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.
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.
You made me realize Balder’s Gate 3 does in fact contain ample dungeons and even multiple dragons.
Truly worthy of GotY
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.
Funny story, it’s to fix the second half of this complaint that TSR got Dragonlance going
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!
Be the change you want to see
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!
As someone who has played alot of Call of Cthulhu there is a distinct lack of Cthulhu. But I am presently playing Traveler and let me tell you something - there is A LOT of traveling.
It’s called “Call of Cthulhu”, not “Sighting of Cthulhu”, forehead
DM: “The phone rings.”
Player: “I pick it up.”
Cthulhu: “Wasaaaaaaaaaaaaap!”
Player: *Cries blood*
Cthulhu: “Wasaaaaaaaaaaaaap!”
Definitely one of the Great Old Ones.
Player: *Cries blood*
Awh, didn’t know they were missing Cthulhu that much!
For a game called “GURPS” it certainly is a Generic Universal Role Playing System
Best part of Traveller is character creation.
Not always the best, but often a lot of fun
Did anyone die in character creation?
No but I always end up in super-debt
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.
If you compare it with most other rpg:s there’s actually a lot of both dungeons and dragons in DnD.
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
My players have finally encountered a dragon for the first time last week. They managed to resolve the situation peacefully and have taken up a quest to do for the dragon. Currently they are being mogged by a Blob of Annihalation instead. Fun times.
Not with that attitude.
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!
