Dragons, Dragons, Dragons

[Byronic]

What role do Dragons usually play in your game?

I think that most of all I use them as "end" bosses at the end of an adventure (or at least a dungeon) but then we have all that talk of using Elder dragons as great manipulators and such, even making the Kings vizier and the Guild Masters their puppet. Having contacts with merchants to discover when a valuable shipment will arrive.

Does anybody use them like this? And how do they make all these people their puppets? Shapeshifting into human beings and dealing with them? Using dreams? Emissaries who handle in their names? Sheer brutality? How do your dragons handle this?

And what other ways can they be used?

 

[Rechan]

What role do Dragons usually play in your game?

I think that most of all I use them as "end" bosses at the end of an adventure (or at least a dungeon) but then we have all that talk of using Elder dragons as great manipulators and such, even making the Kings vizier and the Guild Masters their puppet. Having contacts with merchants to discover when a valuable shipment will arrive.

Does anybody use them like this?

I do.

Dragons have popped up 3 times in my campaigns. The first time, as merely a background situation; the white dragon went around breeding with all of the humanoid tribes of the area, giving them sorcery and half-dragon off spring, in exchange for worship (and thus, protection in his territory). This was causing a bit of a civil war with the other entities in the area, which the PCs were traveling through.

The second, a Green dragon was operating as a de-facto mafia boss in a very large forest, and had various contacts outside of said forest. The dragon knew the PCs were coming, and steered them into the direction of acquiring an evil artifact that was housed in a place the dragon or its surrogates could not reach, because it was only a place that Good-aligned entities could enter. The purpose was to remove the item from the area, to keep some agents of another faction from getting their hands on it.

The third is the most recent. Again, the green dragon met the PCs in humanoid form, being very vague. She needed help: her eggs had been captured by a rival group, and passed to some volcano worshipers who were planning to sacrifice the eggs to their Volcano god. This would have infused the Volcano God with a lot of power, and disrupt the power balance in the region. Of course, she didn't tell the PCs this; she told them the Volcano Worshipers were about to go on the war path with the power their God was going to give them, and do so by sacrificing "Children". The PCs weedled it out of her that it was Her children on the chopping block. She could not intervene in the situation, due to agreements about interfering or acting, so she needed a catspaw that was not under her protection.

 

[justanobody]

I have had dragons hire the PC party before. (Once the PCs were the puppets of the dragons.)

I have had dragons imprisoned to serve time doing hard labor as mounts.

I have had dragons on tavern menus, and taverns requesting dragons for their menus....

I always felt that with a game called Dungeons and Dragons, I should include both in each adventure of the game in some way.

Sometimes I cheat and have the Dragon in a Dungeon. Shhhhhh!

 

[Rechan]

And how do they make all these people their puppets?

There's a "Knights of the Dinner Table" comic where a guest DM came over, and played a session where the PCs delved into a Wrack-Dragon's lair. The PCs get there, and discover that the hoard is gone. THey confront the dragon, shocked that all his swag (read: their loot) is gone.

The dragon replies, "Oh all my hoard is tied up in investments, property, stocks, and held in banks in the surrounding region."

Also, in Shadowrun, a Dragon was elected President (before it was assassinated).

Dragons are 1) Smart, 2) Have lots of resources (Namely, a lot of gold and magical items), and 3) Long lived. So this allows them to plan. Their 4) Raw power also doesn't hurt.

So a Dragon could easily become the equivalent of a robber baron, with a monopoly on something locally. It could be come a patron; granting loans, support, etc in exchange for help, eyes and ears. My favorite option is the dragon functioning as a de-facto Protector; "You, villages in my territory. Provide me with offerings (cows, maidens, gold, information) and I shall destroy any menace that faces you." You do that, and the locals will riot if any adventurers come in planning to "kill their dragon".

As for emissaries, a dragon can easily create leutenants for itself. Not just ye olde fashioned breeding half-dragons, but it could easily acquire and raise monstrous entities from birth to be its vassals. Trolls, minotaur, that sort of thing.

Dragons are hoarders, and very powerful entities, thus they might make the best guardians or "Keepers" for something important, be it keeping others away from a sacred (or profane) site, to watching over an item that is too important to fall into mortal hands.

Also, due to how well a dragon associates with its environment, a Dragon could easily be representing the "spiritual manifestation" of that area. The Black Dragon isn't just the lord of the swamp, but it is the Swamp taken physical form.

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

What role do Dragons usually play in your game?

I think that most of all I use them as "end" bosses at the end of an adventure (or at least a dungeon) but then we have all that talk of using Elder dragons as great manipulators and such, even making the Kings vizier and the Guild Masters their puppet. Having contacts with merchants to discover when a valuable shipment will arrive.

Does anybody use them like this? And how do they make all these people their puppets? Shapeshifting into human beings and dealing with them? Using dreams? Emissaries who handle in their names? Sheer brutality? How do your dragons handle this?

And what other ways can they be used?

Nah, I use fiends that way.

I like how 4e dragons are solos. I don't like to use them as bosses with minions (game term or not), but rather as an entire mini-encounter.

Fiends get to manipulate kings, have minions, and boss fiends tend to be elites working with minions instead.

That's the way I like things anyway.

 

[Fallen Seraph]

Usually Dragons don't play a important role in my settings. They are most of the time just another critter (though I powerful one) in the world. I like my Dragons as feral, only human-intelligence creatures who simply prefer hunting, mating and hoarding

 

[Mercurius]

Dragons are, well, dragons--they are great, but very very over-used, and therefore have lost a lot of potency in the wider fantasy genre.

I like the idea of dragons being extremely rare, having been killed off by great heroes or gods. A few still remain, but only those intelligent and powerful (old) enough to survive, and mainly through sleeping centuries away in high mountain lairs.

I plan on running my newly hatched PCs through the classic dragon-destroyed/stole/now lives in-a-dwarven-city quest, but not until they can face an Ancient Red. I might throw in a young dragon early on in the campaign, but I don't foresee having them face more than one or two dragons in their march towards 20th level and beyond.

 

[Celebrim]

They mark the empty spots on my maps.

Seriously.

I don't use dragons all that often. I mostly write 'Here be dragons' on the far corners of the world and assume that that area is for 'epic adventuring'. I've had the occasional wandering young adult (or younger), but mostly dragons and civilization just don't mix like oil and water. You can't have one where you have the other.

I would consider great wyrms would be on the scale of civilization ending natural disasters.

Boom, there goes Atlantis!

And that's what I would use one for if I planned on using one.

Even back in 1st edition days, I had a tendancy to prefer advanced versions of more exotic monsters to dragons when placing legendary menaces on the map. For example, in one 1st ed. campaign the biggest monster on the 'local' scale map was a triple HD manticore; in another it was a double HD wyvern. Dragons just struck me as overdone and I wanted my own schtick. I've occasionally placed dragons in isolated portions of the regional map, but I've only a couple of times had one encountered (a green). I figure if adventurers are all the time encountering dragons, pretty soon there would be either no dragons or no adventurers. Hense, they don't. I've only once planned a dragon encounter (a white) as a necessary part of an adventure.

 

[Derren]

I try to reduce the number of dragons I use as they are overdone. But when I use them they are schemers or magical powerhouses.

At least in 3E. In 4E WotC removed much of the dragons abilities to interact with the human society as they lost spellcasting (and spellcasting doesn't have have much utility anyway) and I don't just give NPCs some unnamed abilities but instead I try to stay within the rules of what is possible and what not.

 

[NilesB]

The dragon replies, "Oh all my hoard is tied up in investments, property, stocks, and held in banks in the surrounding region."

Also, in Shadowrun, a Dragon was elected President (before it was assassinated).

Dragons are 1) Smart, 2) Have lots of resources (Namely, a lot of gold and magical items), and 3) Long lived. So this allows them to plan. Their 4) Raw power also doesn't hurt.

They are also Defined by compulsive hoarding behavior!

You could have your dragons act in this manner, but only at the cost of losing everything that makes dragons interesting, evocative and distinctive monsters.