Why don't Dragons run things?

[horngeek]

This is inspired by the "why don't Wizards run things?" thread, due to similar characteristics of Wizards and Dragons. i.e. both cast spells, both are usually smart...

So, in you campaigns, why don't Dragons (of any kind) rule the world (or if they do, why?)?

Possible reasons:

A) There simply enough Dragons
B) There'd be too much infighting. If Chromatics try to take over, Metallics stop them.
C) In this world, Dragons aren't intelligent.
D) The chromatics aren't interested, the metallics are too Good to opress.
E) Some kindoms actually are ruled by Dragons.

Any other reasons?

[Starscream]

I always imagined it was for the same reason the devils/demons don't run things. Too much fighting.

If the chromatics tried to take over, the metallics would stop them. And vice versa.

Then again, they might not be interested. Give a dragon a big pile of treasure to lie on and he's pretty much happy. Who cares what a bunch of brief-lived monkeys do?

[mistformsquirrl]

Several reasons as I see it.

First - default world reasons:

1) - Dragons in general are kinda lazy. The older they get, the less they seem to do; (with occasional exceptions. But if you read the descriptions in the Draconomican, most dragons who are powerful enough pretty much just sit around collecting 'stuff')

2) - Those that are interested and powerful enough may very well do so; you just wouldn't know they're a dragon; or running the world. (When your Int is as high as a Wyrm's; it becomes entirely feasible to play the world like a fiddle; assuming you can get the drop on the few other creatures attempting the same.)

My World reasons:

Very VERY few dragons in existence. They're also nigh immortal (don't age, most weapons can't harm them, etc..) - However like a few other extremely powerful but rare races - they realize that if they started exercising that power in a big way, they'd be putting crosshairs on themselves.

That is - though they're almost immortal, they aren't; and someone will figure out your weakness if you give them a reason to try. Why give them that reason?

I should add, dragons are pretty much gods in this world - they exist on the mortal plane and all; but they're so much above everything and everyone (in their own opinion and in general power level) that it takes a great deal to really draw their attention. Doing so is generally something you don't want to do >.<

The other factor is that dragons just flat out tend to be jealous - if one started conquering the planet, others would do so as well. Given that dragons can most definitely harm each other... well you wind up back at "Nigh Immortal" - why risk yourself for (to a dragon) limited gain when you literally have... forever.

Course that said it's not that none have ever tried...

[raitalin]

I'm partial to the "They just can't be bothered with it" approach. You can sit in your lair with your pile of treasure, fat and happy on the local peasantry's cattle, why bother mucking that up with politics and responsibilities? The most you need from the lesser races is for them to bring food to your door in the form of livestock, maidens and adventurers.

[Yora]

With some monney, a human could easily own hundreds or thousands of rats. But practicaly no one wants to.
Some people own some thousands of chicken and run their own farm, but they are very few. But if you want to, every human could do that.

And I guess most dragons are simply not at all interested in running a kingdom or even a city of 10.000 humans.

[peacenlove]

There would be another reason why dragons don't rule. It would draw attention to them, their lairs and their treasure. They are strong and intelligent enough anyway to take what they want fast and safe, ruling a kindom would be inconvenient and take much of their time (which is occupied by counting their treasure and devising new means and plans to increase it )
Another one would be that dragons, when they grow in power, leave the material plane in order to gain more knowledge (that can't be gained on the Mortal Coil), influence (Imagine a dragon general of the blood war ) and most importantly riches. (not only money but other forms of currency, after all they lust for ANY kind of treasure)

[horngeek]

In my opinion, it depends on the Dragon. For example, in the Draconomicon it says that Gold Dragons do have a tendency to drop in on a villian and destroy him. If one did that to someone who was taking over a kingdom, the people might well want the Dragon to rule them. If there was no one qualified, it might well agree, at least in a caretaker role. In this case, it would probably be commone knowledge that a Dragon was ruling the country.

For Chromatic Dragons, the justification of them wanting to rule somthing (even if only a small kingdom) is more a matter of power than anything else. Of course, the majority of Dragons simply couldn't be bothered, yes. But some would.

For Metallic dragons, the primary problem isn't actually a "can't be bothered" but more a matter of "we think too differently". I mean, a Gold has four thousand years before it even has to worry about the Twilight. Humans? They're lucky if they live more than a century. So, yes, you might see some Dragon rulers, but they'd be rare.

[Melamoto]

With some monney, a human could easily own hundreds or thousands of rats.

Actually, that would be pretty badass. A Rat Master who uses his vast armies to conquer cities and even nations. That gives me an idea...
*Slaps himself* Bad Melamoto! Stay on topic!

I think it probably isn't too rare that Dragons DO run things, except they are either Alternate Form users, or a secret power behind the throne. After all, there are enough Dragon Slayers for any Dragon in an obvious seat of power to be taken down quite quickly.

[kamikasei]

I would actually see a minority of chromatics ruling city-states or nations, though this would be moderated by in-fighting and resistance from metallics keeping them in check. Still, you could easily envision an entire nation of draconic overlords with half-dragon and dragon-blooded descendents acting as the day-to-day rulers and aristocracy of the population.

Metallics would recognize that humans need self-determination and that they can't properly govern (due to temperament and psychology), only dominate and rule, which isn't their thing. I'd see metallics more often in a patronage role than actual rulership - not part of the hierarchy of any nation, but powers in their own rights with alliances and pacts with their neighbours. People might venerate them as if they were spirits of place or small gods; leaving out offerings of food and goods, though generally not intruding on the dragon's territory. They might be called upon to mediate disputes or witness treaties. They could have honourary seats on all sorts of councils, for which they would almost never show up.

[mcv]

In Earthdawn, dragons do run things. I mean, they don't run human kingdoms -- that'd be like a human running an anthill -- but they run their own afairs on a scale so big humans can't see it. And if humans interfere with dragon plans, they pay for it.

Also, there's a lot of rivalry between dragons.

If your world has weaker, wizard-level dragons, then maybe the reason neither of them runs things is because of dragon-wizard rivalry, and because politicians manage to play one agains the other. Or neither really cares about mere worldly power.

[AslanCross]

In Dragons of Eberron, there's a a sidebar that actually discusses this question: Why don't dragons solve all the world's problems?

(For context: Eberron has an entire continent run by an epic dragon civilization.)

Answer: You don't want them to. The last time they saved the world from imminent collapse, they incinerated a continent-wide empire of giants ruled by titans by using epic magic.

They don't have much of an idea of scale. If something threatens them enough to act, they will burn it to the ground, salt the earth under its remains, and then use epic magic to cause magnitude 9.9 earthquakes to sink the earth beneath the sea.

That's the primary hook I'm using in my Eberron run of Red Hand of Doom. The bad guys are going to ultimately try to resurrect Tiamat, whom the dragons have imprisoned in the most heavily-fortified location on the entire planet.

Tiamat in Eberron is not a lesser deity. She's an incredibly powerful demon overlord who has power to corrupt ALL dragonkind (including metallic dragons, though chromatics are more susceptible to her sway---Eberron's dragons are free to be of any alignment). Her prison is so well-guarded that the dragons who volunteer to guard it only do so in shifts, and when their shift ends they're expected to honorably accept execution---Tiamat's mere proximity is enough to corrupt some dragons, so the dragon authorities don't take chances with wyrms who guard the Pit of Five Sorrows.

If Tiamat manages to get revived, the dragons will not be happy.

So I tell the PCs that if they fail, all of the dragons of Argonnessen, the nation of dragons, will wing their way to Khorvaire (the continent where the adventure is set) and burn everything to the ground.

A lot of the dragons have epic levels.

There are over 50,000 dragons on Argonnessen.

Do the math.

TL;DR---Draconic measures are so drastic that the PCs should be glad that saving the world is in their hands.

[Fishy]

Imagine you're a Dragon living on earth in 1909. You've got a giant bushel of gold, but for whatever reason you decide to convert it into a 'local' currency before you settle down for a 100 year nap.

Is there anywhere on earth where that money would be worth anything today? How would you choose?

Dragons who get involved in human economics are the equivalent of day-traders. There's profit to be made, but one civil war and you're out a massive chunk of change.

[Eldan]

I do something like the lazyness idea, on a grander scale: I haven't read the draconomicon in a while, but at least when it came up in my world I did it like this:

Dragons never die. Instead, as they age, they become ever larger. But the larger they get, the more their metabolisms slow down, until, eventually, the super colossal megabeasts just lay still somewhere outside, because their caves no longer fit them. Over time, sand piles up on them, weather washes over them, plants grow on them. They become landscape features. Hills, mountain ranges and so on, are often sleeping dragons with scales so hard, they don't notice anything.
Dwarves know this and carefully make sure to dig around any of the castle-sized armor plates they find buried deep beneath the roots of the oldest mountains.

This is actually stolen from a legend I read once, where sleeping dragons became dragon trees. (Don't know if that's the english name, but they were called that. You can go and have a look at these trees, even. They are impressive)

[kamikasei]

Imagine you're a Dragon living on earth in 1909. You've got a giant bushel of gold, but for whatever reason you decide to convert it into a 'local' currency before you settle down for a 100 year nap.

Is there anywhere on earth where that money would be worth anything today? How would you choose?

Dragons who get involved in human economics are the equivalent of day-traders. There's profit to be made, but one civil war and you're out a massive chunk of change.

That analogy breaks down on two fronts.

A) Why would the dragon convert their wealth into anything that isn't inherently valuable? Huge piles of precious metals, gems, and magic items might become easier or harder to sell, more or less valuable, over time but they're not going to become simply worthless as if the bank or government backing a currency had disappeared.

B) Dragons have immense personal power - they're giant flying ominvorous X-breathing monsters who are also high-level casters. They're not giant squirrels hibernating for a century with a stash of steadily depreciating nuts, they're powers to be reckoned with in their own right. If your 1909 day-trader could wake up today with a few tons of gold close to hand and the ability to lay waste to wide areas and slaughter thousands single-handedly, I think he'd be a bit better off than you make out.

[Eldan]

Also, even today, I think a Great Wyrm would have the power to back up his own currency, if necessary.

[horngeek]

Yeah... in a world I've started to punt ideas around for homebrewing, there would, on the focused-on continent, be 500 Dragons. This is in somthing the size of asia, and I mean every type's numbers put together. Only 50 care to interfere in human affairs in any meaningful way. i.e. more than the classic "give maidens" situation. Of these, 5 are known widely.

Compare to several million humanoids.

[Eldan]

The problem is still the following: I've seen this article online that calculated that in the real world, basically no one is over level 5. They made Einstein a believable level 5 expert. Therefore, in any halfway meaningful "medieval" fantasy world, people over level 5 should be absolute exceptions, with people over level 10 being legends already.
Compare that to 50 dragons and you see that even then, they would have no problem controlling the world.

[kamikasei]

Yeah... in a world I've started to punt ideas around for homebrewing, there would, on the focused-on continent, be 500 Dragons. This is in somthing the size of asia, and I mean every type's numbers put together. Only 50 care to interfere in human affairs in any meaningful way. i.e. more than the classic "give maidens" situation. Of these, 5 are known widely.

Compare to several million humanoids.

But any pool of rulers and leaders - the real movers and shakers at the absolute top of the pile - is going to be vastly outnumbered by the people over whom they have power. Who does rule all those humanoids, and what do they have over dragons?

I don't think anyone's suggesting that dragons (or wizards, or anyone else) would rule an entire civilization literally single-handedly. Rather, they'd be at the top of a hierarchy, just like any other ruler. The dragon would have ministers and generals and priests and servants in general, the whole apparatus of government, but unlike your average king or emperor he could literally eat anyone who displeased him and burn down their hometown (personally). Not that he should have to...

[Johel]

Like most people here :

Dragons are too few in number. The chromatic are prolific but very few reach adulthood because of their uncaring parents and ruthless siblings. The metallic have learned that the ecosystem can't support a large population of dragons and so they somewhat control their own number.

Dragons sleep a lot. With a metabolism that is basically a flying dinosaur with magical power, they would need to eat a lot if they were awake 7/7. Most old dragons go in slumber for long periods and to awake to feed, breed, collect stuff, visit relatives and do whatever you need. Kobolds, young dragons and other minions are there to run the daily operations.

Dragons are living gods and they know it. How interesting would it be for you to run a colony of ants ? Sure it could go further than any other colony of ants. But in the end, if you want something done, you better do it yourself than asking the ants. So, yes.
Most elder dragons just do what they want, without caring for mortals. They are more worried about their personal fame, wealth and family. When they interact with mortals, it's because one of these 3 things is disturbed.
Young dragons might behave differently (like our child when they "play" with insects and small critters) but they don't have the power to really matter yet and over the time, they lose interest.

[horngeek]

Sorry. More specifically, only 2 of the well known ones are Chromatic. This proportion carries over to the rest of the 50.

[Shpadoinkle]

Probably for the same reason that humans don't dominate colonies of rats or mice. There's little satisfaction to be had in bending such stupid and pathetic creatures to your will. Yeah, they can be trained, if you take the time to do it, but in the end it's probably easier and faster to just do things yourself. Plus they don't live very long so you'll have to keep training them over and over again.

[kamikasei]

So on a point of curiosity, what do dragons do all day? Are they engaged in vast works on a higher plane than that which touches on human affairs, pursuing magical research or interplanar politics or the like? Are they immersed in do-nothing time-filling addictive games and inconsequential puzzles? Or do they just sleep?

Of most interest are the metallic dragons, because the chromatics you can always just say "well, they're running around doing evil because it's how they get their kicks". But what are the long-term interests and goals of benevolent, hyperintelligent superbeings?

[Eldan]

The only exception to the entire "uninteresting" thing would be spellcasters, actually: even if dragons are epic spellcasters, they might appreciate others throwing out XP for their magical items, or saving spell slots.


Dragons, I'd assume, would be interested in Dragon Politics: even if they don't care about humans, in a race of hyperintelligent near-ageless superbeings, there must be a lot of backstabbing going on.
Generally, they are also interested in treasure for hoarding. It seems to be a biological drive for them, probably connected to mating: the bigger your hoard, the more attractive you are.

[mcv]

In Dragons of Eberron, there's a a sidebar that actually discusses this question: Why don't dragons solve all the world's problems?

(For context: Eberron has an entire continent run by an epic dragon civilization.)

Answer: You don't want them to. The last time they saved the world from imminent collapse, they incinerated a continent-wide empire of giants ruled by titans by using epic magic.

I'm not familiar with Eberron, but this sounds like a bloody scary world to be a mere human in.

(reads the rest)

Okay, so I was right.

Imagine you're a Dragon living on earth in 1909. You've got a giant bushel of gold, but for whatever reason you decide to convert it into a 'local' currency before you settle down for a 100 year nap.

Is there anywhere on earth where that money would be worth anything today? How would you choose?

Dragons who get involved in human economics are the equivalent of day-traders. There's profit to be made, but one civil war and you're out a massive chunk of change.

Nonsense. Dragons invest in the long term and spread their risks. They're not day-traders, they invest in land or anything else that's currently cheap but stands to grow enormously in value over the next century.

[Salt_Crow]

Probably for the same reason that humans don't dominate colonies of rats or mice. There's little satisfaction to be had in bending such stupid and pathetic creatures to your will. Yeah, they can be trained, if you take the time to do it, but in the end it's probably easier and faster to just do things yourself. Plus they don't live very long so you'll have to keep training them over and over again.

My thoughts the same. I guess some dragons might like building kingdoms like someone would build lego blocks, and just knock them down for a laugh. But it wouldn't be a long-term aspiration of a dragon in my books.

After all, I'd imagine dragons have their own political wars to fight, hoards to collect and many other things to amuse themselves with. Like fidgeting with those puny little mammals in shining armour.

[Telonius]

I've always pictured Dragons as being very much like cats in personality. Could kill us all in our sleep if they wanted to, but too lazy to do so.

[horngeek]

See, metallics do occasionally foster wyrmlings with humans...

[Kris Strife]

For the same reason humans don't try to rule kobolds: We're more useful as exp and treasure fodder.

[Zen Master]

In my view, dragons are very much like gods - in so far as they really have better things to do with their time than lording it over irrelevant lesser beings.

Occasionally they may use such beings as pawns, if the effort seems worth it - but generally micromanagement of a horde of humans has to produce very specific effects to be worth the bother.

Also - in my worlds, dragons aren't good. Metallic versions ... don't exist.

[kamikasei]

I'm not familiar with Eberron, but this sounds like a bloody scary world to be a mere human in.

(reads the rest)

Okay, so I was right.

Really, so are (or should be) most fantasy settings, they just don't seem to notice it. By default the world is filled with terrifying monsters, flown over by dragons, burrowed under by drow, gnawed at by illithid and beholders, contested by demons and devils and gith and...

A continent of powerful dragons who pretty much mind their own business is small potatoes.

Dragons, I'd assume, would be interested in Dragon Politics: even if they don't care about humans, in a race of hyperintelligent near-ageless superbeings, there must be a lot of backstabbing going on.

Ah, but wouldn't you expect those few, powerful entities with so much (their lives) to lose, to use proxies in their politicking? One would expect draconic politics to lead to more involvement in mortal affairs, as they use one another's tribes and kingdoms and armies against each other in preference to just flying from one cave to another and staging draconic throwdowns.