Indie Game Focus: Slayer of Dragon
Slayer of Dragon RPG is a stripped-down system for tabletop storytelling by Grant Gigee. The focus is on fast, simple combat, with room -but not hard rules – for roleplaying and story. “The core of the game,” Gigee says, “is like rock-paper-scissors in the sense that there are many ways to achieve victory but no one ‘right’ way.”
Gigee’s game system attempts to bring tabletop roleplaying away from the dice rolling and swords of +1 towards playing pretend. The rules exist to keep group storytelling from devolving into playground claims of who killed who. If you enjoy creating stories and playing pretend more than rolling dice, this is a game for you.
Inspiration for Slayer of Dragon comes from across the globe. Gigee was influenced by the simple rule systems of European strategy games, and he tries to bring that clarity and accessibility to a tabletop RPG system. His other influence is a love of martial arts movies, from Kurosawa classics to the flimsiest B-grade films.
Instead of leveling and learning new skills, Slayer characters have “revelations” in which they tell the other players what their character has always known but never mentioned before. This method of leveling, like many other elements of Slayer, is a nod to Gigee’s love of martial arts movies.
“Slayer of Dragon RPG is designed to recreate kung-fu movies,” designer Gigee says, “So I needed it to be fast: fast to make characters, fast to get into the action, and fast to move from scene to scene. A complete session can be played in two hours, only a bit longer than the typical film takes to watch.”
The Slayer RPG rules are available on Gigee’s website, StandardDeviation.cx
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