A friend and I are running a joint Fallen empires game (eight people in the group, too many for a regular game, so we split off into two group). Sebastian Baker is running a group on the mainland, and I am running a group sharing an island (the world continent was fractured at the end of the golden age of empires, leaving a shattered coastline, and hundreds of islands in a massive archipelago)
we basically did this so that we could occasionally switch up the groups, because they are close enough to reasonably intereact.
That is all just bragging, though, my point here is, How would you do a Dragon In Fallen Empires?
(You’ve already read this, but I guess I’ll put it here for others to see and comment on.)
I like my dragons, especially in dark fantasy like Fallen Empires, to be sky-blackening monstrosities of fire and death that even gods fear, closer to a natural disaster than an animal.
To that end, I’d run a dragon as a big enough threat to have an entire front dedicated to it and the places/people it affects, maybe called “Under the Dragon’s Shadow” or something like that. The dragon itself is a grotesque (perversion of birth), its lair is a landscape (prison), the area it terrorizes is a landscape (furnace), the desolation it leaves in its wake is an affliction (sacrifice), and the people who are panicked and desperate because of it are brutes (family).
I don’t know about special moves, but if the PCs were stupid enough to fight the dragon head-on I’d seriously stack the deck in its favor. Give it thick armor, overpowered attacks, probably make it count as a gang and/or mounted.
As for agendas and countdown clocks and such, I usually just play those by ear so I don’t know what they’d for a dragon. Something bad.
As a baseline for its increased armor and overpowered attacks, definitely treat the size of the dragon the same way you treat the size of a gang. Figure out how many people it’s as big as, and modify its harm and armor in battle the same way you would for a gang that size.
Ben Jarvis, in keeping with Seb’s vision, which I love, this thing is 80 feet long, not including the tail, it adds 50 feet to whatever mountain it rests upon, and when it flies, its wings eclipse the sun
Vincent Baker, Those were my thoughts as well, though From my measurements, I’m not sure how many that is, at least a hundred (and I’m pretty sure fire breath ignores armour). I think I might make this thing a very optional front.
Yeah, dang.
Well if it’s not going to show up, why waste the effort!?! 😛
Ben Jarvis, because they might decide to become dragon slayer, and because if you are playing a sandbox game, you have to be prepared for the players to ignore thing you made, no matter how cool you thought they were. and I am making it optional because this thing is horribly deadly, like easy TPK deadly, and I think the players should have a choice as to whether they face something that dangerous
Dragon as the one optional boss from the PAL? Considering you pretty much described a Typhoon with fire instead of rain, I’d go with that. That sounded awesome.