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Pathfinder: The Dragon’s Demand is a single-player, turn-based CRPG that takes role-playing back to its roots with miniature-based characters and digital dice to recreate the look and feel of a tabletop RPG. But it opens up a whole new dimension by allowing miniatures to climb walls and trees, fly through the sky, and swim to underwater depths using an innovative three-dimensional grid system that delivers true 3D tactical combat.

Developed by Baldur’s Gate and Neverwinter Nights veterans, Pathfinder: The Dragon’s Demand features a comprehensive implementation of the remastered Pathfinder Second Edition rules in a classic CRPG format. Players can create character builds from 7 ancestries, 16 classes, and more than 30 backgrounds, customizable with hundreds of different armors and weapons. They will also encounter a cast of colorful companions who will be on hand to join their party in exploring a wide, interactive world filled with hundreds of unique characters and dozens of rich quests.

Based on the Pathfinder module The Dragon’s Demand by fan-favorite adventure designer Mike Shel, this expanded adaptation provides over 30 hours of immersive gameplay, where the world of Golarion is brought to life by cutting edge audio and visual effects, a beautiful musical score, and professional voice acting.

Our goal in bringing all of these aspects together is to recreate those feelings of excitement and discovery that make the best tabletop campaigns so memorable.

Deep within the ancient Verduran Forest of Taldor, in a treacherous swampland known as the Dragonfen, there exists a tale about the dragon tyrant Aeteperax, slain a thousand years ago by a band of warriors led by a valiant dragonslayer. Now, Aeteperax has inexplicably risen from death to threaten the small town of Belhaim on the edge of the Dragonfen. A new generation of heroes must hunt down and slay the dragon before it razes Belhaim to the ground!

This expanded version of The Dragon’s Demand adventure will include an entire region filled with intriguing sidequests, perilous mysteries, and cunning monsters. Player characters will experience a brand new, personal story that touches upon the same darkness that has drawn Aeteperax back from the grave: the Dark Tapestry. In the black voids between the stars lurk the ancient Great Old Ones, whose terrible cyclopean powers can captivate souls and destroy worlds.

Our guiding gameplay vision for Pathfinder: The Dragon’s Demand is to deliver a stunningly comprehensive adaptation of the remastered Pathfinder Second Edition rules set that allows players to create a diverse party and engage in deep, tactical turn-based combat while exploring a beautifully realized world that changes and reacts according to their choices.

One of the benefits of creating a digital tabletop version of the adventure is the ability to accomplish visuals that are difficult or impossible to do with physical tabletop games. For miniatures, this includes:

And for the dice that players can toss in the world, we’re creating all kinds of fantastical ones with special effects, like:

These tabletop features are complemented by exciting visuals for skill-based environmental interactions, such as:

And of course, Pathfinder: The Dragon’s Demand will include the kind of staple gameplay features found in great party-based, tactical RPGs, where players can:

Ossian Studios is an indie video game developer that has been making RPGs exclusively for 20 years, including three Dungeons & Dragons story-driven RPGs for the Neverwinter Nights franchise (Darkness over Daggerford, Mysteries of Westgate, and Tyrants of the Moonsea). We also developed the mobile RPG, The Shadow Sun, set in our own fantasy world using the Unity Engine, as well as other games like The Witcher: Scars of Betrayal, which was never released due to changing publisher priorities.

Creating RPGs with passion is what Ossian’s all about and we’ve amassed the right experience to build an ambitious game like Pathfinder: The Dragon’s Demand. Led by Alan Miranda, a former BioWare producer, the Ossian team is made up of talented, hard-working people, all of whom are RPG gamers - we love what we do!

Alan Miranda, project director and CEO of Ossian Studios, is a former BioWare producer on the Baldur’s Gate and Neverwinter Nights games, whose experience will be invaluable for helping the team focus on creating a high quality, authentic Pathfinder experience. He directs many aspects of the game’s vision in conjunction with the team leads, including narrative design, gameplay systems, artistic aesthetic, and audio production.

Kevin Smith has been Ossian’s lead programmer since 2005, switching from software architect in telecommunications to video games because of his fan devotion to classic RPGs. He has also been the programmer in charge of the mobile version of Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition and the lead programmer on the Pathfinder Adventures card game from Obsidian Entertainment.

Luke Scull has been Ossian’s lead designer and writer since 2006, and as a lifelong fan and student of RPGs going back to Gold Box games, he will ensure the game has that classic party-based role-playing feel with a riveting story and engaging characters. He is also an internationally published author best known for The Grim Company trilogy.

Philip Lyon joined Ossian in 2022 as art director. His love of tabletop and fantasy miniatures, as well as his experience with creating and selling his own line of miniatures on MyMiniFactory, was key in establishing the tabletop style used in the game. As a talented 3D artist, he is the driving force behind asset creation for the game involving modeling, sculpting, texturing/painting, and rigging.

Gabriel Dagostin joined Ossian in 2022 as lead artist. He is the wizard behind the in-game visuals, pulling together all the technical art aspects in the Unity Engine, such as shaders, lighting, and visual effects. Being an avid RPG gamer and tabletop player, he was able to draw on both experiences to help him produce the digital tabletop look for the game’s creatures, environments, and dice.

Pathfinder: The Dragon’s Demand is our dream game. We're well on the road to building a deep RPG experience from the ground up, utilizing a unique visual style, for a famous role-playing franchise that has gone from strength to strength. We’ve dreamed big, and we need your help to make this dream a reality!

We started this Pathfinder journey over 2 years ago, and have worked very hard to create a prototype for what we envisioned. This includes nailing down the right art style, building a solid technical foundation within the Unity Engine, and converting the remastered Pathfinder Second Edition rules into a format the game can use, which is a huge ongoing process. But there’s a lot of work needed to make this prototype into a full game, which is what this campaign is all about!

Ultimately, we won't just be building a game — we'll be building a platform, one that we want to expand in the future with additional games as well as new features like multiplayer. And the best way to do that is to involve you, the passionate and knowledgeable community. Your enjoyment is paramount to us! But this long-term plan all starts with hitting our funding goal for Pathfinder: The Dragon’s Demand.

The following descriptions are for our standard rewards items. For descriptions of our limited rewards items, see the limited pledge tiers. Note that the only physical rewards are the minted Absalom coins. All other rewards are either digital, in-game, or 3D printable STL files.

We’re thrilled and honored to be making an official video game in the Pathfinder universe! We would like to take this opportunity to thank Paizo for being such a fantastic partner, from their support and guidance to always sending us the things we need for our development.

We have a lot of respect for all Paizo has built since their first Pathfinder release back in 2007, and how they continue to push its evolution to the forefront of tabletop gaming.

Shipping will be charged through PledgeManager at a later date closer to fulfillment. Our only physical rewards are our coins, which ship from the USA where they are manufactured. Please note that international backers may be liable for import fees when their rewards arrive - these fees will not be charged in PledgeManager.

Coins will be sent in a protective mailer envelope via USPS First Class Letter Mail, which has a maximum weight of 3.5 oz. This means there is a limit of 5 coins per envelope, or 4 coins per envelope if at least 3 are pure silver (silver coins weigh more than plated copper coins). Any coins over that amount are sent as a new shipment in another envelope. If large coin quantities are requested by backers, we’ll explore the shipping options for handling that during the post-campaign on PledgeManager.

The following per envelope shipping and handling rates are estimates only:
USA: $9 (~$6.50 USD)
International: $10.50 (~$7.50 USD)

Shipment of the Absalom Mint Set, which comes with a display case and is included in some limited pledge tiers (not available as an add-on), will be done through FedEx for security reasons. Shipping rates are set by FedEx and will vary depending on your location in the world.

Due to various geo-political, customs, or postal situations, we are unfortunately unable to ship to the following countries: Afghanistan, Belarus, Brunei, Central African Republic, Cuba, Haiti, Iran, Kazakhstan, Laos, Myanmar, Niue, North Korea, Russia, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, West Bank and Gaza Strip, and Yemen. We will ship to Israel and the Ukraine but please note that there could be delivery delays.

As Ossian Studios Inc. is a Canadian company, we are required to charge GST/HST and applicable provincial taxes to our Canadian backers on all our rewards. These will be charged in PledgeManager. Taxes... I know, eh?

Ossian Studios has 20 years of experience developing story-driven, fantasy RPGs. Our D&D and The Witcher games used toolsets specific to those games, but when developing our own fantasy RPG, The Shadow Sun, we used the Unity Engine to construct the necessary custom tools and systems. Now, with over 14 years of expertise using Unity, the Ossian team is well-prepared to build on that foundation in order to make an RPG of the scope of Pathfinder: The Dragon’s Demand.

Our Absalom coins are minted at the distinguished North American Mint in Rochester, New York. As a private mint with almost 40 years of experience in striking custom coins and medallions, their clients include the U.S. Military, American Red Cross, Hershey Co., Sesame Street and many more. Their amazing attention to detail is the cornerstone of their production philosophy, allowing them to match the quality of national government mints from around the world. Our coins are in good hands. These are our only physical rewards and backers will receive them well before the game is released.

Our art director, Philip Lyon, comes from a background of creating and selling his own line of Lost World fantasy STL miniatures on MyMiniFactory. As a tabletop gamer himself, he enjoys the entire process of miniature creation with designing, sculpting, printing, and painting new creatures for his collection. He’s already made several of our reward items and will either be personally working on or overseeing production of the rest. Our STL rewards will be sent to backers well before the game is released.

At Ossian Studios, we dream BIG.

For our first game, Neverwinter Nights: Darkness over Daggerford (2006) made for BioWare’s Premium Mod program, we dreamed of building a big Baldur’s Gate style expansion. And despite the program being canceled by publisher Atari, we persevered and released it for free 3 months later, where it became one of the fastest downloaded NWN modules ever, winning the IGF 2007 Best RPG Mod award.

We followed up with another expansion, Neverwinter Nights 2: Mysteries of Westgate (2009), and dreamed of creating a big, bustling city adventure in a Forgotten Realms metropolis like no other. Development started even before NWN2 was patched by Obsidian for the modding functionality to work properly, but we still pressed ahead, delivering it on time and on budget to Atari, to solid reviews.

When mobile emerged as a popular new platform for games, we dreamed of making a true CRPG experience for it by developing The Shadow Sun (2013): a stats-based action RPG with character classes, branching narratives, and meaningful role-playing. As our first game made with the Unity Engine, it took us longer than expected, but for years afterwards, hardcore gamers who’d played CRPGs since the Sir-Tech and Gold Box days, emailed to thank us for their favorite mobile RPG.

Our tenacious history should prove that we will finish this game. So the only question is, will it be great? And this is where you’ll have to trust us. Trust that we’ve grown in skill as developers from making our past games, that we’ve gained knowledge and wisdom from both good and bad creative experiences, and that we’ve honed our instincts on what makes a captivating, ground-breaking, role-playing adventure. We dream big because we owe it ourselves, and to you, to make a CRPG worthy of being called a “classic” 20 years from now.