E2 Dragons

Hello and welcome to the Monster Mechanics Podcast, where we dissect creatures of myth and media to see how they can be improved. I am your host, Scott Paladin, and with me, as always, is the call to my oats, Zach Jakeways. Zach, what's today's episode?

Today we're talking about dragons.

All right. And I don't think we need to explain to anybody what dragons are.

I should hope not.

Yeah, we're going to range kind of all over the place on these. Well, we're going to stick to western dragons. I think there are a lot of things called dragons in the world, but we're going to kind of stick to the flame and fire D and D dragons for now. Great. So the first thing we got to talk about is, like, why are dragons big lizards with fire? Like, what world created these creatures? Right, sure.

Yeah.

Well, and if we're going D and D, you've got tons of elemental versions of dragons, right?

Oh, yeah. You got the acid, the fire, the lightning frost.

So. Okay, so let's think about the thing that came before the dragons. There was a thing that was either naturally or unnaturally turned into the dragon, either through just straight biological pressures. You know, evolution in a magical world where you can, you know, one day your genetics might change a little bit and suddenly you have magic powers, I guess. But, you know, maybe there's a process by which dragons were created. Maybe there was a God or something that took something. But there was. There was a lizard before.

Yeah. Maybe dragons are just the dinosaurs who made it.

I've always loved the idea of the sort of proto dragons, as big, like Tyrannosaurus rexes and Stegosauruses and stuff, and having very dinosaur like features. A lot of the art depictions, you can sort of see influences in there. Like you'll see occasionally dragons with frills.

Yeah, they'll have like that dimetrodon crest down their back.

Although we know enough about dinosaurs now to know that they would be covered in feathers. And so that's not typically the way you see dragons. Although a feathered dragon is pretty cool. I mean, you could make it. As long. As long as you don't make them really fluffy, they're still going to look really dangerous.

Yeah.

But if they're. If they're like a chicken, that's a bit. That's a bit bad. I mean, can you imagine that being a regular, like a caveman, a proto human or a cave elf? Which is a campaign that might be really fun to run, actually. But you see your cave elf and you turn a corner and you see.

I think they prefer to be called drow.

Okay, yeah, you got me. Okay. So you turn a corner and you see an allosaurus and it's bright red and it turns to you and it shoots flame at you. Like as scary as like an allosaurus would normally be if it also has elemental powers.

Oh, yeah.

Let's sort of imagine the idea that this is. These are dinosaurs. And is there a way they could mate with an elemental of some sort?

I mean, that can't be comfortable.

I like the idea of it having been introduced to them at some point. I mean, there's two options. One is if you want to have your green dragons and red dragons and all of those be very physically similar to one another. Then there's the proto dragon, which is just like a brown lizard that has or dinosaur that's got four legs and maybe it's got wings. Or maybe it's Drake style, where it's got two legs in the back and then the big wings. And this is just a natural creature that exists in the world.

I'm thinking like, you go back far enough, wings on dragons are basically just. They're like big hands with webbing between them.

Yeah, they're bat style.

So maybe these proto dragons are these like six limbed lizard creatures, which I believe also fits the description of creatures like basilisks.

Yeah, or the. Isn't that a bit like a bullet? Or bullet.

I believe bulet only have four legs, but I can.

I'm just petty enough.

I mean, I only spent most of my childhood staring at a monstrous manual.

Right. This is, this is going to be a recurring theme or I think about something and you tell me I'm wrong and I look it up and you're always going to be right. I can tell. That's how it works. Okay.

I didn't have much of a childhood outside of these books.

Hey, look, if we were doing a podcast about Mechwarrior, then I would be the one that always did that.

Fair point.

That'll have to be. That'll be the next podcast we start after we get patrons or something.

Okay, here we go. So these. Yeah, these proto dragons could be something like maybe also the progenitors of basilisks. And eventually these third set of limbs eventually evolved into these wings. As you said, Biological preference pressures.

Yeah. According to the images I'm looking up, basilisks actually have eight limbs, which is interesting.

Oh, interesting.

You could theoretically have like two sets of wings and two sets of legs evolve out of that. Which is kind of cool. Although we're reverging very close into James Cameron's avatar territory with his dragon. But we can imagine a sort of, kind of a cross between a crocodile and a, like a Dimetrodon or Tyrannosaurus rex, something that's, it's a bit up off the ground. It's, it's not got its legs splayed out like a crocodile does. It sits with them underneath it. Yeah, it's one of the big differences between dinosaurs and lizards.

Yeah.

And it's got six limbs. And this is a magical world where you've got centaurs and flying tentacle brain monsters. So six limbs creature. Totally. I'm just going to, we're just going to go with it. That's totally fine. Okay. So how do they become elemental?

So my idea is, you know how like a chameleon kind of blends in with his environment. It's got that natural camouflage. Maybe instead of adapting the color of its environment, it adapts the elemental properties of its environment.

Oh, that's interesting. So maybe it started off as a generalist. So these creatures, this proto dragon, it would be in an aquatic environment and it would start to gain aquatic powers and it would be in a fire, you know, a volcanic environment would start to grow fire powers. And then slowly over time you have species ation over those and you have the ones that are more and more fire dragon, they become the red dragons and they adopt these elemental powers just by being in proximity to those ideas. And that means you could have some version of that older version around too. You could have this creature which is not as dangerous as a dragon. I mean, he's still going to be terrifying. You know, 30ft long and several hundred tons, not hundred tons, but several tons of horrifying mon. I mean like monitor lizards are scary as it is. Now imagine that they could also like summon sandstorms when they're in the desert. Yeah, okay, I like that idea. So you can sort of imagine the idea of places of power. Like the concept of where ley lines connect is one is a very common idea. I think it features in a lot of different worlds. Yeah, maybe that's the center point of where dragons started to form. They were in these high magic environments. And because of the nature of high magic environments, they're also very extreme places. Like, and you have these creatures which are, they're total badasses. They can go anywhere and they can live in any environment because they're adaptive and they're just terrifying.

They're the giant lizard, like Water bears?

Yes. Tardigrades? Yes, yes. And water bear is adorable. As badass as tardigrades are, the water bear name is just not doing them justice. Well, okay, we'll stick with proto dragon.

Sure.

So you can imagine various, various populations of these centering on those high magic areas and sort of feeding off that magic.

Sure.

And just ambient in the world. They're also, you know, if they're on a mountain, they're also eating yetis and stuff probably too.

Maybe they were just prolific and just the ones that did gravitate towards these extreme environments did better because of their extreme adaptiveness.

Yeah. And I think that works great. Which also means that this is a world where there are proto dragons fossils everywhere. And those things might be imbued with power. Like if you get the femur from a proto dragon that had fire powers and you carve a sword from it, that sword is better than a regular bone sword or stone, I guess sword. It'll have firepower sort of innately. And this might be how your culture. Well, let's get into culture stuff later. But I like, but we're going to, we're going to circle back around to that idea because I love this proto dragon fossil idea. Okay. So as they centered in on these places of power and grew more and more specialized, they also grew more powerful to the point where they were able to do things that the proto dragons weren't able to do. And let's just say to make life easier that it also makes them more intelligent.

Okay.

That being close to that power, you know, starts to get them from lizard like intelligence to being much more like a human. Well. And then they surpass humans, Right?

Sure.

Especially once they get old and have been around for a long time. Because they're lizards. They're. I mean, I guess. Are they still cold blooded?

Good question.

I can't imagine a red dragon being cold blooded. That doesn't make sense. But you can imagine like the. Which one's the cold one? White.

Yeah, the whites.

Yeah, yeah. You can imagine them being cold blooded which produces. Well, I don't know. Because then they would never be active because white dragons would live in a cold environment almost all the time.

Right, that makes sense.

I think that would make sense. You don't act as a white dragon and then spend all of your time on volcanoes, basking on rocks or something like that. Okay. So let's assume that the magic within a dragon's body also makes them essentially warm blooded.

I mean with dragon biology at some point there has to be Some. And magic was involved.

Well, I think we're developing a kind of dragon that is innately magical. That this is what happens when a creature lives in a very high magical field for millions of years surrounded by magic, that they integrate that magic into themselves. And to the point where whatever mechanism a wizard uses to summon fireball dragons have that just as a. Like an organ inside of them. Or maybe it's part of their brain or their spinal column or something along those lines. They've got something within them that just does that naturally. They don't have to learn it.

They've got their magic set sack.

Not everything has to have a sack.

Doesn't it?

Oh, man. Maybe. Actually, let's steal from Brandon Sanderson.

Okay.

And imagine something more like the gem hearts from the Chasm Fiends, that within a dragon somewhere there's a crystalline formation that is the font of their magic, the internal part of their magic. And it's going to be very strongly elemental magic.

Sure.

If it's like a strongly elemental dragon. So that's a. That's a neat idea for your players because inevitably, when they finally kill a dragon 15 levels into the game, they're going to carve that thing up.

Oh, yeah.

Into a bunch of different things and.

Use every part of the dragon.

You have to use every part of the dragon. And that can either be really great for your campaign where that is a real mark that they've made it. They make the dragon scale armor and they have the dragon bone.

Whatever.

Whatever or something. I'm gonna have to cut that. Okay. So they make the dragon scale armor or dragon bone swords or whatnot. And maybe that's something you really let them get into. They have that craft. More likely they're just gonna sell it off. That's what players are if you want to.

I mean, more likely it's gonna sit in their inventory for the next 30 sessions until they remember it at some crucial moment.

Yeah, probably. If you don't want to introduce a lot of high power material, or especially if you're not the kind of DM who likes to let your players figure out the logistics of how they get 3 tons of dragon back to their stronghold.

Yeah.

You could bring in the concept of this gem heart, which is incredibly valuable. Maybe all of the value of the dragon really is within this one magical thing.

Sure.

Because it's what allows a dragon to exist. And that the moment that you separate any part of a dragon from. From this, it loses all of its magical property. And what you then have is just really Big lizard scales. Really big. Just regular old bone that's not even particularly strong. Not that you have to do this, but rather that it gives you a tool as a DM or gm to say, I don't really want to have you guys hassle with carving up this entire dragon, but here's something really special at the heart of it. And it's not just valuable, it's magical.

The dragon was the treasure all along.

The dragon inside of us was the treasure all along. Okay, I like that idea. It gives a real mechanism for why something so preposterous as a three ton flying lizard that breathes fire or electricity or what's the most ridiculous dragon?

You have to know the most ridiculous dragon. There's probably got to be like some dragon that breathes like pure void or something.

Oh, void dragons. Okay, I'm just going to get a list of dragons. List of D and D dragons.

There's going to be a lot.

Oh yeah, I hope there better be.

You can't release a Monstrous Manual without adding at least two or three extra kinds of dragons.

Okay. Yeah. They couldn't even put them in all the same place. There's chromatic Metallic gem, something called a lung dragon. Oh, they're oriental dragons. That's right. Ferris dragons, which is a terrible name. You need metallic dragons because Ferrous would imply they have to be. Maybe they're just iron.

Maybe they're just very magnetic. Correct.

They all have magnetic personalities.

Yes. Okay, there you go.

Shadow dragon. Adamantite dragon. Arboreal battle. Chaos. What the hell's a choll dragon?

What does an arboreal dragon breathe? Trees.

Oh no. They shoot razor sharp thorns out of their mouth apparently. Okay, so this is the thing that allows that to happen.

I was happier when I didn't know that.

I'm happier now. I like it when it's weird. The most famous quality of dragons is that they gather hordes. This is the thing they're known for. We should think about why that's the case in a real world. Like what is it about gold and valuables and wealth and things like that? That means that a dragon wants it. It can't use most of this stuff. Right?

So I have a theory about that and that's that a dragon lives a very, very, very long time. And it's got to be these acquisitions and things aren't so much hoarded for their material value so much as the memory of that particular time. It's a trophy, It's a reminder.

So every gold coin in its giant.

Pile of gold coins that Breaks down when you, when you get down to that point. Sure.

I mean, I love the idea of a dragon that has a trophy room. That's fantastic. We have two things. One is where does this idea come from? Which is it's an old school myth where dragons are associated with greed. And part of that's just structurally, as a storyteller, you can put the treasure and the great danger right next to each other. Why does this guy need to slay the dragon? Well, this giant pile of treasure, it's right here that the dragon was guarding. So it makes the structure of creating this story really easy in sort of our modern zeitgeist of today. It comes very specifically, it seems, from the Wagner's ring cycle. Fafnir, the great dragon of the cycle, stole a ring that was crafted by. I think it was crafted either for his brother or by his brother. I have to admit, I don't remember off the top of my head. But he covets this ring. This is the ring that the ring of the Lord of the Rings is mimetically modeled on.

Okay.

It's the thing that everybody in the whole story wants. It's what drives everyone.

It's the MacGuffin.

It's the MacGuffiN. Once he acquires it, his greed itself turns him into the dragon. And that he becomes the dragon Fafnir because of the greed. This is sort of an eruption that comes out of something about your personality. There's also, if you go back to Beowulf, there's just a mention of, with no explanation of a big ass dragon that has a big horde. And when somebody steals a cup, he gets really mad.

Yeah.

And hey, does that sound familiar to anybody? He starts raging the court she side until finally a hero steps up to kill it. Yeah, that's not the hobbit at all. Anyway, so there's some structural reasons, but I think that stories are better when they have purpose behind them. So the idea of the dragon having this valuable horde that can be defended and can be stolen and can be given out at the end of it is good. I think we can use that. But there has to be reason enough behind it so that once it's explained, it's not just. Well, because. Well, because that's no fun. So we've got all these different kinds of dragons. We've got, you know, white dragons and red dragons and metallic dragons and all these things. If we want to give them variety, they might have different compulsions in this way. You can imagine a red dragon being the traditional. Just wealth and maybe it's, they're magical creatures, so they might actually just have an innate understanding of wealth, the valuableness of something.

Well, let's break down. Wealth in itself is an expression of power.

Okay.

And we know from what we were talking about earlier, these dragons or these proto dragons were always just biologically just accumulating power from their environment. And it could just be this persisting impulse to just keep accumulating power into themselves.

And in that way things like, even though they can't use these items because they're either magical weapons made for mortal.

Men, I mean, there's tons of evolutionary dead ends in real life.

Exactly. Even though they can't use it, they still want it and they have to have it. And even things they don't understand why they want to keep them. You can imagine a dragon, it's almost ocd, like where it's like, I don't know why I want this shiny yellow stuff, this gold. But they know other creatures want it. And because other creatures want it, that means I have to have it. Not only, you know, like they can't have any, I have to have all of it and I'm just going to make a big ass pile and sleep on it. But I like the idea that you could have dragons with different compulsions or different expressions of the same idea. So the evil dragons might hoard power and so some of them might like maybe white dragons, they understand exactly what value is and they're able to conceive of it on a, on a more complex level. And so they might think, no, I'm going to hoard everything I'm going to hoard. I'm going to own like corporations and people and stocks. And if they're powerful enough to cast disguise spells or polymorph spells that would turn them into a man and they could reside in a city, they could, you know, they're going to live forever and they're incredibly intelligent and very powerful. They could acquire all kinds of wealth. And if they're able to make machinations over time, they might own countries and that would be their hoard. You know, they don't have a giant pile of gold, but they have a controlling share of a merchantile empire. Yeah, it's a very different kind of villain, but it gives that villain a very specific motivation. He wants to increase his power by increasing his holdings. That's a compulsion. You know, if you're a dm, having a villain that has things like that gives you a model of how they'll react and how that can be exploited by the players. They may offer him something which he might even know it's a trap he has to have, but he has to have it. He knows they're setting him up, but he has to do it because. Well, of course I do. Like I could get it. There's the chance that I could get it and there's no way I'm going to turn this down. That's, that's cool. I like that idea. I also really like the dragon with the trophy room were talking about earlier. I don't know which color you want to assign it to.

That feels more like something along the lines of the metallic dragons, the good aligned dragons. I feel like they would kind of maybe value things differently.

Yeah, absolutely. They're not going to go about their lives in an evil way and instead they're going to feel compelled to hoard these things to gather them up. And they also might understand the idea that they can give something value by the way they value it. Which is really a complex way to establish, you know, that this is something that's valuable. It's just, you know, it's a, oh, what's that ratty ass cloak? And it's like, well, that was the cloak that was put around my shoulders by my greatest friend 5000 years ago and I hold it now because he was very dear to me and he died, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah. The way that we might value a memory of an old pet or something, but like that will be important to them and they may feel very strongly about keeping it and holding it. And one of the things we are thinking about in all of this is adventure hooks. So the idea that they might have something stolen for them, but they're a good creature so they can't just go out roaming, they can't smog it up, wrecking up the countryside. So they have to go seek out maybe our little adventurers and say, hey, here's a thing which is actually not valuable for most people, but it is valuable to me and I need you to get it back now.

And there's no way the players are going to trust. Like if they're approached by a dragon and the dragon says, hey, I need you to get this totally non magical item for me.

But there's nothing better than being a DM and telling them the truth and having them think you're lying. That is such a great feeling because they're going to spend so long trying to figure out what you're up to and it turns out you were just telling them the truth the whole Time.

I also like the idea of dragons having thematic hordes.

Sure.

Like a dragon who's just got a very specific obsession. Perhaps a dragon with a butterfly collection that is extensively documented and labeled and just everything is in its place.

And if a sufficiently powerful dragon was collecting butterflies, he would probably be the best one in the world.

Oh, yeah. Or maps or knowledge in general. Just having massive libraries.

Oh, yeah, that's a great idea. It might be something that is really valuable to the dragon and maybe even really valuable to the world and completely useless to your players.

Oh, sure.

Because what are they going to do with the world's best butterfly collection?

Yeah. That's also going to be very frustrating for your players if they've just vanquished this dragon.

I think that is an excellent opportunity for you to punish a murder hobo.

That's true.

Because if they were only going after this dragon because that dragon was a dragon and they wanted the horde, that's not the best behavior in the world. And maybe they karmically, they shouldn't be rewarded with everything that. Although the way to make that work in the story would be to make sure that they know ahead of time what they're getting into. Or even if they don't know that they could look back and go, oh, we should have figured that out.

Yeah. Drop some breadcrumbs.

Drop some breadcrumbs. Have an NPC mention something about how the butterfly population in the local area is lower or give them enough of a clue to understand. Or even have a wizard NPC explain to them directly that not all dragon's horde go gold.

Sure. Yeah.

And that way when they ignore all of that and kill the dragon anyway, you can go look. Look what I showed you.

Sure. Yeah.

Okay. I guess that's the only thing I can think of that dragons are most known for. But they're intelligent creatures. Capturing maidens, that's another form of hoarding.

Maybe they have a horde of maidens. I mean, traditionally, I think they're eaten, aren't they?

Let's not get into the. The sexual undertones of eating fusions. Right?

Yeah. There you go.

Well, we'll save that for a Patreon only episode later on. I think if you're going to want to go maiden route, it's an expression of power over someone specific that by acquiring the sacrifice of a maiden or any person that you are saying to the closest people to that person or even the whole kingdom, hey, look, the firstborn child of your king mine now.

Is just a massive expression of dominance.

That Is that's like a Tarantino move where you eat the guy's burger right in front of him. Yeah, yeah, that's a. That is a power move. If you expressed it in that way to your players, that's. That's going to show them that this is a mean.

Right.

That this is somebody who is not good and could not be considered good, but is somebody to be feared and should be feared.

When you just need that mustache twirling villain, have them eat a maiden, but.

You can give them a reason why eating the maiden is as evil. Evil as it. Like this is a. This is a motivation. It's not just something to do because. Well, because it's evil. Anytime that you have a villain that. Well, why am I going to tie this woman to a train track? Well, because I need the hero to have to save the maiden. Like that's. That's the terrible.

That it really is.

Yeah. It's not satisfying to your audience. It won't even be satisfying to you, really, unless it's meant for a joke or something like that. But if you're taking yourself seriously, you should have a motivation. And thinking just a couple of steps behind and using something like the compulsion of a dragon to gain power and express that power is a perfect way to turn them into a real villain. Somebody that the players or the audience will remember after all your story is done. We could think a little bit about how dragons might interact with one another, because that's probably the majority of their interactions, Right? Sure. Either within a family group or within a culture. These are intelligent creatures, more intelligent than humans by the time they become great worms. And they can be powerful mages and shape shifters and they can be godlike almost. I think the great elder worms are like one of the most powerful creatures in most versions of D and D. So any dragon that your players encounter needs to be a fully fleshed out character. There should be a structure there for how dragon culture might work. What is about them? They're relatively solitary, but they're intelligent. And the thing I know about intelligent creatures is they get board right. So you can almost imagine a dragon sitting on its horde. You know, maybe it's a butterfly collection, maybe it's a stamp collection.

There's just nothing on Netflix at the moment.

Yes, there's with a scrying stone or a magic well or a mirror, but what I was actually thinking was they want to interact with someone of their own intellect. But putting two dragons in the same room together is maybe not the best way to go.

Like there's always going to be horde envy.

I think that that dragons meeting face to face except for very specific purposes is probably bad for them. They tend to get territorial, but they have this competing interest of wanting someone that they can interact with and they can talk to. The thing that comes to mind is the idea of pen pals that dragons not compulsively, but they spend a lot of their time writing other dragons and like sending those messages off. And there's this huge dragon information network.

Interesting.

Where every dragon has a couple of other dragons. You know, sometimes it's my cousin Zethwar Farce or whatever who I've kept up with since I was little hatchling. Or sometimes it's a. Maybe it's a dragon you've never even met. It's just like, oh, here's the address of this other one you might like talking to. And you can now start exchanging letters.

Okay.

And that gives them an ability to create relationships between one another without having to actually like, fight. And you can kind of imagine that if there's a globe spanning information network of just, you know, one dragon writes to his five friends and those five friends write to their five friends. That's going to get everybody. But like maybe the chromatic dragons, they're all evil, so they'll talk to one another. They love it. Hey, I'm going to eat some maidens. Look how big my horde has gotten. You know, maybe they're compulsively lying about, you know, the great horde rankings or whatever. Yeah, absolutely.

I'm just picturing Facebook for dragons at the moment. It's that whole like you post your best life online.

Yeah, exactly. Instagram.

Yeah, yeah. Leave the camera carefully positioned to catch maximum amount of gold.

Yeah, exactly. And get the scales just right. Maybe you've got a filter of some sort. And maybe the way that dragon Facebook works is that the red dragon's never going to be friends with the gold dragon directly, but that red dragon might be friends with the neutral dragons I think are like earth and sand, stuff like that.

Oh, gosh. I know. The two diametrically opposed, metallic and chromatic. And I know there's hundreds of in betweens.

Yeah. According to Wikipedia, the gem dragons are neutrally aligned. So you'd have amethyst and crystal and emerald. Which really just sounds like somebody tried to reboot the evil dragons and give them new. Like when the second toy line came out because the first toy line wasn't selling so well.

Does reek vaguely of Hasbro.

Yeah, vaguely. Or it's like season two of the kids show comes around and they're like, well, our red dragon is now Ruby Dragon. Right. So that if they're deeply social creatures, as most intelligent creatures tend to be, they might also be obsessed with rumor and, like, incredibly gossipy. And their little information network is probably not completely impermeable to the mortal world. And so this is a ridiculous idea, but they are obsessed with humans in a sort of reality show television way. Like, they keep track of other people's kings and queens and who married whom and who's gone to war. Like, we keep track of. Like we keep track of seasons of television.

Sure. Yeah.

They're like, oh, man, did you see what Henry VIII did? He formed his own church. That character is so out of this world.

So unbelievable.

So unbelievable. I can't. I don't. I don't like the writing this time. I think they're going off.

Did you hear? They discovered a new continent.

I love it. I'm sure the dragons would think it would be hilarious because there's probably dragons on the continent already and they've been watching the whole time getting news from. And I mean, with a magical world, the concept of something like a scrying circle or just divination spells which powerful dragons would have access to, makes that concept. We were laughing and it is ridiculous, but it's completely workable. And the idea of well connected villains who know, and they know more than you. In fact, they might have been watching you the whole time as you approach their lair because they're powerful enough to.

Do it because you're their favorite character on their show.

Okay. An adventuring hook of a dragon who's just a fanboy and desperately wants to meet the party and so arranges for them to come to it because it's not gonna go out and meet them, but instead it arranges a quest where they're sent to kill it, just so that it can be like, oh, I love you guys so much.

Well, that could be. Its. It just. It collects its favorite characters that it knows about in the world.

That's fantastic. And that's a story that you can take in two directions. And it'll be either very lighthearted and hilarious because that's essentially a Saturday morning cartoon villain who wants to put all of his favorite heroes in a jar. And it's not that weird. I mean, it's weird, but it's weird in a fun way. Or if you took yourself seriously about that one, it's just kind of a weird world they live. But that is deeply creepy. That is Serial killer stalker levels of creepy.

If we're assuming like these dragons are just spying on and scrying on these locations and whatnot. Imagine like how invested you become in like your favorite character in your show and you want that character to succeed.

Oh yeah.

So maybe you start tipping things in the player character's favor from time to time or engineering their success when normally it wouldn't have happened or couldn't have been possible.

That sounds beneficial, but it doesn't have to be a beneficial thing in the long run because they might be setting you up. Oh, it's so much sweeter if you. If you're set up for the betrayal later. To hook them up with an NPC or to pose as an npc because these powerful magical creatures can shape shift and everything. To have them basically write a storyline and then try to.

It's dragon fan fiction.

Okay. If you were gonna go light hearted when the players arrive at the dragon's hoard and he's got tomes, just absolute tomes of fan fiction. And it's categorized by which player characters he ships. And so you've got the barbarian ex wizard section and you've got the bard ex wizard section because he's gonna do both. Right.

Of course. The dragon horde's erotica.

Oh, okay. There's a joke in there about him not understanding human biology. And so it's all really like.

It doesn't make sense when he's talking about the barbarians. Cloaca.

Yeah, exactly. Because that's something bad fan fiction writers do where they're like, you know, he was. I will spare you guys the example of the horrible things that could show up, but go on to archive of our own.

Gently stroked his soft underscales.

Okay, I think that's enough about dragon.

About dragon porn.

Well, it's definitely enough about dragon porn for now. Until we start getting those patron only.

Episodes, we need to start horing ourselves out.

So the last topic, the sort of angle we could approach this is dragons would have a great effect on the world. They're very powerful, they live a long time. And how they might put pressure on both naturally and sort of societally on people. It could be very interesting going the most sort of small scale version of it. If you are the heroes and you slay a red dragon and now you've got all of the gold, you have all of it. Like you have more gold than is in the economy. Sure, yeah, just now and that right there, the occasional time it happens like that could wreck the world economy. Like you could devalue a currency just by trying to spend all of this ill gotten gains.

Sure. When suddenly your ale for dinner becomes five gold pieces instead of the previous three copper.

Exactly. And that's going to piss off everybody who doesn't have a hoard of gold. Right. So just by spending the money that they got from their red dragon kill have become the greatest villains that this country has ever seen because they've totally destroyed the economy. That could be fun too. You could also have a pretty developed world to have sort of monetary speculation. But if somebody got wind that a dragon horde had been discovered and knew that a currency was going to crash and so uses that as a. Like the short sell. Essentially like that idea of a villain who. And this could be where your players aren't the ones who kill the dragon but the villain might have made his fortune by watching for events like that and manipulating them in such a way that he can gain. Where you're just straight economics. Because this is a magical world where these things happen occasionally you can just assume. Well my actuarial tables say that once every five years a hoard of class D or greater will be found and that will cause a economic event that I can then exploit. I love that idea. You can also imagine that heroes. Maybe that's the outgrowth. Dragons are big and they are very dangerous. And they can be dangerous on a country level, a nation level. A single dragon who wanted to could put an end to a monarch and his entire lineage and wreck his economy.

So as a human society, when dragons are a fact of life. What is life like in that situation?

Humans aren't dumb either. So they're going to respond. So you have to think there's two ways. One is that we come up with the most mundane solutions of all time. Which is just like a standing army who is specialized in training in fighting dragons. And they've got giant ballistas that are. You know, they train for the dragon fights and stuff. But I think that maybe a more fun approach is to explain the phenomenon of adventurers. That the reason why the Pathfinder Guild or the great adventuring guilds of the world exist is so that we have people to call on when a dragon shows up. Player characters especially can be a bit murder hobo ish. And that that's kind of just the tendency of crunchy D and D based systems that you're. You're not encouraged to spend a lot.

Of time when all you have is a hammer. Everything looks like a nail.

Exactly. And so as an explanation for why these creatures who are a bit sociopathic, if not completely outright sociopathic are allowed to exist. Is that once every five years when the blue dragon that lives up the hill attacks, we call in everybody. We call in all hands. And there's an amnesty given for all of the bandits or whatever. You know, the great. The villain who has his lair and is a Lich, you know, shows up and we go, you know, well, it's fine. You don't. We're not going to attack you now. We need you to show up so that we can all fight this one dragon. You know, when you join one of these organizations, maybe there's a similar evil organization organization or maybe the main organization allows evil people in. I mean, you know what I'm cribbing from, right?

Oh yeah.

You get that I'm talking about the end bringers from Worm.

Fantastic idea.

Yeah. Because when you can't think of something of your own, just outright steal a good idea from somebody else and make it work for your world.

I mean, that seems like. At least in the terms of the forgotten realms, that absolutely seems like the sort of thing the Zhentarim.

So.

Of this global secret society bent on domination of everything would be like, yeah, we'll seek out these heroes to deal with these existential threats.

Yeah. And a sufficiently powerful dragon would be an existential threat and could be called in like a natural disaster and expect people to help. I can imagine that being something you introduce your players to as a great foreshadowing event where they're level one and maybe they get called in and they're way over their heads.

Yeah.

I mean if you're the kind of player who's very precious with their character, this would be devastating to like have you get brought in and then just killed off by a like not even targeted at you. Spell or blow.

It would take a special kind of player to work with this.

Yes. Or a sufficiently cruel game master. Right. But if you need a way to tell your players that you're serious about. About the world and how the dangers in it. That could be a good way to do it is to call them in to something that. Like a dragon attack that they're just not prepared for. That they're. They've been obligated to do it. And if they refuse, that's a. I mean this is. This will do. This will derail your campaign if you're not ready for it. But if they refuse now, they're outlaws and it provides them with choice. You know, you've said you're going to show up so you can show up, it's very dangerous, or you can refuse, at which point your outlaws. That gives them the choice and it gives them agency, but still consequence. And that's kind of at the heart of making that story feel good to them. Because if you do something that they just can't have any control over. If you said, if you just had that dragon show up out of nowhere.

And it's the same as rocks fall, everyone dies.

Exactly. That will feel very bad. But they get a scroll that says, you guys got to show up right now. And if you don't, we're going to hunt you down after it's all over. But if you do, you're going to be facing off against the Elder Great Worm and doing whatever you can. That could be a great teaching moment for your players. Or maybe it's the start of a new adventure. They get called in and maybe the fight doesn't go great and they're not super involved. But all of the most powerful heroes in the world have been killed and now there's a power vacuum and the.

World, which the dragon is now filling.

Yes. Or even if the dragon's, you know, ultimately slain. Slain or even just beaten off. These kinds of fights don't have to always be to the death. If the dragon is just there to cause mayhem and steal some stuff, then maybe it steals some stuff and leaves. But in the meantime, it's killed off all the level 10 heroes in the realm and nobody's left to keep the peace. And that starts you off on another different kind of adventure. And you've also established a big bad, which you can use later. And making those investments early means they pay off much better in the end. Like introducing a new villain to somebody one session before you're meant to fight them. Eh, you won't really care. But if that dragon that you guys, you know, nearly died fighting at level two and you show back up, you know, 15 levels later, and now you can. You're the ones facing square off to square off against it. That's going to be psychologically impactful. That's going to give you narratively impactful at least that you're going to go, oh, look how far we've come. You know, it will show how much the characters have changed in the intervening years. So that's a way to use it in the story, how they might impact things more mundanely. I don't know if you have more.

Ideas or not, but yeah, I mean, aside from the standing army to deal with dragons and whatnot, I mean, there's got to be all kinds of internal factions designed to deal with dragons meddling in your economy and whatnot.

And you might even if we're using the realm where all of the dragons are pretty much watching humanity like a giant reality television show, some faction of them might be the puppeteers. Right?

Interesting.

Where, you know, they've been around for thousands of years and they're very powerful and they're not going to spend money, but they'll do whatever they want. And they. They might be manipulating things. They may be running the show where I'm really only trying to lead up to a joke which I can't formulate, which is about a. Of the leaders being lizard people. So. But there is a secret cabal running the world, and it's the dragon. And maybe it's not an evil cabal. If it's a set of metallic dragons who are all good aligned in various ways and are really just keeping the major patients from going to war with one another, that forms an interesting way to explain stasis, where you would expect a dynamic world, but instead you're getting a static one, and it's because somebody's got their claw on the scales in order to keep great nations from going to war with one another.

Suppose there are even, like, societies that have kind of twigged to the fact that they are these dragons source of entertainment, and have realized that, hey, when we're really entertaining, they dragons leave us alone.

Oh, so it's just a. It's just an entire society of Kardashians, essentially. I love that idea. It's such a good one. And it's so ridiculous that I think we're going to have to end on it.

All right.

All right. Well, that's it for us this week. Bye.

And we still don't have a tagline.

I think no tagline is our tagline. Thank you for joining us on this episode of Monster Mechanics. You can find links and episode notes at our website, monstermechanics.org if you'd like to support us, head on over to patreon.com monsterpod we'd love to hear your feedback. We can be reached on Twitter onstermpod or you can email us@monstermechanicspodcastmail.com Monster Mechanics is produced and edited by Scott Paladin. This episode was hosted by Scott Paladin and Zach Jquez. All of the ideas generated in this episode are released on a do what the F you want public license.