I’ve played a lot of D&D over the years. Hundreds of hours.
But these so-called “dungeons”? No captives. Not even any cells. That’s not a dungeon. that’s a glorified cave.
And don’t even get me started on the dragons. Dragonborn? Sure, I’ve seen plenty. Heard my fair share of Draconic. And wyverns are fairly common I suppose but that’s like pointing at all the dogs in the world and saying “we’re infested with wolves!”
I’m beginning to feel like I’ve been lied to all this time.
Tell your DM you have a fever, and the only cure is real dungeons and dragons with cowbells.
Seasons don’t fear the Raven Queen
It really depends on who your DM is.
I have not yet played a campaign without either dungeons or dragons. A gold dragon is typically the one giving us quests, which requires delving into dungeons or we end up being captured and thrown in one by the BBG.
Protect that DM at all costs. They truly understand what it means to create a D&D campaign
Oddly enough, they’re pretty much the only Steam friend I still have that reguarly comes online other than my sister. It’s the other 3 players that have fallen off the face of the earth that keeps us from playing again 😔
…ngl I’ve been looking for a campaign to join 0_o Just saying :D
Just saying twice over, for good effect, you know?
AND MY AXE.
Alright, let’s just forget blue name dude, and grab you, me, and blue name dude #2 and get something rolling. It’ll have dungeons, and it’ll have ‘dragons.’ Oh yes, ‘dragons’ muahahah!
Dragons are pretty high level-threats in D&D, which most players rarely get to fight because most campaigns don’t last that long. Which does make it a bit weird to name the entire franchise after such a rare enemy.
On top of that old dragons in disguise meddling with human society make good NPCs… which the players will not find out until much later.
So even when they meet Dragons -even ones not antagonistic- early on they will rarely realize it…
FYI: you can throw a dragon at any party at any time as a non-combat encounter or as a natural disaster they aren’t supposed to be able to fight or control
Good point.
Counterpoint: Many groups have trouble discerning between a regular encounter and an encounter they aren’t supposed to fight.
Yeah, my DM threw a young white(I think) dragon at us pretty early in the campaign. It wasn’t meant to be a fight we won, we were only meant to drive it off and possibly have a sidequest type thing to go loot it’s lair later.
It tried to fly away. We teleported into the air after it, and I clung to it’s back and kept dropping divine smites in it until it died. Was fantastic.
There’s pseudodragons and whelps that can easily be low level encounters. I threw a green dragon and a bunch of flying kobolds at my level 3 party and they easily won the fight.
Like you said, it’s been around for a while, so most of the actual dungeons have been picked clean and all we’ve really been left with over the last 30-40 years barely fit the legal definition!
All the good dungeon real estate got bought up by early adventurers with their collected loot, so now they are located in gated communities or expensive adventuring resorts. Everyone else gets the roadside discount dungeon experience with plastic monster chotchkes for loot drops and pugs and chihuahuas dressed up in skeleton and dragon costumes.
You made me realize Balder’s Gate 3 does in fact contain ample dungeons and even multiple dragons.
Truly worthy of GotY
I started a campaign where, after 20 years of gaming with this group, we were finally going to have a dragon for a big bad. Then my entire country collapsed irl, destroying the game. It’s like the universe abhors actually having dragons in your D&D game.
Caverns and Critters?
My players have yet to discover any paths. They just keep following the ones that are readily visible on the map!
I recommend Kingmaker, then. There is a lot of exploring of new paths and a bit of king making.
I’ve been listening to the Narrative Declaration playthrough of Kingmaker, and they don’t seem to be anywhere near making anyone a king! They seem to have some sort of council-based thaumocracy going, instead!
Blame it on two year old Cindy Gygax who picked the name out of a few choices.
This sounds an awful lot like a story Gary made up to cover for his mistake /s
Supposedly some sources in the past claimed his wife made the pick, but wiki says it was his daughter. Given how many variants I’ve seen over the years to avoid a copyright, it seems a good choice. Even became well known for the name by people who didn’t understand it, like Jack Chick tract readers.
Be the change you want to see
But these so-called “dungeons”? No captives. Not even any cells. That’s not a dungeon. that’s a glorified cave.
I’ve always wondered how the term “dungeon” as it’s used in RPGs came to be. a lot of appendix N literature had locations we would now consider dungeons, but were they called that at the time? and then the first RPG dungeon was the literal dungeon under Blackmoor Castle, but very early on we had dungeons that stopped being literal dungeons- didn’t B1 and B2 exclusively have cave “dungeons?” and the Ruined Tower of Zenopus in the first Basic book had underground portions but I think those were caves too!
The Dungeon is YOUR MIIIIIND. The Dragons are the friends we made along the way. At least I assume so. I don’t play Dungeons & Dragons, I play Deeandy Fivey.
Dragon Delves exists, it is, I believe 12 different dragon focused adventures for levels 1-12.
I recently ran a group of high school kids through The Shattered Obelisk Phandelver and Below, which has a dragon in it. The group kept avoiding the area with it. I finally had it make an appearance to save their bacon.
We asked our DM to avoid using flying enemies after a dragon tpk’d us by breath weaponing and retreating for 30 rounds. Give me a tarasque before you even consider offering me a competent dragon
This implies the existence of incompetent dragons and I really want my DM to have us fight one
I play dragons like “vainqueur the dragon” aka very full of themselves and won’t actually listen to anything the players say. Its hilarious because its made to frustrate the players as much as possible. Getting a dragon to do anything is a monumental task.
MINNON!
Off the top of my head:
- Cast Fly yourselves or purchase/acquire some boots of flying
- Elemental resistance or immunity vs the element of dragon’s breath you expect to be meeting, from the Protection From Energy spell or from equippable gear
- If you’re confident in your spell save DC, Hold Monster is a fun one to cast on any flying creatures
- buy a bow and arrow
- better yet, buy a ballista and a mule to tow it around
- buy a couple dozen health potions that you chug furiously on the rounds that you aren’t being breath-attack-strafed
- have the fighter make consecutive grapple checks to Los Tiburon the dragon into the fucking dirt
There are a lot of ways to deal with this, you just have to get creative and maybe set yourselves a short side quest or two to acquire what you need for the real job. Half of the above suggestions can be accomplished by a single tactically minded cleric, and no arcane caster worth his salt isn’t going to know how to fly by level five, wizards that can’t fly generally don’t live very long and sorcerors that can’t fly don’t get laid.
That sounds like a job for Readied Actions!
(Our DM tried that with the dragon at the end of Icespire Peak, but fortunately my character had a spell that grounds flying enemies and it failed its save. Dragons aren’t nearly as bad when you know they’re coming and have an entire campaign to build your character towards fighting them. Surprise dragons are a nightmare though!)
We kept readying actions! Used cover, avoided grouping up, tried distracting it, begged pleadingly, etc. as well. All that did was cause the dragon to choose two squishies to kill before the others. Prepping would have been an excellent idea, but in our defense, we were very dumb
Ah, the bane of all adventurers: planning. Why waste time with thinky-think when big stick already hit good?
Though our party of three didn’t include any ranged weapon characters (and my druid was the only caster), so we’d have been completely screwed if the dragon didn’t fail a save before I ran out of spell slots. A strength save, so our own “plan” was a stupid gamble that only paid off due to luck.
IMO, you played perfectly. Luck and narrative building are fantastic skills that can tip a campaign in one direction or another, and we simply lacked one of the other. Revel in your superiority!
