Racist Dragons

[SLOTHmaster]

Looking at the new Sorcerer class, his abilities depend on what type of dragon he descended from, which is not a problem. What I do object to is the way the dragons are named. Every other species with variants has a meaningful variety - hill dwarves live in the hills, mountain dwarves in the mountains; lightfoot halflings are kender, stout halflings hobbits, etc. But what does the name blue dragon tell about the dragon? Nothing except that it has blue scales and, due to the chromatic-metallic nomenclature, that it's evil. But without looking it up nor knowing beforehand, how does the name show a white dragon to be any different? White scales. Fifth edition doesn't seem to want to break with tradition, but I wouldn't mind seeing more evocative names; even "swamp dragon" and "snow dragon" would be better.

 

[DEFCON 1]

Looking at the new Sorcerer class, his abilities depend on what type of dragon he descended from, which is not a problem. What I do object to is the way the dragons are named. Every other species with variants has a meaningful variety - hill dwarves live in the hills, mountain dwarves in the mountains; lightfoot halflings are kender, stout halflings hobbits, etc. But what does the name blue dragon tell about the dragon? Nothing except that it has blue scales and, due to the chromatic-metallic nomenclature, that it's evil. But without looking it up nor knowing beforehand, how does the name show a white dragon to be any different? White scales. Fifth edition doesn't seem to want to break with tradition, but I wouldn't mind seeing more evocative names; even "swamp dragon" and "snow dragon" would be better.

I suspect because at least as far as the chromatic dragons are concerned... everyone either already knows or is able to easily infer that white means snow/cold, red means fire/mountains, green means forests and poison, black means swamps/acid, blue means lightning/sky. In fact... it's so well known and so easy to infer that Magic The Gathering basically copied the D&D chromatic dragons color format for their lands and magical foci. And this was even BEFORE WotC bought D&D.

We've had almost 40 years to have what being a "black dragon" truly represents, and have "black" be all the necessary description we really need.

 

[TerraDave]

even "swamp dragon" and "snow dragon" would be better.

They wouldn't be better. They would be worse.

 

[I'm A Banana]

If D&D does its marketing job, you WILL associate black dragons with acid and swamps.

 

[Umbran]

Every other species with variants has a meaningful variety - hill dwarves live in the hills, mountain dwarves in the mountains; lightfoot halflings are kender, stout halflings hobbits, etc. But what does the name blue dragon tell about the dragon?

Well, 'lightfoot halfling" doesn't really tell you anything either. You just happen to know what kender are, from Dragonlance, and can see the resemblance. You're just making a reference to prior works. With the dragons, they're doing the same - referring to tradition that is older, and has been pretty darned consistent.

 

[Tovec]

If anything I have no idea where the good dragons (metallic) belong. On a good day I can remember their alignments and breath weapons but good dragons are so similar in colour (gold, bronze, brass) and temperament that I often forget their nagging little details.

And that isn't including the whole new host of dragons introduced in 4e's MMs. If anything, frost dragon, swamp dragon, etc. are too limiting. I don't necessarily agree that a colour scale is best because I would rather see multi-coloured scaled dragons as the norm.

Now, I don't expect that to happen, but it is my wish. It is what I've long done in my home games. Generally speaking a primarily black dragon is going to be in a swamp but tell me (players) what breath weapon is the black dragon going to have with green colouring in his wings, red colouring at his horns, a black body with a golden-white underbelly? Exactly, non colour coded means I can make it whatever I feel like.

 

[mlund]

The lamer the material the lamer your metallic dragon. Just remember: Olympic Medals (hierarchy enforced), metal people steel out of AC and plumbing on buildings, cheap fittings and hinges at Home Depot.

1. Gold, LG
2. Silver, LG
3. Bronze, LG
4. Copper, CG (N tendencies)
5. Brass, CG (barely)

- Marty Lund

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Well, 'lightfoot halfling" doesn't really tell you anything either.

Their feet glow in the dark, right? Making them hunted as a material component for Continual Light spells no doubt!

 

[The Shadow]

Well, I don't know about racist, but I've always been annoyed by D&D's color-coded dragons.

It's positively story-destroying to be able to tell at a glance that a dragon is Chaotic Evil, breathes fire, and so on.

I'm with SLOTHmaster to this extent, that I'd rather see 'mountain dragons', 'swamp dragons', and the like. I just know for a fact that I'm not going to.

And then when we had all these evil chromatic dragons, we had to come up with symmetrically matching good metallic ones... and neutral crystalline ones... and so on. When it would have made more sense to just let dragons be, y'know, people, and freed up their alignment tendencies a bit. I don't mind if mountain dragons breathe fire, mostly have red scales, and are mostly pretty cranky. I just don't want to see "red = killable with a clear conscience".

I'd keep the gold dragon as an Asian variant, and also free up its alignment, then lose most of the other metallics. But again, I know this will never happen.

 

[Morrus]

I do object to is the way the dragons are named. ... what does the name blue dragon tell about the dragon? Nothing except that it has blue scales and, due to the chromatic-metallic nomenclature, that it's evil.

Really?