D&D General Why Did They Change Gold Dragons?

Aaron L · Jul 23, 2019

In the 1st Edition of AD&D, Gold Dragons were presented as Asian-style Dragons; wingless and serpentine (flying through sheer magic.) This matched their presentation as wise, intelligent, and benevolent, befitting the mythology of Chinese and Japanese-style dragons. Gold Dragons stood out from all the other dragons by being drawn from Asian mythology instead of European, with the drawings in the Gold Dragon entries in the 1E Monster Manual showing a serpentine Chinese dragon, and the pseudo-scientific nomenclature given for each dragon type in the MM made this even more obvious by labeling them as Draco Orientalus Sino Dux (basically "Dragon Eastern Chinese Duke.")

(I just went back and checked, and apparently even though the 2E MM drawing shows a Gold Dragon without wings the text says that they do have wings but often polymorph into wingless forms to swim better. Too bad... the change started all the way back then.)

So why then did the later books change Gold Dragons to being plain old standard European-style dragons just like all the others? It's boring and it has always bothered me. Having Gold Dragons stand out as specifically Chinese-style always made them more interesting, but now they're just presented as being just like all the others. Was it just because the artists wanted to make all the dragons look the same? (I never did care for the 3rd Edition dragon art anyway; the way the muscles where the wings attach was made to be so over-exaggerated just looked gross to me. These creatures fly mostly by magic, giving them bigger wing muscles doesn't do anything to make it any more "realistic.")

Is anyone aware of any actual good reasons for the change? Or was it just the artist's decision? Was it to make all true dragons look more similar to show they all "evolved" from the same base? (Which is unnecessary anyway, being creatures of magic.) Because I think it was a very poor decision that removed a lot of flavor and variety from the game, flavor and variety that had shown D&D was drawn from worldwide mythological sources and not just from Europe.

Tony Vargas · Jul 23, 2019

Aaron L said:
In the 1st Edition of AD&D, Gold Dragons were presented as Asian-style Dragons; wingless and serpentine (flying through sheer magic.)

So why then did the later books change Gold Dragons to being plain old standard European-style dragons just like all the others?

AFAICT, 2e ditched demons & devil's &c to be less offensive, maybe they decided to cut down on the orientalism/cultural-theft for similar reasons?

billd91 · Jul 23, 2019

Tony Vargas said:
AFAICT, 2e ditched demons & devil's &c to be less offensive, maybe they decided to cut down on the orientalism/cultural-theft for similar reasons?

Not with Oriental Adventures and Kara-Tur still out there. Plus, the 3e and 5e gold dragons retain the 'beards' of the classic Chinese dragons. If I had to guess, I'd suspect that they were given wings so they didn't get short-changed an attack form. 2e dragons introduce the wing attacks. Any dragon without wings would lose out on that attack form. And so the 2e gold dragons have wings in their natural form - as do all versions since.

cbwjm · Jul 23, 2019

I'd have thought that they were wanting to make them distinct from the oriental dragons.

MNblockhead · Jul 23, 2019

I'm a fan of Chinese "dragons" but I still really like the look of the 5e Gold Dragon. I think it keeps a lot of the flavor of the Chinese lóng , but is still something distinct.

Paul Farquhar · Jul 23, 2019

I suspect it was when the original Fiend Folio was published. It added a whole bunch of "Oriental Dragons" as an additional dragon subtype. So the gold dragon had to become western to indicate it did not go with those.

No reason you can't have gold dragons in your world looking Asian though.

Mirtek · Jul 23, 2019

If you can dig up the official dragon family tree that was once on the WotC website you'll find the golds to be most closely related to the oriental side of the draconic family.

The small "beards" they have is the most striking physical evidence

Maxperson · Jul 23, 2019

billd91 said:
Not with Oriental Adventures and Kara-Tur still out there. Plus, the 3e and 5e gold dragons retain the 'beards' of the classic Chinese dragons. If I had to guess, I'd suspect that they were given wings so they didn't get short-changed an attack form. 2e dragons introduce the wing attacks. Any dragon without wings would lose out on that attack form. And so the 2e gold dragons have wings in their natural form - as do all versions since.

I think the bold is the reason why. With the advent of real asian dragons hitting the shelves, gold dragons could, and probably should be changed to match the other color dragons.

Doug McCrae · Jul 23, 2019

The monk class was also removed from the 2e PHB and the hobgoblin art no longer presents them as Japanese. Perhaps part of an effort to remove East Asian elements.

dave2008 · Jul 23, 2019

@Paul Farquhar and @Maxperson have the most likely answer for you (post #6 & #8). However, to follow up with another possible explanation:

I don't believe the D&D (specifically Mentzer BECMI) gold dragons are ever describe as being wingless Asian-type dragons. So when 3e came along and "unified" D&D & AD&D perhaps they decided it was best to go with the winged variety and leave the wingless design to the Asian-inspired dragons.