jgsugden
Legend
I am having real trouble understanding what you mean. It sounds like you're saying that you never met a player that assumed dragons would be in a game without knowing there were dragons in D&D - which the name kind of gives away.Maybe some players. I've never been in a game with players who assumed dragons without already knowing about them ahead of time.
40 years experience. I've played with hundreds of DMs, and DMed for perhaps a thousand different players. Outside of Athas, Dragons have always had an important role in a setting ... not for every adventure, but absolutely for every campaign that ran the gambit of levels. That was a shoe that always dropped.