D&D: Dragcars and Dragons

[Endarire]

I was wondering for a long time why the traditional D&D dragon colors are white, green, red, blue, and black. (Yes, there are the metallic dragons of gold, platinum, silver, brass, and copper, as well as other types like shadow.) Then it hit me! These colors (white, green, red, blue, and black) are common car colors nowadays, and were probably common car colors during the 1970s when Gary Gygax, Dave Arneson, and co. were making the original D&D.

It may also explain why D&D 3.5's Red Dragon is the biggest of the bunch, due to prestige of having a spiffy red car (like a Corvette or Mustang or Viper). Perhaps Arneson was envious of someone's hot rod and made the fantasy version an end boss.

[DM Nate]

They're also the prime colors of Magic: The Gathering, another WotC product.

CONSPIRACY!!!!

[Admiral Squish]

They're also the prime colors of Magic: The Gathering, another WotC product.

CONSPIRACY!!!!

Ahh, but the dragons are tied to different things than the magic colors. White dragons don't live on plains and they're certainly not sacred, they're arctic and evil. Green dragons don't live in forests, they dwell in oceans. Blue dragons live in the desert, not on islands.

[Rhynn]

They're also the prime colors of Magic: The Gathering, another WotC product.

CONSPIRACY!!!!

D&D is 16 years older than Wizards of the Coast and 19 years older than MtG.

Anyway, red, green, and blue are additive primary colors. All three together make white. None of them makes black. This idea goes back to the birth of color photography in the 1860s. (Inkjet printers use black plus the three colors you get by crossing two of RGB: cyan, magenta, and yellow. These are subtractive primary colors.)

Seems pretty obvious that red, green, blue, black, and white are just some of the most common, basic colors there are.

Trivia:

• Original D&D had six color of dragons: white, black, green, blue, red, and golden (from least to most Hit Dice, with ranges of 3 HD that overlap by 2 with the previous one and with the next one; e.g. whites have 5-7 HD, blacks have 6-8 HD, greens have 7-9 HD ...).
• Original D&D had 6 dragon age categories, because HD were d6s; a dragon had the same number of hit points for every hit die, determined by its age category (e.g. a very old dragon, at 100+ years, had 6 per HD). AD&D 1E expanded this to 8 because the default monster HD became d8, and the original Forgotten Realms supplement a further 2 age categories. AD&D 2E added the last 2 age categories, but switched to rolling the hit points and just giving bonus HD for age categories.