On the Matter of Dragons - Coffee Table Lessons

A goblin warband waits outside the Archmage's tower. The hobgoblin chief and the Archmage are enjoying a cup of gold leaf coffee after a copious meal. The warchief listens intently.

"Dragons are usually presented in relation to their color and the albedo of their scales. Peasants, vagrant scholars and even court wizards will say Red Chromatic Dragons are evil and Gold Metalic Dragons are good and righteous. The reality is that they are both humongous beasts of a magical nature and their look on life and morality mostly depend on their upbringing. They can't die of old age, but as they never stop growing they get so big they can no longer eat enough. Eventually their  wings can't lift them and they succumb to atrophy.

A curious fact about dragons is that they are the only creatures that get objectively smarter with age. Up until they are as big as a horse they have brains that differ very little from the ones on their smaller reptilian cousins. They are basically as smart as a a common lizard. It will take them arround 50 years to become this big and it will take them the next 250 years to become as big as a commoner's house.

By this time their brains will have developed enough for some actual conscience. A dragon left to it's own devices in nature will very likely still have an animal cunning to it, becoming the apex predator of the area and building a new nest, with some semblance of architecture, hoarding as much things as possible, usually of a similar nature. They will definetly not talk. A dragon that by this point has been largely exposed to inteligent behaviour and speech will have developed actual conscience. This conscience will still be rooted in centuries of survival of the fittest and their hoarding syndrome. They are petty and try to plan a lot, but they are not very smart. Their hoards are usually made up of things that other creatures desire, these are the famous dragon hoards filed with gold and magical artifacts. A peasant could probably trick them, but villagers terrorized by a dragon overlord would rather not risk their wrath most of the time.

A domesticated dragon that has spent their whole life surrounded by trusting and loving people will be no diferent than a human. A very big dumb human with scales and a built in flamethrower. Like a dog raised by cats. They usually end up hoarding books, candles or mail stamps.

They will spend the next 500 years slowly growing. Arround this time they begin to be of national importance.All Dragons of this size are know to the local population and there are only one or two a single country at a time. They are big enough to easily take on an entire city with its own magic school (unless we are talking about an Abjuration or Evocation type college). At this point you can be sure that even the more animalistic of dragons would have picked up language. If not they are smart enough to understand it after being exposed to it for a breif period of time, although they probably won't care to engage you in a conversation.

By the time they reach 1000 years of age their cunning and inteligence will rival the best of Archmages and their size is arround the size of a hill or medium castle. Although dragons can pick up casting soon after they start being able to speak, they will have picked some sort spellcasting by this point regardless of their exposure to magical learning. Those that have had lessons are on par if not superior to any Archmage.

The way dragons are built they to only need to eat their own body weight every month or so if they are keeping their movements at a minimum. By this point, arround 1200 years, they basically need to hibernate every time they hunt. They require giants or other creatures of this size. Dragons that are amphibious usually have an easier time finding this kind of prey, but they are also hardly the biggest thing in their ecosystem.

By the time they are 1500 years old they are too big to consistently feed themselves. They will start to waste, their wings decay, their scales turn to hollow stone. They will stop moving unless completely necesary. 

Eventually they will try to hunt but fail to even get up. And in this spot they will slowly but surely turn to stone, their brain and heart being the last two things to stay healthy throughout the process."

The hobgoblin had been absentmindedly looking outside the window for most of the lesson.

"So the pretty-big-but-smaller-than-a-house lizard in the mountains is dumb."

"Yup."

"Then Garlok will gain fame and glory when she kills it with cunning and steel."

As the warband marches the Archmage aproaches their crystal ball. In it they see through the eyes of Garlok. Time to see if the wizard's theories are correct.

Hit Points suck (and what I'm going to do about it) - Salt in the Coffee

An Archmage sits on a wingchair. They are engaged in conversation with a Mirror of Devil Advocacy.

A "Hit Points suuuuuuuuck".

M "No they don't, they are a perfectly fine way of tracking health."

A "It makes no sense for a wizard that has reached the middle of their career to be able to receive a battleaxe to the chest and walk out the door."

M "It's because they are don't get hit points. You are not supposed to consider them life points but rather a resource that runs out before you can no longer fight."

A "Bullshit, if that is the case why are we basing it on Constitution, it should be dependent on Dexterity."

M "PCs are asumed to be trying to defend themselves with something most of the time not just trying to dodge like it's a life or death game of dodgeball. Maybe it represents how many blows they can parry or block before they can't help but to receive a fatal wound. Besides, Dexterity is already taken into account under Armor Class."

A "So are parries and blocks."

M "Maybe it's just that several systems were intertwined to create a cohesive illusion of physicality."

A "But it clearly doens't work, as soon as you take it ouside of the expected exchange of blows it all falls apart. Fall damage and poison are two systems that struggle with HP, for example. This means that we have two systems working off of the same stats, constantly oversteping over the other, that fail to cover most things related to their conceptual spheres."
A "Besides, if they are not Life Points, why would you then drop unconscious once you go to 0 HP? Characters that are dropped suddenly go from being a plus to the party to being a minus. There is no drama or interesting choice, you either rush and it them with some magical adrenaline or they are going to bite it."

M "Combat is already complex enough and it takes a long time as it is."

A"Only because of HP bloat. It's way more interesting to offer the players the option to gamble with their remaining health if they can still act."

M "What would you suggest then?"

A"I think that the Fudge system found a very elegant solution with how it treats wounds."

M "Certainly as a substitute of life-like HP, but what happens to AC now? Is it just a number to beat in order to have a chance at lowering the enemies defenses? How do we measure how and when a thief with high dex, a knight with high armor class and a completely beefed up, high off his shit on mushrooms barbarian manage to stay on the fight?"

A "Different defense stats?"

M "That would be so class dependent that it would blow off the verosimilitud your little crusade against HP wants to maintain."

A "Fine, no Wound system as HP...for now."

M "What are you going to do with your current GLOG hack then?"

A "I'm thinking of implementing a Grit stat equal to DEX/2 + STR/2 which advances as the regular GLOG HP stat and a Guts stat equal to CON that is used to check when you fall unconcious. You still die when you get to negative 10 but you can take actions until you go under negative CON. Once you go to 0 Grit taking any action costs 1 point of Guts. You are as hard to hit as 10 + DEX if wearing no armor or (armor bonus) + DEX/2."

M "Isn't that too much math for someone who praises the GLOG for its simplicity?"

A "It's only done during character creation, after that it's just +1 every level. Plus, a good character sheet desing can do wonders to simplify math."

M "So unless you are magically cured once you go bellow 0 Grit you can never dodge a blow?"

A "Once HP(Grit) is no longer conceptually intersecting with Life Points you can have a Fighting Man recover Grit without it feeling as a Power Up. You are actually catching your breath and re-asesing the situation instead of blatantly healing. This gives players a reason to be pick them over the wizard, instead of just nerfing casters until they are so limited by mishaps, dooms and random sums that a fighter is a viable option. I want the fighters to be as cool as wizards, not have everyone be equaly boring. It also brings back concepts like the battle master and the tactician, which are cool as hell."

M "They really are."

M "What about Fall Damage and Poisons?"

A "They automatically roll on the Guts table."

M "Are you really happy with this answer?"

A "Not entirely, but there is no point in taking this any further. Its probably functional and it should stop bothering me as much as HP does. You can go now."

An Archmage sits on a wingchair. They are looking at an empty mirror, still stiring a cold cup of coffee.

While the coffee brews...

I'll probably leave this test post up and while I'm at it I'll list the blogs, games and authors that led me to open another heartbreaker RPG blog. These are in no particual order.

Arnold K's influential Goblin Punch. Because it showed me that letting your imagination go to wierder places was what I needed to find the fun in running games again.

Justin Alexander's even more influential The Alexandrian. Because even in the smalest or blandest of products you could find a way to twist the good ideas into something inspiring.

Arnold K's GLOG system and its countless iterations over the web. I will be sure to also butcher it in the next few pages, just like they intended.

The Critical Role cast and project, for re-kindling my love of roleplaying.

Matthew Colville. For both his contibution to the comunity with his Running the Game series and to literature with the Ratcatchers series. I have never felt so empty and sad after reading a book as I did after finishing Priest. I thank you for it.

The obvious but necesary mention to D&D. Bless your bland and outdated soul. Whatever grudges I still hold towards you for making me believe you were a neutral standard all other games deviate from, they are lessened by how impressive it is to me that you manage to still live in undeath, atop a throne kept by virtue of being the first-born. We now plunder the relics lost in your dungeons and ruins to raise our own towers and cities.

The king is dead, long live the mages.