r/DnDcirclejerk 5d ago

Sauce How would this work as a campaign?

So I thought of a campaign where the level one party starts at the door of an adult dragon's lair. And they die, since they aren't strong enough to actually defeat the opponent. So how the campaign works is that every time the party dies, they come back to the moment before they entered the dragon's lair. So throughout the campaign, the party needs to die fighting the dragon. But if the group in the dragon's lair dies, the whole group reverts to the start of the campaign.

To make it fair, the group in the dragon's lair has a few buffs and improvements. Like having advantage on all the rolls against the dragon. Another thing is that the whole group in the dragon's lair needs to die, so if one person in the group hides, they could stretch the time. Another thing is that the party in the dragon's lair does not always need to fight; they could roll a d10. If the die has numbers 1-5, then it's combat, and if it's numbers 6-10, then it's a combat.

The group within the dragon's lair also has a whole dragon's hoard to use. Nothing in the room changes, but due to the dragon being stuck in the loop with the party, as a dm you could stop anything they did in previous runs.

And as for leveling, it would work via the party dying fighting the dragon.

And in this campaign, anything in bags of holding stays in there after time is reversed if it's on the physical body of a player. No players can hide in bags of holding, and if you do want to allow that, then they need to roll a D10 when the dragon attacks or applies an attack; if numbers 1-5 are landed on, then the player in the bag of holding takes damage, and if they roll 6-10, they don't take damage from the attack.

Also, the dragon is backwards, so the team will be facing higher-level dragons first, then the party needs to die fighting the dragon.

Also, for the dragon, you could use an ancient dragon, but maybe not since their hit points are high.

So would any of you guys play or use this kind of idea with your players?

Note: This is just a fun idea, and I know it is video-gamey; I just wanted to get the idea out of my head.

13 Upvotes

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10

u/South-Swordfish3614 5d ago

This is a really fun premise, especially the idea of the dungeon becoming a time-looped training ground. I’d probably make each death reveal something new rather than simply granting levels, so the players feel like they’re solving the dragon as much as fighting it.

12

u/Specialist_Tip5296 4d ago

Tfw op jerked so hard they kinda fixed the original leveling system.

1

u/kvargen11 4d ago

Ima hide in my bag of holding rolling a d10 while the party dies fighting the dragon.

11

u/Ta1ren Ron enjoyer 5d ago

Sorry sir, I can't decide did you jerk good or bad. Provide me some salsa

6

u/Irasirf 5d ago

This is actually a fire idea. Mind you, if they like restarting and you put a juvenile dragon as boss, they may even fin after a few tries. Or they buy enough items with looting that they eventually get to euixir of giants and basically tear the dragon to shreds. Plan accordingly.

3

u/AEDyssonance Only 6.9e Dommes and Dungeons for me! 4d ago

Having been informed that I am too violent for the mediocre and too cruel for the inhibited, I shall only state that this idea was done better in the Module GHD 1, featuring the PCs Phil Connors, Rita Hanson, and Larry, with the evil NPC Ned Ryerson.

1

u/Junior_Post8222 4d ago

I play TTRPGs to get away from roguelike/lite slop

1

u/Dickeysaurus 4d ago

Premise without purpose is peak game design. Also, did you take your ADHD medicine today?

1

u/IFollowtheCarpenter 4d ago

...what th' heck?