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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Iosue" data-source="post: 6390310" data-attributes="member: 6680772">But let's say you and three or four friends come across Mike Tyson beating up a bunch of 12-year olds?  Do you say, "Well, I could never beat Mike Tyson one-on-one in a boxing ring, so we're moving on..."  Or do you say, "Okay, this is going to be tough, but what can we do as a group to stack the odds in our favor so we can stop Mike Tyson from beating up on these kids?"It's metagaming knowledge to say, "We're 1st level characters, so we don't have a chance against the dragon."  A character may certainly understand that dragons are big and bad, and do everything they can to avoid having to go toe-to-toe with them.  That doesn't mean they decide to do nothing when a town is being attacked by a dragon.  They can treat the dragon like a natural disaster, and simply try to save as many regular folks as they can.  They can try to find a way to drive the dragon off without engaging it directly.  They can look for force equalizers.Every adventure involves adventurers walking into situations that normal people avoid if they can.  A dragon attacking a town is no different.  How the characters respond to that is entirely up to them.  Dragon over town != PCs must fight dragon to the death.  They can go with no intention to fight the dragon, but just to help people.  They can go because they see humanoid bad guys who are more their size.  They can go because being in some kind of shelter is safer from a dragon on the wing than being out on the open road.  They can go because, hey, a dragon attacking a town is a good chance to do some looting of their own!  And heck, they can go just because they're adventurers and there's adventure in that thar town.And of course, there's certainly the choice to just lie low until the whole thing blows over.  The point is not that a dragon attacking a town shouldn't give the player's pause, or induce them to act carefully.  The point is, a dragon attacking a town doesn't mean the only "sane" choice is to run away because the characters somehow know that they absolutely cannot defeat a dragon in a straight up fight.  And here's the kicker.  The game starts with the characters outside of town to give them choice in how to approach it.  It would have been just as easy to start with PCs already in Greenest when the dragon and raiders attack, thereby giving them no choice in the matter.So does the idea of going into a burning building.  Nevertheless, people do it.  And generally they do it in a way to mitigate the danger.  And not just firefighters, either.In Phandelver, it's dumb to engage the dragon toe-to-toe, and the module takes pains (and encourages the DM) to discourage the players from doing that.In this module, it's perfectly reasonable for PCs to go into a town that's being attacked by a dragon.  And it's perfectly reasonable for them to attack that dragon, from the safety of the keep, along with scores of militia men.  Again, the PCs are not told or expected to engage the dragon toe-to-toe.  They are expected to snipe from a distance until the dragon goes away, or to find another way to drive it off (as many actual play reports have recounted).What "contrary"?  Each module has it's own context and it's own method of presenting a dragon.  Each module gives the players the choice of whether to engage with the dragon.  In neither module are the characters expected to kill the dragon.But even setting that aside, there's absolutely nothing wrong with different modules presenting different playstyles.  A sandbox heavy adventure might go even further than Phandelver, and have a dragon that won't flee if reduced to half hit points, and put the choice of what to do with the dragon (fight now, fight later, avoid altogether) entirely with the players.  That would be good module design for a group that wants a sandboxy module.  A more linear, plot-heavy module might go even further than Hoard, and make it necessary for the players to fight the dragon, adjusting the challenge to the PCs level by either using a much weaker dragon, or by having the dragon flee after one or two hits.  That would be good module design for a group that wants a plot-heavy story with balanced encounters.As it happens, both Phandelver and Hoard take a mixed-approach, allowing for DMs to approach the adventures either way.  And though that means that the DM has to make some decisions to present the module in their preferred style, that's a feature, not a bug.</blockquote>

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