Anybody who got into Dungeons & Dragons through the 1991 beginner’s set probably remembers Kamro the white dragon. While not the first villain introduced in that boxed set, he was the first dragon, hiding in the central room of Stonefast. For many new gamers, he was essentially Baby’s First Dragon Fight.

When I Took DMing Seriously

In later years I got lazy about dungeon design, outlining a few key rooms and winging it. Back when I got started in RPGs, though, I took this stuff seriously. I dutifully pounded out descriptions for each room on my manual typewriter. I rolled on the room contents tables as suggested and generated treasure ahead of time. In game, I even recorded how long torches stayed burning and when I needed to roll for random encounters.

Some of my planned encounters were winners, such as a group of dwarves who hoped to slay the dragon and recover their ancient family treasure. Others were atrocious. I put in a werewolf at one point with the description of, “This room contains a white wolf. But he’s much bigger than a normal wolf. He must be a werewolf.” Back then, I had more enthusiasm than skill.

Facing Kamro

Kamro was the big awesome encounter of the dungeon, and there was a lot of buildup to his introduction. The group knew they were in for something big when the corridors all widened and led to a series of double doors. Finally, the group came face to face with Kamro himself. The dwarves, affected by the dragon’s fear aura, ran away immediately. So much for honor to their ancestors.

As a young white dragon, Kamro couldn’t speak, but he did understand some words. My mother, the veteran D&D player in the group, knew that it was best to attempt diplomacy with a dragon if possible. Her character bowed reverently and offered to pay the dragon for safe passage through the dungeon. Kamro liked this and showed mercy, allowing the group to live as long as they offered up a treasure. Unfortunately, he didn’t know enough to identify magic potions before he used them.

My halfling NPC, who was sort of the potions cabinet for the group, had in his collection a potion of diminution, which reduced anybody who drank it to six inches tall. He offered that up to the dragon, who downed it immediately. As Kamro shrunk down, the rest of the group leapt into action, tossing the dragon in a sack and lighting it on fire. The very surprised dragon quickly burned to death.

Leaving Stonefast

One other note I remember about Stonefast is that it had one of the most annoying rooms of all time in it. Behind several secret doors was a room with 100 treasure chests. Each chest was trapped – and with a 2^nd-level thief having less than a 20% chance to find traps, that meant that the traps were likely to go off. The traps unleashed poisonous gas. The ultimate reward for bypassing all of those traps and dealing with the dangers? One copper piece in ever chest.

Old school games seemed to have a habit of putting in an annoyance room once in a while that was designed just to screw with players. That’s one reason I’ll probably never run Stonefast again. If I put those same players through that insane trapped room filled with copper pieces immediately after a dragon fight, I’d probably have to run and hide afterward.

Plus, I don’t think any alternate take on that dungeon would beat the thrill of putting a tiny dragon in a sack and then lighting it on fire.

Images: Piotr Siedlicki, Dagny Mol, Larry Elmore, pxhere