On the morality and intricacies of love, passions and marriage in dragonblood-led societies

Guest post from the in-house testing team, on topics that have become relevant during our long running Ducal House campaign.

Dragons are among the most unpredictable creatures in existence. When they bred with humanoids, chief among them the ever-unsteady humans, their bloods mixed together in strange ways. All except the most distant of dragonbloods are fundamentally the same, their dominant draconic heritage an internal unifier, almost no matter to which extent their blood carries human, elf, or even, rumor has it, goblinoid parts; and yet, they can be fundamentally different in what drives them. There is no predicting the passions of a dragonblood - only the fact that there will be passion for something, be it buried deep or spilling out of every word and gesture.

A dragonblood-dominated society lives by unwritten, oft unspoken rules where passions of the flesh are concerned, necessitated by the potentially vast differences in the extent of such needs and wants between individuals of even the same clan.

For obvious reasons, marriage and offspring are vitally important concerns to titled individuals and families. Owing to the ancient magical prowess and recipies of the elves, however, these have little bearing on how an individual dragonblood chooses to live out their passions.

Two maxims appear to rule intimate relationships: discretion and plausible deniability. If an innocent bystander observes something they may well have overlooked had their gaze been turned a different direction, it is presumed by all parties that nothing of note occurred. Indiscretion and carelessness, however, are frowned upon and will lead to gossip and/or pointed questioning, particularly in repeat occurrences.

No dragonblood need fear moral outrage for engaging with their passions, even well outside their own species, as long as a certain amount of deniability is maintained.

Two dragonbloods who are courting may do so openly with decorum. Sharing a residence or discreetly sharing a bedroom before or without marriage will not be commented upon by society at large, though it has been observed that the closest acquaintances will take particularly the latter as permission to ask, nudge, jibe and joke with incongruous relentlessness.

Most dragonblood marriages among the higher strata of society take place under the patronage of Bahamut rather than one of the goddesses. What couples promise to one another in front of the altar of the Oath-Keeper allows for some variation, and the clergy of Bahamut does not concern itself with the policing of such vows (any who swore an oath in the Platinum Dragon‘s name will have to answer for its keeping before being granted his eternal rewards, after all), except perhaps for a gentle reminder in particularly ostentatious or high-profile cases.

However, engaging with one‘s passions outside of one‘s established marriage is a vastly more risky proposition among dragonbloods; the reason for this lies not in social repercussions or admonishment by the church, but rather in the well-documented irrationally possessive nature of draconic creatures.

Dragons High! Setting for Legojam

An entry for the Summer LEGO RPG Setting Jam created by DIY & Dragons. If you want to have a go - here are the curated helpful links we were given.

I was too slow with my initial idea (pirates plus atlantis - TableTobRPG did the Azure Archipelago) so it took me a while to come up with a fresh idea - portal invasion! Here we have a world of islands where the resident elves are getting pushed back by clockwork invaders. All is not going well for the invaders however, as it turns out this place is rife with ferocious deep sea monsters and a resident bunch of underwater hostiles. This is a setting about dragon-riding! Aerial combat using the rules of your choice - MCDM's Aces High if you're feeling like quick stuff, Calidar Skyship Combat Mechanics work for monsters if you're on for a challenge.

Shiny TTRPG links #179

Some links, some archive diving during this holiday period. For yet more links, see the previous list found here or you can check the RPG Blog Carnival or on Third Kingdom Games news roundup. Originally inspired by weaver.skepti.ch End of Week links.

lumpley games gives us In Brief, the Problem of RPG Design

Daily Adventure Prompts shares DM TIP: PUZZLING IT OUT

@prokopetz gives us rules don't matter

Torchless writes LOW OPINION: Short-Sighted Focus on Fun Ruins Long-Term Enjoyment of Tabletop Games

The Welsh Piper gave us What’s Your Genre?

Periapt Games Design Blog shares Upon training your character's replacement

Actual Test: Shadowdark adventure generator tables

I gave the the Shadowdark adventure generators a turn to create a session for my Friday night open game. Whenever folk ask about adventure generators it is one that comes up alongside Worlds Without Number and Knave 2e. The Shadowdark one is quite terrain tied with a lot of it being in the 'quest' and 'location' elements backed up by terrain-specific encounter tables.

Throwing some dice at the various tables we get:
Inciting event - runaway wagon
Quest - Spy on the ritual of the Royal Knights
Location - Necropolis of the Enchanted Depths
Opposition - Steel Drakes - known for defeating dragons
Location - Grassland, ruied town


Encounters (grasslands 1) - Beserker hunters that invite you to join them
Encounters (grasslands 2) - Wild boars
Encounters (ruins) - Ogre scrawling grafitti
Encounters (tomb) - wandering merchant trapped in coffin

I also used the settlement generation tools to come up with the destination settlement of Darkwater - those were very good giving me four districts, a handful of landmarks across all of them and enough texture to make the place interesting. Shadowdark being Shadowdark it also has dungeon generation tables but I did not delve that deep for this one-shot session.

Upcycling content - campaign vs one-shot sessions

I gave myself a challenge recently of setting one-shots for other groups in my main campaign world because in theory there are lots of locations that have been visited once where I did a bunch of set up work already and they could just be lifted and replaced, right? Well, not quite so simple but hardly impossible.

The key factors I found are:
- Motivation changes
- Incidental locations
- NPC backgrounds
- Timing

The specific situation I used was a buried but intact temple of Bane.

Shiny TTRPG links #178

More interesting links from a week on the web. For yet more links, see the previous list found here or you can check the RPG Blog Carnival or on Third Kingdom Games news roundup. Originally inspired by weaver.skepti.ch End of Week links.

Welcome to the Deathtrap wrote On The Spectrum of Hobbies that Use TTRPGs, and Finding Yours

Ramming the Dungeon launches with DESIGNING A COLLABORATIVE SESSION ZERO

Against The Wicked City gave us On romantic fantasy and OSR D&D

thydungeongal shared On play culture in D&D

666-Sided Dice launches with Thoughts on the Flame Lizard

Zzarchov Kowolski gives us Magical Languages

Review: Dr. Grordborts Scientific Adventure Violence

tl;dr: steampunk planetary romance 5e conversion kit, heavy on the gear, lighter on the setting details.

This was a kickstarter I backed because a) I rode in on the 90s steampunk wave back in the day - Abney Park, the Difference Engine - all that jazz and b) I seriously contemplated getting myself a Weta Workshop raygun once. When Dr. Grordbordts Scientific Adventure Violence dropped on Kickstarter I backed it more on that nostalgia kick than I was expecting something mindblowing but now that I've gotten to reading it I've been pleasantly surprised.

Cover art by Max Chow

This is a 5e conversion book; following a similar course to what I have seen elsewhere of very much running with the system as it exists and applying mods through new conditions, tags and the like. The art is fun, the production values are very good indeed and there is lots of the original Dr. Grordbort material turning up in the pages which is neat. This is a toolkit to do this type of game in 5e, a mod-pack for familiar players, rather than an entry to the hobby for new folk. I would say you would need to be fairly familiar with basic 5e D&D to get the most out of this.