Project: Dragon 01

Dragons.

In most social gatherings in this world, the best thing to say to appear cool is not to say "I think dragons are overrated". Rather, I'd recommend to not mention dragons at all. In some corners of the world though, it is quite a cool contrarian view to say "I think dragons are overrated", since so much of classical fantasy is build around the notion of dragons. Or rather, much of the notion of classical fantasy is built around dragons.

Hence it feels a bit like kicking at an open door when I say this: I think dragons are overrated.

Having that said, I recently listened to an episode of Fear of a Black Dragon, a podcast reviewing OSR-modules for RPGs, an on that episode they discussed the Dragon as a monster in in role-playing games and how they are often reduced to big meat bags with lots of health that takes a good amount of time to whittle down, instead of a climactic fight that takes wit to tackle. That lead them to touch on the topic of the "16 HP Dragon" first mentioned by the user stras in a forum post here here. Stras describes the dragon much more akin to how it is presented in books, a creature of immense power that has the ability to kill thousands and ruin entire cities, but can still be killed by a single well placed arrow. The arrow here not really symbolizing a single attack written on a character sheet (At least not in D&D-terms, but if so probably something more like a custom move in a PbtA-game), rather the culmination of a well thought out plan or a desperate lucky, last ditch attack – a satisfying story beat. A dragon capable of immense damage, but that can be taken out very quickly if the stars align just right.

This thought was expanded upon by the blog Explorers Design. How about a 1 HP dragon? The dragon (and perhaps other monsters?) only as a puzzle. Do the right thing (or rather, one thing that seems right enough, as is the OSR-ethos) and you win. Fictional positioning (things making sense within the game world) instead of tactical positioning. Sell the solution to the game master and you will get a good result. This fictional positioning be handled in a mechanical way as well, as proven in the blog post.

So, again. I think dragons are overrated. But this has got me thinking and of course I want to take my own stab at creating the best dragon fight ever. The dragon as a puzzle? The dragon as a story? An intricate set of PbtA moves? Number-crunching dragon fight mechanics? I don't know!

This project is all about making the best dragon fight ever!