Do your PCs spend a lot of time in taverns drinking and gambling? Do you want to role-play the games perhaps as a change of pace or as a prelude to a cracking barroom brawl?
The dragon and the Thief is a perfect game for PCs to play when relaxing in their favourite tavern. They can play it among themselves or try to win coins from the locals. Unlike some gambling games, a single round of Dragon and the Thief can go on for some time, but large amounts of money are rarely won or lost as each player usually only puts down or picks up one coin at a time.
A game of Dragon and the Thief is a great way to introduce new NPCs – either normal locals, rival adventurers, thieves, rivals or even potential employers. A game of Dragon and the Thief is also the perfect backdrop for some impromptu information gathering.
How to Play
To play, Dragon and the Thief, each player needs two six‐sided dice and a game board. The game is best played with three or more players.

Game Board by Matt Morrow
Start: Before play begins, the players must decide what denomination of coin (copper, silver, gold or platinum) to wager. All players start by placing a coin of the relevant value on the number 7.
Who Goes First: The players all roll their dice. The player with the lowest score goes first. Thereafter, play passes to the left.
Playing: Each player rolls his dice. The result determines the player’s action:
- 2 (The Thief): The player takes all the coins except those on number seven (The Hoard).
- 3, 5, 6, 8, 9, 10 or 11: The player checks the number for a coin. If a coin is there, the player takes it. If there is no coin the player puts one down on that number.
- 4: The player does nothing.
- 7 (The Hoard): The player puts a new coin on that number.
- 12 (The Dragon): The player takes all the coins on the board.
Play continues as long as the participants want to play; players can join or drop out at any time.
Get it Free
This is an extract from a Raging Swan Press product released as a special Christmas gift. It’s still available as a free download and contains several different printable game boards along with lists of players and in-game events designed to spice up the PCs’ gambling session. You can grab a copy at RPGNow or DriveThruRPG. Get your copy today!
A WORK OF GREAT SCIENCE FICTION?
May 25
Posted by Jack
Is GRR Martin’s ASOIF not every bit as much a work of Great Science Fiction as it is a work of High Fantasy?
(Though, perhaps given the numerous bloody, torturous, criminal, immoral, and amoral events of the story and books, perhaps Epic Fantasy is a far better term than High Fantasy. I should also say that I have read quite a bit of Martin’s science fiction so I do not make this observation in a vacuum.)
In any case look at the background, the events, and the milieu of the world itself. Even the very planet is apparently out of sync, ecologically and biologically. You have a world whose very orbit and rotation seems seasonally misaligned.
You have a past superculture (Valyria), apparently with a fairly highly developed technology, who were abruptly and almost instantly annihilated in what appears to be a self-induced immolation or act of self-destruction.
You have incredible acts of architecture, engineering, and materials control, such as with the Wall.
You have what is essentially a wholly alien race of creatures (the White Walkers) who can disappear into hibernation for untold aeons only to reappear in a mutated and far more dangerous form. You have other species of peculiar natures and seemingly bizarre backgrounds, such as the giants and the Children.
You have a very dangerous long-term degenerating disease which looks very much like some form of designed biological agent. Or yet another mutating agent.
You have a boy who cannot only “warg” himself backwards in time to gain critical information or historical events, he can actually influence people in the past. In other words you have visionary time travel with a built in ability to influence previous timelines.
And I could list many other such elements, including the dragons themselves, and their obviously native and possibly enhanced, not animalistic intelligence.
Now none of these things negate the obviously fantastical elements of the story (whichever you take as the source material for the real story and the truer events, the books or the Game of Thrones show) but they do point out that the frontier between fantasy and science fiction in this case is an extremely thin line of division.
Then again the exact same thing could be said of Tolkien’s work.
The frontier between science fiction and fantasy in the works of both men is an uncertain one indeed. At least when it comes to certain obvious elements.
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Posted in ALLTHING, Beasts, Campaign/Campaign Development, Commentary, Community, Entertainment, Fantasy, Fiction, Information, Literature, Milieu/World/World Building, MY WRITINGS AND WORK, Myth, Science Fiction, THE FORGE, Uncategorized, Work, Writings and Verse
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Tags: ASOIF, disease, dragon, fantasy, Game of Thrones, Martin, science fiction, Tolkien, Valyria, Wall