Sunday, February 28, 2010

Sandboxes & Dragons

Here's something that I found interesting as I've been working on the Blitzkrieg Peninsula of my World of Cinder: placing dragons. According to the chart on page 16 of OD&D volume 2, The Underworld & Wilderness Adventures, dragons can fly 24 five mile hexes per day. That's a 12 hex round trip. So assuming that dragons are territorial apex predators (which I do), that places a hard limit on how many flying dragons you can fit on any particular sandbox map. And looking over my particular map I can eyeball maybe three good places for dragon lairs. So from the moment this sandbox is put onto the table I'll be able to tell the players likely places they could hunt for dragon hoards. "Yeah, the Draco Mountains are called that for a reason." Stuff like that.

Of course those three lairs don't include long-hibernating wyrms forgotten by the races with shorter memories, dragons that have burrowed deep into the bowels of the earth or the Common Purple Land-dragon.

6 comments:

  1. I used a similar approach with my last campaign. I figure something as powerful as a actice dragon wouldn't be an "oh look a Dragon lives here! what a surprise!"

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  2. > Common Purple Land-dragon.

    Eeek! Hope not too common ;)

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  3. Anonymous10:16 PM

    > Eek! Hope not too common

    About as common as a purple worm...

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  4. don't forget, like wolves, dragons will probably use a spiral pattern when hunting or on patrol.

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  5. There was a hawk hanging out in a tree in my back yard a few weeks back. What was interesting to me was that there were no other birds around. They all came back after the hawk left.

    Point being, that I would imagine a similar telltale sign that a dragon is nearby...

    Great 'blog!

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  6. > a similar telltale sign that a dragon is nearby...

    I've always been keen on large steaming piles of dragon poo! In part cause players always try to do cool stuff with it, magical components, scare other monsters with it, etc. No one has yet covered themselves in it and tried to sneak past dragon...

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