Feature: Dragon Reactor

Nova: One of the main driving forces in our design has been to make something that tells big stories about people. We wanted to pull on legends, myths, poetry and prose to make something that channels the emotional core of so many stories that live on through oral tradition.

Throughout the game we use the language of legend and poem. Your machines of destruction are Dragons, you shape the world by singing and harmonizing Refrains, which are short poetic phrases you can channel to change the world in any way. The whole game is very much focused on the interpretation of language to not only tell your story but to gain dice for your checks and shape the world.

As much as Dragon Reactor is a game about getting in the big robot and doing a big fight, it’s more about the way that story is told and how each Pilot plays the instrument of their character sheet to bring something to life.

Quinn: What do you call something that can destroy whatever it wants? That outclasses entire armies? That is greater than the sum of its parts, and has its own will in some strange way? That’s a Dragon. A mythical beast defined by the destruction it can cause. This idea is how the game began life in a group chat way back in 2022, and so the science fantasy fusion style grew out of this interpretation of the Gundam as a nuke, and the nuke as a dragon.

As an unpredictable mix of the familiar and new, with a huge range of possible aesthetics, science fantasy was the obvious choice. It lets us harness the inherent romance and horror of war stories in a way that honors the Wow Cool Robot of the source material while also leaving a clear pathway for true emotional vulnerability in play.

Nova: We knew from the jump that we wanted something with structure to follow and something that could be run in a pretty consistent amount of time. We looked to phase-based games, of which there are many in the Mech TTRPG Sphere. The pretty classic structure of mission-to-downtime was an obvious go-to for many reasons, but mainly because it works, really well. 

We did feel there was more to be done with it, more space that we could use to flesh out the vibes of Dragon Reactor. We sketched up Aftermath as a directly-after-the-fight reflection so players could have a slight wind-down before the real downtime and worked it into a short phase where we can answer immediate questions at the table about the direct effects the big fight we just finished have on the world and the various characters we’re getting to know.

Then, once that’s done, we move into Countdown which is our answer to standard downtime phases. We knew we didn’t want something consistent and reliable, because war is not consistent and reliable, so we worked Countdown to be this semi-inconsistent gamble. You start with a set amount of dice, and roll them every time a player makes an action (like recovering or repairing their robot), and as they act the pool gets smaller. Once no dice are left, downtime is over.

This leads to a very dramatic, unpredictable amount of time you have before the next fight starts. We’ve had Countdowns go on long enough that everyone fully recovers and we’ve had some that end right after a single player heals themself one time. Both are dramatic and intense for different reasons, and both lean into the “well, war is hell” of it all in satisfying ways.

Nova: So many, oh my god. At the start of development we put together a big list of our favorite Big Robot and Big Feelings stories, and then dove into each of them to pick specific aspects we wanted to pull on. I think a lot about “what if Pacific Rim was sad”: big, very cool machines of destruction with lots of tricks up their sleeves fighting to defend their home, but make it tragic. I’m also (unsurprisingly) constantly pulling on Armored Core 6 and Escaflowne.

Make it big, dramatic, and weird.

Quinn: Yeah, there really are a lot of moving parts here. Something that was fun about the project is that Nova and I each brought a pretty different spread of influences to the table, and I think you can see them all in different pieces of the game. If there’s one of mine that I want to bring to the forefront, it’s war poetry, particularly from the first world war - there’s this wistfulness to the way they represented violence that struck just the right note for me.

Nova: We both knew that we wanted to pull from two specific Gundam series: 0079 and Iron-Blooded Orphans. The tragedy that lives in the DNA of both those stories is something we both love and needed to use as a baseline for Dragon Reactor.

Quinn: I usually make games because I’m having a hard time finding a game that does exactly what I want or says exactly what I want it to say. There are lots and lots of amazing mech games. There are a few amazing Gundam games. The thing is, the mech games don’t approach mechs the way Gundam does - as a nuke, as a dragon. Meanwhile, the Gundam games give us a very skillful tight focus on aspects of Gundam storytelling rather than the larger campaign and context.

I wanted to make a game that truly felt like making your own Gundam series and piloting your own Gundam, literally seizing the raw themes and harnessing them in your own way at your own table. And thanks to my incredible co-designer, we actually pulled it off. So if you’ve been playing mech games and feeling like you’re getting some of what you want, but not all of it? Maybe you’re like us. Dragon Reactor will get you there.

Nova: Songbirds 3e has been in my mind since I read it. The way Snow uses language throughout that book is impeccable and poetic with what feels like little effort. It’s an elegant game that awards creativity in a way I hope we can approach.

For mech games specifically, Last Shooting hits every mark for me. It’s a 2-player game focused on the exact final moments of a war inspired by the final confrontation between Amuro and Char in 0079, and it’s perfect.

Quinn: I’ve been thinking about Spectres of Brocken the entire time I’ve worked on this game. I think it is such a searing, awesome deep-dive into that pilot-rival relationship that is so core to how we think about this genre. 

I’ll also recommend Ross Rifles from Dundas West, which is an incredible historical game about being members of the Canadian Expeditionary Force in WWI. I learned about it very early into my forays into the RPG scene, and it’s always stuck with me as a wise, caring, and unrelenting look into the complexities of life in and behind the trenches. It engages with so many difficult topics so deftly, I can’t help but love it.