The dragons in D&D play a suspiciously familiar Great Game
An article about the obscure lore of xorvintaal, the British Empire, and a very special Mongolian horse.
Towards the end of the lifecycle of D&D 3.5, Wizards of the Coast released their Monster Manual V. Tucked away in the middle of this peripheral book is an idea so good that people still talk about it to this day despite the fact that it has hardly been mentioned ever again in official D&D books. It's called Xorvintaal. The idea is simple: "A few dragons, young and old, devote their lives to a competition called xorvintaal, the ‘great game.’"
Imagine a fantasy world, populated by kings and queens, alliances and rivalries, wars of conquest and survival. Then, imagine all of that was the result of a game being played by the oldest, wisest, and most bored creatures in the material world—dragons. The core of Xorvintaal was the idea that the landscape of mortal existence was simply a chessboard. Wake up, meeple! You might think you're living lives of unbearable romance and tragedy, but you're simply pawns in a great game.
Part of the charm is that nobody knows the rules of this game. At least, nobody who isn't a dragon. The rulebook of xorvintaal takes centuries to learn (so marginally more than Mage the Ascension). But also, the rules are not the point. They're smoke and mirrors—convenient excuses for why there's this illogical dungeon here or this unnatural disaster there. You’re supposed to have fun with it. On the Knight At the Opera blog, artist and designer Dwiz, explains, ".... if asked about rules or strategy, you should try to improvise a long-winded, nonsensical explanation drawing from as much jargon as you can muster from whatever game you are really familiar with. So if you’re into Magic: the Gathering, then you start railing on and on about Aggro-Control, Burn, Board Wipe, Topdeck, and so on. If you play DotA 2 then you’ll be ranting about carries and supports and lanes and juking and whatever. If you play World of Warcraft, then you talk about DPS and Tanking and AoE and Cooldowns (unless you play 4E D&D, in which case you’re already using these terms. BOOM. Roasted)".
