Proposition with Dragon Herald

I'm ok with forcing prophecies and wielding great power.  I meant prophecy in the way that it will come true.  I sort have always interpreted many soothesayers as prophecies are inescapable and make them happen.  That's fine.  It's just the term dragon. If we agree it's the control of terrible power, and its herald.  Maybe we just change the name herald to something like, Herald of Chaos, Herald of destruction, Herald of the Apocalypse.  Something that doesn't straight make our minds jump to this is daenerys from Game of Thrones and you are going to use actual dragons to cause this.  You don't need to have giant dragon beasts to make a land scary adn awful and  I feel the naem dragon herald just is to blatant about the type of destruction.  Thoughts on names like Herald of Destruction and Herald of the Apocalypse?

"Doom" is the word I'd use, if I were to change it. Herald of Doom, Doom-Bearer, something like that.

-Vincent

I can accept herald of doom,or doom herald.  I like the word disaster, apocalypse, destruction something longer then just doom, but Doom will work much better then Dragon.

This is kind of off-topic, but both Murderous Ghosts and Dark World are apocalypse engine games that involve powerless main characters. I think I agree with what you're saying, though, but I'd add the caveat that any apocalypse engine game that uses playbooks is going to be about power fantasy, as one of their purposes is to give the PC cool stuff he can do, that other people can't.

That's a great caveat, thank you. I did have a moment of "am I talking out of my ass here?" when my mind wandered to Murderous Ghosts, but I felt like there's still something to the general thrust of the statement and so kind of wanted to leave it stand alone instead of enmeshing it in a thousand caveats (like, making sure that no one thinks that I consider calling AW a 'power fantasy' a negative pejorative, explaining why not, saying how big of a deal I think having to deal with other cool guys as part of a power fantasy actually is...), but that would have probably made it an unintelligible mess.

I also agree with you about prophecies, but I think it's not that it's hard to make an AW game in which true prophecies are a large part of the game, but that it's hard to make a Story Now game in which true prophecies are a large part of the game, because choices and uncertain outcomes are important to making Story Now work.

I don't think that's true exactly! You'd have to drill down deeper into what makes stories about prophecies tick, but you could do it. For example, Ben Robbins' Kingdoms have a character-class that is pretty much defined by having full knowledge of a world-defining event but no power to change it, which could very well support something prophecy-like. But I guess this is beside the point.


I'm a little bit struggling with the Dragon Herald, to be honest. This might just belie my lack of knowledge, of course, but while I can think of multiple characters 'out there in the wild' that are War Heralds, Outlaw Heirs, Wicker-Wises or Troll Killers, when I think of Dragon Herald, the only image that comes up vividly is Daenerys. Maybe also Arthur or Merlin if I squint? I like the playbook and am sure I could play it, but I don't feel 'free' around it, if that makes any sense. Like I'll always be making stuff up on my own rather than being able to borrow things from my memory when I get stuck.

I quite like the Dragon Herald, especially once I read the MC section about how the Dragon cannot harm her. She's, like, the only chance humanity has at dealing with this ferocious force of nature. That's her bargaining chip and it's her seat of power. Wars are the affairs of men; the Dragon could end it all.

I have nothing against what you say Scrape, but could you agree that the term dragon could be replaced with doom or destruction.  They can still be immune to it, but it doesn't have the dragon connotation.

Kkibrick, I'm not clear. Are you asking me to change the Dragon-Herald, or are you working on making a playbook of your own?

If the former, thanks for the suggestion.

If the latter, you don't need anyone else to buy in before you create it. Create it and see what people think of it then.

-Vincent

No, I love everything about the Dragon Herald, it's the name "Dragon".  The class is spectacularly well written, and I love it's story changing ideas in awakening.  I just think the word "dragon" is to specific a connotation of doom compared to the word doom, destruction or its ilk.  Your game could be made its semantics and I should really stop talking about it, but the word I feel evokes the idea of Giant creatures, when you don't need those to have destruction, and doom.

I've gone too much rant by this point and I apologize, I am ending my own contribution to this topic :P

No, I love everything about the Dragon Herald, it's the name "Dragon".  The class is spectacularly well written, and I love it's story changing ideas in awakening.  I just think the word "dragon" is to specific a connotation of doom compared to the word doom, destruction or its ilk.  Your game could be made its semantics and I should really stop talking about it, but the word I feel evokes the idea of Giant creatures, when you don't need those to have destruction, and doom.

I think that the idea behind the dragon-herald is that they are the heralds for supernatural forces beyond humanity. It isn't "dragon" in the traditional sense of lizardy flying creatures that hock fire-loogies, but "dragon" as in a living force of destruction that wreaks havoc upon the world. It has a different meaning in this game, just as the word "troll" has been expanded to reference other lesser monstrosities.

So your setting might have completely different dragons from mine. Your dragon might be a leviathan, consumer of worlds looking to turn whole kingdoms into something it can digest; it might be the first lich, who births the undead hordes that march in its wake; it might be the world serpent, hunting the land for the last roots of the World Tree; it could be Satan him-fucking-self, come to bring the war of angels to the land of mortals.

The dragon isn't just doom. It is a living embodiment of doom, an incarnation of its coming. To let it live is to let the doom be wrought. To slay it is to give the world reprieve.

Hmmm, I read that playbook as very much saying "there is a literal dragon, and it will treat you as an equal." There's no reason you couldn't slightly tweak the playbook to be about any other doom, though: a plague or anything. I bet it would rule! But it'd be different for sure. This playbook promises a big-ass dragon to me, real and deadly.

Hmmm, I read that playbook as very much saying "there is a literal dragon, and it will treat you as an equal." There's no reason you couldn't slightly tweak the playbook to be about any other doom, though: a plague or anything. I bet it would rule! But it'd be different for sure. This playbook promises a big-ass dragon to me, real and deadly.

As it should. It just doesn't have to be a flying lizard-esque dragon. It has to be huge, it has to have a vast and patient hunger, and has to distort the environment to reflect its nature. All other aspects are up to you to define, and nothing in any of that inherently screams flying lizard.