In which we ask "How big is a dragon scale?"

 I've spent the last two days researching limpets, komodo dragons, fish, snakes, pangolins, gators, armadillos, bones, goethite, keratin and a crap ton of physics and geometry.  And dragons.

Weeks ago my party found a "dragon scale" in a plundered abbey.  It was meant to clue them in as to the presence of a dragon in the area.  A plot hook.  They ignored it which was fine of course.  Days later they briefly encountered a wyrmling in a dark forest in the rain.  As the dragon withdrew they noted it was missing a couple scales.  And in our most recent session they considered using the scale to further the ruse of "there's a dragon in the woods" (see prior post.)  I questioned whether they had TAKEN it.  They said they did.  I said I didn't remember, but I'm willing to allow it.

Jump to my post-session review.  I need to update Aerialayna's inventory to reflect that she's carrying the scale.  So how big is it?  How much does it weight?  The interwebs and ChatGPT had no (valid) answers.  "It depends" was a common response which is fine if it's followed up on.  

Most of the attempts at answers failed on SOME level.  Usually too heavy.  Reason?  Virtually every animal we know of is in the 3%-5% range of "hide" to total weight.  Notable exceptions are armadillos (15%) and turtles (50%.)  I'm happy to go with that 15% figure for our dragon.  A wyrmling is a medium creature which means it will max out at 500 pounds.  So the dragon would have 75# of scales.  So the dominant answers found online (usually somewhere between 20 and 50 pounds) means our wyrmling would have FOUR scales.  No.  Just no.  

So if a satisfactory answer doesn't exist I need to create one.  Not gonna bore you with all of my leaps and dead ends but I will include some assumptions.  Rules:  Dragons range from medium to gargantuan.  Assumption: scales are bigger on bigger dragons.  Using some of the critters mentioned above we can assign diameters of 6, 9, 13 and 25 inches.  To simplify the match we're going to use round/cylindrical disc scales.  And we're going to make the scales bone as opposed to keratin or goethite, for size purposes.  Next assumption - the body surface of a dragon covered by scales is similar to the amount of usable  hide from a cow (sq footage equal to .05% of its weight.) Final assumption: scales overlap so they'll only cover "half of their size."

Now lets take a look at our 500 pound wyrmling.  It will have 75 pounds of scales covering 30 square feet.  Scales have a 6" diameter.  Each will cover 14 square inches.  It will take 300+ scales to cover the dragon.  Each scale would weigh about 4 ounces.  Jumping the gun: ancient dragon scales would weigh over 4 pounds!  All of the scales would be .1298 inches thick (1/8.)

Young dragon: Large, 4k#, 240 square feet, 9" diameter, covering 32 sq inches each.  Just under 1,100 scales, weighing 9 ounces each.

Adult dragon:  Huge.  16 tons.  1,920 square feet.  13" diameter, covering 66 sq inches each.  Just over 4,100 scales weighing 18 ounces each. 

Ancient dragon:  Gargantuan.125 tons.  1,667 square YARDS.  25" diameter, covering 1.7 square FEET each.  Almost 9,000 scales weighing 4 1/4 POUNDS each.    

I think I can live with this!!!!

In which we make a dragon

 Haven't done session notes for a while but last night's was ... memorable.

Party was hired to pursue some poachers.  Poachers were going to reach target before the party could intervene.  Quick thinking was needed.  "Let's make a dragon" sez Dakora (the wizard) iirc.  I went for a beverage and by the time I got back the plan had been hatched.  Dakora would cast the minor illusion of a dragon's roar.  Terestan (sorcerer) and Aerialayna (elf) would each cast mage hand and use them to shake the top leaves of the trees.  Kirkus (ranger) would lead the charge, urging the poachers to run for their lives as there's a dragon attacking.  A handful of skill checks later and all were running for the city gate.  

Upon reaching the city gate our brave party reported to the watch captain that nothing happened and the other party (poachers) must have been drinking.  The ruse was successful.  Last night.  But it won't work again and they'll need a new, better plan since the poachers likely know the party is on to them.

Film at 11.

In other news I watched Luke's video on "Ten signs something is wrong with your game."  Over half of them apply to us but it's because we're friends who play D&D, not a D&D group who are friends.  Jus' sayin'.

In which we try to catch some shut-eye.

 Not gonna add this to my current campaign but you can bet it'll be part of the NEXT one!

Per Xanthar's: 

Sleeping in light armor has no adverse effect on the wearer, but sleeping in medium or heavy armor makes it difficult to recover fully during a long rest.

When you finish a long rest during which you slept in medium or heavy armor, you regain only one quarter of your spent Hit Dice (minimum of one die). If you have any levels of exhaustion, the rest doesn’t reduce your exhaustion level.

OK.  So we'll use this.  Gotta skin outta that medium/heavy armor to get the full benefit of a long rest.  FWIW Elves don't sleep.  They trance, so no effect.  Game-wise it makes those late-night surprise attacks a little more troublesome.  As a player just make it the rule that if you're exhausted and/or have lost more than 1 HD of damage, you need to be comfy! 

So what if you DON'T get a long rest?  I'm a bit skint when it comes to allowing them, so this might be hard on my parties.  I'll need to be aware of this.  IF you go 24 hours without a long rest you need to make a CON check at DC 10 or take a level of exhaustion.  The DC increases by 5 every additional 24 hours.  Result:  going 24 hours is doable.  Making that first roll isn't bad.  But when you go 48 the DC is 15.  Fail THAT and you take a lvl of exhaustion so the NEXT roll (72 hours) is at DC 20 and -1.  Now you're in a death spiral.  Four days is at DC 25 and likely -2.

Some nice plot points can come out of this.  The elf in the party scurrying to find a suitable resting place (!?) for the fragile humans, etc.  Perhaps the exhaustion from lack of sleep doesn't lead to death but rather a coma-like state.  Out for 24 hours under any circumstances reduces exhaustion by 1 lvl, alowing the struggle to continue

In which we visit the butcher, the baker and the candlestick maker

As usual Alexis started it.  Still noodling the numbers on wages.  Figure something might gel by Labor Day.  In the meantime it provoked me to revisit one factor of the trade system I've never been comfortable with.  for h in hexes and I have been "corresponding" about our approaches to the mechanic.  He's a coder.  I'm a spreadsheet guy.  But we benefit from comparing notes.

To recap:  each settlement in the world produces things, dependent on size and location.  These things are disbursed over the planet based on distance from the source.  These resources can then be acted upon by those with the proper skills to make secondary (or tertiary, etc) products.  At each step the craftsman impacts the cost of the finished product.  This impact is determined by a factor, somewhere between .5 and 2 (?.)  The factor CAN be assigned to achieve whatever price range is desired for the product but that seems arbitrary.  

I had already adopted a system for deciding what businesses existed in a city, based on it's population, using MDME.  Why not plot the businesses for EVERY settlement, then determine how much impact they have on neighboring villages using the trade table.  The numbers the raw system gave me were WAY too large, but using the quad root proved to be ideal (so far.)  More testing to follow.

End result: the cost of anything you wanna buy is determined by the cost of raw materials, cost of the skilled tradesman to convert them, and the distance both of THOSE are from the purchaser.  As a general rule no settlement deals in anything that costs more than 1 gp per 10 pop (so 10%.)  So I can keep the shopping lists limited in small or out of the way locations.  Rarity creates conflict.  Conflict creates plot hooks.

In which we examine "The Promise."

Back in late May the Spriggan's Den wrote a very nice post entitled Making RPGs live up to their promise.  I let it simmer more a month and while I don't have a lot to add to the good parts I thought I'd make a somewhat responsive post to address some of the points raised.

The author begins by observing that 

"When anyone first tells new people about roleplaying games and what makes them such a cool activity, it’s nearly always about how you can play characters who are free to do anything and go anywhere, and how your choices create a unique story as the GM has the NPCs and the world react naturally and logically to whatever you can come up with. This is the promise that RPGs make to players, and I think that we all should expect these from any campaigns we play and don’t accept any campaign that doesn’t. Because what’s the point of all of it then anyway??

 So there's the premise (or rather, promise) of the article.  Why is this so often NOT so.  And can we MAKE it so?

 The author's next point was that there was a lot of "do not do these things" advice and it GREATLY outweighs the "do these things" advice.  Boy howdy.  Because the "dndtt" advice applies to virtually ALL tables while the "dtt" advice can be VERY table specific.  The last few months I've started spending WAY to much time on YouTube WATCHING this advice.  There are content creators I NEVER have to watch again.  There are others that I rewatch on the reg.  And there are some that I wonder "what the hell are they even doing on the inter-webs?"  They seems to be clowns, playing D&D.  And their game is terrible.  But for THEM?  They love it. And I'm sure their viewers do.  But if 95% of the DM's out there are watching it there is a serious Cargo Cult problem.

We then proceed to a series of premises.

#1.  The player  characters are the protagonists.  Well .... yes.  But as the author observes in published adventures the PC's are essentially henchmen, helping the king save his kingdom or the princess or whatever they're supposed to be saving.  And who wants to play a henchman? 

#2.  The players decide what the characters do.  But in most railroad games the players DO decide what to do but it's a decision without a difference.  The decision's players are given aren't driving the story.  They're deciding whether take the high road to the demon's cave or the low road.  Again: a problem with most published adventures.  

#3.  Players decide where the players go.  Short answer: so long as it's in the 24 pages of the published adventure.  And the author recognizes that as well.  Riding off into the night abandoning the demon-plagued village to its own devices MUST be an option.

#4 Players decide who they side with or against.  Don't like the quest giver?  Awesome.  Go join the other side!  As the DM - present the world.  Let it unfold.  And let the players decide which side of the fold they take.

#5.  The players decide which causes to pick up.  I've been through this recently in my game.  The party decided to let the wood elf war refugees fend for themselves and to let the blighted forest spread unabated.  They're headed west to The Crossroads to see what else is "out there."  And "out there" there's a whole social structure with people and groups who have a wide range of goals and drives.  And this was AFTER they took a stab at setting up a protection racket.  

#6.  They player characters are the champions of their cause.  See #1 above.  

#7.  The Antagonists of the Story are within the PC's means to challenge.  As the author observes, think Seven Samurai.  

It’s set in a world of constant civil wars with raiding armies and roaming bandits destroying and plundering all the villages they come across. There is a tale happening somewhere in that world about one warlord rising to the top, defeating and subjugating all the other warlords, and establishing a strong state that cracks down on the bandit problem. But The Seven Samurai is not that story. The heroes of that story do not have fight and defeat all the warlords and their armies to be victorious. They are just seven samurai with no resources and there is no way for them to win the civil war for the control over all of Japan. But that is not their story. Their story is about destroying a gang of some 30 bandits raiding a single unprotected village. This is a threat that the seven samurai are perfectly able to deal with and win against. Great warlords and their armies exist in this world, but they are not the antagonists of the story.  

Not sure I'm as married to this one as the others but it DOES make for a great campaign.  And it doesn't always have to be about saving the world.  Sometimes it's just about beating the Urbania Cowboys.  

#8.  Failure is always an option.  Failure reinforces that each eventual success was NOT a given but rather was the result of their own hard work.  

#9.  False conclusions are the fault of the players.  Or SHOULD be, if the DM is doing their job.  

I also left a comment at Spriggan's.  We'll see what discussion ensues.