For anyone who has played Dungeons & Dragons (D&D), or for anyone who has tried to play, the rules can be quite daunting. There are two separate rulebooks for the game: one for the Dungeon Master, and one for the player (over 300 pages each!). It can easily take a few hours to get an idea of how a character should be built, or how weapons, armor, and items work. It's not for the faint of heart.

Back in 2010, I had a group of friends who were really interested in playing a role playing game, but couldn't quite get the rules and mechanics down. The group eventually fell apart. Frustrated with the lack of entry level content, I decided to create a basic version of D&D and use that as a stepping stone to get a better grip of how tabletop and role playing games work. Battleborn was born.

Back to Basics

Talk about the site planning, and architecture.

PHP to Backendless

Users can be "DM" or "player" and the system changes your view based on which one you want

Updating your stats in real time

My first steps were to define the core components of how a role playing game should work. Players should be able to walk, fight, communicate, and interact with the world. With these simple things defined, it was easy to build a new ruleset. Much like writing a novel, its handy to have a general outline of how you want things to play out as the story progresses.

I challenged myself to keep each rule around two or three sentences. I wanted players of the game to be able to pick up the rules and immediately know how to play. You don't want your group to spend hours learning something they'll only play for 30 minutes. The goal was to create an environment where people completely new to tabletop gaming, could start a new character and jump into action in less than 5 minutes.

What About the Lore?

Another part of D&D that felt a little intimidating to newcomers is that there is an existing world. Playing a character of one type, might not be welcomed in the town of another part. Unless the new person read all the backstories and understood this, they might find themselves in a frustrating, and unpleasant spot.

The world of Battleborn stops at the character creation, and lets the Dungeon Masters create and explain their own world, without locking the into any set rules.

Dozens of test players, hundreds of rule changes, years of feedback have culminated into a great entry level tabletop RPG game. A huge shout out to all my supporters and those that helped me get the game off the ground. It has been played in multiple states, by tons of different people, many of which would have never spent the time to pick up a more complex game like D&D. I hope that with this game, I have helped people discover new things to enjoy in their life.

Finito! (The End)

Thanks for reading!