Having got back from seeing How to Train Your Dragon yesterday, it struck me (actually it struck me at the time) that the creative team had some experience with role-playing games. The Viking village has a (largely erroneous as it turns out) Monster manual of all the types of dragons they've encountered, and one of the kids in the movie has memorized as many of the stats as possible (not that it helps him a lot when training to fight dragons).
That said, it might be cool to have a culture in a Fantasy Hero game that rides dragons. Controlling a dragon is not easy to do -- that is unless you've been breeding and training them for several generations. It probably took dozens of generations for horses to learn to accept being ridden, after all. It's not an entirely new idea -- Anne McAffrey built her career on something very similar.
In system terms, the dragon would be a follower -- albeit a very expensive one! Riding it would be a use of the Riding skill. Although it's very difficult compared to riding a land creature, if you've spent most of your adult life learning how to do it you won't have a penalty to the skill. An outsider trying to do it, though, would face a significant penalty to skill rolls -- -4, perhaps -- to reflect that he has to control a mo punt that moves in three dimensions.
But in campaign terms, what would this culture do? If they can control beasts that everyone else in the world fears and loathes, what does that mean for how they're viewed by others? With respect? With terror? With awe?
That said, it might be cool to have a culture in a Fantasy Hero game that rides dragons. Controlling a dragon is not easy to do -- that is unless you've been breeding and training them for several generations. It probably took dozens of generations for horses to learn to accept being ridden, after all. It's not an entirely new idea -- Anne McAffrey built her career on something very similar.
In system terms, the dragon would be a follower -- albeit a very expensive one! Riding it would be a use of the Riding skill. Although it's very difficult compared to riding a land creature, if you've spent most of your adult life learning how to do it you won't have a penalty to the skill. An outsider trying to do it, though, would face a significant penalty to skill rolls -- -4, perhaps -- to reflect that he has to control a mo punt that moves in three dimensions.
But in campaign terms, what would this culture do? If they can control beasts that everyone else in the world fears and loathes, what does that mean for how they're viewed by others? With respect? With terror? With awe?
