AD&D Black Dragon Game

At Gen Con, I sat down for a 1e game. Fifth-level characters. Classic setup. Village in trouble. People gone missing near the swamp.

I was playing a fighter.

So we do the usual. Question some locals. Track some footprints. Look at the trees. DM plays it cool. No big threats. Just a creeping feeling that something isn’t right. Animal carcasses. Acid scars. Air that smells off. You know how it goes.

Then someone spots the cave.

And that’s when it clicks.

This is not goblins. This is not a bandit hideout. We are walking into something bad. I know acid means black dragon. But we’re only fifth level. We should not be here.

But we go anyway.

The dragon doesn’t roar. It talks. That’s how you know the fight is going to suck. It offered a deal. It lied. Of course it lied. But we suspected he did, but didn’t care, we decided to attack it when it thought we were off doing its bidding.

It felt like the old days.

The DM used that monster right. He didn’t drop it in out of nowhere. He built up to it. Let it breathe. Let us figure it out. No big twist. Just pressure. And when it showed up, it wasn’t a stat block. It was a presence.

That is how you run a dragon.

Not with balance. With fear.

If you want to use a black dragon in your game, take the fight out of the sky. Put it in a swamp. Use terrain. Force the players to earn every move. Make them feel the acid before they see the wings.

I left that table smiling. Not because we won. But because for the first time in a long time... I had to think like a fighter again.

Try it sometime.

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