Only if I can introduce you to a dozen who fit the stereotype perfectly! Heck, even the gold dragon in Witcher fits.
Yea and no. Humility is a rare trait in ANY dragon so arrogance comes with the meal, but in my experience Silver Dragons are less likely to judge you openly, and more likely to just do good things instead of promoting entire ideals.
The gold dragon rules you, teaches you, knows better than you, encourages you to think like it, can probably solve this without you except it's surely busy with other things. A silver dragon joins your party and does it with you. Probably dies heroically along the way.
I guess I just see this as demonizing what the gold does and brushing under the rug all the negative aspects of what the silver does, as argued upthread. Most dragons "rule you" and "encourage you to think like it"--even within that party, you can bet your britches the silver dragon is going to be manipulating people toward the ends it thinks are best. Demonizing the silver dragon is simply a matter of painting it as "ah, these weak mortals can't take care of this themselves, guess it's up to
us to actually save the day," or worse, as "ah, time for a little vacation as a mortal," heedless of the emotional cost that can take on folks who believe the lies the silver tells in order to join them.
To be clear, I don't see either dragon this way. Silver is absolutely one of my favorite types of dragon and I
do love that they genuinely get into the mix themselves a bit, having some skin in the game as it were. But it's good--for everyone--that some dragons
don't get personally involved, and if there's going to be a dragon behind the scenes, I'd prefer that it's a gold.
Of course, I'm also a bit biased because
this gentleman is an NPC I play in my
Jewel of the Desert game, and has proven wildly popular with my players. Shen has a mission (find and capture--or more likely kill--a hidden black dragon), but he treats the PCs as somewhere between "trusted friends" and "beloved grandchildren," people whom he turns to for help when he needs it and whom he brings gifts to when he has the opportunity. It genuinely got one of my players misty-eyed when his character had his reunion with Shen and heard, "I could not be more proud of you."
That's the kind of awesome stuff a really well-done gold dragon can pull off. A silver may be your buddy, your tag-team teammate, perhaps even your lover, but they're not really going to be the "Team Dad" archetype, to use the TVTropes term, or if you prefer, the "A Father To His Men" type.
