Wardog
2014-01-07, 06:39 PM
Something I was wondering the other day:
What is the inspiration for the various dragons in D&D?
The Red Dragon seems to be very heavily inspired by Smaug.
The Black Dragon, I realized while watching a clip on Youtube, is probably based on Maleficent from Disney's Sleeping Beauty (colour, horns, and green fire that could easily be reimagined as acid).
And the Green Dragon seems to be a fairly typical mythic/folkloric dragon (poisonous breath probably being about as common as fire breath in old stories).
But what about the others?
Where did the lightning and ice-breathing dragons come from? I can't think of any examples of them outside modernt fantasy fiction.
Or the metalic dragons? (I think I once saw some art of a Gold Dragon that made it look like a Chinese dragon, but most of the current art is the more typical Western style).
Not to mention all the other sorts that pop up from time to time as though someone was rolling on a "random material or colour" table.
What is the inspiration for the various dragons in D&D?
The Red Dragon seems to be very heavily inspired by Smaug.
The Black Dragon, I realized while watching a clip on Youtube, is probably based on Maleficent from Disney's Sleeping Beauty (colour, horns, and green fire that could easily be reimagined as acid).
And the Green Dragon seems to be a fairly typical mythic/folkloric dragon (poisonous breath probably being about as common as fire breath in old stories).
But what about the others?
Where did the lightning and ice-breathing dragons come from? I can't think of any examples of them outside modernt fantasy fiction.
Or the metalic dragons? (I think I once saw some art of a Gold Dragon that made it look like a Chinese dragon, but most of the current art is the more typical Western style).
Not to mention all the other sorts that pop up from time to time as though someone was rolling on a "random material or colour" table.