Dragonslayer Role-playing Game
Adventure with the power of a dragon within you!
Introducing Dragonslayer!
Dragonslayer is a high fantasy role-playing game with a healthy dose of realism! There is a heavy focus on player choice & agency, both through character building options & how your character interacts with the game. These choices extend all the way to the core dice mechanic! The core mechanic is easy-to-learn & used for all aspects of the game. Lastly, the game is designed to play & flow like a show with the player characters as the stars. Many rules such as inventory management, group rules, & combats with no turns are designed to facilitate this.
A Focus on Player Agency
Dragonslayer focuses heavily on player choice & options. From 63 Class & Element combination options, to hundreds of spells, abilities and features, it truly gives choice a new meaning.
However, in Dragonslayer, a player's choices go beyond build options. Players having choice and control over their character is a core tenant of the game. You even have control over how you roll skill checks (see below)!
The biggest way you have agency is choosing how your skills, spells, & abilities are represented in the game. The build options in the book tell you how they mechanically interact with the game, but you choose what they represent!
Accessible Mechanics
Having accessible mechanics allows for players of any skill level to jump right into the fun. Whether you're a seasoned gamer or new to the genre, our game's learning curve is designed to be smooth and accessible, allowing you to focus on the incredible adventure that awaits.
The core mechanic of the game is the Skill Check. When you roll in Dragonslayer you use the same Skill Check mechanic whether you're making an attack, casting a spell, or befriending a barkeep. You don't need to learn different mechanics for different parts of the game.
When making a Skill Check, a player receives points to build their die pool equal to their Skill Value. You spend these points to add dice to the die pool and modifiers to the results of those dice.
Spending 2 points adds a 10-sided die to the pool. Spending 1 point adds 1 to the result of the die. After spending all of your points, you roll each die added to the pool and take the highest. Then add any modifiers you spent points for. That's it!
As an example, if you are making a Skill Check with a skill that your character has a 4 value in, you receive 4 points to build a die pool. You may spend all 4 points for 2 d10s at 2 points per die, or, you can spend 2 points for a die & 2 points for a +2.
Check out our Youtube channel for videos going into detail of some mechanics!
Playing & Flowing Like a Show
A big part of Dragonslayer is the focus on flowing like a show. We want your games to be as engaging and exciting as watching your favorite play, movie, or TV show! There's numerous ways we go about this from a focus on the player characters, inventory/money & other mechanics, to combats, both physical & social.
In Dragonslayer, the Player Characters are the stars of the show. As such, many of the rules are designed to keep the focus on them & their story flowing. A simple yet big way this is done is rounding numbers. Player characters round up, NPCs round down.
There are many other ways that focus is kept on the player story, but the largest is how damage is done. Characters in Dragonslayer have 2 damage pools; Vitality and Wounds. Wounds are actual physical damage the is, or can add up to be, life-threatening. Vitality represents any or all of luck, superficial damage, turning a hit into a near miss, & plot armor.
Player characters all have both vitality and wounds. This allows combats to be both heroic and dangerous all at once. But, be careful, as some NPCs have vitality as well and can be challenging foes.
Dynamic Combat
Another way Dragonslayer elicits a cinematic playstyle is through its engaging & dynamic combat. In physical combat, there are no turns. Instead, characters are performing actions simultaneously, like in actual or show-style battles. Each action has a cost that is paid for in time.
Dragonslayer uses Show Stages to mark the passage of time in combat situations. When combat begins, the GM declares that it is Show Stage 1 and any character able to act declares an action. The cost of an action represents how many Show Stages it takes to complete. The player adds the cost to the current Show Stage, the sum becoming their "Personal Show Stage."
In the story, from the time the player declares an action until the Show Stage matches their Personal Show Stage, their character is performing that action. When the GM declares the Show Stage that matches a character's Personal Show Stage, the action completes and the player makes their roll.
Social Combat
Debates, arguments, and the like can be handled through social combats. Social combats are conducted by the debaters taking turns speaking, represented by different actions, such as "explain" or "address the audience."
There are multiple ways to win in a social combat. Not everyone gets their way by proving their superior position after all. A character may win a social combat by proving their point, disproving their opponent's, or swaying the audience.
In a social combat, you may win by accumulating 10 credit. The first character to 10 credit proves their point and has convinced or at least silenced their opponent. You may also reduce your opponent's credit to 0, representing a breaking down or disproving of their point. Finally, a character can sway the audience to their side. The audience works as a tug of war, measured from -5 to +5. One character tries to pull the audience to -5 to get them on their side while the other pulls to +5
How to Get Started
The full game is in a single book! Both a print version & a pdf version is available on our webstore. One book is all you need to jump into the action!
If you're still unsure about jumping in, we have a FREE quickstart rules available for download. Even more is it comes with a FREE adventure, complete with premade characters & maps. Everything you need to get started with your group right away!
Why give away a free quickstart & adventure? We're that sure that after you try out Dragonslayer that your group will be sold.
Dragonslayer at Conventions & LGS
Photos of happy gamers playing Dragonslayer!
The Dragonslayer Project
Dragonslayer has been more than a decade in the making. Countless hundreds of hours of development, playtesting, and balancing have gone into making it the great experience it is. Our initial printing last year was limited. We learned a lot from it and updated the game to it's fully complete version that was launched at Gen Con 2023. Now, we're ready to take it to the next level. Check out our Kickstarter pre-launch page at, https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/slayergames/dragonslayer. The Kickstarter's goal is to get funding for a print run large enough to fulfill orders for distribution and get this fantastic game to your FLGS!
Dragonslayer is a complete game, already in print and digital pdf. Jump in now or go to the Kickstarter to get the next wave. Get involved with Dragonslayer through one of the channels below or purchase the early release book in the webstore!