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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pming" data-source="post: 6397554" data-attributes="member: 45197">Hiya. From what I'm reading...the whole encounter seems too Yes/No. Reading about how Mearls group basically just kind of shrugged and went in tells me one thing about them; they understood the meta-game aspect of it. That aspect was "We're 1st level and this is the beginning of the module...we see a dragon...there is NO WAY we can die from it. Period. Impossible. We can all drop our drawers, bend over, and give it a big ol' moon...no worries. We Will. Not. Die". Why would they think this? Because it's the beginning of the module. Kind of like what if Bruce Wayne had yelled at the 'joker' and said "You low life piece of s#!t, drugged-up coward!", and then threw a rock at him hitting him square in the forehead. Well, either A) The joker laughs and says "You get that one for free, kid" and walks away, or B) young Bruce gets a bullet in the head. Seeing as if you were writing a movie, option B would make for a pretty short movie. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /> Ergo, option A is the only real choice...no matter what young Bruce does, the joker walks away, letting him live. This "dragon attack" scenario is the same thing. And the players will know it.So...I'd bet coppers to platinum that many of the 'we go in' groups were thinking meta-game; knowing that they wouldn't be killed. Or that some super-NPC would save them. Or that the dragon was an illusion. Or anything other than what it looked like; a dragon laying waste to a town. So in they went, perhaps 'faking' concern to make the DM feel good ("Oh noes! Maybe we should sneak around so the mean-old dragon doesn't get us!"...all the wile thinking they could just walk casually down the middle of the street without a care in the world because the DM wouldn't let them die).I know exactly how my group would have played it. They would have just hidden and waited for the dragon to leave. Doesn't matter if the dragon landed and was threatening to incinerate and eat a farmer, his wife, four children and their pet goat; the good aligned PC's may have turned their heads and said "I can't watch this!" and started preying or sticking their fingers in their ears, singing LA LA LA LA LA! I CAN'T HEAR ANYTHING! LA LA LA LA LA LA LA!". Why? They know how I DM. They know that I'd let the dragon kill their PC's in a heartbeat. My players play from the perspective that dangerous things are, well, DANGEROUS. And nothing is much more dangerous than an angry, airborne, evil dragon.Bottom Line: Bad encounter that would be no fun at all for me and my group. If I was to run it...the dragon would be the THREAT, not the actual ACTION. Meaning I'd likely have the dragon sitting on top of the keep or a tower, and the cultists basically saying "Give us all your stuff, or this here dragon will raze your town to the ground and eat all of you!". That is a *potential* threat. I'd increase the number of cultists, I'm sure, and they'd go house to house collecting treasure. The dragon would roar, eat a horse or two, and generally try and Intimidate the town (probably not hard...). If he was attacked by the PC's, well, remember what I said about TPK's above? <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" />  Anyway, that set up would have the same plot-effect, from what I read, and also becomes much more "winnable" by my PC's; the goal wouldn't be to kill/drive off the dragon...the goal would be to not do anything to piss it off.^_^Paul L. Ming</blockquote>

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