I've been busy lately with stupid adult things like taxes and prescription drugs and cleaning the pool filter, so I haven't done any word processing, graphic design, or layout for Moon Shadows, my #dnd #osr #ttrpg setting, but I have been thinking about it a lot and scribbling in my little notebook.
My compulsion toward completionism compels me to finish the dwarves on the blog before moving on, but I've been thinking a lot about dragons.
I've never found #rpg games to be therapeutic the way many players claim, but they are a sort of "indicator species" for my mental health. If I'm spending a lot of time thinking about dragons and goblins and vampires and owlbears and the wizards who love them, I clearly don't have many real world problems weighing on my mind. As a result, I enjoy doodling in my Moon Shadows book for its own sake, but I also appreciate it as a sign that my anxiety is on hiatus.
My current focus is on dragons. Moon Shadows dragons are all altered (some slightly tweaked, some radically changed) from the standard #dnd types, but I still refer to them in play as "red dragons", "black dragons", etc. I'm gonna rename them for publication so it's obvious at a glance that they're different, so a Moon Shadows red dragon will be a "Scarlet Dragon", for example. If you ever play at my table, I'll still be calling it a red dragon though.
The chromatic dragons (red, blue, green, black, and white) have cosmetic changes with some extra abilities (and lower hit dice to compensate so they aren't overpowering). Gold, silver, and copper are also slightly tweaked. I could never remember the difference between copper, bronze, and brass, so I replaced the latter two with Iron and Leaden dragons. There are also two new types, diamantine and umbral, very loosely based on the BX Crystal dragon and AD&D1 Shadow dragon.
I keep thinking about how to rename gold dragons. There aren't any good synonyms for "gold". Other words for "yellow" are all less noble (and less metallic). "Gilded/gilt" is less pure, more superficial. "Aurichalcum" ("gold copper") was a Roman transliteration error for "orichalcum" ("mountain copper"). Hmm. What would "sky copper" be? "Uranichalcum"!? No. Every alloy of gold is just "[non-yellow color] gold". Blah.
I might just have to go with "Golden" unless you have any suggestions?
Help.
@Da_Gut@dice.camp
you know honestly make them about the size of a pseudo dragon and called them Drakes… and this isn’t a bad idea
they could just naturally come about in a too empty barrel of the appropriate alcohol type. (Say, 5% chance per week) monitor lizard like things, with a single target, intoxicating breath. They are just a naturally occurring problem for the innkeeper trade. It’s a rare inn that lets them get so out of hand that they require adventurers to resolve the issue.
