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Maurice Tousignant
Canada
Windsor
Ontario
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Quickly: For some reason I really loved reading this one. Great resource.
Summary:
This is a 255 hardcover supplement for Dungeons and Dragons 4th edition. I would consider this a DM only product mainly, though I suggest letting the players either read the Dragon Lore section or slowly giving out that information in game.
The Book is divided into 4 chapters.
The 1st chapter talks about Dragon Lore. This goes into Physiology, life cycle, outlook, religion and more. Each chromatic dragon type is looked at in great detail including physical characteristics like wingspan and tail length.
The 2nd chapter is information for DMs. This contains Combat encounters, social encounters (including two fleshed out examples) and dragonic traps. Adventure seeds and hooks are listed including 6 fleshed out story arcs. Suggestions for Draconic patrons are given. Two campaign suggestions are listed. An entire section is devoted to Dragon Hordes. The chapter is finished off with new Artefacts, rituals and components as well as some Famous Dragons.
Chapter 3 includes 3 lairs for each tier of play. These are fully mapped out and each includes two fully detailed encounters.
Chapter 4 is the last half of the book and includes New Monsters. The non-standard Chromatic dragons (Purple, Gray and Brown) are statted out along with Wyrmling versions of your standard Chromatics. Many planar and Undead dragons are given as well as some creatures associated with Dragons (including Kobolds and Dragonborn). There are full stats for some famous dragons, including probably the most famous of all: Tiamat. The chapter finishes with a couple of templates and then some Alternative Powers.
The Good:
If you've read my Open Grave review the above structure will seem very familiar. What's odd is that I didn't like it in Open Grave but didn't mind it at all in this book. I found this one a much more enjoyable read and even liked reading the Dragon Lairs (which was the section I thought could have been omitted from Open Grave). I don't know if I just like Dragons more then Undead or what. This was a great book, I really enjoyed reading it and was inspired by each chapter to add something to one of my home games. The initial chapter on Outlook will have me running dragons completely different in every game I run going forward and I think my games will be more memorable and better for it.
The Bad:
As with open Grave, the section of Lairs was a bit long. For some reason or another I found it more enjoyable to read. I think mainly because the dragon lair is such an icon of fantasy, seeing 9 of them fully fleshed out was pretty cool. Still I doubt I will use many and definitely not all of these in my games, 3 per Tier is a bit much.
The Ugly:
I wasn't a fan of the Dragon Components section of the book. It just felt forced. It's like they know that it's a tradition to have wizards wanting dragon bits, but then don't actually want players to just be dissecting every dragon they find and I don't think they managed to find the right balance in this book either. I don't plan on adding any of that section to my games.
Overall
I found this to be a very well written easy and enjoyable read that has already influenced how I run Dragons in my game. There's some great stuff here. Overall the books pretty much just an expansion to the Monster Manual but I didn't mind that at all. I found myself inspired by nearly every section. Maybe there are a few too many lairs and I didn't like the idea of draconic components but that doesn't stop me from recommending this one.
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