Dragon Reactor: Embers, Ashes, Moments and Stars

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. What will you do with all that power?

• 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?

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!

Created in collaboration between Dinoberry Press & 200-Proof Games.

Required for play: 
✦ 2 or more players, with one acting as the Poet and the others acting as Pilots
✦ A handful of six-sided dice (d6) per player
✦ Character sheets, notecards, and note-taking tools
✦ A copy of this game