Everything is Dragons

For a while now, D&D has had a problem with its second D: dragons.  That problem, according to some of the people designing the game and some of the people playing it, was that there weren't enough of them.  Dungeons were everywhere, but dragons? Dragons were high-level monsters - a lot of adventuring parties never survived to see one, and many that did didn't survive the encounter.  The solution, of course, was more dragons.

But now D&D is suffering from a problem I like to call "everything is dragons."  Dragons are terrifying and powerful monsters; encounters with them should be rare and memorable.  Basically, they should inspire awe and fear - an encounter with a dragon should be one of the most dangerous, most tense, most memorable episodes of a campaign.  Unfortunately, the attitude toward dragons expressed by D&D over the past few decades has watered down the threat and the majesty of these iconic monsters.  There are four clear examples of this: kobolds, sorcerers, 3.5 edition's Monster Manual IV, and 4th edition's dragonborn.



Kobolds
Kobolds are fun.  Everybody loves the little guys.  They're cowardly thieves and devious trap-makers.  Look at that little guy: he's got a scorpion on a pole!

2nd Edition Monstrous Manual

For many adventurers, they are the first opponents they come up against.  Frequently, they are played more for comic relief, as they pose very little threat to even the lowest level adventurers.  And, starting in 3rd edition, they have the blood of mighty dragons flowing through their veins.

Yes, as part of the campaign to put the D back in D&D, the weakest, most cowardly enemy was given draconic heritage.  That's why, to some of you, the kobold picture above is unfamiliar: these days, they look a bit different.

d20 srd

4th ed. kobold (c)Bart Carrol

The traditional doglike faces and ratlike tails have been supplanted by the need to emphasize the reptilian-ness of these draconic foes.  Now, when the adventurers find themselves in the lair of a mighty dragon, they can say "Oh, another draconic monster.  Remember those goofy kobolds we fought at level one?  I wonder if this guy's related to them."

Sorcerers
3rd edition also brought along the sorcerer, a new type of magic user who does not have to memorize his spells every day like a wizard, but can cast them spontaneously.  The problem was how to justify this new type of casting when the memorization-based (Vancian) magic system was already established.  The simple answer: magic flows through their veins.  Unfortunately, the slightly-less simple answer was dragon-magic flows through their veins.

And if that's not enough dragon for you, there's always the Dragon Disciple prestige class, which just turns you into a freaking dragon because you love them so much.

So now one of the base player classes is draconic.  The image of dragons is starting to become less "terrifying nightmare monster" to "can't keep it in his dragon-pants."  I mean, I love applying the half-dragon template to monsters as much as anyone (Half-dragon dinosaurs? Count me in!), but this is ridiculous.

I'd like to give credit to Pathfinder for realizing that dragons aren't the only source of magic in D&D and spicing sorcerers up a bit by giving them all sorts of different bloodline options.  Unfortunately, they also gave  default dragon-blooded sorcerers a Dragon-Disciple-esque draconic transformation, complete with wings, claws, and a breath weapon.

Monster Manual IV
As 3rd Edition aged and the publishers scrambled to scrape up some new material to fill their books with, they dipped their bucket in the old dragon-well again and pulled out Monster Manual IV.  It's easy to recognize because of the dragon clawing its way out of the dragon-skin binding:

(source)

The big draw of MMIV was 35-or-so pages of draconic monsters of varying difficulty called the Spawn of Tiamat.  Now you can spend your whole campaign fighting dragons!  They include such gems as the dreaded ice-skating dragon.

Beware its dreaded triple-axle flip                (source: MMIV)

No campaign is complete without one of those beasties.  Just when you though it was safe to go back in the skating rink.

Dragonborn
All that stuff above is pretty bad, but in 4th Edition, they made dragons a base player race.

And you thought boobs were just a mammal thing.                                                       (pic source) 

Obviously, someone wanted this; there were innumerable playable dragon races in 3.5 edition, either homebrewed, 3rd party published, or official.  In fact dragonborn actually made their debut in the 3.5 edition supplement, Races of the Dragon.  I'm not one to stand in the way of campaign settings that let you play as a dragon-person-thing, if you are that dead set on taking all the awe and mystery out of D&D's most iconic monster.  But now it was one of the default player choices (even going so far as to boot out the gnome, which had been a playable race since the 1st edition player's handbook).  In the Forgotten Realms campaign setting (one of the most popular settings, known for having a ridiculously-detailed history thanks to mass player collaboration), they even destroyed an entire continent and replaced it with Dragonborn Land in order to justify the new race in-game.

Now you can have a party of dragons, with dragon magic flowing through their veins, fighting dragon-blooded kobolds and dragons on ice-skates.  Dragons have become so diluted and commonplace that they have lost their majesty and power on both a gameplay and a story level.

The second D in D&D isn't 'dragons' because there are a lot of them, it is 'dragons' because they are the most iconic and terrifying monsters not just in the game, but in all of human mythology.  If you want to maintain the magic of dragons in your game, don't let your players play as a dragon, don't let your players turn into dragons, don't create a continent full of dragon-people civilizations, don't make a bunch of goofy dragon variants, and - for crying out loud - don't make the weakest, most cowardly, and most comically inept low-level monster share the blood of the mighty, earth-shaking, awe-inspiring dragons.

~~~~~~~~~~

-your draconic d20 despot