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The Dragon & The City
Table of contents
What is The Dragon & The City?
The Dragon & The City is a card from the Storyteller Tactics deck by Pip Decks.
There’s a dragon outside the city walls.
Your world is no longer safe. What should you do?
Escape: find a safer place to live.
Defend: strengthen the city walls.
Attack: take on the dragon before he gets stronger.
Each option has risks and rewards. Just like your project.
Try this version of a story after Three Great Conflicts tactic.
When to use The Dragon & The City
- When a project lacks engagement or buy-in from stakeholders
- Facing a strategic pivot or major decision point
- Preparing for a high-stakes presentation or pitch
- Needing to align a team around a common vision
- Launching a new product or service that requires market excitement
How to use The Dragon & The City
You need to get people excited about your work. Turn your project goals into an epic story about a City (the status quo, safe but limited) and a Dragon (threatening but full of potential).
- What is your City?
- What is good and valuable in the status quo?
- What is wrong, unfair or wasteful?
- Who’s in charge? Who do you need to persuade to act?
- What is your Dragon?
- Where is the threat coming from?
- How has it been allowed to get this bad?
- Is there an opportunity here? (Dragons hoard gold!)
- Escape
- Where would you go?
- What should you take with you?
- What’s the cost of abandoning the city?
- Defend
- What is worth defending in the old city?
- How can you strengthen your walls?
- Walls protect, but they also restrict. What’s the cost of staying put?
- Attack
- What’s your best line of attack?
- What are your chances of winning?
- What’s the reward and is it worth the risk?
Use What’s It About? to bring your Dragon story into the real world.
