The Cozy Dragon's Hoard of Dice

At a comparatively young age, I first read The Hobbit.

I’m certain beyond the shadow of a doubt that the above sentence has been written often enough that it hardly bears mentioning. It may be the most-written sentence in the history of creating an ‘about the author’ page for aspiring and accomplished fantasy writers. And yet, cliche or not, it fulfills the ‘what’s going on here’ field well, and so I shall expound.

The reason that I bring this up is that the Hobbit – and later, the Lord of the Rings – emphasized the dichotomy of the protagonists’ lives; that they have to give up relative comfort and security in pursuit of adventure. The indulgence of food and comfort are not spurned as selfishness or moral failings, but as a sacrifice made in the name of adventure. The open road is not without its blisters or saddle-sores.

Indeed, as the heroes in these and other, inspired works would tell you, the further that they got into their adventure, the less comfort or luxury there was. But the cheeses and cured meats, the gardens and teas and baked goods were every bit the part of fantasy as fighting a dragon or saving all of Middle Earth.

Fantasy novels, it seems, lean increasingly toward building cold worlds that are devoid of pleasure because they focus on the saving of the world but not why the world is worth saving.

More recent works have declined to engage with the premise. Game of Thrones delights in weird and off-putting food and drink, and seems to relish the idea that indulgence of any kind is somehow childish. The lands of Westeros are closer to the Desolation of Smaug than to even Gondor or Rohan, and our persistent view of the pseudo-medieval settings of most modern pseudo-medieval fantasy is that they were dismal. While no one will say that the life of a serf was joyous, it is the nature of the soul to crave moments of enjoyment – a man’s reach must exceed his grasp, or what’s a heaven for?

And so we come back to not the Desolation of Smaug, but to a Cozy Dragon’s hoard of dice. I’ll give my two cents on fantasy RPG tropes, and my thoughts on how to build in those moments of indulgence that make for warm and cozy fantasy. I’ll share some recipes, throw in a few homebrew mechanics, and try to help expand upon everywhere that a fantasy realm can be warm, indulgent, and enjoyable.

And I hope you’ll join me.