August 6, 2025 • 12 mins
In this episode, I talk about a Gen Con AD&D game where I played a 5th-level fighter investigating some missing villagers. Classic setup... until it wasn’t. Turns out the culprit was a black dragon in a cave. I break down how the DM built tension, how the fight played out, and why black dragons make better villains than half the NPCs your players have ever met. If you’ve ever wondered how to run a dragon without it feeling like just another monster, this is the one to hear.
#ADnD #BlackDragon #GenConGaming
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:16):
Hey folks, welcome back to the Evil Dungeon Master AD and B
Universe Podcast. I'm your host, Evil Dungeon
Master Vince, and hopefully you're doing well.
It is Wednesday, I am back from Gen.
Con after having a wonderful time meeting up with a bunch of
people and playing games. Gen.
Con is definitely the best gaming convention that I've ever
gone to. I went back to early days of
(00:39):
2011, twelve. I thought it was great and then
I, you know, didn't go again. Now that I've gone back in 2025,
it proves again it is the best convention out there.
Whether you can find the most things and meet the most nicest
people in the world and meet newfriends and fun games.
Anyway, today's podcast is inspired by a Gen.
(01:01):
Con game that I played in which was a 1 E, AD and D game.
And I don't normally play in games, but Gen.
Con is a special occasion so I figured I'd play in a game.
I found a 1E game that was in the open gaming area during one
of the open gaming area days that actually had up one of
those little cones looking for players.
I was like why not? So I joined the group of some
(01:24):
friendly guys around, you know, age.
You would think of playing AD and D, probably guys older
though. There was one younger guy there
playing, I think he was the son of one of the other ones and he
was showing him the great 1E. But we were a party that was
around 5th, 6th level around there.
I was playing a fighter and we had no idea what it was really
(01:46):
coming into. The adventure started with us
coming into a village after justcoming from a long adventure,
going to looking for a place to rest for the night.
Well, the adventure basically had us roaming around the
village for a little while, which I was kind of like, all
right, this is interesting. And then we had got gone to, you
(02:06):
know, we heard some rumors aboutvillagers missing and people
getting worried about family members that are not coming back
after long trips. So we inquired with the local
law enforcement there and the mayor what was going on.
We found out that there possiblymight be something in the swamp
area that was attacking and eating villagers.
(02:29):
Now this seems like a really to me like a first level adventure
for fifth level virtual. Like this is kind of, you know,
small time. So I was like, all right,
whatever, it's a small time adventure going in the go
investigate the swamp and get paid, you know, bundles a little
money and probably take out somecoal boats or some goblins that
(02:51):
moved in. You know, something really
simple in the swamp area didn't really Click to me what it
really was because, I don't know, it just seemed like a one
small adventure. I mean, he set it up really
well. It's a spooky swamp.
People were scared to go to the swamp.
(03:13):
The swamp had a nice atmosphere going on.
So it was kind of like, all right, well, what are we going
to do? Well, we'll next morning we went
out and the DM never actually said what the monster was, never
actually alluded to what the monster was.
You know, we heard, we heard strange growling sounds.
(03:33):
And when we got closer into the swampy area, we got near a cave,
we saw some acid ruined scars. We saw some bodies that we had
investigated dead wildlife. No obvious tracks, just a lot of
real mood and tension building by the DM Suspicion around the
(03:53):
table rolled around and he did some foreshadowing that was
really done really well. Now after we found out it was,
we had seen weird things carved into The Cave walls which threw
us off because it was worded in words like, you know, beware,
(04:16):
get out, this is my cave. And we're like well what the
hell can this monster be? I was like all right, well
whatever. Little did we find out it's a
black dragon now the black dragon on you know he used
directly from the book I knew assoon as he started describing
what it can do and everything page 31 one to four armored
(04:36):
class of three movement of 12 dice hit dice of anywhere from
let's see here hit dice where did I see that is 6 to 8.
I just lost the the page there for a minute charger type is 8.
She's got three attacks and they're not that big of a deal,
but when it comes to the actual dragon himself with his breath
(05:00):
weapon, it's an acity like weapon that could basically just
kind of wipe us all out, especially a fifth level.
But he had the dragon kind of taunting us and talking to us.
He used the chance of Speaking of only 30% in this cave and the
dragon was kind of just like taunting us.
(05:21):
He's like, oh good, some more food for my stomach as I want to
eat today. I haven't eaten in a few days.
The village provides And he saidweird statements like that to
which we were like, wait a minute, the village provides.
And I was just like, I jumped inand I'm just like, listen,
Dragon, what do you mean by the village provides?
(05:43):
And he's like, don't you see thepeople they send out here?
They don't want to come back. They pay a tribute.
He was doing voices like that. And we were like, wait a minute.
So we figured out that not only that, these people were missing
the actual like town itself. I mean, nobility of the town was
worshipping this dragon and sending out people they really
(06:06):
didn't like or care for, families that did wrong.
They sent them out this way on purpose for the dragon.
And that's how they have to dealwith the dragon.
That's how the nobles kept themselves rich in this town.
As we've talked to the dragon, the dragon revealed all this in
his little monologue before he was going to kill us because
what do bad guys do? They monologue.
So the monologue he gloated and he spoke how he was going to eat
(06:29):
us and he couldn't wait for his next meal.
And every time he does this, he provides the town with
protection and riches. And the people that that have
made this deal with him, he promises that he will not attack
them unless they go a certain time period without sharing
something with him. Then he the dragon will attack
(06:51):
the town randomly. So they keep sending people over
and every time adventurers come in, adventurers get sucked into
coming over to him thinking he'sbasically a dragon that's
terrorizing the village. Meanwhile he's not.
So this is an excellent way to use what would be rather a kind
of a boring. I'm not.
(07:11):
It's not really that it's boring, but are just an average
black dragon. Sure, you got the black dragon
that terrorizes the village and you Avengers have to go and
fight it. Or we got the black dragon
that's, you know, kind of this is my land and you people were
my slaves. No, this is kind of a black
dragon that is setting up a dealwith the town that the town is
just sending all these people and all this food to him so they
(07:34):
can keep themselves rich. I thought it was an excellent
adventure. What we had to do was figure out
how to get around this. So we made a deal since the
black dragon, the black dragon is going to always Dragons are
just interested in deals whatsoever.
So we proposed, I said, well, well, what if we strike a deal
with you? And he's like, well, that's
(07:56):
interesting. And he is, what do you propose?
And I, I said to him, well, instead of you eating us, which
I know you want to do, how aboutwe do a favor for you and then
you let us go and then we will leave you as you do want with
your deal. And the Dragon's like, well, how
do I like to trust you? And we were trying to convince
(08:17):
him how to do this or that. But overall it came out to be
that he gave us a quest to go and go to another Dragon's cave
and steal one of their precious items out of there for him.
And it was some type of magical ring that he wanted.
So we had to go to the other cave and steal the item from
(08:39):
would look like a green dragon and steal it back from him.
Meanwhile did what we really didwas we left The Cave and he gave
us I think he was like 48 hours or so to do this.
But instead what we did was we planned our way to go back to
The Cave and attack this a hole and kill him while he was
(09:01):
sleeping. So we decided that we were going
to have our magic user was goingto get his sleep spells ready.
Now, obviously his magic resistance and everything in
place there, we didn't know whatit was, but we got lucky with
this. He was already sleeping when we
came back. We had the magic user cast the
sleep spell. We believe it worked.
(09:24):
So we snuck up on him. We got our first attacks in and
we beat him down into submission.
And then one of the other players reminded it that we can
beat a dragon down into submissiveness so that he serves
us. So we asked the team about that,
which he was a little unsure about the rules.
(09:45):
And then we kind of all together, since he was just a
thrown through game, he was justlike, yeah, that that works,
that's fine with me. So we beated the black dragon
down into submission while he was half awake, half asleep.
The spell did not work. He woke up, he breathed some
acid on us, but we were ready for him.
(10:05):
But two of the party members, there were seven of us, two of
them wound up dying due to the acid damage and too many hit
points struck on them because ofthis dragon was quite powerful.
But we did beat the dragon down into submission.
And our first thing was that we wanted the dragon to pretty much
(10:26):
attack the elders of the villagefor doing this in the village.
And that's where we left it off because it was just an impromptu
game for a couple hours before waiting for another game.
The dragon was going to go seek out the ones he made a deal with
and kill them to free this village.
Though little did we know the entire village was in.
The GM told us at the end that the entire village was in on
(10:47):
this whole plan. And then it was all a big setup
for anybody coming into town, that they would start making
these rumors and feel like they were sad and pathetic.
Meanwhile, they were all part ofthe big deal.
So that's a black dragon they typically found in like swamps
and marshes. So it was perfectly set up.
Not all the time it speaks. It's only got a 30% chance and
(11:08):
it's only got a 10% chance of magic use and it's always like a
5050 chance of sleeping. So it was an interesting battle
with the black dragon and an interesting little adventure for
a side adventure. I wouldn't call it like a full
adventure. I would call it a side adventure
since we put it in about two 2 1/2 hours.
But I thought it was an interesting way to use a black
(11:29):
dragon and have a little fun little AD and D fun with a
typical type dragon. I don't know.
Tell me what you think about theblack dragon in the comments
below. I wanted to just talk about this
little story and how well he used it for the Gen.
Con. For a group of people who didn't
even know each other and worked pretty well together, we're
beating down a dragon. So with that said, I'm going to
(11:49):
head out. Keep original, keep it old
school. Goodnight and God bless
everybody.
Hey folks, welcome back to the Evil Dungeon Master AD and B
Universe Podcast. I'm your host, Evil Dungeon
Master Vince, and hopefully you're doing well.
It is Wednesday, I am back from Gen.
Con after having a wonderful time meeting up with a bunch of
people and playing games. Gen.
Con is definitely the best gaming convention that I've ever
gone to. I went back to early days of
(00:39):
2011, twelve. I thought it was great and then
I, you know, didn't go again. Now that I've gone back in 2025,
it proves again it is the best convention out there.
Whether you can find the most things and meet the most nicest
people in the world and meet newfriends and fun games.
Anyway, today's podcast is inspired by a Gen.
(01:01):
Con game that I played in which was a 1 E, AD and D game.
And I don't normally play in games, but Gen.
Con is a special occasion so I figured I'd play in a game.
I found a 1E game that was in the open gaming area during one
of the open gaming area days that actually had up one of
those little cones looking for players.
I was like why not? So I joined the group of some
(01:24):
friendly guys around, you know, age.
You would think of playing AD and D, probably guys older
though. There was one younger guy there
playing, I think he was the son of one of the other ones and he
was showing him the great 1E. But we were a party that was
around 5th, 6th level around there.
I was playing a fighter and we had no idea what it was really
(01:46):
coming into. The adventure started with us
coming into a village after justcoming from a long adventure,
going to looking for a place to rest for the night.
Well, the adventure basically had us roaming around the
village for a little while, which I was kind of like, all
right, this is interesting. And then we had got gone to, you
(02:06):
know, we heard some rumors aboutvillagers missing and people
getting worried about family members that are not coming back
after long trips. So we inquired with the local
law enforcement there and the mayor what was going on.
We found out that there possiblymight be something in the swamp
area that was attacking and eating villagers.
(02:29):
Now this seems like a really to me like a first level adventure
for fifth level virtual. Like this is kind of, you know,
small time. So I was like, all right,
whatever, it's a small time adventure going in the go
investigate the swamp and get paid, you know, bundles a little
money and probably take out somecoal boats or some goblins that
(02:51):
moved in. You know, something really
simple in the swamp area didn't really Click to me what it
really was because, I don't know, it just seemed like a one
small adventure. I mean, he set it up really
well. It's a spooky swamp.
People were scared to go to the swamp.
(03:13):
The swamp had a nice atmosphere going on.
So it was kind of like, all right, well, what are we going
to do? Well, we'll next morning we went
out and the DM never actually said what the monster was, never
actually alluded to what the monster was.
You know, we heard, we heard strange growling sounds.
(03:33):
And when we got closer into the swampy area, we got near a cave,
we saw some acid ruined scars. We saw some bodies that we had
investigated dead wildlife. No obvious tracks, just a lot of
real mood and tension building by the DM Suspicion around the
(03:53):
table rolled around and he did some foreshadowing that was
really done really well. Now after we found out it was,
we had seen weird things carved into The Cave walls which threw
us off because it was worded in words like, you know, beware,
(04:16):
get out, this is my cave. And we're like well what the
hell can this monster be? I was like all right, well
whatever. Little did we find out it's a
black dragon now the black dragon on you know he used
directly from the book I knew assoon as he started describing
what it can do and everything page 31 one to four armored
(04:36):
class of three movement of 12 dice hit dice of anywhere from
let's see here hit dice where did I see that is 6 to 8.
I just lost the the page there for a minute charger type is 8.
She's got three attacks and they're not that big of a deal,
but when it comes to the actual dragon himself with his breath
(05:00):
weapon, it's an acity like weapon that could basically just
kind of wipe us all out, especially a fifth level.
But he had the dragon kind of taunting us and talking to us.
He used the chance of Speaking of only 30% in this cave and the
dragon was kind of just like taunting us.
(05:21):
He's like, oh good, some more food for my stomach as I want to
eat today. I haven't eaten in a few days.
The village provides And he saidweird statements like that to
which we were like, wait a minute, the village provides.
And I was just like, I jumped inand I'm just like, listen,
Dragon, what do you mean by the village provides?
(05:43):
And he's like, don't you see thepeople they send out here?
They don't want to come back. They pay a tribute.
He was doing voices like that. And we were like, wait a minute.
So we figured out that not only that, these people were missing
the actual like town itself. I mean, nobility of the town was
worshipping this dragon and sending out people they really
(06:06):
didn't like or care for, families that did wrong.
They sent them out this way on purpose for the dragon.
And that's how they have to dealwith the dragon.
That's how the nobles kept themselves rich in this town.
As we've talked to the dragon, the dragon revealed all this in
his little monologue before he was going to kill us because
what do bad guys do? They monologue.
So the monologue he gloated and he spoke how he was going to eat
(06:29):
us and he couldn't wait for his next meal.
And every time he does this, he provides the town with
protection and riches. And the people that that have
made this deal with him, he promises that he will not attack
them unless they go a certain time period without sharing
something with him. Then he the dragon will attack
(06:51):
the town randomly. So they keep sending people over
and every time adventurers come in, adventurers get sucked into
coming over to him thinking he'sbasically a dragon that's
terrorizing the village. Meanwhile he's not.
So this is an excellent way to use what would be rather a kind
of a boring. I'm not.
(07:11):
It's not really that it's boring, but are just an average
black dragon. Sure, you got the black dragon
that terrorizes the village and you Avengers have to go and
fight it. Or we got the black dragon
that's, you know, kind of this is my land and you people were
my slaves. No, this is kind of a black
dragon that is setting up a dealwith the town that the town is
just sending all these people and all this food to him so they
(07:34):
can keep themselves rich. I thought it was an excellent
adventure. What we had to do was figure out
how to get around this. So we made a deal since the
black dragon, the black dragon is going to always Dragons are
just interested in deals whatsoever.
So we proposed, I said, well, well, what if we strike a deal
with you? And he's like, well, that's
(07:56):
interesting. And he is, what do you propose?
And I, I said to him, well, instead of you eating us, which
I know you want to do, how aboutwe do a favor for you and then
you let us go and then we will leave you as you do want with
your deal. And the Dragon's like, well, how
do I like to trust you? And we were trying to convince
(08:17):
him how to do this or that. But overall it came out to be
that he gave us a quest to go and go to another Dragon's cave
and steal one of their precious items out of there for him.
And it was some type of magical ring that he wanted.
So we had to go to the other cave and steal the item from
(08:39):
would look like a green dragon and steal it back from him.
Meanwhile did what we really didwas we left The Cave and he gave
us I think he was like 48 hours or so to do this.
But instead what we did was we planned our way to go back to
The Cave and attack this a hole and kill him while he was
(09:01):
sleeping. So we decided that we were going
to have our magic user was goingto get his sleep spells ready.
Now, obviously his magic resistance and everything in
place there, we didn't know whatit was, but we got lucky with
this. He was already sleeping when we
came back. We had the magic user cast the
sleep spell. We believe it worked.
(09:24):
So we snuck up on him. We got our first attacks in and
we beat him down into submission.
And then one of the other players reminded it that we can
beat a dragon down into submissiveness so that he serves
us. So we asked the team about that,
which he was a little unsure about the rules.
(09:45):
And then we kind of all together, since he was just a
thrown through game, he was justlike, yeah, that that works,
that's fine with me. So we beated the black dragon
down into submission while he was half awake, half asleep.
The spell did not work. He woke up, he breathed some
acid on us, but we were ready for him.
(10:05):
But two of the party members, there were seven of us, two of
them wound up dying due to the acid damage and too many hit
points struck on them because ofthis dragon was quite powerful.
But we did beat the dragon down into submission.
And our first thing was that we wanted the dragon to pretty much
(10:26):
attack the elders of the villagefor doing this in the village.
And that's where we left it off because it was just an impromptu
game for a couple hours before waiting for another game.
The dragon was going to go seek out the ones he made a deal with
and kill them to free this village.
Though little did we know the entire village was in.
The GM told us at the end that the entire village was in on
(10:47):
this whole plan. And then it was all a big setup
for anybody coming into town, that they would start making
these rumors and feel like they were sad and pathetic.
Meanwhile, they were all part ofthe big deal.
So that's a black dragon they typically found in like swamps
and marshes. So it was perfectly set up.
Not all the time it speaks. It's only got a 30% chance and
(11:08):
it's only got a 10% chance of magic use and it's always like a
5050 chance of sleeping. So it was an interesting battle
with the black dragon and an interesting little adventure for
a side adventure. I wouldn't call it like a full
adventure. I would call it a side adventure
since we put it in about two 2 1/2 hours.
But I thought it was an interesting way to use a black
(11:29):
dragon and have a little fun little AD and D fun with a
typical type dragon. I don't know.
Tell me what you think about theblack dragon in the comments
below. I wanted to just talk about this
little story and how well he used it for the Gen.
Con. For a group of people who didn't
even know each other and worked pretty well together, we're
beating down a dragon. So with that said, I'm going to
(11:49):
head out. Keep original, keep it old
school. Goodnight and God bless
everybody.
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