(Win pdf books!) Week 1 complete. Click in first post for link to the week 2 thread.

Edit: UPDATE! Because I don't want people to have to wade through this thread, I'm starting a new thread with today's topic. I figure I'll have a new thread each week. You can find week two's thread here.

I'm looking to give away a few dozen free pdfs, and I need your help.

Basically, what you need to do is post something interesting, something that amuses me or makes me think (and preferably does the same for your fellow posters). Then include in your post the name of an E.N. Publishing product you're interested in. Each day in the evening I'll pick one or two people whose posts I liked, and I'll send them complimentary copies.

You don't have to post your email address. The new EN World Gamestore lets publishers send complimentary copies to whatever email address you registered when you joined the boards, and you can see the entire catalogue of E.N. Publishing products here if you want to see what you might win. All you need to do is post, and include what book you want, and I can send it just by entering your screen name.

Today's topic is dragon fights. What sorts of dragon fights have you run/played in, and what do you think makes for a good battle against a dragon? What is the significance of a dragon as opposed to other monsters?

Day Seven: Dragons!
Day Six: Friendship, rivalry, and the adventuring paty
Day Four and Five: Raising, Resurrecting, and Reincarnating
Day Three: Monsters!
Day Two: Topics and about topics.
Day One: Any random topic.

Greed = Tech

As far as I can tell, the driving goal behind the development of all technology has always been the desire for greater wealth.
Granted, it's not always spelled out that way, but boil it down far enough and it all comes out as greed.

We develop better agri-tech first of all to survive, but the best way to survive is to be so "food-wealthy" that you no longer need to worry about where the next meal is coming from.

We developed better arms and armor again primarily to survive, but also to be better able to keep our wealth from being stolen by raiders, and to be able to raid other nations to take their wealth.

Even in the modern day, technology's development is dictated by wealth. Internet R&D is funded predominantly by companies looking to exploit the web to generate wealth.

Transposing this to a D&D fantasy world is a rather interesting idea. In most D&D campaigns I've played in, the people in the world with the greatest wealth are nearly always adventurers.
Clearly then, technology is going to spring up to better enable adventuring. Following that assumption, we can infer that adventurers will fund the development of technology that will enable them to gain the largest return on their investment.
It's unlikely that anyone would fund a program to develop better ooze-fighting equipment, as oozes usually have no wealth to plunder. Likewise, it's doubtful that kobold-killing technology will see much improvement, since there's normally little wealth to gain in such endeavors.

So then, what can adventurers encounter that will earn them big enough rewards to make it worthwhile to pursue technological developments to improve their efforts?

Again, assuming a fairly "standard" D&D world, the first thing that springs to mind is Dragons!
Here are these big, dangerous lizards that normally have ridiculous amounts of wealth. Any adventurer could become filthy rich by specializing in dragon-hunting.
To that end, it's likely that many adventurers would do so. They are in turn going to equip themselves with the best dragon-fighting gear they can get.
This will add wealth to those vendors that can supply such gear, which will inturn encourage them to develop more/better pieces of such technology.

The first merchant that can produce such items as dragon-bane weapons, or armor that provides protection against dragon-breath will be in a very competitive market position.
Such a merchant would have a competitive edge similar to that held by Microsoft. Meaning once people discover the effectiveness of this vendor's gear, every other vendor who wants to gain more wealth will be forced to produce their own version of such gear, or become irrelavent, and lose market share.

This has a real world analogy as well. As soon as the first smith in a culture learned to work with iron, bronze, brass, etc were things of the past. Those merchants who insisted on selling such obselete gear soon were outpaced by the new technology, and either learned the new techniques, or lost their business, and wealth to the new craftsmen.

But of course, dragons aren't really the largest sources of wealth available for plunder. The real money will be in conquering nations. This of course will lead to technological developemtns in seige technology, and possibly even the creation of contructs, ie. warforged.
Follow this logic to its ridiculous end, and now we find that adventurers seeking even greater wealth, will soon need technology developed to hunt an even more dangerous game - gods.
Any enchanter that can come up with a god-killing device will find a source of immense wealth if he can readily provide such technology to adventurers. And history shows us that if the wealth is there to fund research, someone will develop a technology to meet the demand.

As an aside, one funny side effect of this economic demand for better tech is the inevitable creation of fakes and scams. Sure as someone will buy snake-oil and hair-tonic, or send money to Nigerian email scammers, someone in a fantasy world is going to try passing swords doctored with a false magic aura as "genuine-bona fide dragon slaying blades!"

Additoinally support services are going to experience a boom as well. Medical treatment for burns will become more advanced, if an area is plagued with red dragons, and sees plenty of burn victims, you can bet that someone will invent a healing salve that specifically targets such injuries.

The real irony is that if you want to follow the ultimate progression from dragon, to nation, to gods, there's another logical branch, and that's adventurer!
The first adventuring party that kills a god will achieve massive fame and noteriety. Surely some other would be god hunter will realize that the shortcut to wealth would be to just kill other adventurers and take their treasure.
If they conciously pursue that path toward wealth, it would only be sensible that they would fund development of new technologies soley designed for disabling adventurers.

Of course, such devices work both ways, and if they became widespread enough could eventually be used against their creators.
If such technology followed real-world patterns, such weapons would become increasingly easy to use. Once you go down that path, it's easy to picture a world where the technology makers realize that they have developed items that will allow them to disable and loot the adventurers themselves. At that point, you have a world where the commoner and his technology become the driving force in the world.
This kind of scenario could lead to a world where technology is eventually used to supplant magic entirely, rendering the fantasy world a stagnant mudane realm.

Of course at the point, someone will start developing a new technology to bring magic back into the world.
Just to accumulate wealth.

Just in case Ranger Wickett likes this post - Tournaments, Fairs & Taverns would be a very welcome addition to my collection.

How about a cute picture?

Oh, and Elements of Magic, Revised for me, sir.

Ranger, you recently asked about the Sears Tower. How about one made from Jenga blocks?

http://faculty.nmu.edu/ims/sears1.htm

The pics were too large to post one here, but check it out.



I have a good bit of E.N. Pub products, but have not gotten around to picking up Steam & Steel, although I have been curious about it for a while, so that would be my choice.

Tinner's post is a bit closer to the mark than Blue Sky's, for those keeping score. Detailed and thoughtful discussions of fantasy world-building rank a bit higher than cute pictures of kitties. I mean, I'm offering $5+ of swag. The least you can do is spare 5 minutes to come up with something game-related.

Tinner, well done. If others want to continue the technological trend, that'd be cool. It'd give some focus to the thread.

Hmm.... Tinner, I like your thoughts, but one step eludes me. Gods do not have any portable / stealable wealth per se (naturally depends a bit on the game world specifics), so the buck would stop at nations as far as I am concerned...

Another aspect you failed to address is the risk/reward factor. Sure dragons are high reward, but also high risk. Therefore, hunting goblins may still be a better bet, as the risk/reward balance (depending upon goblin wealth factors) may be better.

Another economic aspect not touched upon is that of supply and demand. Demand for wealth is infinite, but the supply is not. If the amount of red dragons is too little, then it may not be worth the up front investments / development costs to create dragonslaying equipment, whereas the same goblins from the example are plentyful, and thus economies of scale can make the investment in goblin slaying equipment more worthwhile then dragon slaying equipment...

Ofttimes it is more worthwhile to cater to the large masses of goblin hunters then to the few brave dragon hunters...

As always, fantasy economics is more complicated then first thought....

Before you begin to play any roleplaying game, all of the players (including the GM) should take some time to draft a social contract. What is a social contract? In simple terms, a social contract is merely an agreement made between the players that organizes the tenets of a given game to their mutual satisfaction. For example:

Charles, Mark, and Melissa mutually decide that they want to use the d20 Modern rules to play a game set during the 1930s, in New York City that centers on a group of pulp heroes battling to save humanity from ancient evil.

In this example, the players have drafted a very simple social contract that restricts their game to taking place during a certain time period, in a certain place, and focusing on a certain premise. Naturally, like the role-playing game itself, the tenets of a social contract are limited only by the boundaries of your imagination.

Setting aside some time at the beginning of the initial game session to draft a social contract does two very important things. First, it ensures that all of the players have some say in what the game will encompass, thus ensuring that they all have some level of personal investment in the game. Second, it lets all of the players know what they can expect from the game that lies ahead, keeping them all on the same page, so to speak. Both of these things go a long way towards making a game more enjoyable for those involved.

The most important thing to remember when drafting a social contract is that it exists to serve all of the players, thus, no player should be excluded from the drafting process. That is, input from all players should be given equal consideration when drafting the social contract - no idea should ever be excluded without first being examined for merit. To exclude a proposed tenet without first giving it consideration runs directly contrary to the stated purpose of cooperating with other players to draft the social contract (and, indeed, such action can cause resentment).

A good rule of thumb to adhere to when drafting the social contract is one of majority rule. This does mean that sometimes certain individuals will have to make concessions, but it also goes a long way towards ensuring that everybody has at least some say in what tenets are incorporated into the contract. In the interest of being fair, some players may wish to hold a vote on whether or not to include individual proposed tenets in the social contract - and this is perfectly acceptable (in fact, I personally endorse this approach to drafting social contracts).

The second most important thing to keep in mind when drafting a social contract is that it is not (nor should it ever be) set in stone. Both the drafters of the contract and the contract itself should always be open to the possibility of change. A time may arise when some players wish to amend, omit, or otherwise alter tenets in the social contract and making such proposals should always be encouraged, even if they are not enacted.

Ultimately, the social contract is an extremely useful tool that is often overlooked, despite the fact that it would prevent many of the disputes related to rule implementation and setting conventions that often crop up on internet forums, by resovling such issues before they occur. Prevention is, after all, the best measure one can take to avoid controversy.

[I have some interest in Elements of Magic]

My first post. For swag, of course.

Why are gnomes inventors? In my game, the drow are the inventors. Drow have always been cool and evil and mysterious, and so my drow invent things to keep the PCs on their toes. It also ties in with that confusing thing -- are drow supposed to be elves, the dok'alfar? or are they more like trolls, the trow? I have drow with geothermal energy, and mithral turbines powered by gases rising from volcanic vents, which power factories that make all those countless drow mithril weapons.

Remember how Lolth's fortress was supposed to be a big mechanical spider that walked around the Abyss? Well, a group of drow hunters pilot adamantine spider mecha that are cloaked with permanent darkness spells and are powered by tiny portals to the negative energy plane, which makes the engines more powerful the more life there is to suck narby.

Why would inventors ever use actual electricity or oil, when they can set up perpetual motion machines next to planar gates? Why not have an airship that has a portal to the elemental plane of air? Technology doesn't have to be all metal and circuits.

Can someone tell me about the Industrial Revolution that happened on these boards? I've mostly lurked, and I see people talk about it, but I don't know where the threads are.

Oh, crap. I forgot to say what I wanted. If I can get only one thing, I'd want The Ironics (it sounds nifty, but I probably wouldn't pay for it). But if I could get two things worth the same amount or less? Is that fair? Could I get the two Necromancer's Legacy books?

I've been thinking about a playing a pacifist D&D character and wondering how I could go about it. There are plenty of non-lethal combat actions and spells to choose from, of course, but I'm trying to figure out what combination of classes (and background) would be be fun to play. Also, I'm trying to decide what the character would actually believe: is all violence wrong, including violence committed by others? Would she try to prevent other characters from harming others? Is summoning monsters as defense wrong? Is fighting to protect oneself wrong (even if only non-lethal attacks are used)?

I also wonder what sort of effect this character would have on the party as a whole. Playing her too righteous would annoy the other players, of course, but I wonder if there would be some middle ground that would still be challenging without causing too much grief.