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While escorting a prisoner to Biel for leading a bugbear raid against the village Erydark, the Doubley-Doos came across a quartet of bards who requested assistance getting their money back from a band of thugs that had taken over the nearby village of Blackmoore. The band of five arrived in town a few weeks ago, supposedly fended off a dragon, and had since been holding the town hostage, charging mandatory payment for continued protection.

Rhass and Dormin did some reconnaissance and learned the makeup of this band of five — a goliath strongwoman, a tiefling sorceress, twin knife-juggling gnome sisters, and a half-elven minstrel.

After freeing their prisoner with the agreement to meet outside of Biel in two weeks, the Doubley-Doos decided to pose as a group of rival bards and draw the band of five out. Making a big, splashy entrance, complete with music, fireworks, and general revelry, it wasn’t long before the group’s performance was interrupted by the appearance of the five, followed by the roar of a gold dragon appearing at the edge of town.

The goliath strongwoman claimed the Doubley-Doos brought this dragon with them, but that her group would once again save the townsfolk. The crowd, already in the grip of fear at the sight of one dragon, flew into pandemonium when Rhass created the illusion of a second bronze dragon in the sky and sent it flying at the gold dragon.

As the battle ensued, it became clear that there was something strange about the gold dragon’s behavior. While fending off its attack, Shelby noticed its collar was carved with the visage of Khurgorbaeyag similar to the figure that Shump carries. She also noticed the strongwoman occasionally reaching into a pouch at her hip, with the dragon responding in tandem, and she realized that the dragon was under some sort of controlling spell.

Rhass charmed the minstrel, stopping his escape attempt mid-sprint, while Badger and Shump dealt with the knife-juggling twins. Dormin used his mage hand to steal the controlling amulet from the strongwoman, but upon obtaining it, he fell sway to whatever dark forces it contained. A mysterious voice began to speak in his mind, promising him unimaginable power with a dragon at his beck and call.

The dragon now appeared to be under Dormin’s control until the tiefling sorceress banished Dormin to another plane. Once he was gone, the dragon’s senses returned to him, and upon seeing the sorceress, he flew into a rage and attacked, tearing her to shreds. Once the sorceress was dead, her spell ended and Dormin returned to this plane. As soon as he’d returned, the dragon lapsed back into compelled obedience.

Upon noticing two of their teammates were now dead and one was charmed into obedience, the twins surrendered, dropping their weapons and putting their hands in the air. While everyone was distracted detaining them, Dormin mounted the dragon and prepared to fly off to tend to his own goals. Rhass saw this and begged him not to leave. His protests managed to help shake Dormin from at least some of the amulet’s glamor, although he still has the overwhelming desire to keep possession of it.

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I’m finding it’s not uncommon for entire sessions to go by without combat when I run a game. I don’t dislike combat, but I don’t like shoving it in just for the sake of having combat — I’m much more interested in the narrative flow, the players’ RP, and the decisions the players make. Sometimes they lead themselves into combat, sometimes combat is basically inevitable, but sometimes games require talking to people, puzzling out mysteries, and interacting with each other.

That said, when I do use combat, I tend to like it using it in a way that still furthers the story. The combat for this session took the entire session, but all of this story stuff still happened during rounds and the initiative order.

Some of my friends complain about the combat system of 5e and D&D in general because they say that it doesn’t lend itself to narrative play, but I really disagree. They tend to like Dungeon World, which doesn’t really have initiative or proper combat. Instead, combat is treated pretty much like skill checks — you say you want to do something, and then roll to see whether you succeed or not. Anyone can jump in at any time, and there aren’t turns or initiative — there aren’t really even moves or special abilities beyond some very limited exceptions.

While that freewheeling style can be fun, I find that personally it’s a little too freewheeling for my taste, and it lacks some of the uniqueness of combat in 5e. If I can play a character and just decide that I want to try karate kicking a bad guy even if I’m not a monk…what does that leave a monk to feel special? (You do get special abilities in DW for your classes, but it’s…different.)

Honestly, I love the drama of a 5e encounter. I love when you nail a good hit and take down an enemy only for a couple more to nail a good hit on you and nearly knock you out, but then an ally uses a clutch ability that counters some spell. The fight between Vecna and Vox Machina is incredible — there are so many twists and reversals throughout the fight. It can be the height of drama.

It also probably doesn’t hurt that in my mind, D&D combat works best when imagined as anime fighting. Not in the sense that your characters have to be massively overpowered and optimized to the gills to do the maximum amount of damage, but in the sense of explaining exactly what “HP” is.

Some folks think HP is your character wearing down throughout the fight and them going unconscious when they finally get dealt a blow. When you roll for damage, these folks say, you’re not actually necessarily hitting them. If you deal 24 points of bludgeoning damage, it doesn’t make sense that your character gets cracked with a spiked mace and keeps fighting.

For my mileage, your character is Ichigo Kurosaki, or Goku, or Vegeta, or Kenshin Himura. They take damage throughout the fight, get knocked down, sliced, bashed, smashed, and taken nearly to the brink of death, but find it within themselves to keep pressing on far past their limit. They’re bloody, they’re exhausted, but they keep fighting. And then… they either win and get to heal, or they lose and finally give into their many injuries like Boromir fighting off the Uruk Hai at the end of Fellowship.

Anyway, enough of my blathering about combat. My point is, this session was a lot of fun. I was super sweaty by the end because I was so caught up in the drama of it all.

The addition of making the dragon compelled by a Khurgorbaeyag amulet was honestly a last minute decision. Originally, it was going to be a blue dragon or something, but it didn’t fit the challenge rating I wanted, and young gold did. So then I started wondering why they’d be fighting a gold dragon, and I realized that the evil goblin deity has definitely been up to a lot of shenanigans behind the scenes for some time.

Jaz’s decision to own the compulsion of the amulet was fantastic. My brother has been great about his interactions with the goblin figure, but he’s been very much of the “I want to get rid of this as soon as possible” mindset. Jaz leaned into it and decided to try to take the dragon and go off to accomplish their own goals. It was an inspired choice, and even though they saved out of the effect and stopped short of leaving, the fact that they were willing to was amazing and exactly the kind of thing I love seeing from my players: namely, taking the scenarios I set for them and making them their own.

I can’t wait to see how this plays out.

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