Power Can Come With a Cost for Every D&D Class

What does power cost the players in your game?

Consider the druid and their emblematic wild shape ability. D&D 5E players shift between forms with the gleeful ease of Beast Boy from Teen Titans. The D&D “Honor Among Thieves” movie includes a scene where the druid rapidly shifts from form to form in the same manner, and this scene, like much of the movie, is very much shot using superhero logic, not sword and sorcery logic.

That’s all well and good for a game that wants a superheroic tone. But what if we want a darker or more weighty feel? Consider the following:

As a boy, Ogion like all boys had thought it would be a very pleasant game to take by art-magic whatever shape one liked, man or beast, tree or cloud, and so to play at a thousand beings. But as a wizard he had learned the price of the game, which is the peril of losing one’s self, playing away the truth. The longer a man stays in a form not his own, the greater this peril. Every prentice-sorcerer learns the tale of the wizard Bordger of Way, who delighted in taking bear’s shape, and did so more and more often until the bear grew in him and the man died away, and he became a bear, and killed his own little son in the forests, and was hunted down and slain. And no one knows how many of the dolphins that leap in the waters of the Inmost Sea were men once, wise men, who forgot their wisdom and their name in the joy of the restless sea.

-“A Wizard of Earthsea,” Ursula Le Guin

Incorporating this idea immediately changes how wild shape feels as a druid ability. Can we build power-with-a-cost into each of the 12 classes in 2014 5E? Let’s find out. This is a concept only, and definitely does not attempt to balance these costs against each other.

Druid. The Earthsea example above guides the way; it’s just a question of which criteria informs the cost. How long the character stays in animal form is an easy one. But it could also weigh how often the PC assumes the same form. That could disincentivize just falling back on the same few animal forms over and over again. Another type of cost would be to scale it against the power or unusual nature of the animal in question. Transforming into a dog is relatively safe; transforming into a tyrannosaurus rex seriously risks the druid’s ability to hold onto their humanity.

Warlock. This is the easiest to do given how naturally the fiction of the patron implies that being a warlock should mean power-at-a-cost. The rules don’t really support it mechanically, but I believe many 5E games have informally steered into this aspect of the warlock. Critical Role’s second season delivers on this fiction, without any explicit mechanical hook obligating the players to do so. A patron could grant and retract powers in relation to how much the PC is fulfilling the patron’s desires. It could even be the basis for milestone leveling in the right game. 

Sorcerer. This one also emerges organically from the fiction. A character’s bloodline provides their power, but they do not master magic the way a wizard does; they are riding the tiger. Simply allow sorcerers to go into the red on sorcery points, and bake in some risk of their powers going haywire. It’s easiest to visualize for wild magic sorcerers; the wild magic table provides plenty of room for a cockup cascade. But it’s not too difficult to come up with consequences for the other bloodlines as well.

Wizard. Wizards seek spells through study and knowledge, but the modern game has gradually given them more and more control over their spell selection, such that finding a scroll in a modern game is not nearly as exciting as in an old-school campaign. In a game that much more strongly incentivizes wizards to learn spells diegetically, it is much easier to provide a cost. Transcribing a spell to the spellbook carries risk, and not just the risk that transcription will fail.  Will it take longer to transcribe?Will it be an unreliable variant of the spell? Or could it be something worse? Is the spell like a living thing, a malevolent entity now making its home in your spellbook? 

Bard. Relative to the other full-casting classes, the bard’s spellcasting seems to come with the least implied risk, labor, and commitment, so let’s not focus on their spells. Instead, consider bardic inspiration. It’s interesting that in 5E’s oops-all-magic approach to character abilities, bardic inspiration is actually a non-magical effect, which implies a world where mundane motivation can propel people to greatly improved performance. Bards could themselves endure wild swings from excessive exuberance to sinking depression that mirrors the swingy outcomes their inspiring words produce.

Rogue. The costs for the rogue are the most obvious in some ways, but also the hardest to implement due to modern play’s promise that players are free from many kinds of social restraint. Some kind of reputation or "heat" mechanic would serve as a natural cost for a rogue. Ideally it would create risk in the same places where many of the rogue’s abilities shine, i.e., cities and other bastions of civilization. 

Cleric. Modern D&D has gradually shed many of the restrictions that once characterized classes like clerics. Simply bringing back some of those limitations would produce a cost that would go along with their power. Use Knave 2’s relic system for inspiration.

Paladin. The paladin is like the cleric, but their complication is less of a personal relationship with a particular divinity. Instead, they are defined by oaths and quests – socially mediated principles, whether as shared aspects of chivalry with other paladins, or a more personal code. D&D 5E’s oaths are all upside, a collection of archetypal powers; but they do include tenets that imply restrictions or downsides that would limit the paladin’s power or constrain their actions in interesting ways.

Barbarian. This is another class that once featured more costs and restrictions, but they too often constrained the player’s choices rather than presenting interesting drawbacks. A barbarian who blindly attacks allies in a frenzy -- or abhors magical items -- fits the fiction, but it doesn’t make for interesting play. Instead consider a barbarian who must decide, when they initiate a rage, how long they will rage; and rule that they can't retreat until it is over, even if they overestimated the length of the fight.

Fighter. As the “most straightforward” martial class, it is difficult to apply costs to fighter. The second wind and action surge abilities suggest endurance, so allow the fighters to tap into those resources more aggressively, with exhaustion as a consequence. This kinda steps on the toes of the berserker barbarian… but I’ve never actually had a player choose the berserker barbarian, so that would be a theoretical problem more than an actual one for me. 

Monk. This one is also challenging. To separate the monks from the fighters, we can imagine monks overclocking not on actions or HP, but on defense and maneuverability. Consider tying costs to more extreme usages of slow fall or evasion abilities, or even lean into the diamond soul ability by allowing them to spend ki points to pass otherwise-failed saves, with a penalty to future saves proportional to how emptied-out their chi pool is.

Ranger. The hardest of all? A ranger could lose their civilized self, but it’s hard to imagine it as severe as the druid’s transformation. If we presume that many rangers are loners whose mastery of the wilderness came in relative isolation, we could make their ability to navigate and survive progressively harder the more people they are trying to guide or protect. 

Counterspell Hacks for More Interesting Worldbuilding

A few ideas for hacking Counterspell in D&D. I can imagine more extreme alterations and I'm sure there are games that have experimented more broadly, but I'm keeping this post relatively close to the rules as written.

You Can Counter Any Spell You Know

D&D has occasionally tried to model knowledge of the spell as part of the countering process, but it usually just adds another annoying ability check to a process that is already disrupting the normal flow of gameplay. Instead, just say that no roll is required if you know the spell that you're trying to counter. You just counter it automatically.

This more closely models a lot of Appendix N fiction that inspired D&D. If you try to attack a wizard with a spell they have already mastered, they’re going to laugh in your face. This gives wizards a much more concrete reason to hoard knowledge and keep spells to themselves, to ensure that they are the only ones who know a particularly useful spell. 

This also incentivizes PCs to learn about their opponents before fighting them. Knowing a wizard’s spell list in advance is a big part of fighting them; by avoiding casting spells they know and prioritizing spells they don’t. 

Many D&D systems offer spell research systems, but my experience is that few players take an interest in them. The official spells in the book are too enticing, and the idea of creating new spells is too open-ended and abstract for a lot of players.

But what if we're using this option? And the PC is trying to fight an evil wizard who knows most of the same spells as them? Suddenly, coming up with their own new spells is a much more appealing option for prevailing. 

You Can Counter a Spell of a Lower Level

D&D 5E.2014 already partially models this idea by allowing Counterspell to automatically counter spells of the same level or lower, plus a roll when Counterspell is used to counter a higher-level spell. We could simply remove the option to roll and say that Counterspell either works automatically, or not at all. In other words, Counterspell cast normally can counter a first- through third-level spell. Want to counter a higher-level spell? You have to use a slot of that level or higher to do so.

This obviously nerfs Counterspell, but I don’t have a problem with that. It’s already one of the most powerful spells in the game. What’s good for the magic goose is also good for the gandermancer, so this change would also help players frustrated at seeing their high-level spells counter-spammed by enemy wizards.

You just know this guy is going to Counterspell you. From Ena: Dream BBQ

You Can Counter a Spell of the Opposing School

I’ve written before that the schools of magic are an underutilized source of worldbuilding in D&D. What if those rivalries define what a wizard can counter? This gives some mechanical teeth to an interesting worldbuilding feature.

If limiting Counterspell to only these rivalries makes the spell too niche, we could simply say that on top of the normal language of Counterspell, countering a rival school's spell counts as if it was done with a slot two levels higher than what was actually used.

Combine All Three

You could create a system where the baseline is that a third-level slot can counter a first level spell, but if the caster knows the spell, that reduces the cost by one, so that they could use a second-level slot. Same thing if they are a member of an opposed school. But countering a spell of one’s own school would add a level, making it more difficult. 

I don’t really recommend this, because it’s crossing the line from “reasonable homebrew” to “oops this is a new magic system.” But go where your heart takes you, wizard.

No Game Needs to End Without an Ending

We’ve all been there. The game is going great. The players are excellent, the GM is doing a great job, everyone is excited to see what happens next. Who knows how this crazy story will end? We can’t wait to find out.

Then the group takes a short break so several players can handle some real-life stuff. The short break unofficially becomes a long break. Months pass. Everyone quietly realizes that the break is permanent and that the game is no more. We’ll never find out what happened next. We’ll never get our ending.

It happens. I understand that. But I think we give up on our endings too easily.

And I’ve decided that at least for games I run, where it is my choice, there will always be an ending. 

We can do things like make sure endings are an interesting part of the game. And embrace restarting a dormant game. But sometimes that’s not enough. Here are ways to end our games.

Plan A: Conventional session-by-session resolution. This is how most games aspire to end. You just keep doing sessions until everything is over. This is easier if you do “seasons” or use another mechanism to forecast endings. This is great if you can manage it. It’s probably the ideal way to end most kinds of games. But it’s not the only way to end the game.

Plan B: Zoom out. Maybe there isn’t time to resolve the story session-by-session. Time is tight. Maybe someone is moving out of town or starting a new job or going back to school or having a kid. There’s time for a few sessions. Maybe just one. How do we conclude without it feeling rushed?

Remember that time in RPGs is fluid. Just as the GM can narrate days or weeks of travel in a few minutes, nothing stops the group from collectively adjudicating entire adventures and arcs at a zoomed out level. They can either use freeform roleplay, or a collaborative system like Microscope, which is specifically built to enable zooming in and zooming out on game events.

Anatoly Fomenko

Plan C: Communal or individual writing project. There isn't time for even a single session, as detailed above for Plan B, no matter how zoomed-out it is. But if the players have time individually, they can end the game in writing. This could take the form of separate parallel efforts, or a single collaborative resolution, perhaps through taking turns, or editing a shared online document. It can be an exquisite corpse. Writing is the most obvious way to do this, but players could draw, write songs, whatever they want. How canon all of this is up to the group, particularly if players are writing different aspects of the ending that touch on others’ characters; but generally, it is a good idea to keep it loose.

Plan D: Solo writing project. Whether due to external circumstances, waning interest, or something else entirely, sometimes the players are simply done before the story is. Even Plan C is not going to happen. 

The GM still has the option to write the conclusion to the game themselves. 

Solo RPGs are great here. Even a simple oracle system can provide enough outside input to resolve the story in an interesting way.

To the degree the players may still care about their characters, the GM can frame this as head canon or merely one possible version of events. Some of the characters could be offscreen. The GM’s conclusion doesn’t even necessarily have to follow the players, per se. An NPC or even an antagonist could be the viewpoint character for the resolution of the story.

This is the last resort because it doesn’t involve the group; it’s just the GM (or really, whichever participant in the game cared the most about the ending). But it’s still better than no ending at all.

Maybe no one will ever even read it. That’s OK. Put it on your blog, if nothing else (if you don’t have a blog, now is a good time to start one). The point is that if you spent dozens (or even hundreds) of hours playing a game that kept you and your players interested for that long, it deserves an ending. You deserve an ending, and there’s more than one way to get there. 

Treat Lists of Deities Like Roll Tables to Create a Scrambled Pantheon

Mythological pantheons in the real world are fascinating. They raise all kinds of fascinating questions about how the people who worshipped those gods thought about the world and understood their place in it. Pantheons in fantasy worlds are often a lot less interesting. 

Look at those tables in Appendix B of the 2014 5E players handbook. We have gods like “Leira, goddess of illusion; CN; Trickery; Point-down triangle containing a swirl of mist” or “Rao, god of peace and reason; LG; Knowledge; White heart.” These are… easy to remember, I guess? They are tropey and linear. Not very evocative, though. Most of these gods lack implicit internal tension. Some of them have obvious roles vis-a-vis their believers, but others only make sense as a flavor hook for a possible cleric character’s desired domain selection.

What if we treat these tables as roll tables? If you count from the first entry in Appendix B, on the Forgotten Realms table, and then number it up through 100, you get most of the way through Greyhawk, Dragonlance, and Eberron. Roll five d100 – once for each column, plus twice on the first column, splitting the name and honorific. I re-rolled entries that came up more than once. Here’s what I got.

Name: Gond
Honorific: Goddess of the Moon
Alignment: LG
Domain: Death, Knowledge
Symbol: Oak Leaf

I just rolled this up outta nowhere. A few details jump out right away. Note that in Appendix B, all the gods with the death domain are either neutral or evil. What does it mean to have a lawful good death goddess? How important is death to the order and well-being of the world? And what’s with the moon and the oak leaf? Are these pure symbology? Or do they mean something more? Is the moon the world of the dead? Are oak trees mystical gates to the moon?

Name: Mystra
Honorific: Goddess of Wrath and Madness
Alignment: N
Domain: Knowledge
Symbol: Feather

I love the idea that the goddess of madness also has the knowledge domain. Very evocative to think of madness as a contingent risk to seeking more knowledge.

Name: Hiddukel
Honorific: God of Meditation and Order
Alignment: NE
Domain: Knowledge
Symbol: Flame drawn on silver or molded from silver

This is what I love. Why is the god of order NE? There’s a story there. My first thought is that he is an usurper. But it could be even weirder. What if the former god of meditation and order trapped him in this role, forcing a NE deity to rule over an order-inducing pantheon? Is he meditating to gather knowledge? Perhaps his parishioners are split between those who venerate him in his captivity, versus those who want to set it free. That’s an interesting deity.

Real-world mythologies are more interesting. In fantasy creators' defense, ancient Egypt has a 5000-year head start. Colossal figures in front of the Great temple of Abu Simbel, via Old Book Illustrations

Name: Milil
Honorific: God of Fire and Change
Alignment: LN
Domain: no clerics
Symbol: Upright flaming sword

Right away we have a “god of change” who is LN. How do we even square that? Some kind of dynamic change that is part of a larger rebalancing of the world? The domain is “no clerics,” an entry specific to Dragonlance, which raises further questions. Perhaps this god considers divine magic to be an impermissible exception to the LN “change” they allow? Perhaps in this god’s view, it is clerics themselves who unbalance the world, and they seek to apply their power in ways that punish or curtail divine casters.

Name: Kelemvor
Honorific: God of Storms
Alignment: LG
Domain: Life, Light
Symbol: Blank Scroll

Again, we get more interesting results from random rolls. Storms are typically chaotic, but what if we associate them with law instead? And the domain of life? And the symbol of a blank scroll? Perhaps a world where lighting strikes spawn new demigods and monsters who serve to maintain the divine order? 

Name: Lunitari
Honorific: God of Thieves
Alignment: NG
Domain: Death, Life
Symbol: Bundle of five sharpened bones

What do you even make of a NG death/life god of thieves? I’m thinking of a mythology where Lunitari steals souls from competing law and chaos factions to balance the scales.

The basic idea of all these ordinary-pantheons-turned-weird-by-roll-tables is this – the incongruities and contradictions that the rolls produce are features, not bugs. The world does not need more chaotic-weather-god-versus-good-light-god-versus-evil-death-god pantheons. Rolling forces the DM/worldbuilder to grapple with weird contradictions. That’s what produces strange, distinct, actionable worlds. Go for that energy when worldbuilding. 

Exploring the Implied Worldbuilding of Random Spell-School-Swapping

This post was inspired by a spell description that the players discussed in the 3d6 Down the Line podcast (I can’t recall which episode). The spell provided a haste-style effect, but instead of transmutation or similar, it was actually illusion magic – it fooled the recipient into thinking that they weren’t actually tired and had more energy available to go fast.

What if we pick spells and schools randomly, and then try to work backward to explain how that would possibly make sense? These could create some interesting forms of magic, or imply unusual worldbuilding choices. We’ll also list more sensible alternatives.  

Telepathy

Current school: Evocation
Random conversion prompt: Conjuration
The sensible alternative: Divination

Well, I suppose you’re "conjuring" thoughts in someone’s head… but generally conjuration is distinguished from other magic by “creating a tangible thing.” So perhaps a conjuration-themed form of telepathy actually externalizes the thoughts sent in either direction, making them externalize as literal manifestations of the transmitted thought.

Spells like Detect Thoughts are divination spells, so it would make sense if another spell meant to connect to another mind would land in the divination school as well. Looking through the other communication spells, it’s interesting how they differ. Note that Sending, like Telepathy, is evocation, but Message is… transmutation? Weird.

Web

Current school: Conjuration
Random conversion prompt: Necromancy
The sensible alternative: Transmutation 

We can make this one work, but you’re not going to like it. Spider silk is made of protein, like human hair. A necromantic web spell manifests the lingering hair of the dead to form its binding strands. Gross.

Transmutation would be the more obvious choice, as many transmutation spells mimic animal and monster abilities, and this would bring it into line with Spider Climb. In moving from conjuration to transmutation, the webs should not appear out of thin air but rather be a transformed spell component, or the caster briefly gaining Tobey Maguire-style spinnerets.

Awaken

Current school: Transmutation
Random conversion prompt: Enchantment
The sensible alternative: Necromancy

Awaken is a spell that grants average intelligence to a beast or plant. It also charms them, so Enchantment is the next most-obvious choice. But it suggests an interesting worldbuilding difference. If you transmute a creature to make it more intelligent, you are creating intelligence where none was before. Whereas if you enchant a creature to make it intelligent, it suggests that the intelligence was inherent within the creature, and you are merely coaxing it out. 

None of the other schools make much sense for what Awaken does. But Necromancy could work if we assume that the intelligence actually comes from a deceased spirit that is bound to the animal or plant. That would explain the human-level intelligence.

d100 Questions to Design A More Memorable Dragon

A dragon is the single most evocative visual element of fantasy games. That same universal familiarity makes it difficult to describe to players in fresh, evocative ways. 

Below is a series of questions and prompts for mixing up the appearance of a dragon. Some of these will suggest novel monster designs or adventure hooks. But many of them will have no concrete gameplay application. The point is that when you tell your players to “picture a dragon” their brains should be lighting up in a way that is measurably different from telling them to “picture a Toyota Camry.”

Much credit to this Wikipedia list of dragons in mythology and folklore as a source of dragons that break conventional mass-media informed conceptions of dragons. You could run dragons based on these mythologies for a lifetime and never run out of interesting ideas. And it is funny to note how many non-dragon creatures (by Monster Manual taxonomy) are listed here as types of dragons – behirs, tarasques, hydras, many such cases.

A memorable dragon by Iguanadon't

d100 Ask Yourself, What Does This Dragon Look Like?

Roll as many times as needed, until the dragon is clear in your mind's eye.

1. How many colors are the scales? If it's a chromatic dragon, is it consistent coloration across the body, or does it vary (e.g., darker on top, lighter on the bottom?)
2. Are the scales reflective or matte? 
3. Do their scales camouflage the dragon in its environment? Or are they bright and distracting colors?
4. What do the scales feel like to the touch? Warm or cool? Rough or smooth?
5. Do they have patterns? Banded scales, like a coral snake, are a personal favorite aesthetic for me.
6. If they’re bright and distracting, is it a warning to other creatures? A mating display? A form of dazzle camouflage to make it harder for the few things that can threaten them (mainly other dragons) to hit them?
7. What are the scales made of? Keratin? Something else? 
8. Are they perhaps scaleless, like a sphynx cat? Natural, or lost to disease?
9. Do metallic dragon scales make a sound like metal when they strike against something? Or are they metallic in appearance only?
10. How big are the scales anyway? Small and countless? Human-shield-sized? Really big like an armored dinosaur?
11. Bones. Light and thin like birds, or strong like steel?
12. Does it have externalized bones, like a carapace? Scales could be absent or just in a supporting role.
13. Shedding skin, for more-explicitly reptilian dragons. What do they do with the shed skin? Hugely valuable to alchemists and treasure hunters, but obviously dangerous to get ahold of.
14. If dragons are not related to reptiles, what characteristics most differentiate them from reptiles?
15. Accretion of treasure. Superheated gold tracing the seams of the red dragon’s scales. A gold dragon whose scales are actually melted gold that they basked in.
16. Do they have feathers? For flying, heat regulation, mating rituals, or something else?
17. Is the dragon sleek and impossibly clean, or scarred and marked by age?
18. Does it have a shell?
19. Frills or a crest, like some lizards? 
20. Does any part of the dragon change color depending on its mood, level of activity, or age?
21. What about its spine? Is there a mane, ridges, or even a sail-like protrudence?
22. Are shed scales and egg fragments left in the lair? Destroyed? Bartered to alchemists? 
23. Quills or spines? For defense, offense, presentation, something else?
24. How many limbs? Two arms and two legs?
25. Does it even distinguish between arms and legs? Does it have claws capable of manipulating objects on each limb, and use them as the situation dictates?
26. Are the wings unusual? Feathered? Bat-like? Manta-like? Jellyfish-like? Don’t worry too much about the physics of how the dragon stays aloft, just think about an evocative way to describe how they fly.
27. When it flies, does it cruise like a raptor? Or flap constantly? Can it bank tightly or does it have a wide turning radius?
28. Is the skin of its wings translucent? Same color as the scales, or contrasting?
29. Does it shed talons?
30. Any vestigial wings or legs?
31. No legs at all, like a lindworm? 
32. Weirder limbs? Tentacles? Ew.
33. Can they regrow lost limbs? Maybe even other parts of their bodies, like salamanders?
34. Artificial limb(s)? Don’t get too steampunk with it. Or do, I’m not your boss.
35. How soon can the dragon fly? Right out of the egg? If not, how long? Does a parent protect it or is it immediately on its own after leaving the egg?
36. Does it walk on all fours, or slither, and only use its feet to climb or hurdle obstacles?
37. How finely can its claws manipulate things? Is it characterized by broad monstrous movement, or delicate manipulation that belies its size?
38. Are they rough and indiscriminate with their claws, or are they capable of fine digital manipulation? For example, could they pluck a single coin out of their hoard? What does it look like if they can?
39. Are there parts of their bodies they can’t reach?
40. Does the dragon have a flat or peaked head? A flared hood?
41. Dragons in most versions of D&D have enhanced sight (blindsight in 5E). How does that work? Is it through their eyes, or some other organ (e.g., pit organs, like in some snakes)? What combination of senses gives it that heightened awareness of its surroundings? 
42. What’s the tongue like? Smooth? Ridged? Sticky? Prehensile? Eww.
43. What organs power its breath weapon? Are they located in the mouth, throat, or abdomen?
44. Can you see the breath weapon charging from the outside? Smell it? Feel it?
45. Horns and antlers? Think about what purpose they serve. Do they shed them?
46. What are its teeth like? When it closes its mouth are they all hidden, or do they stick out?
47. Are its teeth like teeth (they stop growing when mature) or like tusks (they grow continuously)?
48. Are any teeth missing? What does that look like? Does the dragon care?
49. How does it digest prey? What does it look like if the dragon vomits? Especially a black or green dragon?
50. How long is the neck? Does it have a discernable shoulders to its body (like most quadriped-style dragons) or does it continue into the body without an obvious break (like a Chinese-style dragon)?
51. What does the inside of the mouth look like? Do the jaws distend like a snake?
52. Internal or external ears? Do they have good hearing, or do they favor other senses?
53. Can they hear high or low frequencies, beyond what is typical of most creatures?
54. Is their breath weapon apparent when they are not actively using it? Do they seep acid from their mouth while talking? Leave trails of fire through the sky?
55. What about its eyes? Like a snake? Like a bird? Something else?
56. Does it have binocular vision or monocular vision? If the latter, why, given that they are apex predators? Don’t worry about making it evolutionarily logical, but do think about it.
57. Can it see parts of the visible light spectrum that humans can’t? If so, would it use that to leave messages for other dragons?
58. What smells does it emit? Do they differ when the dragon is active versus slumbering?
59. If they can transform into other forms, do they reflect their natural physical traits while transformed? Will a red dragon polymorphed into a human have reddish hair or ruddy skin? Or can they hide their form completely?
60. Altered by magic. What spells left their mark on the dragon? Were they cast by the dragon? It’s allies? It’s enemies? 
61. Does it have runes or sigils on its body, representing protective spells or other enchantments?
62. If it can cast spells, what does that look like? What are the somatic components like?
63. Is the dragon a tyrant? Does it have heraldry, markings, symbols to denote this? If it sleeps for hundreds of years, does it want humans to recognize it from stories when it awakes again?
64. Decorations? Tattoos, pigmentation, jewelry?
65. Are they marked by a mate? Do they wear an equivalent of a ring? Or show scars from aggressive mating behavior?
66. Cold-blooded? We don’t need to get too scientific about it, but does the dragon like or dislike heat?
67. Symbiotic organisms. What do they provide to the dragon that the dragon can't or won't do on its own? 
68. Scars and discoloration. Sickness? Battles? If this old dragon fought in that ancient war, can it point to the part of its body that bears the mark?
69. Any embedded weapons? There’s a story there. 
70. Prey adaptations. What does it eat, and can you see the signs? How are its teeth shaped accordingly?
71. Does it consume anything really unusual? Gold? Moonlight? Does a red dragon drink lava?
72. Does it ingest stones like a bird to grind up food? Perhaps only special stones like diamonds?
73. How long do the remains of digested adventurers stay in its body? LINK Dungeon Meshi
74. Where does it defecate? A designated place in its lair?
75. Does it hork up pellets like an owl?
76. What kind of spoor does it leave?
77. What happens when they hibernate? Will mushrooms and moss grow on their sleeping forms? Or do they cover themselves in anti-fungal treasure while dreaming through the centuries?
78. What kind of ridges or protrusions do they have?
79. Does it have an relationship with other creatures that comes across in its appearance or the trappings of its lair? What kind of guests, if any, are allowed in the lair?
80. Are the teeth like huge tusks? Or tiny rows of thousands of daggers? One row of teeth, or many?
81. If the dragon was hungry or even starving, could you tell? What does it look like shortly after it wakes from a centuries-long hibernation? 
82. What fluids, if any, are present? Can it cry? Sweat? Drool?
83. Can the dragon be suffocated or die from exposure to a vacuum? Or does it merely go into a hibernation state?
84. Does the dragon have any predators at all? What does it taste like? 
85. Does it’s body reflect its preferred mode of locomotion? Will it always fly unless constrained? Or does flying take great effort, and it only does it while hunting?
86. Does their appearance change during mating season?
87. How do they regulate heat? Similar to a reptile, or different? Are they slow to get moving when in torpor, or can they wake up fast like a cat?
88. If the dragon is a type that spends part of its time underwater, what does that look like? Does it have gills? Or just hold its breath for a phenomenally long time, like a whale or dolphin?
89. How much does it drink? What does it look like while drinking? Does it lap up water like a beast, or drink out of vessels like a civilized creature?
90. How high into the sky can they fly?
91. How does it sleep? Spread out or coiled up? Out in the open or wormed into a burrow?
92. Does it display sexual dimorphism? Is its sex obvious on sight? 
93. Does it even have a binary sex? Do dragons experience sequential hermaphroditism? 
94. Are they producing eggs? Can an expert tell? If yes, how?
95. Do they lay unfertilized eggs, like some birds and reptiles? What happens to unfertilized eggs?
96. Are they capable of parthenogenesis?
97. What parts of their body decompose? How quickly? 
98. What does the skeleton look like? Regular yellow-white bones, or colored by their environment, symbiosis, diet?
99. Do they go somewhere special to die? Do they dig graves? Incinerate themselves when it is time?
100. Can it die from old age? Or does it just kinda keep going forever, like a Greenland shark?

Campaign Pitch: Revealing the Secrets of the Mystery in the Most Literal Way

You’re planning a game that revolves around a central mystery. It could be the location of the lost treasure, or the motives of the supernatural creatures hidden from mundane society, or the agenda of the aliens in first contact. Try approaching it like this. 

Create a document that lays out the answer to the whole mystery. It may be similar to your own GM notes, but more elaborate. It can include pictures and diagrams. Think of it like a spoiler-filled after-action report. It can be written in-voice, in diegetic language, but that’s not mandatory. It’s particularly easy to do diegeticly in a modern game like Delta Green, where solving a mystery could be expected to create a paper trail, but it could work in any setting.

Give the players access to the document… but hide literally everything with black redaction bars. This is obviously easiest to do electronically, although you could print out copies for at-the-table reference. When the game starts, the players can tell how long the document is, where the headers are, and how many images and diagrams there are, but that’s about it. They can’t see any of the actual text. Be sure to give them view-and-comment privileges, but not the ability to edit.

As the game proceeds, remove the redaction bars from anything that has been discovered in-game. This serves a few purposes. It formally acknowledges that they have found an undisputed truth of the mystery. It provides a common reference for important information that has already been established. And (for players who care about the distinction) it provides fixed information that was established before the GM knew what the players were going to do; in other words, it “proves” that the answer to the mystery is a fixed target, and not something that the GM is making up in response to player action.

But this particular application of redaction does something else. It lets the players see the shape and size of what they don't know. If the entire section under the “Abandoned Mine” heading is revealed, the players can reasonably assume there’s nothing else they need to know about the Abandoned Mine. But if there’s a single sentence still blacked out… well, that should make the players curious. If the players find a map or a photograph, and the GM un-redacts the map in the document, but not the text around it, that raises some interesting questions, right?

They could infer a lot from the organization and the “known unknowns” of what they cannot yet see. Imagine if a section of the revealed text included a hyperlink to an as-yet unrevealed section. Or if one section said “DANGER: Do not engage with [person/entity/object/location] without reviewing [other section that is still redacted]. 

This is probably enough to center the game’s mystery, but there’s room to make it more complex. The GM could tie revealing text to a mechanic, like experience and leveling up. Or give the players an in-game currency to “pay” to reveal certain parts of the text. It could even be a minigame where the players could choose a word and reveal every instance of that word throughout the document, creating a kind of game show word puzzle where they are rewarded for predicting what words might show up a lot, or in particularly important places.

Depending on the desired level of diegesis, it’s up to the group to determine if the characters literally have the document in question or not. At its most literal, it could be classified files or deciphered lore. For a less direct treatment, one could imagine the document as a historical account of the information associated with the adventure. But it’s also OK if it is purely a meta construct. As long as it piques the characters interest in the mystery, it’s doing its job.