Dragonhealing - Background
Home > Manuals > Dragonhealing > Background
Integrating the canonical idea of Dragonhealing into PernMUSH has been a contentious one. It involves skills from two crafts, and yet is centered in the Weyrs. No Dragonhealing program is ever completely successful at sustaining interest on the part of all its members and encouraging roleplaying.
Dragonhealing is meant to be a role-playing opportunity for people to roleplay with dragons. This needs to involve a lot of consensual role-playing skills so that a dragonhealer doesn't offend the dragons' riders, and it also needs to involve some canonical knowledge so that folks don't go around saying dragons have blood.
There are also proponents for making a dragonhealing program much more than that, similar to a craft, with the kinds of months and months of waiting to advance, and strict examinations. Trying to control people's roleplay with tests ("you can't do X on a dragon until you learn Y") only goes so far. It's not much fun to sit in one's room and roleplay not knowing something. In a Craft, it is fun because there are entire structures and hordes of apprentices, journeymen and masters to roleplay with each other. In a Weyr with one's canonically few dragonhealers - many of whom have other things to roleplay- it's not fun.
Therefore, Igen Weyr strives to strike a balance between requirements of knowledge (both OOC and IC) and the fun of roleplay.
The intention of Igen's dragonhealing program is to be an aid to roleplay. By that, the program is meant to give its members something going on in their lives that can be dropped into conversation, roleplayed about, or roleplayed out in detail: whatever level of depth a player wants. It is also meant to provide networking opportunities: to Igen's Weyrfolk (both riders and the other dragonhealers of the program), to Healer Hall, to Beastcraft Hall, to people at other Weyrs.
It is important to be aware that there is no way a single document could possibly hope to address every question related to dragonhealing, and as such this document does not attempt that. Since the emphasis of Igen's program is on roleplay, it has been deemed preferable to have dragonhealers who are good roleplayers, rather than ones who can simply spout forth information verbatim. The aim of the program and this document are to provide information to augment roleplay. There is technical information provided, but it is by no means the be all and end all of draconic information.
