Legendary Dragons Kickstarter from Jetpack 7 Takes Flight
Coming on the heels of their most recent Kickstarter Masters and Minions, the Jetpack 7 team is right back at it with a brand new project. Legendary Dragons: A 5th Edition Supplement puts all the focus squarely on the most iconic creature in all of fantasy — dragons! All the majesty, terror and epic peril of a dragon confrontation will claim its rightful place as the most extraordinary encounter a D&D adventurer can face. Legendary Dragons: A 5th Edition Supplement for the world’s greatest roleplaying game is live right now, so go check it out and help dragons become the feared, world-shaking menaces they are meant to be.
Unleash the power of Legendary Dragons
One of the best things about Jetpack 7 products is the art. If you’ve got Gods & Goddesses or Masters and Minions on your bookshelf, you know what I’m talking about. The art in these books is so evocative, you can find inspiration for your D&D games just by thumbing through these books (or scrolling through if you’re into digital versions). Exploding with vibrant color and vivid detail, the gorgeous art in Jetpack 7 books is indicative of the best kind of D&D art — the kind that pulls you into exotic fantasy worlds and calls to your sense of adventure. Legendary Dragons will certainly be no exception. The art previewed on the Jetpack 7 website can attest to that.
My favorite thing about dragons has always been their place in the natural order. There are all manner of incredibly powerful creatures in the D&D multiverse, but other than a kraken, the tarrasque, and frighteningly enough a drow matron mother from Modenkainen’s Tome of Foes, dragons are the most powerful natural creatures in the world. All other monsters on par with ancient dragons are either elementals, fiends, undead or extraplanar. Dragons know they are at the top of the food chain, and Legendary Dragons looks like it aims to remind everyone else about it, too.
Personally, I’m a fan of using dragons in D&D games at any level. They’re in the name of the game, so it only feels right. My very first time playing D&D way back in the ’80s, we faced a white dragon that emerged from a treasure chest. (Cut me some slack, we were in 3rd grade.) It’s probably not a coincidence that several acclaimed starter adventures feature dragons either. *SPOILERS* Sunless Citadel famously features a white dragon wyrmling adventurers can help rescue for good ol’ Meepo the kobold, Lost Mine of Phandelver’s young green dragon lurks within Cragmaw Castle, and Hoard of the Dragon Queen starts off with an adult blue dragon attack a town!
The point is, dragons should be awe-inspiring at any level, from Calcryx in the Sunless Citadel right on up. In my home campaign, one of the party’s earlier quests involved investigating a missing dwarven forge master. The adventurers discovered she’d been waylaid by firenewts, who were using her elemental forge on a small moon to channel elemental fire and empower a flame dragon wyrmling. They stopped the firenewts’ ritual before it was complete, but the wyrmling absorbed enough energy to become a young flame dragon, which they chased down in their spelljamming ship and defeated. It was an epic moment the players still talk about.
In that same campaign, the main narrative thread revolves around void dragons, a terrible threat growing from beyond known space. Throughout all their various adventures, they’ve begun to piece together this tremendous danger and our last game session ended on a cliffhanger with their first true encounter with an actual void dragon. They are terrified.
Things get real when dragons are involved
My point is, using dragons of any sort across the spectrum of ages, colors or variety, should instill in players and their characters a sense that things just got real. Real dangerous! Facing a dragon isn’t like fighting anything else. These creatures exude power and peril. Even a campaign based entirely around dragons, with characters created specifically for the task of fighting them, should become a moment of truth when facing such a creature. It’s one thing to say you trained your whole life to fight dragons. It’s quite another to come face to face with one.
This is where I’m most anticipating Legendary Dragons to succeed. The premise of the Legendary Dragons Kickstarter is a guide to making dragons enrich your game — not just another monster collection. The book will spotlight at least a dozen specific Legendary Dragons, complete with their history and motivations. These won’t be “just another dragon” in your campaign. Each Legendary Dragon is a unique creature with all the tools a Game Master needs to include them in your game with impact.
If these unique dragons weren’t enough to inspire several campaigns on their own, Legendary Dragons will include a lot more stuff too. For starters, there are new dragon types, so the individual dragons themselves will not only have classics we all know like red dragons, but there will be brand new types as well. In addition, the dragon family will expand with new wyverns, drakes and hydras, new kobolds, and new dragon races.
Still not enough dragon for you? According to the Legendary Dragons Kickstarter page, the draconic goodness keeps on rolling with even more dragon-themed content like this:
- New Kobolds
- New Dragon Races
- New Lairs
- Dragon Cults
- Dragon Riders
- Dragon Hunters
- Dragon Hunting Factions
- Dragon Hunting & Monster Hunting Economies
- New spell components you can only get by hunting Dragons
- Enhance existing spells with your new Dragon spell components
- Items your players can find in a Dragon hoard
- Dragon Tactics and how to use Dragons effectively!
- New options for Aerial Combat
Up above, I mentioned void dragons, and I would be remiss if I didn’t highlight some of the creators working on Legendary Dragons.
Dan Dillon is one of my favorite creators, who was part of the team responsible from bringing void dragons to 5th Edition. He worked on Tome of Beasts, Creature Codex and several other Kobold Press products, Adventurers League content and a whole lot more. Dan is a fantastic writer and content creator, and I can’t wait to see what he brings to the dragon lair.
They’ve also got James J. Haeck on the team. His impressive credits include the Critical Tal-Dorei Campaign Setting, Waterdeep: Dragon Heist, and is the lead writer over at D&D Beyond.
Jim Pinto is another writer on the team, whose credits include Legend of the Five Rings and previous Jetpack 7 products Gods & Goddesses and Masters and Minions.
Nerdarchy friend Cody Lewis is also part of the Legendary Dragons team. Cody is a YouTube content creator behind the popular Taking 20 channel, as well as Save or Dice along with Nerdarchist Dave.
If you love dragons and want to help them claim their rightful place as the kings of monsters, go check out the Legendary Dragons Kickstarter. It looks like it’ll be an amazing book with everything a Game Master needs to make dragons the epic fantasy creatures they were always meant to be in our games. My imagination is already whirling with possibilities for campaigns I’d like to run!
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