26 thoughts on “Oh, how original…a playable dragon!”

  1. I’m not usually a fan of this sort of thing, but this is really cleverly done.  I love Fearsome Beast. 

    Need to sleep now, but I’ll try to give it a closer look and more feedback tomorrow.

  3. Love it! At first glance, the only iffy thing I notice is that you have three different stats being rolled for the starting moves. If you can find a way to pare that down to two instead, it will offer players a lot more freedom. Maybe change flight to run on CON instead of DEX?

    Hypnotic Presence rolls CON, but feels a little more like a CHA move. That might just be my personal preference, though!

    You might also consider adding a 7-9 condition to the Spitfire move – what happens if they choose to reduce their ammo by 1? My first thought would be to change that option to ‘You exhaust your breath weapon until you Make Camp’

    This is great work!

  4. I really like this! Dragons are fun, it’s not too powerful, and it can work off pretty much any stat spread.

    I’d spell out ‘natural weapons’ a bit more – it’s not clear if this is supposed to include breath weapon and breath weapon derived stuff or not?

    I’d have Hypnotic Eyes be Cha instead of Con – you have other Con-move enhancers, but nothing that you can take later to reward you for Cha, and it’s just as thematic.

    I’d give a little more guidance for if you can use Thatch-Roofed Cottages if your Breath Weapon is down or not – destroy X without it, Y with it, Z can’t be destroyed even with it, perhaps.

    Dragonish Thoughts seems cool but might be a little awkward in play. It seems to strongly encourage settling down. It also encourages your teammates to promise you gold in exchange for taking actions. Both could be interesting directions, though.

  5. Overall: like it more than I thought I would. And I’ll second the request for a Unicorn. 😉

    I balked a bit at Breath Weapon at first (area attack that ignores armor, eh….), but after letting it settle in I think I like it. It’s not that far off mechanically from the 10+ tradeoff you can make with Hack and Slash, and the choices you give are pretty fantastic. I would remove the initial wording which suggests you deal your damage before you even roll, though; GM should have some wiggle room to avoid it if the fiction demands, at least on a miss.

    I think To the Stars should have the wording broadened to Elder Dragons in general, so you’re not limited to negotiating with the goody-goodies. Elder Evil Dragons could have just as much reason to take an interest in a powerful, fire-spitting badass, especially a wicked one. And if you’re not a wicked one, it also makes the 7-9 choice more likely to be a tough one if you can have the player negotiating with a force they don’t entirely agree with.

    Chiefest and Greatest of Calamities I’m not really fond of. I think that whether or not something counts as leverage should always depend on the fiction, and “gives you leverage all the time” moves really breaks that. As a suggestion, trying starting with something like When you use your fearsome reputation as leverage to Parley… as that leaves the fiction more wiggle room and lets you add a neat effect to Parley instead of just allow you to trigger it all willy-nilly.

  13. Looks fun :). Kudos to the moves that allow you to devour things–though I’m tempted to rephrase the Apex Predator question as “What here should belong to me?” to allow opportunities for ritual offerings and the like (or just plain avarice).

    As for Dragonish Thoughts: How’s Fafnir’s Hoard for a name? Also, “even more gold” might work better if it read “even more treasure”. Have to make room for the princess, after all.

    Nice reference to the Rankin and Bass film, by the way. James Earl Jones at his evil wizard best.

  14. I like the concept of Dragonish Thoughts, and the suggested name change, but it seems like it’s a one time deal. There’s no mention of when or how your regain that hold. Is that intentional? Because if so, the move doesn’t seem that attractive.

  15. Christopher Stone-Bush I got the impression that it’s a move that triggers any time you hoard an additional 100 gold – it effectively lets you roll b[2d6] for every 100 coin you ‘spend’ (by never spending on anything else), except it’s only useful if you’re rolling for a move that will bring you closer to more gold to hoard.

    Is that close to what you were intending, Michael Kailus ?

  16. It does look like you get hold 1 whenever you hoard an additional 100 coin Traveling Haberdasher. But if that’s the case, the move feels pretty underpowered, especially compared to the other levelling up choices. How often will the dragon get another 100 coins? 

  18. If I took the move, I’d want the hold to refresh every time I Made Camp. On on some other regular basis. Seeing as how you can only use it in pursuit of more wealth (which you have no intention of spending), I think that’s fair.

  19. Glad I could help 🙂

    As for the mechanics: what if the move granted Craving to be spent in pursuit of more (and greater) treasure? You could also play off the Carouse table, with a selection of hard choices and not enough hold (as warranted by your reckless endeavors).

  22. Yeah. This is definitely one the most surprisingly awesome playbooks I’ve read. I saw dragon and thought it would just be a lot of overpowered attack moves. I really like the thought that went into this. Well done, Michael Kailus. 

  26. Hamish Cameron : I’m using it in a campaign right now; in practice, I’ve changed the trigger on Fearsome Beast from “when you would speak peacefully with someone” to “when you peacefully enter a steading”

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