Return to the Shady Dragon Inn (an Introduction)

Ten years. It’s incredible how ten years can be such a long damn time and such a short damn time at the same damn time. I’ve been stationed in Bahrain for a little over a year now, and imagine my surprise when one of my oldest friends came to town for a few weeks. After some catching up, Mark suggested that I make a long-overdue return to Dice Monkey, and I happily accepted.

But what would my first post be? A scathing review of an obscure roleplaying game? No…I’m far too nice for that. A play-by-play of my last session running Hoard of the Dragon Queen with my gaming group back home? How much time do you have? Then, it hit me. This would be the perfect forum to drop a project I’d been thinking about for some time…and here it goes.

In 1983, during Dungeons and Dragons 1st edition, Karl Smith wrote a supplement called The Shady Dragon Inn. This 32-page supplement featured a quaint map of an inn called the Shady Dragon, as well as more than one-hundred pregenerated characters for use as player characters or non-player characters. If you are unfamiliar with 1st edition D&D, there were four classes: Fighter, Magic-User, Cleric and Thief. In addition, there were three racial classes: Elf, Dwarf and Halfling.

Fast forward to 2018 and D&D 5th edition. The Player’s Handbook features nine character races and twelve character classes. Some quick math gives us 108 combinations of race and class. Line that up with the 100+ pregenerated characters from The Shady Dragon Inn, and I believe you can see where I’m going with this.

After scrubbing the book and choosing my 108 names (removing such wonderfully unwieldy names as Nikol the Necromancer and Fox Fingers), I set to work lining up the names with races and classes that seemed like a fit. Obviously most of the dwarves, elves and halflings remained the same, but not much else did.

So here are some notes on how we rescued and refurbished these characters:

• The names and genders remained true to The Shady Dragon Inn
• All races/classes/background are from the Player’s Handbook only. I wanted any player, regardless of experience or necessity, to be able to use a solitary book to pair with this supplement.
• All nine races and twelve classes are represented. Each subrace is also represented with the exception of drow.
• All thirteen backgrounds are represented with the exception of Sage, which is represented slightly more due to numbers and the fact that Sage is the ideal background for at least three classes.
• Height and weight were rolled randomly, as were the background’s personality trait, ideal, bond and flaw.
• Ability scores are per the Player’s Handbook standard set. (15, 14, 13, 12, 10, 8)
• Skills and equipment are based on class and background, but were chosen by me. Any spells the character may cast were also chosen by me.

Aaaaaaand…I think that’s it? If anything else comes up, or if you have any questions, please feel free to ask. The first character we’ll visit is Abel Artone. Check in on Saturday to meet him!