MonkeyWrench
Explorer
I had my council take place in the cloud mansion of the gold dragon delegate; the place was staffed with contsructs and lesser celestials.
D&D 5E RoT: Metallic Dragon Council
gweinel
Explorer
In my campaign there is one beautiful coastal city called Evergem. Evergem was one of few cities of the world which survived from an apocalyptic force that hit the continent. The true reason of its survival is known only to one creature: Nectisaryx. Nectisaryx is a Topaz dragon who have loved a human female named Evergem some centuries ago. After her death he built a big mount on the coast, near to his lair to honor her which eventually came to be quite popular with the locals. The mount became a village, the village became a town and the town became a city and the initial annoyed Nectisaryx decided that this was the best way to make immortal his lost love. He polymorphed to a fair hair and bright eye noble and ruled the city which renamed it as Evergem.
When the apocalypse hit he used all his magic to protect his beloved city and all his psionic abilities to erase this deed from the minds of his people. Exhausted he fell to slumber for many decades. When he awoke many things has changed: his city was mostly submerged to the sea since the sea level was rised after the apocalypse and a new one was built beside the drown part city. He found this turn of events wonderful since he had a whole town as his new lair with a peak just in the center of it: the mount of Evergem. This time he didn't reclaimed the leadership of the city (he was bored to lead again these puny humans) but he watched from below the sea how it prospered as it became a great trade center.
When the Cult of Dragon emerged, early in their campaign, they targeted the riches of Evergem. Nectiseryx decided to intervene. Although he was strong enough to defend the city he was forced to reveal his true form to his foes. From that time his neutral and indifferent stance against the affairs of the dragons changed. He choose side, and the side was the Order of the Canary, the order of the good metallic dragons of the continent. He became a powerful ally of Tazmikella, the Copper Dragon, and when she mentioned that a group of brave (and foolhardy) heroes sought to destroy the Cult of Dragon he proposed to host a meeting with them.
Nectisaryx found it would be a great idea to hold a meeting under the sea, next to the crowded city of Evergem, in a big mount of a very beloved human who rest in peace.
When the apocalypse hit he used all his magic to protect his beloved city and all his psionic abilities to erase this deed from the minds of his people. Exhausted he fell to slumber for many decades. When he awoke many things has changed: his city was mostly submerged to the sea since the sea level was rised after the apocalypse and a new one was built beside the drown part city. He found this turn of events wonderful since he had a whole town as his new lair with a peak just in the center of it: the mount of Evergem. This time he didn't reclaimed the leadership of the city (he was bored to lead again these puny humans) but he watched from below the sea how it prospered as it became a great trade center.
When the Cult of Dragon emerged, early in their campaign, they targeted the riches of Evergem. Nectiseryx decided to intervene. Although he was strong enough to defend the city he was forced to reveal his true form to his foes. From that time his neutral and indifferent stance against the affairs of the dragons changed. He choose side, and the side was the Order of the Canary, the order of the good metallic dragons of the continent. He became a powerful ally of Tazmikella, the Copper Dragon, and when she mentioned that a group of brave (and foolhardy) heroes sought to destroy the Cult of Dragon he proposed to host a meeting with them.
Nectisaryx found it would be a great idea to hold a meeting under the sea, next to the crowded city of Evergem, in a big mount of a very beloved human who rest in peace.
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Eltab
Lord of the Hidden Layer
When I ran that scene, the PCs were travelling by ship from Neverwinter to Waterdeep. I made an opportunity to point out that the guy in charge of the Assassin Team* was wearing his Purple as a uniform, but this captured cultist was wearing his Purple more like a cape. The Green Wyrmspeaker wears his Purple as a royal robe, which is a hint.
* The guy in charge of the assassin team was the sergeant from the town outside the Flying Castle. He had murdered a PC in cold blood, so the player's new character made a bee-line at him once she made the connection: he had also stolen the old PC's Oathbow; I opened the ambush by shooting her in the back with it and she hears a soft whisper "Swift death to my enemies".
The "light bulb" look on her face made the research worth it.
Honestly, by the time my group got to that point, I think people were just kind of tired of fighting the same dragon cultist enemies, so we mostly skipped over the dragon council. It seemed more like the designers were wrapping up the book to meet a deadline and the intern pipes up with the question "hey, we have this whole campaign about dragons, but where are the good ones?" And then everyone just kind of looks around dumbfounded before the intern was given 20 minutes to "write something up before I fire off the final revision to the printers."
Charles Rampant
Explorer
I've not read the book cover to cover, since my group has shown little interest in the idea of playing it thus far, but this chapter and the Thay one really bummed me nevertheless. These were the two that I was really interested in reading, because Good Dragons and Red Wizards are full of awesome roleplaying potential, but the book is just so flimsy on the subject. It's hard not to compare it to Harshnag in SKT, or Ezmerelda & Rictavio in CoS, and wonder how they would have handled the same idea in one bigger book.
The core problems seem to be:
* How do you make the scene fun for the players?
* How do you communicate what the Dragons want, without a really mechanical 'go up to NPC, hit use, and then listen to canned speech'?
* How do you make it more than just a long walk to a simple conversation?
* How do the NPCs' requests become more than just 'make Persuasion roll'?
For all of these, it seems to me that you almost want to have the Dragons first meet the players collectively, setting out the basic thoughts of the council, then have them each withdraw to a separate 'room', with further conversations between the players and each Dragon at that point. When you're not trying to juggle 5 or more NPCs in the same conversation, it should be much easier to then have their desires and personalities come through. Contests of skill and morality, like the Copper Dragon mentioned above, also appeal; perhaps the Brass (are they the warlike ones?) wants a demonstration that the players can win the battle, through the medium of a chess game or whatever, while the Gold will interrogate the party in a word association game to see how they view the world (and thus learn their morality). Ideally, I'd want this to be a full session by itself, so that it assumed the importance that suggests, and I'd also want enough encounters on the way to get there to make the whole thing feel like an ordeal.
For the meeting place, I'd be tempted by a Dragon Graveyard. Could be contrary to expectations (instead of lofty palaces and harps, they get arid wind and the buzzing of flies), and might help to add a serious tone to affairs. An implicit question - 'why risk joining our revered ancestors on your behalf'? - that would make the players think. It might be a bit too heavy though, and risk setting the Good Dragons in the role of antagonists in the players' minds.
Final thought: the Oracle at Delphi is really hard to get to. It's up a big steep mountain, not particularly close to the major cities of Greece, and it gets really very hot indeed. Just getting to the place was gruelling, which is itself an important element in the act of homage to the gods; dragging a big cart full of gold up there really did take a lot of effort. I'd want this whole segment to have the same feel, I think. The Good Dragons may be Good, but getting their aid will take more than just wandering down the road and giving a nice speech.
The core problems seem to be:
* How do you make the scene fun for the players?
* How do you communicate what the Dragons want, without a really mechanical 'go up to NPC, hit use, and then listen to canned speech'?
* How do you make it more than just a long walk to a simple conversation?
* How do the NPCs' requests become more than just 'make Persuasion roll'?
For all of these, it seems to me that you almost want to have the Dragons first meet the players collectively, setting out the basic thoughts of the council, then have them each withdraw to a separate 'room', with further conversations between the players and each Dragon at that point. When you're not trying to juggle 5 or more NPCs in the same conversation, it should be much easier to then have their desires and personalities come through. Contests of skill and morality, like the Copper Dragon mentioned above, also appeal; perhaps the Brass (are they the warlike ones?) wants a demonstration that the players can win the battle, through the medium of a chess game or whatever, while the Gold will interrogate the party in a word association game to see how they view the world (and thus learn their morality). Ideally, I'd want this to be a full session by itself, so that it assumed the importance that suggests, and I'd also want enough encounters on the way to get there to make the whole thing feel like an ordeal.
For the meeting place, I'd be tempted by a Dragon Graveyard. Could be contrary to expectations (instead of lofty palaces and harps, they get arid wind and the buzzing of flies), and might help to add a serious tone to affairs. An implicit question - 'why risk joining our revered ancestors on your behalf'? - that would make the players think. It might be a bit too heavy though, and risk setting the Good Dragons in the role of antagonists in the players' minds.
Final thought: the Oracle at Delphi is really hard to get to. It's up a big steep mountain, not particularly close to the major cities of Greece, and it gets really very hot indeed. Just getting to the place was gruelling, which is itself an important element in the act of homage to the gods; dragging a big cart full of gold up there really did take a lot of effort. I'd want this whole segment to have the same feel, I think. The Good Dragons may be Good, but getting their aid will take more than just wandering down the road and giving a nice speech.
pukunui
Legend
Exactly!
I really like this.
It's an interesting idea, but I'd be wary of using it in this campaign, considering that the final battle takes place in a dragon graveyard (the Well of Dragons).
Charles Rampant
Explorer
Ah, of course, I'd forgotten about the Well of Dragons. That chapter seemed surprisingly dull, so I never focused on it in my skim reads of the book - I was more impressed by Xonthal's Maze, and curious about the political chapters.
Eltab
Lord of the Hidden Layer
A model to handle the Dragon Council:
The Traveler Book has a 4-page adventure in it where you have to go through bureaucracy to get a permit. Everybody sends you to somebody else, only one guy can sign the darn thing. If you can get a copy and thin it down a bit, it might help you organize your thoughts.
The adventure also includes a 'day planner' schedule mechanic. I wish I'd thought of using it for the Waterdeep Council in the first place. It would be useful here, too.
The Traveler Book has a 4-page adventure in it where you have to go through bureaucracy to get a permit. Everybody sends you to somebody else, only one guy can sign the darn thing. If you can get a copy and thin it down a bit, it might help you organize your thoughts.
The adventure also includes a 'day planner' schedule mechanic. I wish I'd thought of using it for the Waterdeep Council in the first place. It would be useful here, too.
Steven Winter
Explorer
Lots of good ideas here.
Our outline for this adventure was way too big to fit in 96 pages. Some chapters were culled entirely while others, like this one, had to be shorter than we liked. Two factors weighed heaviest in that decision. First, no matter how we staged the encounter, it would disappoint people by either being too majestic or not majestic enough. Second, some groups live for this sort of encounter, but others are bored to distraction by them and would rather skip over them entirely. So rather than expend a lot of pages for little gain, we opted to present the bare bones and let DMs frame the encounter to suit their players.
If I had it to do over, I'd try to squeeze two more pages for this chapter out of somewhere else--I think two pages would just about do it justice--though I have no idea off the top of my head where they'd come from.
Steve
Our outline for this adventure was way too big to fit in 96 pages. Some chapters were culled entirely while others, like this one, had to be shorter than we liked. Two factors weighed heaviest in that decision. First, no matter how we staged the encounter, it would disappoint people by either being too majestic or not majestic enough. Second, some groups live for this sort of encounter, but others are bored to distraction by them and would rather skip over them entirely. So rather than expend a lot of pages for little gain, we opted to present the bare bones and let DMs frame the encounter to suit their players.
If I had it to do over, I'd try to squeeze two more pages for this chapter out of somewhere else--I think two pages would just about do it justice--though I have no idea off the top of my head where they'd come from.
Steve
Eltab
Lord of the Hidden Layer
Maybe cut the Thay chapter (also suffers from lack of space) entirely and put the whole page count into the Dragon Council, doing a robust job on it? One well-done highlight of the campaign, instead of two anemic under-formed ideas competing for limited resources.
P.S. To date, the climax of my group's campaign was facing Arauthator in his lair. (We got interrupted by IRL and are in stasis in the Green Wyrmspeaker's hideout.)
