Ecology of the Dragonborn up

[Rel]

A few things:

1) Giskard, welcome to ENWorld.

2) Please review the rules.
2a) Like first of all watch the language. I deleted some of your more colorful metaphors above. That is not necessary to get your point across. Knock it off.
2b) That first post of yours is what we commonly call a "threadcrap". It basically is just a bunch of bile with little real substance to it. Knock that off too.

3) mhac...mnahc...mhacdebhandia, whatever, you there in Sydney: Even though Giskard got off on the wrong foot, no need for you to be insulting. Knock that off as well.

In summary: Everybody quit doing stuff I don't like. Now.

 

[Corjay]

In summary: Everybody quit doing stuff I don't like. Now.

LOL. So, nails on a chalkboard=bad.

 

[chaotix42]

I could do without the clever name-changing in the quotes, too.

Giskard, I have a recommendation for you. When you go to your next RPGA marathon session, ask if everyone there can agree to a pact, fellowship, or written contract. Start it off something like this:

We, the undersigned, while engaged in the act of playing the Dungeons and Dragons 4th Edition roleplaying game, will imagine that dragonborn women do NOT have boobies. They have flat chests - actually, well-developed pectorals more often than not - and perhaps they are monotremes or full-blown reptiles. Where their "milk patches" or ovipositors are located is uncertain. Whatever the truth of these most curious details, we, the undersigned, hereby abolish the possibility of dragonboobies amongst all other (credible) possibilities.

It should be a good start, and I don't think it will infringe on your RPGA duties or any prior agreements you had with the organization. In fact, since you seem to be so passionate about the subject your fellow players may be more inclined to agree to your "No Dragonboobies" stipulation.

I sincerely hope you enjoy your future gaming experiences despite your distaste of certain elements of 4e, but considering that you'll still be playing regardless of your satisfaction I hope you can adapt and find some middle ground along the way.

 

[Lurks-no-More]

Gryphons are fun. Dragonborn are cheap. And any attempt to make them more "humans with scales, but sexy and kewl" makes them cheaper.

How and why are Dragonborn cheap? It's your opinion, of course, but it seems to be something a lot of people don't share. (And "making female dragonborn instantly recognizable as female, instead of just dragon-people with different colors or a smaller crest" != "making them sexy and kewl".)

 

[rounser]

I, for one, welcome our new monotreme core race and will be retconning mammaries onto all female actual dragons as well, post haste.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

I agree for the most part with your assesment—the threshold dividing the conditionally believable fluff from the outright cheesy can vary for each individual and subject, but it does exist, and Wizards has arguably crossed it with the Dragonborn.

For you, certainly. I couldn't care less. (Oh, wait, that's not true. There are still some worse things)

Boobs are generally great on the mammalian humanoids. (I Don't think many will argue with that.) However, the placement of breasts on a creature that has no obvious evolutionary purpose for them taxes the suspension of disbelief, which in many cases can be critical to enjoying a fantasy/sci-fi experience.

The purpose of female breasts is to be a secondary sexual characteristic. It exists to attract males (similar to colorful feathing of male birds, except the other way around). Theories suggest that the female human breast grew in size when mankind begin to walk upright. The typical secondary characteristics, the female butt, were no longer easily visible in this position, which is why the breast of females enlarged.

Now, I understand that an argument can be made to take the fluff at face value and say that the race sprung from the blood of the dying Dragon god Io, but if you are going to take that stance, then you have to admit that Dragon's aren't mammalian and thus not monotremes,and they darn well don't have boobs. Personally, I think it is unlikely that any dragon or (especially) dragon-god would have any use for or want to have anything to do with breasts. If I were a dying dragon god, my last act as a celestial being wouldn't be to make my begotten-not-made descendents top-heavy with useless fleshbags.

What do we know about dying gods, aside that they don't exist in the real world? I could claim that if I was the creator of mankind, I wouldn't have created breasts for females. I would have focussed on mental capabiilties for both genders and make them so smart that they could figure out to live peacefully. Creating myths often make little sense in an objective or scientific point of view.

Now, take as an example the 3e Half-Dragons. This race had a logical explanation for the boobage. As half-human (or half-whatever else,) the breasts were assumed to come from the non-draconic side of the character's ancestral tree. This was a much easier pill to swallow. Likewise, the fluff explanation for the intermingling of dragon blood with the general population of DnD races was not only believeable, but Awesome. It added more reasons for Dragons to become involved with the affairs of the other races and contributed to the Dragon's characterization as an NPC character archetype in the campaign. It also hardly even stretched the suspension of disbelief—If I were cooped up in a lair for centuries without companionship, I'd be horny as .

Half-Dragons also indicate that Dragons have another purpose then to be killed or fought. Some apparently mate with them. And some can call them their father.

Metallic Dragons, by the way, are another sign for Dragons not being there to be killed.

The fact that Wizards felt it necessary to justify their pro-furry pandering with this ill-conceived monotreme retcon speaks to the fact that
dragonboobs just dont wash with the geek community. Wizards' decision to can a rich and perfectly workable backstory for the Half-Dragon is emblematic of everything else that is wrong with 4e: they overreached and threw out much of what worked about 3e and gave that edition its characteristic flavor. And if they are going to try and sell me a subscription to the fluff through Dragon? That's outrageous. Anyone not subscribing to DDI will automatically be getting an impoverished gaming experience, regardless of the quality of the fluff they release in the future

So given a logical explanation for the physique of a creature is not reasonable?

Damn... i gotta go, have to catch a bus.

 

[rounser]

Half-Dragons also indicate that Dragons have another purpose then to be killed or fought.

Acting as a posterboy for the template system, a 3E "proud nail"...?

 

[Jürgen Hubert]

That's actually a far more interesting criticisimn. I think it was Jürgen Huberts blog on Urbis where I noticed that a lot of races seemed to have a trait that caused that could lead them in conflict with others. (I think Dragonborn was one of them.) I liked that.

The article is here. Basically, in Urbis they were originally an artificial servitor race - dragons created them as servants from their favorite humans, but then the dragonborn got second thoughts about that relationship when a dragon matriarch became genocidal on them (note how the human origin of dragonborn nicely explains some of the stranger aspects of their anatomy, including the often-mentioned boobs).

The potential for conflict that Mustrum Ridcully mentioned is that after they fled their dragon overlords, they essentially became a race without a home country. And in recent decades, a new generation of dragonborn wants to change that. I've deliberately made a number of parallels to pre-WWII Zionism, and I think that approach works quite nicely...

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

All this Dragonboob worries seem to me as people are not finding any real faults in the Dragonborn, and instead care only about the superficial, meaningless.

I get the impression that maintaining a sense of wonder is difficult for experienced role-players. We know to much about numbers, "realismn" and stuff to care about the little things that give color to the game - unless we can nit-pick them...

- Hey, it reads here that my character hatched from an egg!
- Cool! Do you still have a piece of the shell?

- Hey, have you seen that Dragonborn Illustration?
- Terrible. Absolutely terrible. Reptilioids with Breasts? What were they thinking?!

But forward to more interesting stuff:

The article is here. Basically, in Urbis they were originally an artificial servitor race - dragons created them as servants from their favorite humans, but then the dragonborn got second thoughts about that relationship when a dragon matriarch became genocidal on them (note how the human origin of dragonborn nicely explains some of the stranger aspects of their anatomy, including the often-mentioned boobs).

The potential for conflict that Mustrum Ridcully mentioned is that after they fled their dragon overlords, they essentially became a race without a home country. And in recent decades, a new generation of dragonborn wants to change that. I've deliberately made a number of parallels to pre-WWII Zionism, and I think that approach works quite nicely...

Thanks for chiming in! I can only repeat I really liked your racial write-ups.
I hope that WotC will begin to do more in this direction - there should be more sources of potential conflict. They don't have to be developed in entirety, and there is no need for any open conflicts, but it would be helpful for the general Point-of-Light concept if there were a few more hooks on what to do.

Of course, I already have the general idea - for me, it's all about restoring the unity of the PoLs to fight and drive of the darkness. If I ever want to have a campaign run into epic, I am not content with stopping some cultist - it should end with the beginning of a new age of civilization and hope!

 

[Fenes]

How and why are Dragonborn cheap? It's your opinion, of course, but it seems to be something a lot of people don't share. (And "making female dragonborn instantly recognizable as female, instead of just dragon-people with different colors or a smaller crest" != "making them sexy and kewl".)

I consider them cheap because they were made for those people who like dragons, yet WotC didn't go all the way and made them actual dragons (tail, wings, size). They're a cheap stand in for real dragons.

IMHO, it would have been possible to add Dragons as a player race for those who like playing dragons, especially with the scope of the game now ranging from starting hero to god-like, and the stated "PCs are special and different from the rest of the world" theme. I certainly do not see any reason why an actual dragon adventuring in such a world would be anymore jarring or strange or theme altering than an entire repitilian race plopped into a setting.