D&D 5E The Larger Failure of "Tyranny of Dragons"

[Paul Farquhar]

No conflict as far as I'm concerned.
DM: "You guys up for a Tyranny of Dragons campaign?"
Players: "Yeah!"
First text box in the book: “Players [1st level], you approach a city that has an adult blue dragon attacking.”
PCs: “Nope.”
... To me that kind of says they aren't so keen on playing the campaign they agreed to play and, as DM, I've prepared. That's a back to the drawing board kind of moment.

If people plan to play Monopoly and when the time comes to roll the dice the players use their agency to say "Nope" then that kind of says "We aren't playing Monopoly." This isn't any different. Different would be, "Ok, now that we see it's being attacked by a blue dragon... let's find a place to hole up for a while, observe, and make sure we aren't approaching openly." That's using agency in a positive way to do something different from the straight boxed text while still saying they still want to play.

Rushing to help, running away, and stopping to observe are all reasonable things for the PCs to do. I think the issue is when the DM especially and inexperienced DM, treats the text as if it's set in stone, so to speak. An experienced DM should be able to deal with all of those options without much trouble.

And this ties into what I said earlier about writing for yourself, as opposed to writing for someone else to run the adventure. If I'm writing for myself "dragon attacking town" is all that is needed. But If writing for an inexperienced DM I would need to think through all the reasonable options and suggest how to deal with each of them.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Rushing to help, running away, and stopping to observe are all reasonable things for the PCs to do.

Well, for people to do. The middle one, particularly, for rational people to do.

PCs, OTOH, by their very nature, should be the 'run towards the danger' types, or they wouldn't even have character classes, in the first place. I mean, if one is inclined to take only sensible risks, signing up for a Warlock's pact, taking up the merc/warrior life of a Fighter or Barbarian, aspiring to murder-for hire (Assassin Rogue), etc, probably aren't going to top the list. Marry the miller's daughter, maybe, apprentice to a blacksmith, perhaps, or simply stay on the family farm.

Even when a plot hook is a bit much, like the start of HotDQ, it's genre for the 'heroes' to want to have something to do with it.

 

[Gradine]

Did we really need to beat this dead horse again and again and again and...

Look, we've already solved the HotDQ intro. The PCs aren't rushing in to fight a dragon. They're rushing in to provide assistance to a town under siege. The dragon is just there to set the stakes and the tone(and an admittedly ill-advised "let's shoot arrows at the dragon" scenario). The heroes (and yes, the PCs are clearly supposed to be heroes) are there to help in the kind of ways only they can.

We can appreciate the history of the self-interested mercenary murder-hobo style of play and its role in the founding of this game and this hobby while also respecting that not every published adventure in the 2010's should cater exclusively to that mentality.

 

[Umbran]

No conflict as far as I'm concerned.
DM: "You guys up for a Tyranny of Dragons campaign?"
Players: "Yeah!"
First text box in the book: “Players [1st level], you approach a city that has an adult blue dragon attacking.”
PCs: “Nope.”
... To me that kind of says they aren't so keen on playing the campaign they agreed to play and, as DM, I've prepared. That's a back to the drawing board kind of moment.

I don't think I've seen this stated, but I think it is important:

"You guys up for a Tyranny of Dragons campaign?/Yeah!" is, on the face of it, an insufficient agreement to depend upon. We all probably think of that as shorthand, but the details under that shorthand actually matter.

We cannot cogently discuss this but elide over the expectations that should be set up in the initial discussion.

For example, if I am having this conversation, we will, in some way, effectively set the expectation that at least the initial hooks will be level-appropriate. So, the players know that no, I am not going to have 1st level characters getting eaten by an adult dragon in the first session. Meanwhile, if I am embarking on this campaign, I will have set with the players that their character should be the sort that can deal with that kind of initial framing without cutting and running before we can so much as get to the reasonable questions that can follow (like, how far away they are from the city at the time of sighting).

 

[5ekyu]

No conflict as far as I'm concerned.
DM: "You guys up for a Tyranny of Dragons campaign?"
Players: "Yeah!"
First text box in the book: “Players [1st level], you approach a city that has an adult blue dragon attacking.”
PCs: “Nope.”
... To me that kind of says they aren't so keen on playing the campaign they agreed to play and, as DM, I've prepared. That's a back to the drawing board kind of moment.

If people plan to play Monopoly and when the time comes to roll the dice the players use their agency to say "Nope" then that kind of says "We aren't playing Monopoly." This isn't any different. Different would be, "Ok, now that we see it's being attacked by a blue dragon... let's find a place to hole up for a while, observe, and make sure we aren't approaching openly." That's using agency in a positive way to do something different from the straight boxed text while still saying they still want to play.

And I come to a different conclusion.

Players agree to play Tyranny.
Then once the first scene in-character begins they say no to walking into the city.

So far, so good. Player agency deciding what their characters do.

Gm then decides to end the campaign right there.

That is not supporting player agency.

Supporting player agency at that point would involve asking "so, what do you do ?" IE the game foes not end once the players choose a path other than the one the GM has decided they must follow. There is nothing in ToD startup that says to do that. It even provides additional hooks to draw them in in-character.

But, in truth as far as I see, PA is amorphous buzz word so it's no big deal to me. You just assign different meaning to it than I do.

 

[5ekyu]

I don't think I've seen this stated, but I think it is important:

"You guys up for a Tyranny of Dragons campaign?/Yeah!" is, on the face of it, an insufficient agreement to depend upon. We all probably think of that as shorthand, but the details under that shorthand actually matter.

We cannot cogently discuss this but elide over the expectations that should be set up in the initial discussion.

For example, if I am having this conversation, we will, in some way, effectively set the expectation that at least the initial hooks will be level-appropriate. So, the players know that no, I am not going to have 1st level characters getting eaten by an adult dragon in the first session. Meanwhile, if I am embarking on this campaign, I will have set with the players that their character should be the sort that can deal with that kind of initial framing without cutting and running before we can so much as get to the reasonable questions that can follow (like, how far away they are from the city at the time of sighting).

Or, alternatively, some of the expectation and value in those early encounters is to show, not tell, the players that this will not be a campaign where every encounter is level balanced, to be charged into the fray expecting even odds. That some rely on choices to hide, use cover, stick-and-hide etc instead of trying to be first on thr buffet.

Been a while but as I recall that early fight scene had a plethora of targets (redshirts ), cover and the dragon objective was not to kill the PCs - opening up a lot of options in play other than "be eaten by a dragon."

That's how, as GM, I have used it. That was how it seemed setup to me.

 

[Jd Smith1]

And if the rules say that character death isn't going to happen?

When would the rules state that? Unless you're referring to a scenario, in which case it isn't a rule but an opinion.

 

[Nagol]

When would the rules state that? Unless you're referring to a scenario, in which case it isn't a rule but an opinion.

Lots of RPGs have no real chance of death or no death rules at all.

 

[Jd Smith1]

Loys of RPGs have no real chance of death or no death rules at all.

None that I've ever played. Or would play.

 

[Gradine]

None that I've ever played. Or would play.

Cool.