Dragon's Dice RPG
A downloadable game
This is a business-card sized RPG designed for the Tiny Library jam.
You might feel that this game is more of a tactical puzzle than a story telling game, and I would support you in your assessment.
SET THE STAGE
- you're a party of heroes out to slay a dragon.
- grab your bag of dice. You'll want a number of D4s, a couple of D6s and at least one D8.
- print out this business card and place it on its own small plinth in front of you. if the business card seems flighty or dazed by its journey to your desktop, I have found that it enjoys electro swing and frank ocean's Nights.
- a game takes maybe five minutes.
HOW TO PLAY
This is a game of 'beat the dragon by rolling dice and matching them up to hearts, before you are eaten'.
- start on the side of the card that shows 4 heroes: each hero has a choice of two moves, represented as a number of dice that you can roll. they also have passive abilities (you must use the rogue's ability and the mage's ability, the fighter and cleric's are optional)
- You choose which move you want each hero to use, and you use their hero powers.
- roll your hero dice, the results are your dice pool.
- flip the card over, and start assigning dice in your pool to the different hearts that the dragon has. To defeat the '7' heart, you need to assign dice from your pool with a total value equal to 7. To defeat the 'triple' heart, you need to assign three dice from your pool that match.
- when you can't defeat any more hearts, empty your remaining dice from your dice pool, flip over the card and burn a hero (they no longer roll dice and don't have powers, because they are ashes in the wind). you can now choose new moves for your remaining heroes and roll new dice.
- if you defeat all the hearts, you win.
- if all your heroes are burned, you lose. In my last few games I won on my last hero.
SOME NOTES
- you could maybe play this collaboratively with a friend but one of you will want to quarterback, so I recommend playing this by yourself.
- I recommend using a pen to permanently deface the card as you play, crossing out heroes and hearts with wild abandon. You can also track your progress using a sheet of paper or constructing a tiny mound of dice on your table.
CREDITS
Games Design - Ogrillion
Cover art by katrin-hauf
Purchase
In order to download this game you must purchase it at or above the minimum price of $2 USD. You will get access to the following files:
Comments
Log in with itch.io to leave a comment.
I think it's a really cool game, I mean who doesn't want to kill a dragon in 5 minutes? The only downside is the fact that the rules need explaining outside of the card itself on the Itch page.
The rules are simple, so once you've learnt them you don't really need to look at them again, but if you gave the card to a friend or found it in your wallet after forgetting about it, I recon there's be some confusion.
Thank you for playing, and I agree! It would definitely be better if I could encode more of the rules text into the card itself. I just really wanted to get the game from my head onto some paper and then out the door :)
Since its a puzzle-y type of game, I am hopeful that if you found a printed copy of the card while you were cleaning your desk and you had ten minutes instead of five minutes, you would either make some guesses about how the game works and be basically correct, or you would use it as a springboard to make a new fun dice puzzle of your own.