Give Them Your Best Story

I am in the camp that believes that encounters with dragons are the epitome of a D&D game. They are something to be remembered and are a highlight of a campaign. And in over 30 years of running games I have only ever had the party fight a dragon twice. Which is a shame.

Visited a flying island? Never.

Enter the land of Fey? Never.

Battle an army of giants? Never.

Got carried away by a Roc? Never.

Killed Drow? Never.

Fought a horde of zombies? Never.

Swap bodies and minds amongst the party? Never.

Assaulted Hell? Never.

As a player, those are the sorts of adventures I want to go on. In a way, many of those are iconic adventures. However, I seldom, and sometimes never, run those because I am waiting for the “right moment”…and that moment never seems to come. Sometimes because we want to “make it special” we keep saving the encounter.

Instead of taking this waiting approach we should give the players something epic as soon as we can. And then follow it up with something else epic. The goal should in actuality be to provide the players with at least one epic thing each night of gameplay. My above list of missed adventuring opportunities is only a small list of epic things that the players can encounter. Trust me, you will not run out of ideas, not in this age of the internet and the multitude of adventure ideas out there for our perusal.

So, don’t hold back the good stuff for a day that may never come.