We don't need most of the old D&D dragons. Gold's can be folded into sovereign dragons. Copper, bronze and brass can be scrapped and use the personality and quirks for brand new dragons that actually stand apart. Chromatic are just elemental dragons so easy to redo or fold into existing elemental dragons. I would like to see Silver dragons return, perhaps mixed with mirror/iron dragon themes., A mythril dragon that tends to be a combination of social butterfly and social justice warrior or oppressor depending on how they view the communities they play with.
Then all we need is all the old pathfinder specific dragons back, there's plenty of those. Add more new ones or stat up the RFC dragons and that's a full dragon book.
The remaster name for Mythril is Dawnsilver, so that could be cheekier as a 'Dawnsilver Dragon'. Get a second skymetal dragon next to the Adamantine one.
(The wyvern/amphithere/dragon/linnorm thing you've got up there was literally made up by this one English fantasy author. Frankly, if we're choosing classification systems from children's fantasy, I'd rather we picked Graeme Base's The Discovery of Dragons than Dragonology. Much weirder and more interesting designs!)
Speaking of skymetal(-adjacent) dragons, I'm very curious to see if we'll get an Aucturnite Dragon, considering the SF2e Tech Playtest mentions it as a new exotic material (presumably any stats will be for Starfinder, but converting shouldn't be too hard). An Abysium Dragon would be cool as heck, with some kind of sickening aura (I would be physically unable to resist the urge to give it blueish bones visible through translucent green hide, but the people working on PF2e's dragons have been way more visually creative than me), or a Siccatite dragon for a unique option for cold damage, and that Dawnsilver could be pretty fun - it's basically a near-complete opposite material to adamantine, so seeing how much flex the mechanical chassis of "skymetal dragon" has in it.
While I enjoy using categories, the categories are from RPGs and other recent literature, not mythology. D&D itself had has four-limbed dragons and wingless dragons inspired by these myths, at least before 3E homogenized them (e.g. steel dragons).
With wyverns there can be wyverns as distinct relatives of dragons, types of dragons, or simply flying reptiles with a superficial resemblance to dragons.
At the same time, you can have dragons that happen to have four limbs with no particular relationship to wyverns except getting mad when being confused with one.
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(The wyvern/amphithere/dragon/linnorm thing you've got up there was literally made up by this one English fantasy author.That’s generally how it goes with fantasy-someone had to come up with the idea of a wyvern at some point, which is exactly why definitions matter. In real life, I can just show you a duck because we have a physical reference for what it looks like. But fantasy is different. We don’t have actual dragons to compare, so if we don’t protect those definitions, we end up with Smaug being redesigned and depicted as a wyvern-like creature instead of the dragon he originally was. Maybe you don’t see it as a big deal, and I get why no one likes feeling like their freedom is being limited. Still, there’s a reason definitions exist and why they need to be respected. If fantasy terms aren’t protected, they eventually lose all meaning.
Movie Smaug is explicitly a bad example for your argument. Because it wasn't arbitrary. There's plenty of interviews explaining that his initial design was based on the original four legged artwork but they couldn't get the model skeleton to move naturally and he came across as a blatantly artificical. The "wyvern," redesign was as much a practical decision based on technical limitations as anything else. Given that Smaug is what a lot of people consider to be the best thing about those movies. Often citing how impressively he moves. It was almost certainly the right choice to change him.
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Sure, why not? Stories are alive and they change over time. The OG western dragon was a legged serpent the size of a horse known for its terrible venom. When a creature is completely fixed in its portrayal that means its irrelevant and dead in the public conciousness.
By the way I'm not going to bother getting into a back and forth recursive argument with you. It's clear you have no interest in a debate. You just want someone to say you're right. So no point. Have fun getting the "last word."
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Movie Smaug is explicitly a bad example for your argument. Because it wasn't arbitrary. There's plenty of interviews explaining that his initial design was based on the original four legged artwork but they couldn't get the model skeleton to move naturally and he came across as a blatantly artificical. The "wyvern," redesign was as much a practical decision based on technical limitations as anything else. Given that Smaug is what a lot of people consider to be the best thing about those movies. Often citing how impressively he moves. It was almost certainly the right choice to change him.Well guess we should make vampires into glittering vegetarian xmen then after all so many teenager girls loved it.
I agree. Mythological creatures can and should be adapted into a multitude of different concepts and there's nothing wrong with that. I don't even care for the glittering vampires but I'll defend to death that it's fine to make a vampire concept like that because who cares. Dragons are the same, make them whatever way seems cool for what you're doing.
I assume that "Mythril" got trademarked by WotC, while "Mithril" is for Tolkien.
"Adamantine" didn't get changed though, despite also being used by WotC... and "Adamantium" got trademarked by Marvel.
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That's because Adamantine is from Mythology. It can't be trademarked.
That's because Adamantine is from Mythology. It can't be trademarked.
as "an archaic form of diamond" :O
I just learned that right now. Apparently, that's what Perseus's sword was crafted of when he decapitated the Medusa.
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Movie Smaug is explicitly a bad example for your argument. Because it wasn't arbitrary. There's plenty of interviews explaining that his initial design was based on the original four legged artwork but they couldn't get the model skeleton to move naturally and he came across as a blatantly artificical. The "wyvern," redesign was as much a practical decision based on technical limitations as anything else. Given that Smaug is what a lot of people consider to be the best thing about those movies. Often citing how impressively he moves. It was almost certainly the right choice to change him.Well guess we should make vampires into glittering vegetarian xmen then after all so many teenager girls loved it.
Obviously it would be absurd to allow vampires to glitter - we should keep vampires how they have always been. Any vampire that doesn't follow the trend of Lord Ruthven in The Vampyre is obviously a contemptuous betrayal of tradition - all of this nonsense about garlic and burning in the sun and being highly capable in a fight should never have been in the vampiric tradition, they should be killed by bandits like they have traditionally been.
Sarcasm, obviously - at what point do we decide a fantasy concept should be set in stone? It's nonsensical, these are shared concepts that will naturally evolve over time in ways that people find interesting, and that keeps them relevant. It is good that vampires are weak to sunlight, that is an interesting twist that was thoroughly changed from their original creation as a fantasy creature.
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The wonderful thing is that you can *add* things.
Maybe there's a kind of vampire that sparkles. Maybe there's a kind of four-limbed dragon that sparkles.
Reality has the platypus - fantasy doesn't need to be less weird than real life.
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No matter what they tell you, remember: YOU ARE RIGHT! Fantasy definitions must be defended; otherwise, we end up with vampires that glitter in the sun and goblins that look like green elves. If you choose to die on this hill, I will die at your side.Dragons are a reference to Greek serpents, and then the word and concept evolved and got leggier and wingier, possibly partly due to fossil finds etc. The "Asian dragons" aka the loong likely have a similar origin but developed separately, so are only dragons by convergent cultural evolution.Oh boy :p
- Dragon -> 4 limbs, 2 wings- Wyvern -> 2 hind limbs, 2 wings, 1 stinger
- Drake -> 4 limbs, no wing
- Lung -> 4 limbs, no wing, can fly
- Wyrm / Serpent -> no limb, no wing
- Amphithere -> no limb, 2 wings
- Linnorm -> 2 fore limbs, 2 wings
Why are those bad things? Twilight didn't change how vampires are written or depcited in media, and it's very very rare that something does. Nothing was lost.
The idea that fictional concepts need to be locked in one incarnation forever is absurd and would make things like TTRPGs very very boring.
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That's because Adamantine is from Mythology. It can't be trademarked.
Same goes for orichalcum while we're at it.
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The wonderful thing is that you can *add* things.
Maybe there's a kind of vampire that sparkles. Maybe there's a kind of four-limbed dragon that sparkles.
Reality has the platypus - fantasy doesn't need to be less weird than real life.
I think a great setting to look at for this is Monster Hunter. There's so many variations on wyverns and draconic cousins with different morphology and traits. From stuff like the Gravios and Rompopolo whose wings are semi-vestigial weapons, some species that evolved to be more bird-like such as the Kut-Ku and Malfestio, some walking on their wings like the tigrex and nargacuga, some breath fire and some shed virus, etc..
Riding Drakes in Pathfinder don't have art, but since all other drake monsters are winged bipeds I imagine the Riding Drake to be something like a Tigrex or a flightless Rathian.
Why should one random work of fantasy's definitions be forcefully applied to every other work of fantasy as some sort of standard? Not even Lord of the Rings was popular enough to establish orcs and goblins as being basically the same, and western fantasy is practically defined by how it treats the Tolkien inspired bits.(The wyvern/amphithere/dragon/linnorm thing you've got up there was literally made up by this one English fantasy author.That’s generally how it goes with fantasy-someone had to come up with the idea of a wyvern at some point, which is exactly why definitions matter. In real life, I can just show you a duck because we have a physical reference for what it looks like. But fantasy is different. We don’t have actual dragons to compare, so if we don’t protect those definitions, we end up with Smaug being redesigned and depicted as a wyvern-like creature instead of the dragon he originally was. Maybe you don’t see it as a big deal, and I get why no one likes feeling like their freedom is being limited. Still, there’s a reason definitions exist and why they need to be respected. If fantasy terms aren’t protected, they eventually lose all meaning.
Sometimes, it's because it breaks the mold in creative ways...
For instance, before Dawn of the Dead, 28 Days later and Quarantine, zombies were sluggish and slow, with little to no threat. Now, most zombies games, movies and other works of fiction, including Left 4 Dead and The Walking Dead, zombies are now ravenous predators with blinding speed.
Superheroes also got the same treatment, when most movies were light-hearted and silly, until they got dark and serious, all of the sudden.
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Movie Smaug is explicitly a bad example for your argument. Because it wasn't arbitrary. There's plenty of interviews explaining that his initial design was based on the original four legged artwork but they couldn't get the model skeleton to move naturally and he came across as a blatantly artificical. The "wyvern," redesign was as much a practical decision based on technical limitations as anything else. Given that Smaug is what a lot of people consider to be the best thing about those movies. Often citing how impressively he moves. It was almost certainly the right choice to change him.Well guess we should make vampires into glittering vegetarian xmen then after all so many teenager girls loved it.
If "burning in the sunlight" is an inherent trait of vampires, somebody better tell Dracula, Carmilla, Varney, Ruthven, and many other foundational vampires that. They'll just look silly otherwise.
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All things shift with time. Things tying back to culture (language, mythology, fashion, art) shift at a horrifically faster pace than anything else in the natural world. So yea, what is and isn't a thing in something as human and artificial a construct as a dragon is going to depend on where the needle is in the current zeitgeist.
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Anyway, let's hope the Draconic Codex brings what we're hoping for in P2E :)
Holy moly I ddn't realize there were so many Twilight fans in this forum.
You don't need to enjoy something to respect someone else's joys. I'm pretty sure the bigger market for a Sparkle in the Twilight here is of the tiny horse variety, but in either case if there's an interesting idea why not. We already have dhampirs and fetchlings, after all. "If", of course.
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You don't have to like something to defend it's creative freedom.
Dragonets as Tiny
Kobolds as Small
Wyvarans as Medium
Dragonkins as Large
Dragonblood as any size
I think we got them all.
The Wyvarans could be a good opportunity to branch them "away from wyverns". Since those are kobold experiments, it would be possible to see a wyvarans based on drakes, hydras, linnorms and such, in addition of wyverns.
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Not to continue to derail this thread, but Ryangwy has it right.
Vampires are make believe creatures, they don't actually exists. They are a tool for telling a story, a metaphor or extended allegory. Twilight understands this and alters them as it sees fit to tell the story they want to tell.
Just like how Paizo has moved away from "there are 5 colors and 5 metals" to instead have the dragons e more closely linked to a specific magical tradition.
Personally I'm super into the Tradition based grouping of dragons as the primary for Pathfinder. I feel it really places the dragons into the lore and the mechanics of the game in a strong way. Having the various families freed from previous patterns gives more variety and indivuality. The old pattern of new groups being in fives was great continuing off the DnD tradition, but I don't think Paizo is going to hold to that any longer. A single type of 2e dragon can pretty easily represent more than one type of 1ed dragon, and some 1ed dragons can easily be represented by multiple different 2e dragons. They are definitely taking good advantage of reframing.
It does suck to lose some cool old elements to OGL distancing, but considering the cross compatibility and what is already out there I feel the community can produce reasonable accommodations.
Their best option is to have one dragon per plane.
One such thing is to have one dragon per elemental plane, like "expanding the Primal and Imperial Dragons from 4 or 5 to 6" :)
Their best option is to have one dragon per plane.
One such thing is to have one dragon per elemental plane, like "expanding the Primal and Imperial Dragons from 4 or 5 to 6" :)
James Jacobs has said on several occasions that this is they type of symmetry that Paizo tries to avoid. Every plane doesn't need its own dragon and it's more interesting when they don't.
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Nearly all modern fantasy is a twist on something, it's very likely everything you hold dear in the genre is a twist from the original.
"Original" dragons would just be Komodo dragons at that point.
I find the idea of rediscovering the "original" or "more authentic" form of a myth or fantasy creature is really attractive, but overwhelmingly the answer is "there is no definitive version of this thing" if you go back more than the last 100 years. What we think of as the classic is just what was popular when we came into the picture. Weird offshoots like vampires being weak to sunlight rule the day for as long as the idea works for the stories it needs to tell, and fall by the wayside when people stop being interested in those particular tropes.
No story is ruined if a different story does something differently. Heck, even if sparkling vampires became the default in popular consciousness tomorrow, I would be disappointed, but Dracula still would walk in the sun without sparkling (or burning) in his own story. Every story necessarily gets to (and has to) define fantasy terms for itself based on a nebulous and ever-shifting collective picture that sometimes only loosely bears any resemblance to other takes kn the same concept. The derivation has been replacing the 'original' for centuries, I don't think it's going to stop now just because we in this moment thought it should.
The issue is when you remove something, not when you add to it. Dilution can certainly happen, but that's usually going to happen when nothing is particularly more popular than anything else.
For instance, when you force dragons to be strictly beings with 4 legs and 2 wings you lose a lot of wonder and creativity.
I kid you not, back in D&D 2E, the Steel Dragon wasn't considered Metallic, because it lacked a second breath weapon, while the Yellow Dragon wasn't Chromatic, because it lacked wings ^^;
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A toxic dragon that could spritz venom like a spitting cobra, but was more likely to inject it through a bite, be surrounded by a toxic funk of it, or spray it onto anyone who stabbed or cut it, could be fun.
No 'clouds of chlorine gas' or anything that smells like D&D IP, but more like ye olde dragons that were occasionally described as so toxic that knights had to kill them with a long lance, to avoid getting killed in return by their toxic blood.
A 'mist' or 'cloud' dragon that actually took the form of a gargantuan cloud in the sky to travel at a stately pace, and then coalesced only at night into a much smaller (but still large!) serpentine gray-white-silvery form, leaving a thick fog behind it as it traveled (through which it could see just fine, but blinding most anyone attempting to fight it). A dragon hissing and slithering through the all-concealing fog, lunging out to bite or rake or tail-smack people, could be a fun horror-y sort of encounter, since they'd barely ever see more than a flash of the creature that is toying with them.
I do like the idea of coming up with dragons not to fit some arbitrary scheme, like colors or metals or gemstones or planes or 'one for every terrain category,' but based on traits that would make for compelling encounters. (I also like the original format, just like my own 'not gemstone!' dragons of pearl, coral, amber, ivory, etc.) but hey, vive la difference!)
As for vampires of folklore vs. D&D, if the post-D&D vampires have nothing at all to do with level drain, I'll be very happy. That never really 'felt right' for me. Sort of a rules-mechanical 'gamist' kludge.
Turn to mist? Crawl up walls? Control weather, wolves, bats, etc.? Turn into animals? All fine, with folklore precedent. But level drain just felt weird. (An unnaturally cold and strong grasp that leaves you weakened and too feeble/overcome to marshal your strength, like a permanent chill touch or touch of fatigue effect? Sure!)
The plethora of weaknesses are also, IMO, a bit much. It's like, let's just heap on every single vampire weakness we've ever heard of and lump them onto the same dude! Something like the mutant template, where as the vampire progresses, they get access to more and more powers (they don't all start with mind control and animal shapeshifting and weather control!), but also can buy extra powers at the cost of some of the more uncommon weaknesses like running water or skeered of mirrors or die super-fast in sunlight (a fair number of folkloric vamps could function during the day, although some were at reduced power, or even fully human, like some sort of 'werewolf' that didn't know they were a monster at night!), could be funky.
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Also, drakes are ducks. If drakes are a type of dragon, then it therefore stands to reason that dragons are also types of ducks.
This comment made me pause and think to myself about how much I love our community.
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Also, drakes are ducks. If drakes are a type of dragon, then it therefore stands to reason that dragons are also types of ducks.This comment made me pause and think to myself about how much I love our community.
Can't wait to play a miserly Drakeblooded with a cane sword of pogoing.