Dawnfire Warriors
A downloadable one-page game
Strike Forth to Claim the Godhead
The worldlords, the Nowdead Gods, have fallen and the lands they once ruled with wrath and divinity have exploded into an age of unprecedented warfare. You, as a dawnwalker, are a nigh-immortal juggernaut of death clad in the gods' own armor: dawnplate. Stride into battle with your honor guard and your allies, to claim territory and seize the drops of Godhead Ichor dripping from the astral corpses of the Nowdead as they hover over the world, morbid reminders of what came before.
Now is a time of war and fire. Shod yourself in dawnplate and carve through armies to claim what is yours.
One-Page RPG Jam 2024
This game was released as a submission to the One-Page RPG Jam 2024.
Dawnfire Warriors is a tactical warfare RPG where you play as a mortal uplifted to demigodhood by the divine power of your dawnplate armor. You, your honor guard, and the allied dawnwalkers and honor guards you bring with you into battle fight to seize godhead ichor from enemy forces. Losses are inevitable, and as long as the godcorpses above continue to bleed out their divinity, this war is sure to continue.
- The game is intended to have a GM, but it wouldn't be hard to automate their role.
- The game uses d6s, be sure to have at least 2 on hand (but 2 for each player would be preferable).
- The game is fully playable, and fits on a single sheet of A4 paper.
If you happen to play Dawnfire Warriors, please let me know how it went with a comment here! I may one day think about expanding this into a bigger wargame, but for now it was an exercise to see if I could complete a one-page RPG, as every time I've tried in the past, I've found myself spilling over into more & more pages.
Current Version: v1.1
Update Release: August 25, 2024
- Tweaked number of enemy units per dawnwalker. 1 DW faces 4 starting units, 2~3 DWs face 6 starting units, and 4+ DWs face 2 units per DW.
- Clarified some text. Clarified that DWs have a single HG unit each and that the GM is in charge of picking all enemy unit types.
- Fixed some typos. Cleared out some errant words left over from when I'd changed wordings around to better fit the space.
- Improved War Wizard's Skyblaze Levinbolts ability. Compared to Marshal's inherent passive and Tidewall's 7th armor slot, WW's passive seemed slightly underwhelming. I didn't improve their passive, but made them deadlier at range to compensate.
Attributions & Credits
This project uses the Dicier typeface by Speak the Sky, which operates under a CC BY 4.0 license. It also uses licensed fonts by YutaONE (@yuta_ptv on twitter). The painting used for the banner and store cover image is by Warmtail and is used by license with Shutterstock.
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Development log
Comments
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I finally got the chance to play this! We tripped up on the rules a bit at first, but things got rolling nicely along. I played with 2 Dawnwalkers, a Tidewall and a War Wizard and they managed to win 10:8!
My players pointed out really quickly this game seems to have "Quiddich rules" which I wonder if you've heard before. They enjoyed the game, and we all would enjoy seeing the game have more depth as a full game, as all of our negative feedback revolves around wanting more options, more HG to control with ranged units, more Dawnwalker types. They would also love more opportunities to roleplay, which would require a bigger game.
The only feedback I have that's actionable for the single page is some clarification on the timing of Ranged & Monster's end of round losses that they inflict. It seems those losses happen after the Morale check? Also, the Tidewall's ability to negate their HG's next losses I assume is meant to absorb this damage as a lump sum, rather than just one instance of it (I let them soak up two Monster end of round losses). In addition, the War Wizard's Illusory Terrors ability mentions it prevents movement on that unit's next March phase, but since GM units can take extra movement during Melee I assumed this ability should prevent them from moving *at all* until after the next March (or next round).
This game looks really fun!
I have a few questions: How many HG does each Dawnwalker start with? Does the GM determine each Enemy Type? I feel some guidance would be nice. Finally, starting units seems to suggest the game always has 6 enemy units to start until you have 4+ Dawnwalkers, is this intended? Won't this be more difficult for smaller groups?
Congratulations making such a neat little 1-page RPG.
Thanks! I have updated the game with clarifications based on this feedback (and reorganized the starting enemy allotments, because you're right that the numbers didn't actually make sense lol).
Nice work :)
If I get to try it, I'll have more feedback. Next time you have some changes to make, btw, the section under morale says 'Melee check' and I think you meant 'Morale check'.
This slaps
LET'S GOOO 😤