Dragonhide Era

Purpose and Process

Dragonhide Era began with a simple, common question - what if? What if everything we knew about tabletop roleplaying games was turned around? How would it change the gaming experience? What would we learn looking at a world from its complete opposite angle? Thus, Dragonhide Era came into being. My hope is that by letting tabletop players examine their favorite settings in a different way, they can examine the world beyond the table in the same way.

This project was originally planned to be much larger. I started writing it with a standard tabletop module in mind, which is nearly 200 pages! Pretty early into the creative process I condensed my ideas down and set a 25–30-page goal in mind. I took inspirations from proper tabletop modules, namely the Dungeons and Dragons modules Curse of Strahd and Icewind Dale: Rime of the Frostmaiden. I looked at how they added onto their base system and applied the same logic to Dragonhide Era. The add-on includes two unique player customization options, 30 adventure options, a thematic random encounter table, and two new game mechanics.

Once I had the scope of my project settled, I had two milestones to reach: the alpha playtest and the beta playtest. Each playtest focused on a specific aspect of the add-on to make sure it all functioned in practice. The alpha playtest was composed of in-depth character creation with two experienced tabletop players, while the beta playtest centered on a one-shot play session with multiple people with varying experience in tabletop gaming. After each test I collected feedback from each player, and made adjustments to the add-on accordingly.