D&D General Companion Thread to D&D Survivor: Dragons, Metallic

[Mind of tempest]

I going to see if I can knock out Silver next as I find it equally boring

 

[Corinnguard]

I going to see if I can knock out Silver next as I find it equally boring

Are there any that excite you? curious

 

[RoughCoronet0]

Huh...I think both Chromatics and Metallic Dragons are pretty neat. Now grant it I do typically prefer the Chromatic Dragons personally (And Tiamat is one of my favorite deities in the game), but over the years I have grown very fond of the various types of Metallics and their different ideologies, strengths, and flaws. Ironically, having my first campaign be putting Metallic Dragons in roles as both the overarching villains and the victims needing to be saved from an overwhelming and corrupting force have made me grow even fonder of them, all while getting a fun chance to have the Chromatics be more benevolent versions of themselves.

Obviously this is playing them outside of the norm, but it has let me better appreciate the Metallics for what they typically are and I can't wait to see how else I'll use these dragons.

I'm still sad the Cobalt Dragons lost though.

 

[Scribe]

I going to see if I can knock out Silver next as I find it equally boring

Silver Dragons have been my thing since DL.

 

[Mind of tempest]

Are there any that excite you? curious

no any option I liked is gone so now I want to see if I can remove the next likely winner I still have a final to win.

Silver Dragons have been my thing since DL.

nothing wrong with that it is not personal.

 

[RealAlHazred]

Folks, why do we keep dropping a line without a contestant being eliminated?

Again, that was my bad. I snatched four hours of sleep under the tyranny of the Baby Dragon, and am glad someone caught it immediately!

I find the original D&D dragons to be dull as dishwater. Back then, people didn't want a lot of description of their monsters -- they're just experience points in a meat bag, after all; and besides different campaigns will have different ideas how these monsters work, so minimalism in description is better!

Which, of course, misses the point. I will change anything, anything, especially what you, the writer, believe you have set in stone, if it makes the setting/monster/spell interesting to me, the world-builder for my table. If it messes with my players' expectations, even better.

But later, after countless novels and modules and Ecology articles in Dragon magazine, they started putting loads of detail into monster descriptions. Sometimes it was great, but a lot of times it read like dry academic texts. You can do it well (see, for instance, the excellent A Folklore Bestiary by the Merry Mushmen), but a lot of authors felt like they needed to put in details but weren't inspired to come up with anything cool.

As for the original dragons, they were by then in everybody's campaign, so they got the blandest of official interpretations, so that they would hopefully fit in the most campaigns just fine, I suspect. When people came up with brand new dragons, they didn't feel constrained by those limitations, and a lot of the newer dragons are weird, and cool, and interesting as a result. For an example of this, see the free Cosmic Dragon Breviary by Tony Caspar; it's got a whole new type of dragons, and they're very different from the Chromatics and Metallics, and they seem at least somewhat interesting to me.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Again, that was my bad. I snatched four hours of sleep under the tyranny of the Baby Dragon, and am glad someone caught it immediately!

I find the original D&D dragons to be dull as dishwater. Back then, people didn't want a lot of description of their monsters -- they're just experience points in a meat bag, after all; and besides different campaigns will have different ideas how these monsters work, so minimalism in description is better!

Which, of course, misses the point. I will change anything, anything, especially what you, the writer, believe you have set in stone, if it makes the setting/monster/spell interesting to me, the world-builder for my table. If it messes with my players' expectations, even better.

But later, after countless novels and modules and Ecology articles in Dragon magazine, they started putting loads of detail into monster descriptions. Sometimes it was great, but a lot of times it read like dry academic texts. You can do it well (see, for instance, the excellent A Folklore Bestiary by the Merry Mushmen), but a lot of authors felt like they needed to put in details but weren't inspired to come up with anything cool.

As for the original dragons, they were by then in everybody's campaign, so they got the blandest of official interpretations, so that they would hopefully fit in the most campaigns just fine, I suspect. When people came up with brand new dragons, they didn't feel constrained by those limitations, and a lot of the newer dragons are weird, and cool, and interesting as a result. For an example of this, see the free Cosmic Dragon Breviary by Tony Caspar; it's got a whole new type of dragons, and they're very different from the Chromatics and Metallics, and they seem at least somewhat interesting to me.

I guess I just don't understand why dragons need to be weird to be interesting. I don't need to randomly get lychee and durian and loquat flavored jelly beans in order to enjoy them. Vanilla is the most popular flavor of ice cream and does, in fact, have distinctive and valuable flavor all by itself.

Weirdness for weirdness' sake alone just comes across as trying too hard. "Look how cool this thing is! Isn't it just the coolest! It's so different it just HAS to be cool!"

 

[Tonguez]

I guess I just don't understand why dragons need to be weird to be interesting. I don't need to randomly get lychee and durian and loquat flavored jelly beans in order to enjoy them. Vanilla is the most popular flavor of ice cream and does, in fact, have distinctive and valuable flavor all by itself.

Weirdness for weirdness' sake alone just comes across as trying too hard. "Look how cool this thing is! Isn't it just the coolest! It's so different it just HAS to be cool!"

yeah I tend to agree that while the ‘Nebula‘ dragon and Comet dragons look like fun ideas, they are a bit ‘weird for weirds sake’ rather than adding a new dynamic to dragons in a game.
Like Why are these Nebula dragons living in the desert on terrestial planets rather than being out in the depths of Spelljammerspace?

 

[Corinnguard]

I guess I just don't understand why dragons need to be weird to be interesting.

They don't need to be weird in order to be interesting. We just need to convert the Council of Wyrms setting to 5e.

 

[Uni-the-Unicorn!]

Conversely, I don't understand why metallics get so much hate, while chromatics are 99.9% dull Saturday morning cartoon villains in my experience. They don't even reach "magnificent bastard" status.

Then your experience is bad, don’t blame the dragons!