TTRPG Tips & Tricks: The Chaos Dragon, a tool for keeping attention and facilitating fun chaos
This post is going to be about a GM character who has helped me run MANY games and let me quickly engage with players in a humorous way. The Chaos Dragon can diffus several common pitfalls in running TTRPGs with new and young players while keeping balance between the needs for chaos and consistency. I hope it helps, and… bring on the shenanigans!
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What is the Chaos Dragon?
The Chaos Dragon is… a hand puppet.
It is my hand that I make into a mouth shape, and I use it to talk to my TTRPG players as the Chaos Dragon when she pops up in the game.
This dragon is able to defy space-time, drops in if players need help or get too rowdy, can argue with and override the GM (also me) if she wins the argument, and is a random agent of whatever seems like the most fun thing to do at the moment.
This mostly involves sitting in the crossover dimension watching all the other dimensions on screens like they’re TV shows, but… she gets involved sometimes too.
She is the embodiment of the rule of cool crossed with a chaos goblin crossed with a kid-friendly version of Deadpool.
And she likes snacks. And jokes. And when the bard epically disses the bad guy.
How the Chaos Dragon started
The Chaos Dragon’s predecessor first appeared when I was running sessions of StoryGuider, specifically, the adventure where Will the Wizard meets the Loc Yes Monster.
There were a whole bunch of little kids staring up at me, I could see the attention fading at 2pm on the last day of the convention, I was also tired because… 2pm on the last day of the convention… and when we got to the Loc Yes Monster, I used my hand and a funny voice as a bit of a low effort bid for humor.
After about a minute, kids were falling off the bean bag chairs laughing.
The Loc Yes Monster, by the way, only says “yes” in different tones, so having a hand puppet that could face certain kids, jerk attention across the room and answer, “YES!?” to someone that yelled in to see if their friend was there, or face ME and not say anything to play up a “what did you set me up for here?” kind of bit let me do a lot without having to say much.
I used that in the next game and saw that they paid WAY more attention to Yessie than me, so I started using this hand puppet in other games with kiddo when he needed a shift in the game’s tone, and I eventually used it in a game with a group of tweens to represent a dragon.
And that group let me take this to a new level as they began to push the boundaries of what they could get away with and explain away when it came to interacting with this character.
She is now a standby character/tool that I’m bringing into almost all my games now (if she’s needed) since she can cross dimensions, so it’s still canon, right?
How to use the Chaos Dragon in a TTRPG
The Chaos Dragon can do a lot and is an ever-changing being who can be anywhere at any time, so she comes in handy (haha) for quite a bit.
I’m going to summarize some of the big hitters here, but… there’s a lot more than just this, and I’m sure you and other readers will probably come up with more ideas too.
Also, the Chaos Dragon does not do ALL of this in every game – she’s kind of there for what’s needed at that particular table.
So, if a particular player is seeking an in-world explanation for how the GM (out of world) can award a PC inspiration for doing something cool… I bring the Chaos Dragon in. This might not be necessary in another game though, so we just don’t bring that up. I pick and choose what works.
TTRPG genre crossovers
This is a big one because I like to make my games tailored to my player’s or players’ particular interests (it’s what I built my guidebook on). This means, I get a lot of situations where we maybe have super heroes and pop stars coming into medieval fantasy adventures, and some players want an explanation for that OR may try to push that freedom a bit further… and further… mid campaign.
The Chaos Dragon gives me a tool to explain in-world that there’s actually a multiverse and this one being (or maybe others like her) can access those different spaces. Our friend to the party wants to see things get interesting, so they’re willing to use their power to bring stuff into the game, but there’s also some limits to that power (and what the dragon wants). It’s a yes-and with enough bounds to keep the game consistent for those who need some consistency.
Managing pets and buddies
I think all but maybe one party that I’ve GM’d, when presented with the option to adopt a creature, being in need of a parent, or displaced eldritch horror have wanted to do so.
Then it tends to snowball.
Players try to tame everything, ask for pets as rewards instead of gear, and come up with some cool ideas for new adoptable entities to bring into the game… and I REALLY want to make sure I encourage that! It’s peak creativity and engagement, plus it’s also just fun to watch too.
The catch is that it gets hard to manage in the game sometimes too. If there’s too many pets that the party is taking care of at once or they think their buddy, who can’t really fight, might get hurt during an encounter, they turn from fun during downtime to a bit of a stress during action.
With the Chaos Dragon, there’s now a pocket dimension where NPC friends that have formed a strong bond with the party can hang out, have fun, watch the adventure through the Chaos Dragon’s screens to other worlds, and join back up with the party when the fight is done.
No beings can be forced into the pocket dimension if they don’t want to go there, and, if the party starts using this too much like a “pocket-sized monster PC storage system where they are trying to capture them all”, I can either put a limit to how many the Chaos Dragon can care for (which is still much higher than I’m willing to have in active play), or it clues me in that we might want to switch to a different game where the focus is specifically on befriending magical creatures.
Supplying food and water
I have had some players get very concerned about resource management, and, if I’m not running a resource management game, I don’t typically want their focus to be on that. I also don’t want anyone stressing about food scarcity if that’s something on their triggers list during our safety tools discussion.
So… the Chaos Dragon provides another solution!
She wants the party to succeed and be generally OK despite also wanting them to provide her with entertaining drama and high stakes action, so she helps with handling some of the off-screen needs during everyday travel.
Players don’t HAVE to buy up 40lbs of jerky to survive the next few weeks in the wilderness unless they WANT to. They don’t HAVE to worry about finding a way to transport a gallon of water per person per day for a 2 day hike across a desert.
The Chaos Dragon can also help players who have food preferences to know there’s a solid way to have vegetarian, vegan, etc options for their characters during travel too.
And, if I WANT a resource management game or no one brings up this concern, I just don’t introduce this concept to the players.
Redo or rewind for safety tools
Safety tools are REALLY important in TTRPGs, and one of the arguments I’ve seen against the rewind or redo tool is that it bothered them to just rewrite the story when a trigger is accidentally hit.
A lot of times, I think this argument is less about the in-game reasoning and more about someone not wanting to use safety tools, but… The Chaos Dragon also gives a super easy way to resolve that particular point by saying the Chaos Dragon decides that she agrees with the player who was triggered and we really should rewrite that part. She then boops the party into a very similar parallel timeline where that scene is different.
The Chaos Dragon is also a WONDERFUL tool for explaining why some things might just change moving forward. If a player forgot to mention during session 0 that they are terrified of snakes, we get into a plot revolving around visiting a snake temple, and then they bring it up… the Chaos Dragon can pop in to say, “Eh, I think a slime temple might work better… BAM! IT IS NOW ALL SLIME!”
Providing in-game info
This one, I don’t use so much with my adult players or really young players, but it comes in handy with the tween to teen groups that seem keen on figuring out what’s going on but tend to have a lot of inter-player chaos that may make it hard to collect thoughts.
If players are getting stuck and need a hint…. Summon the Chaos Dragon! ONLY IF the players all agree to summon her will she appear, and she can just kind of nudge the group into A direction if they’re having a hard time with something or maybe give assistance on something like a history check.
Typically, she’s not going to give a ton of info and will just allude to general themes OR may point out a clue they missed or don’t remember like she’s watching a crime drama and is getting frustrated that the detective skipped something important.
The point is, there’s a way out if players do really want some help, and it’s more engaging than them just asking me (the GM) for help.
Bringing attention back to the game
If my players are starting to argue, have spent 30 minutes debating the next turn (and are losing a couple players in the discussion), or are just getting a bit silly…. I slowly bring up the hand puppet dragon from the edge of the table or the screen, and have the Chaos Dragon just watch intently, shifting direction between who is talking or doing something.
It usually takes about 60 seconds for the group to see her, and then it starts with giggles or “oh no, she’s back!” or it goes quiet.
At that point, the Chaos Dragon might just wait for the players to settle and then slowly slip away, or they might speak up with something like:
“no no, go on! I want to know what happens next!”
“wait… so if you’re going to be in the kitchen and you’re going to be on the balcony, who is going to be in the ballroom stopping the assassin?!”
“Hey, are you OK? I can drop a time bubble to take a break if we need to.”
“Bro, you got so out of character I can see your player”
“I had to pull you into my pocket dimension or the frog king was going to get you while you were trying to figure out how to get his crown. I can only hold it for another 2 minutes…. And… timer go!”
It is going to all depend on the game’s tone, the group or individual, what’s going on, etc, BUT this gives me a very playful mechanism to reel the party back without having to the GM directly telling them what to do. It’s a gentle nudge to get back into character (since I’m now in character to talk with them), and it can add a bit of humor to diffuse a heated situation. Of course, if there’s a BIG issue at the table, I’ll be me and will settle that per our agreements during session 0, but for small stuff… This works really well.
Hopping dimensions when the story needs a change
The last one I’m going to cover is dimension hopping! I GM for a lot of young players, and sometimes when you have a game tailored to their pop culture interests, that interest can change faster than the game can keep up. Other times, it might turn out that this plotline isn’t clicking, but folks still want to keep their characters and stay in their story. AND sometimes I just want to run a dimension-hopping focused campaign where every 5 or sessions is in a different setting because that fits a particular overarching storyline.
ALL of these can be helped with… the Chaos Dragon!
If player interest is starting to fade, no one is really getting into the plotline, or you just want to change things up in a big way, the Chaos Dragon can just… change the channel.
Literally, she can come in with a remote control, say the story is boring (get that self-depricating humor from the GM), she has a side mission for you, or the villain went to Mars, and punt everyone into a totally different story.
There’s some kind of consistency USUALLY because the Chaos Dragon is at least watching and helping to provide some kind of common thread, but you can do a big adjustment to the story while giving a good reason for why everyone can keep their characters without any modifications, story rewrites, or totally resetting the campaign.
AND…. There’s a dozen other things that I want to write more on here (explaining how magic works, dishing out plothooks, facilitating some very specific shenanigans… ) but I will leave that to maybe a future post or for you to explore and generate some ideas on.
What I hope this does is give you a possible tool to bring into your games, which could be the Chaos Dragon, the Chaos Corvid, the Interdimensional Iguana, etc., and find a fun way to engage your players. This has been, by far, one of my favorite characters to act out as a GM, and I hope you have fun using these ideas in your game too!
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