The Economy of the Copper Dragon: Part 2

Picture an enthusiastic young dragon who has just discovered the joy of investment and community building, and possesses roughly the same level of restraint as a sugar-addled gnome in a fireworks shop (a gnome we’ll meet later).

Building Campaigns Around a Copper Dragon Patron: A DM’s Guide

Now, for those brave souls who wish to inflict, I mean, share, these experiences with their adventuring parties…

The unique nature of copper dragons can create a fun campaign arc that evolves as both dragon and communities mature. Each age stage presents different types of challenges, opportunities, adventure, and well-timed comedy.

Wyrmling Stage: The Eager Investor (Levels 1-6)

Theme: Small-scale community building with immediate, visible impacts (and frequent mishaps, usually magical in nature)

Picture an enthusiastic young dragon who has just discovered the joy of investment and community building – and possesses roughly the same level of restraint as a sugar-addled gnome in a fireworks shop.

A copper dragon wyrmling has enthusiasm that often exceeds their planning abilities, creating adventures focused on solving the unintended consequences of good intentions. Think of it as “community development meets slapstick comedy with occasional property damage.”

Adventure Seeds:

• The Overambitious Workshop: The wyrmling funds a magnificent artificer’s shop, but the magical experiments are now threatening the village
• The Abandoned Mine Revival: Reopening an old mining operations has awakened something that was definitely better left sleeping and has strong opinions about noise complaints
• The Festival Disaster: The dragon’s elaborate community celebration has attracted unwanted attention from bandits, rival communities, and at least one very confused owlbear

Young Adult Stage: The Network Builder (Levels 5-10)

Theme: Regional politics and interconnected communities

By this stage, the dragon has learned from early mistakes and now works to connect communities into mutually beneficial networks, though the learning process involves some spectacular miscalculations.

The dragon has developed some wisdom to match their enthusiasm, focusing adventures on managing complex relationships between different settlements while defending against external threats and the occasional internal dispute over trade routes.

Adventure Seeds:

• The Trade Route Fortress: Establish and defend a strategic waystation connecting two dragon-sponsored communities
• The Neutral Ground Academy: Create a shared institution where different communities can collaborate, learn, and engage in spirited debates about optimal cheese-aging techniques, despite farmers attempting to sabotaging the goods
• The Diplomatic Embassy: Navigate the politics of establishing the first formal diplomatic mission to a foreign land

Adult Stage: The Regional Power (Levels 8-14)

Theme: International diplomacy, sustainable development, and sophisticated humor

The dragon’s network has become a significant regional power, attracting broad attention and creating political situations complex enough to make even experienced diplomats reach for strong drink.

Adventure Seeds:

• The International Conference: Navigate complex negotiations in a neutral city where multiple kingdoms debate and wrangle for the future, and judge the corresponding annual pie contest!
• The Trade War: Respond to coordinated economic attacks designed to undermine prosperity through tariffs, sanctions, and stupidly passive-aggressive trade negotiations
• The Succession Crisis: Manage political upheaval when a neighboring kingdom’s ruler dies and various claimants seek network support (usually in exchange for questionable promises)

Ancient Stage: The Elder States (Levels 12-20)

Campaign Theme: Legacy building

The ancient copper dragon has created something greater than themselves, a civilization that must survive without their direct guidance, and which requires perhaps the most complex joke setup in history.

The ancient dragon faces the ultimate challenge: ensuring their life’s work can continue without them, while addressing threats that could destroy everything they’ve built.

Adventure Seeds:

• The Planar Embassy: Establish diplomatic relations with extraplanar entities whose involvement could secure or threaten the community’s future
• The Dragon’s Successor: Create institutions and train leaders who can maintain prosperity after the dragon’s eventual departure
• The Great Library: Build a repository of knowledge that preserves the wisdom and innovations of the entire community, despite threats from religious sects and rebel artificer arsonists

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Adventures with Comedic Timing

Sharing some specific examples of the delightful chaos that follows copper dragon investment projects.

The Overambitious Workshop (Levels 1-3)

Situation: Millhaven’s new artificer workshop, funded by an enthusiastic young copper dragon, has become a magical powder keg of epic proportions. Master Artificer Glintzy Cogsprocket’s experiments with “efficiency enhancement” have created unstable magical constructs that threaten not just the village, but possibly the fundamental laws of physics.

I may have been slightly overenthusiastic in my support of Glintz’s “revolutionary improvements to traditional crafting methods.” In my defense, his initial proposals seemed quite reasonable, and his enthusiasm was infectious. Unfortunately, so were his magical experiments.

Hook: The characters arrive in Millhaven as magical explosions rock the workshop district with the rhythmic persistence of a very destructive metronome. Panicked villagers flee past them carrying smoking belongings, while a merchant figure argues frantically with a soot-covered gnome outside a building wreathed in purple smoke and what appears to be sentient steam.

Encounters:

Meeting the Dragon: The copper dragon wyrmling (disguised as “Merchant Pete,” a helpful fellow with surprisingly extensive knowledge of local investment opportunities) desperately needs the characters’ help. He funded Glintzy’s workshop to bring prosperity to Millhaven, but the artificer’s enthusiasm exceeded his wisdom by approximately the same margin that a tornado exceeds a gentle breeze. Pete offers the characters 200 gp each to help contain the magical disasters before they spread to the rest of the village, and possibly the neighboring kingdoms.

“I know what you’re thinking,” Pete says, wringing his hands with theatrical distress, “‘How could such a obviously wise and foresighted patron allow this to happen?’ Well, let me tell you, Glintz’s initial proposals seemed perfectly reasonable! Who could have predicted that adding ‘efficiency runes’ to everything would result in… well, this?”

The Workshop Chaos: Use a modified version of the Manor map from Appendix B in the Dungeon Master’s Guide, representing a two-story workshop. Roll on the encounter table below for a random encounter or place each in an interesting looking room:

1d6	Encounter	Pete’s Commentary
1-2	2 Animated Brooms gone berserk (sweeping everything into the fireplace)	“Glintzy thought they needed more initiative. He was… technically correct.”
3-4	1 Homunculus and 3 Animated Objects (tools) fighting each other	“They’re having a disagreement about proper workshop organization. It’s gotten quite heated.”
5	Magical explosion (DC 13 Dex save or take 2d6 force damage)	“Ah, the efficiency runes are ‘optimizing’ again. Perfectly normal!”
6	Glintzy’s failed experiment: 1 Golem made of workshop materials (use the Flesh Golem stat block, but with half the standard hit points and only 1 slam per attack action)	“That one’s particularly tragic. It used to be a very nice workbench.”

Master Glintzy’s Laboratory: In the workshop’s upper level, Glintzy Cogsprocket (use Mage statistics, but replace spells with artificer-themed alternative decriptions) is trying to contain his greatest mistake: an Apparatus of Kwalish that he “improved” with unpredictable magical enhancements (use the Giant Crocodile stat block, with bite and tail attacks representing the pincers and legs of the apparatus)

“The beauty of the design,” Glintzy explains while dodging a grasping mechanical arm, “is that it’s so efficient, it operates even when we don’t want it to! That’s innovation!”

Player Objectives:

• Combat Obsessed Players: Face off against rogue constructs and the magnificently unpredictable apparatus in increasingly creative ways
• Exploration Obsessed Players: Navigate the chaotic workshop, if they find Glintz’s scattered notes they can glean what went wrong and how to fix it with appropriate Arcana (DC 15) or crafting (DC 17) checks
• Socially Obsessed Players: Convince Glintzy to accept help (challenging his professional pride) and join the fight against his rogue monstorsity, negotiate with “Copper Pete” about future safety protocols, and calm panicked villagers

Resolution: If the characters help stabilize the workshop and convince Glintzy to accept reasonable safety protocols, Tinkerholm gains a properly functioning artificer’s workshop that will provide minor magical services without threatening the locals. Copper Pete might reveal his true nature to the party and become a recurring patron, having learned the invaluable lesson that enthusiasm must be tempered with oversight, preferably the kind that prevents furniture from achieving sentience.

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The Stoneheart Bridge (Levels 7-8)

Situation: Two dragon-sponsored communities, Millhaven and Riverside, need a bridge across the turbulent Stoneheart River to complete their trade network and stop the weekly “great ferry debates.” However, bridge construction has awakened an ancient guardian that views the project as a territorial violation roughly equivalent to building a dance hall in a monastery.

Building infrastructure seems straightforward until you encounter the sort of complications that make you nostalgic for simple problems like rogue magical furniture.

Hook: The characters are either hired by the communities or sent by their young adult copper dragon patron to oversee the bridge’s completion. They arrive to find work halted as a massive Stone Giant has emerged from the riverbed, claiming the waters as its ancestral domain.

Encounters:

Diplomatic Overture: The Stone Giant, Thorgrim Deepstone (who speaks in the low measured tones of someone accustomed to thinking in geological time), is not inherently hostile but believes the bridge violates ancient treaties between giants and river spirits that predate most human civilizations by several millennia. Characters can attempt to negotiate, requiring successful DC 15 Persuasion checks modified by their approach:

• Showing respect for giant traditions. A successful history check (DC 16) might glean information about the traditions granting advantage on subsequent charisma checks (“Proper manners never go out of style, even across species”)
• Offering tribute or compensation: +2 bonus (“Acknowledgment of value given and received”) – assuming the gift is something the giant would appreciate, like an interesting crystalline formation or stone tablet reading material (a good waterproof romance novel in Giantish might also suffice)

“You small folk build quickly and think in moments,” Thorgrim rumbles, his voice like distant thunder, “but these waters have been sacred since your ancestors were learning to make fire.

The Engineering Challenge: Whether through negotiation or the more traditional approach of applying force until problems go away, the characters must solve the technical challenge of building a bridge that respects the ancient giant’s principles. This requires:

• Exploration: Survey the riverbed and discover ancient giant-carved channels that reveal the river’s true sacred geography (DC 18 Investigation)
• Social: Coordinate between Millhaven’s stoneworkers and Riverside’s engineers, two groups with very different approaches to “proper” construction techniques (DC 15 Persuasion)
• Combat: Deal with River Trolls who emerge when construction disturbs their lair and who have strong opinions about noise pollution (DC whatever, roll for inititative)

Character Objectives:

• Combat Obsessed Players: Fight river monsters and potentially face the Stone Giant if negotiations fail spectacularly
• Exploration Obsessed Players: Survey challenging terrain, discover ancient giant artifacts, and solve engineering puzzles that combine magic with practical construction
• Social Obsessed Players: Mediate between communities with different building philosophies, negotiate with an ancient giant, and coordinate complex construction efforts

Resolution: Success creates a bridge that becomes more than infrastructure, it’s a symbol of cooperation between communities and respect for ancient powers. The bridge provides significant economic benefits and becomes a pilgrimage site for those seeking to honor the old ways alongside the new, generating tourism revenue and at least three competing guidebooks (and a meager mention by Volo).

The Bridge of Millhaven represents a good mid-tier adventures where economic prosperity creates solvable problems. But what happens when success attracts darker attention? When industrial growth awakens ancient evils? When the dragon’s grand experiment threatens to collapse under the weight of its own success? That’s when adventurers earn their legendary status. We’ll look at High Level adventures in Part 3.