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<blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 7802137" data-attributes="member: 4937"><p>I personally like the color coded dragons probably for the same reason that they were originally introduced - diversity. My fear in getting rid of color coded dragons is that I would be subtracting and not adding.</p><p></p><p>Personally, I think this comes down to what you want from dragons. I've never really had a desire to have dragons as NPCs per se, since I think that demystifies them. I've never actually used a good aligned dragon in my 30 years of DMing. My preference is for dragons to be alien forces of nature, and if they have anything like human personalities then that is what would turn me off to their presentation. I don't really want dragons to be something you have a normal relationship with, or at least a conversation with that isn't fraught to terror and danger. And to me, that has only something to do with alignment and more to do with <em>these things aren't human</em>.</p><p></p><p>I've been working on building dragons to my taste, starting from first principles - what should have dragons been in 1e AD&D - and working up from there to what the blocks should look like converted to say 3e.</p><p></p><p>You can read the thread here:</p><p>[URL unfurl="true"]https://www.enworld.org/threads/revised-and-rebalanced-dragons-for-1e-ad-d.580811/[/URL]</p><p></p><p>But then, I've never looked at alignment as something that makes anything simplistic. I look at it only as a convenient marker or abstraction for something more complicated, not as something that erases that complication. Alignment is not and never has been personality and it is very difficult to actually predict personality from alignment. Nor am I the sort that is the slightest bothered by players metagaming based on their knowledge as players. I have no desire to cheaply impress, confuse, or awe my players. All that will come all on its own in due time (and sometimes undo time). Players are more often in the dark than they are supremely confident of everything, much less actually correct in their supreme confidence and not actually ridiculously over confident and acting entirely on wrong assumptions.</p><p></p><p>Give you some examples based on your examples:</p><p></p><p>"...they see it has silver scales. They are immediately put at ease, and openly greet their new friend, "Shimmershine the Uber-Powerful-Pandimensional-Beast-Who-For-Some-Reason-Is-Really-Nice-To-Everyone"."</p><p></p><p>Read my write up on Silver dragons. Players in my game world that act like that will probably be killed. They have just trespassed on a Silver dragon's property, and the Silver's first motivation will be to protect her lair, using nonlethal force if she is able to. However, since these are PC's, they'll probably be able to resist strongly enough that she'll just kill them. TPK. Stop being stupid players that metagame, and instead think this through - you are complete strangers that have just invaded what a powerful and dangerous being considers her property and she has absolutely no reason to trust that you aren't thieves and murders. As far as both sides will be concerned, they are acting in self-defense. And actually, if the silver isn't taken by surprises in this, it will almost certainly not present itself in true form anyway.</p><p></p><p>Why the heck do you think that 'good' means, "Is nice to everyone?" Why the heck should a silver dragon be nice to random heavily armed strangers? I mean, if a group of scruffy people with M-16s and hand grenades showed up on your front porch, would your first thought be, "Yeah, I can definitely trust those people. I'm not in any danger, and neither is my children or my property."</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Celebrim, post: 7802137, member: 4937"] I personally like the color coded dragons probably for the same reason that they were originally introduced - diversity. My fear in getting rid of color coded dragons is that I would be subtracting and not adding. Personally, I think this comes down to what you want from dragons. I've never really had a desire to have dragons as NPCs per se, since I think that demystifies them. I've never actually used a good aligned dragon in my 30 years of DMing. My preference is for dragons to be alien forces of nature, and if they have anything like human personalities then that is what would turn me off to their presentation. I don't really want dragons to be something you have a normal relationship with, or at least a conversation with that isn't fraught to terror and danger. And to me, that has only something to do with alignment and more to do with [I]these things aren't human[/I]. I've been working on building dragons to my taste, starting from first principles - what should have dragons been in 1e AD&D - and working up from there to what the blocks should look like converted to say 3e. You can read the thread here: [URL unfurl="true"]https://www.enworld.org/threads/revised-and-rebalanced-dragons-for-1e-ad-d.580811/[/URL] But then, I've never looked at alignment as something that makes anything simplistic. I look at it only as a convenient marker or abstraction for something more complicated, not as something that erases that complication. Alignment is not and never has been personality and it is very difficult to actually predict personality from alignment. Nor am I the sort that is the slightest bothered by players metagaming based on their knowledge as players. I have no desire to cheaply impress, confuse, or awe my players. All that will come all on its own in due time (and sometimes undo time). Players are more often in the dark than they are supremely confident of everything, much less actually correct in their supreme confidence and not actually ridiculously over confident and acting entirely on wrong assumptions. Give you some examples based on your examples: "...they see it has silver scales. They are immediately put at ease, and openly greet their new friend, "Shimmershine the Uber-Powerful-Pandimensional-Beast-Who-For-Some-Reason-Is-Really-Nice-To-Everyone"." Read my write up on Silver dragons. Players in my game world that act like that will probably be killed. They have just trespassed on a Silver dragon's property, and the Silver's first motivation will be to protect her lair, using nonlethal force if she is able to. However, since these are PC's, they'll probably be able to resist strongly enough that she'll just kill them. TPK. Stop being stupid players that metagame, and instead think this through - you are complete strangers that have just invaded what a powerful and dangerous being considers her property and she has absolutely no reason to trust that you aren't thieves and murders. As far as both sides will be concerned, they are acting in self-defense. And actually, if the silver isn't taken by surprises in this, it will almost certainly not present itself in true form anyway. Why the heck do you think that 'good' means, "Is nice to everyone?" Why the heck should a silver dragon be nice to random heavily armed strangers? I mean, if a group of scruffy people with M-16s and hand grenades showed up on your front porch, would your first thought be, "Yeah, I can definitely trust those people. I'm not in any danger, and neither is my children or my property." [/QUOTE]
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