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Dragonbon are?

What are Dragonborn?

  • Oviparous Reptiles - Egg laying

    Votes: 21 7.4%
  • Ovoviviparous Reptiles - Live Birth

    Votes: 18 6.4%
  • Monotremes - Egg laying mammals

    Votes: 10 3.5%
  • Marsupials

    Votes: 2 0.7%
  • Placental Mammals

    Votes: 1 0.4%
  • Ornithosuchia - Dionsauroid. Presumably warm blooded egg layers

    Votes: 49 17.4%
  • Avians

    Votes: 2 0.7%
  • A Fantasy Race, who cares?

    Votes: 138 48.9%
  • Tofu

    Votes: 29 10.3%
  • None of the above

    Votes: 12 4.3%

Didn't Soul Coughing do a song about this? DragonBonBon dragonbonbon...

And I think "Lizard Boobs" would be a good name for a band.
 

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ProfessorCirno said:
To quote myself in the other thread:

"While the 'unrealism' bit is part of the big complaint against dragonborn breasts, I think the crux of the argument is 'It's unimaginative, sloppy, lazy, and panders to the lowest common denominator, and if we wanted that, we'd play FATAL.'"

I tend to think the roles are reversed. I think it those that have a knee jerk reaction to dragonborn and boobs cheapens the elegance of the figure and reeks of "conservative family values". It reminds me of the kind of people who wanted to shut down d&d in the 70s and 80s. I'm not saying that their any anybody like this on these forums, but anytime people rally AGAINST expression of the body, i tend to get alittle annoyed. I just don't see whats wrong with it.

I just wanted to let you know that using words like "unimaginative, sloppy, lazy, and panders to the lowest common denominator" kindof hurts. Now i don't know if this was your view or if you were just sumerizing other peoples view but still.

I wonder if their is a forum were we can discuss this topic further as i think its getting a tad out of hand and might stray were mods would not want it to... no thanks to my post. sorry.

ps do you have a link to FATAL?
 

Moon-Lancer said:
I tend to think the roles are reversed. I think it those that have a knee jerk reaction to dragonborn and boobs cheapens the elegance of the figure and reeks of "conservative family values". It reminds me of the kind of people who wanted to shut down d&d in the 70s and 80s. I'm not saying that their any anybody like this on these forums, but anytime people rally AGAINST expression of the body, i tend to get alittle annoyed. I just don't see whats wrong with it.

I think its more people rallying to the inanity of a clearly reptilian creature being given a clearly mammalian physiological character. You're ascribing social context and implications that frankly aren't there.

What's wrong has nothing to do with 'conservative family values' or taboos, what's wrong is that they're given a feature that isn't really necessary. I fail to see how giving a reptile breasts is 'expression of the body'.
 


Kishin said:
I think its more people rallying to the inanity of a clearly reptilian creature being given a clearly mammalian physiological character. You're ascribing social context and implications that frankly aren't there.

What's wrong has nothing to do with 'conservative family values' or taboos, what's wrong is that they're given a feature that isn't really necessary. I fail to see how giving a reptile breasts is 'expression of the body'.

Any time the figure is put to paper its an expression of the body. Any time one thinks of the body its an expression of sorts.

We are anthropomorphizing lizards into humans. We give them them male breasts why should they we not have female breasts as well? Are you going to make me drudge up images of guys with boobs? Sure it surveys no function but guys to get natural boobs from time to time. Also let us not forget that in evolution their is sexual selection. And finely Platypus.

I think a bigger problem would be, how did all these races all come to resemble the human figure. At that point their is a much more complex thing to explain then just why do dragonborn have boobs.
 

Is it improbable to assume that something can lay eggs yet nurse their young but its natural for said creature to assume the basic humanoid shape without any divine assistance? Once divine assistance is needed, doesn't one throw logic out the window? i think thats little odd myself. I'm just saying, maybe this is a case of not seeing the forest through the trees.
 

Moon-Lancer said:
Any time the figure is put to paper its an expression of the body. Any time one thinks of the body its an expression of sorts.

We are anthropomorphizing lizards into humans. We give them them male breasts why should they we not have female breasts as well? Are you going to make me drudge up images of guys with boobs? Sure it surveys no function but guys to get natural boobs from time to time. Also let us not forget that in evolution their is sexual selection. And finely Platypus.

I think a bigger problem would be, how did all these races all come to resemble the human figure. At that point their is a much more complex thing to explain then just why do dragonborn have boobs.

I disagree. You're not expressing the body if its a non existent creature. Its not a depiction of a human. As for anthropomorphizing in general, I see it as a lazy way out, and frankly, we could do with less of it in fantasy.

It's already been pointed out that monotremes are mammals.

Your last point, I agree with its entirely. Why do so many things look Human? Well, the best answer for this is obviously to facilitate your ability to identify with them:It's easier to find a basis of relation for a creature that even only superficially resembles you.

Dice4Hire said:
Threads like this make me worry about how capable the gamer community is of actually reproducing. Dragonborn, or not.

You will never find a subculture more obsessed with minutiae.

However, I do thank the guiding principles of the universe for allowing me to find the white path between the rivers and still interact with the opposite sex, whereas years ago my 9th grade self was at one point firmly convinced he would have to abandon his gaming roots in order to interact with females. ;)
 

Kishin said:
Your last point, I agree with its entirely. Why do so many things look Human? Well, the best answer for this is obviously to facilitate your ability to identify with them:It's easier to find a basis of relation for a creature that even only superficially resembles you.

so what about the girl gamers who don't want man boobs? ;)

I also understand what your saying in the other parts of your post I didn't quot, I just don't know if I agree.
 

None of the Above for me, because it seemed the most appropriate. Dragonborn have been renamed to "Sir Not Appearing In This Campaign" at my table. (And here's why.)
 

Moon-Lancer said:
I tend to think the roles are reversed. I think it those that have a knee jerk reaction to dragonborn and boobs cheapens the elegance of the figure and reeks of "conservative family values". It reminds me of the kind of people who wanted to shut down d&d in the 70s and 80s. I'm not saying that their any anybody like this on these forums, but anytime people rally AGAINST expression of the body, i tend to get alittle annoyed. I just don't see whats wrong with it.

I just wanted to let you know that using words like "unimaginative, sloppy, lazy, and panders to the lowest common denominator" kindof hurts. Now i don't know if this was your view or if you were just sumerizing other peoples view but still.

I wonder if their is a forum were we can discuss this topic further as i think its getting a tad out of hand and might stray were mods would not want it to... no thanks to my post. sorry.

ps do you have a link to FATAL?

First of all, I regret using that most dreaded of acronyms, FATAL, to begin with, and have damned my soul in doing such (though I have done so before, so there wasn't much left to damn this time around). Do not follow down my god forsaken path into madness by looking further into it.

Secondly, I use unimaginative, sloppy, lazy, and pandering to...well, juvinile-ism may not be a word, but that fits better. And I use it because that's what boobs on dragonborn are. Let's not mess around. They aren't even breasts. They're boobs. They're there for two reasons: 1) make dragonborn women "sexy," which is, in my opinion, a dumb idea, and 2) make it really easy for people to tell the females and males apart.

There's nothing conservative about my statements - heck, go to the actual dragonborn thread, I think the best idea for the race would be making them a matriarchal society, something that I don't think has actually happened in D&D yet, excusing the psychotic and insane ones because...well, duh.

So why do I have my problems? I'll go through it with both one and two.

1) "Make dragonborn women sexy." The problem here is the question of "To whom?" Dragons don't have boobs (at last I'm pretty sure). And while it's true that often, creatures in the animal kingdom do things to show themselves off, not only is it rarely such humanoid features as breasts, but it's never the females that do so. Humans are one of the very few animals in which the female dresses up for the male. Which again brings me to my issue - who are dragonborn women supposed to look sexy for? Is it for dragonborn men? Or some of the more, er, varied young men who inevitably play Dungeons and Dragons? Let's both be honest here - dragonborn males weren't in mind when the breasts were slapped onto the dragonborn females. That's the first reason I say it's unimaginative, sloppy, lazy, and pandering (especially pandering); because it's not made with the game in mind, it's made for "Hahaha boobies" in mind.

2) "Make it easy to tell dragonborn females and males apart." Again, the same question comes up: "Who's telling them apart?" Do a small experiment. Go outside, and find a lizard. Just glance at it briefly. Can you tell it's gender? Probably not. Do other lizards have any problems telling it's gender? Probably equally unlikely. The *only* creatures in the game that should have heavy concerns with telling the two types of dragonborn apart should be, well, dragonborn.

Let me drift off topic momentarily - one of the problems I'm seeing with 4e, and one of the reasons I'm as...disagreeable with the fluff as I am, is that I'm not seeing varied and exciting races. What I'm seeing is "Humans...WITH A TAIL!" or "Humans...WITH SCALES!" This is what the dragonborn breasts do. It breaks DOWN that barrier that I think *should* be between dragonborn and humans. Because otherwise you're just playing another human with a silly costume on.

To go back on topic, and to readdress my previous statements, just slapping on breasts is the very literal interpretation of laziness. It's about as unimaginative as you can get if you want to add sexual dimorphism to just throw on a physical human trait and call it a day. In the case of dragonborn, I personally think the race would be greatly improved if they were less "anthro dragon people" and more of their own seperate race. To that end, you want a sexual dimorphism that ISN'T inherently human. My idea for it was to take a look at nature and see what she's been doing all these years, and the answer there was "male preening."

As I mentioned before, in the vast, VAST majority of the animal kingdom, it's the male that goes around screaming "Have sex with me, I can make my chest big and red!" To that end I proposed that, since dragonborn AREN'T specifically related to any one colored dragon flight, we keep the bronze and gold colors for females, but change the male scale colors to be very bright and vivid. I think it would have some really excellent roleplay ideas, and would fit in perfectly with their tribal, militaristic, and arrogant nature, where different color patterns could show tribal loyalties, and the dragonborn males could look down on the inferior non-dragonborn for how lifeless and un-manly their lack of colors are. It definitely adds sexual dimorphism, but makes it more alien and exotic, which is, in my opinion, what dragonborn are SUPPOSED to be. I mean, they're freaking dragon people. They aren't supposed to blend in perfectly with no troubles, especially in a world that's supposed to be mostly Bad Places with points of light; on the contrary, they should be a rare and wonderous (and fearful) sight.

And one more thing. I'm way too long winded.
 

Into the Woods

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