story: two pilots fated to battle over and over, locked in a push-and-pull stalemate that won't end until one of them is dead or they kiss (sometimes both).
We knew from the jump that we wanted this intense, antagonistic connection to another character to be in Dragon Reactor, and we also knew it had to be meaningful when a rival shows up. They needed to not just be difficult to fight, but carry an emotional weight for the Pilots and, by extension, get the players excited (and a little scared) when the Poet stars describing their entrance.
Here's the current introductory text for Rivals:
Through the oil and smoke, a shimmer of butterfly blue catches your eye and the screaming engine sounds their call. Your rival is here.
You are not the only pilots with infinite destruction at their fingertips. Your rivals, each with their own loyalties and goals, have tamed Dragons.
During character creation, each player has the option to establish a Rival that their Pilot has already encountered, formed before the war began or in the fires of a previous battle. If a player wishes to have a rivalry form during play, with an NPC met during a conflict, they can skip this part of setup and refer to it when they feel a rivalry beginning to bud.
Rivals tell us just as much about your character as Anchors do, especially when you make them at character creation-- though that's not required. In fact, the first thing you write down about a rival is a single sentence that describes your relationship, how you met.
We've had a pretty wide range of answers here. One of my own playtest characters had a Rival that was her older brother, who was in turn another Pilot's starting Anchor. In our ongoing campaign, one of the Pilots that's been around since the first session as her mother filling the role. In that same campaign, another Pilot's rival was a member of an enemy faction that we ended up allying with after a few missions.
Each of these has incredible implications for the story, and they give everyone at the table something to play with. They're personal, not just to the Pilots who often mirror their Rivals, but to the players that are signaling to the poet: "hey, this is the kind of foil I want to go up against. This is a kind of story I want to tell here."
Plus, they're really damn cool.
The mirroring that Rivals do to Pilots is very intentional. After describing how you met, you pick their Archetype. Just like the Pilot Archetypes, these are made up of a few key phrases. Mainly, their Once Per Conflict move and a kind of fill-in-the-blank picklist to build their past and present.
Take the Zealot, for example:
Zealot A true believer in the cause. Once per Conflict: They call upon their faith as a shield. Each time they take a Condition, the enemy Conflict clock is progressed by 1.
They’ve been a believer since (childhood, a tragedy, meeting their hero), and never looked back. They have sacrificed (family, morality, everything) in service of their cause. When their (immediate superior, only friend, great leader) gives an order, they obey without question.
There's quite a bit to parse here, but I'm actually going to start at the bottom. Those three phrases allow the Pilots to mold the first shapes of their Rival, within some constraints. These Archetypes are built with purpose, designed to key in specific kinds of characters and stories.
To that end, the player picks one of those options in the parentheses on each phrase. As an example, that first phrase could become "They've been a believer since childhood, and never looked back".
Of course, once you have the game at your table you can make up anything you want, but we wanted to make sure we point you in a direction.
Ok, now we can go up a bit and take a look at that scary Once Per Conflict move. We haven't talked much about Conflict here, but you can learn a lot about it in the demo. To boil it down, Conflict is structured as competing clocks and the first side to fill theirs wins. Conditions are essentially HP for Pilots and Rivals, and Rivals can initially take up to 4 Conditions before being "defeated" (not killed!). Every time a Rival comes back, they can take 1 additional Condition.
The Zealot's Once per Conflict move is incredibly powerful, and very terrifying. Once it's triggered, for the remainder of the Conflict they'll move their side closer to victory any time your smack 'em. You don't have to defeat them, but they're going to cause a lot of trouble for you if you don't.
We took that approach with every Rival Archetype in the game. Once we figured out what we could do here, we knew they each needed to immediately change the game and bend the rules just like the Pilots can. Our guiding phrase for the Rivals (and for much of the game) grew into "how can we make this weirder and hit harder?".
I'll share two more before moving on, for the Noble and the Warlock:
Noble Once per Conflict: Reach out to a Pilot, establishing themselves as an Anchor.
Warlock Once per Conflict: They call upon their apostatic powers, stealing and immediately utilizing a Refrain.
Both of these directly mess with a Pilot's character sheet in ways nothing else does.
As you know, Anchors are personal, and the Noble can insert themself into your life in a very real way. Remember, when an Anchor's clock fills, you have a scene with them. They are built to be an ongoing presence working towards some ulterior motive, and they will use you to achieve it.
We haven't talked about Refrains yet (check out the demo!), but they are these personal, powerful phrases that Pilots pull on to shape the world in magical ways. The fact that the Warlock can simply reach into your character sheet and pluck something from your heart and hands should feel exactly as troubling as that sounds.
They're really, really hard to kill.
Any good rival is gonna stick around for a while, and in a game like Dragon Reactor where you're piloting a hyperpowerful superweapon capable of destroying a galaxy, we need to temper that a bit. We do this in two ways:
When a Rival's conditions fill, they are removed from the Conflict. A Rival is only defeated for good if the Poet and Pilot agree to bring their story to a close. The next time they show up, they're harder to beat.
Since Rivals also pilot Dragons, even acting against them is harder. A regular roll while piloting a Dragon needs at least 2 hits to succeed, but a check against a Rival needs at least 3. That difference is massive, and you'll know more about why when we talk about Magnitudes.
By designing Rivals like this, we ensure they show up throughout your story and have a major impact every single time. They're really, really freakin' cool.
And that's a wrap on Rivals!
There's a lot to say about these characters, but I can't without spoiling a whole bunch of stuff in the book- which I don't want to do! Seriously, every time I drop on into a Conflict the vibe shifts immediately in the best way possible. It's dramatic, it's scary, and it raises the desperation factor even if the Pilots are winning by a landslide.
Once again, thanks for reading! Please share this with your friends & TTRPG spaces to let as many people as you can know about the work we're doing with Dragon Reactor, and help us get across the finish line for funding!
What system would you like to hear about next? Rivals won out in the tie, so now it's between Magnitude and Conflict- take your pick!
Yesterday I dove into Doom in Dragon Reactor, and the second poll's results are in so here I am to swim with some Anchors!
About halfway through development on Dragon Reactor, we realized we were missing a pretty key component to the stories we're trying to tell- side characters.
It feels like suuuuuuch a silly thing to miss, but we were pretty focused on making sure all the other interwoven systems were hitting their mark so it came to us a little late. Conflicts had plenty of chatter between the Pilots, but any NPCs we brought in felt pretty shoe-horned, and there weren't really any interactions with them during Countdown. It was fine, since players were interacting with each other and having their own pretty driven scenes, but something was missing.
Thus; Anchors!
Put simply, Anchors in Dragon Reactor are non-player characters that a Player has decided their Pilot cares about. Or, more specifically, the Pilot cares about their opinions, and what they think of the Pilot.
They don't have to be people you like. Their thoughts have to mean something to you. In fact, one of the Rivals (the Noble) has a once-per-conflict move that establishes themselves as an Anchor for any one of the Pilots present. In one of our playtests (the one that created the setting in the demo), my own Pilot's initial Anchor was the mother of the person I was raised to protect, and it was a pretty rough relationship to say the lease.
I think that's a pretty important distinction, the difference between caring about a person and caring about what they think of you. We don't always choose who the latter applies to in our lives, and bringing that in to these NPCs has ended up being pretty key to the game. In fact, yet again, our text puts it best:
Despite some of their best efforts, Pilots are far from solitary beings. Each and every one of them has ties to another. Whether it’s someone back home, a fellow soldier, or someone they met on a mission, every Pilot has an Anchor that keeps them steady and, in some cases, serves as a guiding light.
Every Pilot starts with one Anchor, and more can be gained over the course of a campaign. Pilots can have up to 3 Anchors at a time.
Some Anchors provide motivation, others are a source of moral support, and some may even ask questions the Pilot doesn’t want to hear. Whatever their individual case may be, every Anchor is important to the Pilot they’re tied to.
We call them Anchors because they keep you grounded.
Anchors live on your character sheets, and like other things in Dragon Reactor are created by answering some questions and change over time using a clock.
The Anchor questions guide the player through creating this side-character in a pretty specific way. They're things like "Who would they say they are to you?", "What do they see in you that others do not?", "How do they make you feel?". They're mainly focused on the anchor, from their own view. In the full set, there are only 2 questions from the Pilot's perspective (including "how do they make you feel").
The structure here ensures that not only so the Pilot has a strong understanding of this character and the angle they'll be coming from, but also so the Poet has a foundation to build from when playing the character and tracking their Moments with the Pilot.
Many times running this game, I've gotten to pull on an Anchor in a way that emphasizes a particular moment in play. They can drive points home, they can tug on heartstrings and hit you in the gut, and they can relieve tension all at the same time.
What is a Moment?
We're going to take a quick detour to talk about relationships. When you boil it down, interpersonal relationships can be broken down into memories of things you've shared, of moments in time that build and refine your connection.
With Anchors, we wanted to make sure we had something to emulate this. A way to make it clear that a Pilot's relationship with their Anchor isn't static, but flowing and changing over time depending on what happens. To do this, we designed their Moments.
Every Anchor tracks specific Moments that occur during play, and we note down whether it's from a Positive or a Negative angle. When four Moments have been filled on an Anchor's sheet, the Pilot gets to have a scene with that Anchor during their next Countdown phase and the relationship changes as a result.
I mean that literally, by the way! After the scene the Pilot has to change an answer to one of the Anchor questions. This relationship grows, and at some point it can end. If either the Pilot or the Anchor thing the conversation marks the end of their connection, the Anchor is removed.
They can still be a character, but they won't be as present and the Pilot doesn't care in the same way. Of course, the players will always care- that's the beauty of these kinds of NPCs. But the Pilot has removed the Anchor from their heart, and someone else will fill that void.
Another resource, another kind of health
Player resources in Dragon Reactor can often feel limited. They have just enough to get through a conflict, and things are constantly dwindling. A player can only take 4 direct damage before they have to roll on the Disaster Table, and they only have 12 bits of what you'd recognize as "traditional HP".
This means the Poet has to be pretty particular with when they hurt the Pilots by giving them Conditions. It's one of the options in the Burdens and Boons table (which we can talk about when we get to Magnitudes), so it's not something they can do freely, but it's still something worth holding onto. Often, the other Burdens are more impactful, like marking a Negative moment with an Anchor.
Anchors aren't just characters- they're also a kind of health bar.
Rather than having a Pilot mark down an Injury, Woe, or Damage the Poet can instead have them mark a negative Moment with their Anchor (the Pilot can use a Boon from a success to gain a Positive one). This gives the Poet something to pull on other than "ok you take damage" or "the enemy makes progress towards their goal".
A Poet's role in Dragon Reactor is in part to control pacing, and it gives you a truckload of tools to do that with. You have to be mindful of how much damage the pilots are taking and how often the enemy marks progress on their Conflict Clock. The more filled those bars get, the more tense things are. The more marks on a Pilot's character sheet, the more desperate they're gonna get.
Anchors give you one more thing to pull on. A new set of boxes to fill that don't directly affect what's going on right now, but still have weight and affect the Pilots.
And, y'know what? Every time a Moment gets marked, it hits.
And that's it for Anchors!
For now, at least. I'm sure you can tell, but I could easily go on about this system, too. Anchors have turned out to be such a dynamic and strong part of Dragon Reactor and I can't wait for y'all to make yours :)
So, thanks for reading! Please share this with your friends & TTRPG spaces to let as many people as you can know about the work we're doing with Dragon Reactor, and help us get across the finish line for funding!
What system would you like to hear about next? With Doom and Anchors down, we're left with Rivals, Magnitude, and Conflict- all of which I can go on and on about, so take your pick!
The first system poll has ended, and y'all want to hear about DOOM, so here we go! :D
What is the worst possible thing that could happen?
That's your story's Doom. During setup, the table establishes some facts about the world (IE; how does tech look and function, where in the universe are we, how long has the war been raging,), sets the groundwork for 3 factions (by answering 2 questions for each), and decides what their story's unique Doom is.
The game describes Doom best:
The end is not out there. The end is not coming. It is already here, a stagehand in black ready to lower the curtain when the lights die. (....) Doom is a ticking clock shared by the entire table that represents the amount of time left before something catastrophic happens. It can represent things as relatively small and personal as losing your home to those as large and widespread as the destruction of the galaxy or a successful power grab by a universal empire.
Whether or not Doom occurs isn't really the question- it's how long? Doom is an eventuality, one that the Pilots are (possibly) fighting against. In some instances, the Pilots may not even know of it. One of our playtests had a Doom of "the machine-god at the center of the planet wakes", but the Pilots were neck-deep in a revolution with know knowledge of this possibility.
Fictionally, Doom is an omen, a very real countdown and sense of pressure on the whole table--not just the Pilots. Unless you're very clever (and lucky), Doom will come to pass after a long enough time playing. While that exact amount of sessions will vary, the pressure will always be there. Heck, in our digital character keepers the DOOM clock sits right at the top of the sheet:
DOOM clock from our playtest campaign. 5 out of 5 segments are filled.
The ongoing playtest campaign this clock is from has had 5 sessions, and Doom has progressed 5 times. One of those session had no Doom gained, while another had 2. It varies, but its triggers aren't uncommon. Currently, they are:
You only reach a Pitiful result at Magnitude 4.
An already-marked Disaster is rolled.
You lose a Conflict.
A Pilot’s Dragon is destroyed.
A Pilot or Anchor dies.
Mechanically, Doom is a soft limiter on the length of a single campaign. When approaching Dragon Reactor's session & campaign structure, we think of the story as a season of a TV show. What kind of show is this? What's the usual structure of an episode? How long should a season (campaign) last?
Doom makes sure that season has a good length and guides pacing. The more that clock fills, the sooner the season will end. The close that end is, the more desperate the Pilots will get to win and the more dramatic and intense the Poet should make the Conflicts.
Should that clock fill and Doom come to pass, though, it doesn't mean you'll never play Dragon Reactor or see those characters again, though! In fact, we encourage you to consider what happens and decide what your next moves are together.
When the Doom clock fills, the event comes to pass. Discuss it as a table, and describe how the world changes in response–and if you’re even still around. Decide if this is where the story ends, or how it continues. Do you make new characters to try again in this forever-changed world? Do you somehow survive and push forward, hopeful despite it all?
We want your show to get renewed for a second season. We want you to have a satisfying ending. If your table agrees that the ending brought about by Doom is sufficient, then you're absolutely OK to put the game down and pick up another. But if you're not? Then by all means, run it back.
What about winning?
It's hard to play a longer game where such a tragic outcome is so likely, and we want our Pilots to win just as much as you do. There's so much desperation, drama, tension, and tragedy throughout Dragon Reactor that having this inevitability hangin' out in the room can make it feel like a difficult game to approach.
I want to make it clear that while this game is intense, it's also very, very fun. I'll likely talk more about the push-your-luck mechanics when we get into the details on Magnitude and Rivals, but for now I'd recommend checking out one of the Actual Plays in our coverage!
When it comes to overcoming Doom, or "getting the GOOD ending", we decided we didn't want that to also be a ticking clock. We also tried to make "pushing back" the Doom clock work, reducing its marks to get more time, but we couldn't get something that felt right at the table. Then, we realized the reason those approaches weren't clicking: they're too tidy, too specific, and too obvious for the stories we want to tell.
Having a straightforward "good ending" meter doesn't land for this project, while having that "the bad ending is on the way" clock hits the exact kind of pressure we want.
Instead of forcing another clock into the game, we decided instead to offer some instruction on how to win. Currently, here's how that looks:
Overcoming Doom
What does victory look like in a world as doomed as yours?
War does not yield victory as readily as it doles out Doom. There is no dedicated system or set of rules in place to allow the Pilots a clean, obvious, preferable end to the war. No special lever to pull or clock to fill. No single move that lets you stop the bloodshed for good.
Together, you will need to be clever. Think about your Pilots and the desires of your opposition. Figure out if you're even on the right side of this. Tell your story, and try to win. Eventually, with your efforts combined, you may be able to stop the war in one way or another. If you do, you have a choice: stop playing right then and there and tell yourselves that peace will last, or continue the story to discover who fires the next shot.
We want your Pilots to be clever. We want the Poet to grant them plenty of opportunity to work towards a victory. We want you to win, but you're gonna have to work for it.
I'm so, so proud of Doom and the effect it has on play. Any time I, as the Pilot, get to say "everyone needs to fill their Doom clock by one" it hits, and often it hits hard. You should also know that, through those 5 sessions we've had, the Pilots haven't lost a single conflict. They've been making great strides towards victory, though they may not know it yet. At this point, they have in their midst the key to ending the war they're in.
I can't wait to see how they work with her to bring the story to a close.
And that's Doom!
Or, as much of it as I can talk about for now. I have a lot of thoughts about this system in particular, but this post is getting long and I should have some breakfast.
With that said- thanks for reading! Please share this with your friends & TTRPG spaces to let as many people as you can know about the work we're doing with Dragon Reactor, and help us get across the finish line for funding!
What system would you like to hear about next? There's a new poll attached below- give it a vote, and I'll do another one of these! :)
