Racist Dragons

[howandwhy99]

I think dragons had more to do with territoriality and terrain than alignment. But there were the good and evil, metallic and chromatic.

They are all just like the goblins and orcs and ogres and pixies, trolls, centaurs, kobolds, bugbears, elves, dwarves, and even humans. They are all open to interpretation for each individual campaign setting.

Dragons don't even need to be colored in your game. Perhaps they are all invisible? (Man that would suck for us)

 

[billd91]

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

Unless your story doesn't depend on either of those bits of information being unknown, in which case, carry on.

 

[The Shadow]

Unless your story doesn't depend on either of those bits of information being unknown, in which case, carry on.

Fair enough. But beyond that, it just comes across as lazy worldbuilding. "We need to fill out the whole color wheel, and then they need metallic counterparts, etc." It's mindless completionism, and it's not interesting.

YMMV, of course. And as I said, I know as I know that the sun rises in the east, that it will not happen. This is not the hill they want to die on.

 

[Vael]

I prefer the Eberron approach that doesn't lock in alignments.

 

[billd91]

Fair enough. But beyond that, it just comes across as lazy worldbuilding. "We need to fill out the whole color wheel, and then they need metallic counterparts, etc." It's mindless completionism, and it's not interesting.

It needn't be uninteresting. What you can do is fill in the lore beyond the stats. If you can find it (or buy the PDF), check out Paizo's Dragons Revisited by Mike McArtor. It's got some really nice ideas in it.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Damn them for lazy worldbuilding!!! They should have used a more realistic naming convention, like RW bird names!

You know, like Bluebirds, Blackbirds, Redbirds...

Wait...what about blue whales, grey whales...errrr...Black bears and brown bears...



Naming critters for obvious features- especially colors- is something people do.

 

[The Shadow]

Naming critters for obvious features- especially colors- is something people do.

Again, it's not so much the color names that are the problem for me. It's the completionism, and the hardcoded alignment, and ... you know what? What's even the point? As I have repeatedly said, this is not an issue that's going to change.

I will point out that True20 dragons did just fine, and were much more interesting to me than the D&D ones, with only minimal changes.

 

[Grimmjow]

they gave names to the chromatics in the dragon supplements in 4e. green was forest and fey. Black was swamp and skull. Blue were known as storm dragons.

I dont remember any of the metallic dragons except that adamant dragons were cave dragons.

 

[Mishihari Lord]

... 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. ...

Where have you been the last 25 years? Unless you're brand new to D&D you know that a blue dragon is evil, breathes lightning, and lives in the desert.

That said, I often switch things up in my own game. I like mixing and matching dragon abilities so that each one is unique and creating unusual abilities, like breath weapons based on radiation or a gaze that inflicts flesh to ice. If the party is going to take on a dragon they're usually well served doing some research to find out what's known about their abilities.

 

[Jeff Carlsen]

I for one welcome our color-coded masters.

D&D dragons are so iconic that I sometimes react negatively when dragons in other creative works aren't color coded.

Honestly, dragons have seen so much love and development over the years that each type really has it's own identity, and that it is expected that individual dragons may deviate from it. I mean, all dragons are characters. So much so that, even though a given green dragon is evil, it might still be difficult to justify killing them on sight.