The dragon, possessed of exceptional hearing, overheard the plans as he was selecting a tasty morsel from the herd of cattle grazing just outside the village. He was outraged, as he considered himself to be a great neighbor, dining only on livestock and keeping more aggressive dragons out of the area. While he did not want to destroy the villagers (who else would provide him with such tasty cattle?), he was not sure how to proceed. So he went back to his lair to ponder his predicament.

The villagers mounted their expedition a few days later. Waving pitch forks and torches, they climbed the mountain trails to reach the dragon’s lair, only to find it empty. When they turned around to head back to the village, they found their path blocked by the dragon. This was when they realized that a flying dragon may be a terrible sight to behold, but a dragon up close is much more terrifying.

Most of the raiding villagers scattered, seeking shelter behind rocks, trees and each other, trying to find indirect paths back to the village. One man, however, stood his ground in the middle of the path. “Oh, Dragon,” he said, “We are here to bring eternal peace to our village by destroying you. Yield to us now.”

The dragon raised his eyebrow at this speech, taking in the absurdity of the speaker’s situation. “Oh, Human,” he replied, “I will not yield for my destruction will bring not eternal peace but many years of heartache and despair. For upon my death, another, more terrible dragon will take my place.”

The speaker looked around for his fellow companions, uncomfortable with this turn of events. Another, more terrible option had not been considered. Realizing that he was in this alone, that all of the other villagers had fled, he shuffled his feet, digging in the loose dirt with the toe of his boot. “We cannot allow you to live for fear of our lives, yet we cannot survive a more terrible dragon. What solution do you propose for resolving this impasse?”

The dragon refrained from stating the obvious, that he had never taken a life of a villager. Instead, he attempted to reason with the speaker. “If it is only fear of your lives that prevents us from being neighbors, perhaps we can reach a compromise. If I swear only to eat your livestock and never your families, can you swear on behalf of the village to leave me in peace?”

The speaker appeared thoughtful for several moments, knowing that the decision he made would affect the entire village for many, many years to come. The fear of a more terrible dragon, however, forced him to consider this compromise as the best possible option. “I swear, on behalf of the entire village, that so long as you only dine upon livestock, no action will be taken against you by our citizens.”

Making it official, the dragon stated, “I do so swear to only dine upon livestock.” Both the speaker and the dragon smiled, the dragon only a little to avoid showing too many teeth. Then the dragon proposed a feast to celebrate this newly established peace. The speaker promised a spectacular feast in three days’ time and returned to the village to share the good news. While many still gazed fearfully upon the mountainous trail leading to the dragon’s lair, most were willing to accept peace at the price of a cow.

And so, when the sun rose on the third day, the dragon carefully settled himself in the field and shared a spectacular feast featuring the fruits of the harvest. And thus, all were happy, especially the dragon, who had become quite found of cattle.

I’m not the only person out there who thinks this way, and WotC knows it. But it’s not that they’re ignoring us. The guys at Critical Hits recently did a great interview with Rob Heinsoo, lead developer of the 4e core rules. In reference to us simulationist types, he said “You know what, don’t tell them that they’re wrong. They’re right, in a simulationist world, the system they want to use is RIGHT. That is exactly what happens in real life, but guess what, it’s a real pain in the ass.”

I suppose I can see that. The first thing that comes to mind that I really hate is camping and deciding who has what watch and how many hours of sleep everybody gets. Yes, it’s a fantastic simulation of figuring out who sleeps when. It’s also as fun as having my teeth drilled. I hope they severely gloss that part over in 4e. But combat? The new, more-official, very World of Warcraft-y combat roles they’re rolling out with 4e make me a little nervous. Making me more nervous is that they want to make what you do in combat “cooler” and “more like the movies”. This to me throws up about ten red flags that say “stupid things are about to happen that don’t make sense”. You know, like in almost every movie.

How A 500 Foot Monster Taught Me How To Love Again

I find the less I know about something, the more fun I have when I watch it. Sometimes I hate being a nerd. I saw Cloverfield a couple months ago, and shortly thereafter I read a very interesting article about what it might take to actually take out a 500 foot monster. Well, naturally that got me thinking about dealing with other giant monsters recently and how the lance our paladin hit the Tarrasque with wouldn’t have done much damage at all and eventually my mind wandered back to a scenario I always wondered about ever since I first started playing D&D:

How in the HELL does a 6 foot tall adventurer take a wee (albeit powerful) little sword and kill a dragon that stands ten times his height? All he could realistically reach would be the dragon’s feet! Maybe he could climb on there and attack an ankle. I don’t know. But most plate-mail-wearing fighters aren’t gonna pull a Legolas and climb and flip all over everything. Right? They’re gonna wade in there, hopefully dodge the fiery death and razor sharp talons the dragon throws at them, and try to cut the dragon until it dies. Somehow.

Uh oh. It seems my desire for “making sense” has painted me into a corner. At this point, the only way to kill a dragon that really makes sense is that he hacks the dragon’s toenail completely off. Hopefully the dragon is a hemophiliac, and bleeds out really fast before it gets a chance to have an order of fresh, delicious, flame-broiled Adventurer Nuggets.

It seems the concept of hit points has already abstracted out most of the battle for me. Because a fighter that winds up on top probably didn’t just do 400hp of Toe Damage. He probably did a lot of really incredible things to make that dragon keel over dead. Things that set dragons to bleed, princesses to swoon, and bards to write furiously.

It seems what I was worried about had already come to pass — several years before I was born, when D&D (and hit points) were created. And the world didn’t end.

So Now What?

This revelation gave me the ability to handwave some of my fears about the upcoming fourth edition of D&D. But I’m not cured completely. I still want everything to make sense, but sometimes it’s better if I don’t know all the details. Or if those details get somewhat exaggerated. With the things our characters do, we’re doing epic, legendary things. And let’s face it — a lot of mythology doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.

I guess my chainmail panties are only in a half-twist now.

Characterized by the terror he provokes, this dragon enjoys the chaos he can spread among the villagers who unfortunately live in the village at the bottom of the mountain in which he resides. In his defence, however, this dragon just can’t get enough of those villagers! They make such wonderful snacks, though all the running around in terror does tend to make them a little more lean than he’d prefer.