DM Hot Take: Never Give Your Party a Dragon

Plenty of people have said it before me, so this might be more of a reheated leftover take than a hot take. But! There are plenty of reasons why, as a DM (or GM depending on your preference) you should delay giving you party a dragon for as long as possible.

But wait… aren’t you playing Dungeons and Dragons? Isn’t the dragon kind of a pre-requisite? Well okay, sure, hear me out. There are some things that I think are helpful to consider if you are considering starting a campaign. Now I’m no expert of course, and I’m not claiming to be, but these are all things I learnt the hard way and wished I had seen coming. For many of us, we might dip our toe into the world of being a DM by running a oneshot. There are plenty small plug and play modules out there, and oneshots are a great place to start. And in a oneshot you can give the players all the tricks. Give them three dragons and all the magical items they can carry. It doesn’t matter because you are there for a good time, not a long time. However running a full campaign is akin to running a marathon, and like a marathon you need to give consideration to pacing. A great campaign should have that feeling of tremendous accomplishment when you cross the finish line. Characters should develop, the party should struggle and experience losses, so that the wins all feel brighter. Dragons are mythical, and carry a weight to them in stories. There is something to be said for making a dragon your big bad. Whether it is a Juvenile or some ancient dragon god, if you are going to have a dragon, play into that. Give the dragon the respect it deserves. Icespire Peaks (the module that comes with the newer starter set, therefore is the gateway campaign for lots of people) demonstrates this wonderfully. Throughout the campaign the dragon hovers in the background. Players and DM can roll checks and based on random chance they may see the dragon fly over head, or they might come across some wreckage of the dragons recent destruction as they dance around each other through their adventure. This turns the dragon into a looming threat. Something that the party fears in the early levels and relishes in hunting later on. It’s a great way for DM’s to learn to pace and build anticipation. And if like my party, you encounter that dragon early on and have to run for their lives? It makes returning to the problem much more satisfying. But building that tension comes with a caveat. Honestly, I kick myself to this day for how my own Icespire peaks campaign ended. The moment the party were face to face with the dragon, the tension popped. They killed it and it felt bizarrely unsatisfying. Now this was partly to the fact they did the dungeon in reverse , managing to hack it, quite frankly, through complete luck. That meant instead of having made their way through multiple levels, used up potions and spell slots and facing the dragon by the skin of their teeth, they instead skipped ahead and found the bastard thing sleeping. But sometimes the dice want to tell a story, and in this case? The dice wanted them to be heroes. Something I am sure many other DMs reading this will relate to. And sometimes you just have to honour the kenku rogues nat 20 stealth check. The other thing about a dragon is, well quite frankly at this point they aren’t that hard to kill. With the right prep, (and a few choice lucky moments) most parties can figure it out. And it’s not that DMs should aim for a TPK, but solving the impossible problem of an unknown monster can be one of the most bonding and rewarding experiences. Most chromatic dragons have well known resistances and with a bit of clever strategy, players can and will find a way to thoroughly thwart you. And finally, in my book the most compelling reason not to have a dragon be your big bad? There is only one better feeling than killing a dragon as a player, and that is befriending the dragon and riding it into battle to kill a god. And trust me, the moment your players discover that, all bets are off. It took me a long time to realise that limitations and consequences are actually helpful for storytelling. If players can do whatever they want with no problems to overcome it can feel meaningless when they succeed. Likewise if all they ever face is limitation then they quickly shut down the more creative options. It’s a careful balance. In terms of the friendly dragon play (what I like to call the Puff defense), if the first universal truth of DMing is that at some point your carefully planned dungeon will quickly unravel because the players do something unexpected, then the second law of DMing is this: Parties love to collect NPCs. Give them a unique quirk, or an accent which is really difficult to sustain and guarentee that is the NPC that the party will want to keep. And who can blame them? I would ride on the back of a dragon with a German accent in a heartbeat. So that’s my humble opinion, and if you disagree? Well in the words of my personal favourite professional DM Brenan Lee-Mulligan: get in the comments. Come tell me why you think I’ve done dragons dirty. Or better yet, what kind of creature would you have instead of a dragon as your big bad?