Why Don't Dragons Rule the World?

[Laurellien]

It's a question that occasionally comes up in D&D. Here's my attempt at an answer.

What do you think? I know that my perspective may be controversial, and I want to give my players a good answer.

Furthermore, if you can think of any examples that might back up these points (from D&D sources, folklore, fantasy, or history), then please do let me know.


So, why don't dragons rule the world?

Dragons live for thousands of years, are far more intelligent, wise, and charismatic than humanoids, have supreme strength and constitution, and complement their physical prowess with a vast array of supernatural abilities and arcane spell casting. Why then, do they not rule the world? The same question too might be asked of any sufficiently long-lived and powerful creatures. Why don't gods, titans, giants, genies, outsiders, aberrations, or even sphinxes rule the world?

The first and most important thing to realise is that dragons and other long-lived beings gain their powers relatively slowly compared to humanoids, and humans in particular. A dragon may take centuries to even learn the basics of spell casting, but it can take mortals a matter of a couple of decades to be capable of using magic that will undo even the mightiest dragon. Thus, over the span of a dragon's life, hundreds, if not thousands, of humanoids will arise who are powerful enough to overthrow it. Moreover, dragons are few, but mortals are many. Conspiracies and armies of humanoids can also bring down a dragon, even if none of the humanoids even comes close to the dragon in power.

There is also a problem with empathy. To a being with a lifespan of 1,000 years+, a mortal life passes in the blink of an eye. For a dragon, a mortal's problems might be bad for the mortal now, but they will be over in a few decades, whereas a dragon has to be thinking centuries down the line. This leads to an inability to empathise with short-lived mortals, and to see their problems as meaningless and insignificant. A dragon would thus make a poor ruler, as it would make decisions too much in the long term for the benefit of mortals. A dragon king would happily see forty years of misery if it would lead to several centuries of bounteous prosperity. However, the mortals would not see things in the same way, and would rebel. This happened to Zyphaxes, a goodly bronze dragon who ruled in ancient times in Jinania. She thought that she ruled beneficently, with the long-term good of the realm ever at her heart. In enacting a plan that would have made Jinania more prosperous and pleasant than any kingdom that ever existed, she had to subject the realm to 5 years of hardship. Subjects who had seen family members die and suffer, and who lacked the vision to see what Zyphaxes would achieve, killed her in her sleep to end the suffering. It worked, and things got marginally better, but they all suffered worse in the end.

The empathy problem gets exacerbated when one realises that human intelligence is insignificant next to a dragon's. Dragons regard mortal problems and desires as stupid, and so evil dragon rulers will dismiss and ignore the concerns of their humanoid subjects, and see them much as humanoids view cattle. Even good dragons will consider humanoid concerns as mostly insignificant, and will patronise the humanoids. To a humanoid, these are equally bad.

The third problem is that of the stagnation and ossification of society. Living so long, dragons get used to certain ways of doing things. The natural suspicion of change and small-'c' conservatism that sees humans resent change is writ large in dragons. Two thousand years and more ago, it was considered reasonable to stone people to death for wearing clothing cut from two cloths, or to set bears on people who insulted travellers. A dragon brought up in those years would probably still be dropping boulders on fashion criminals and setting bears on rude children. Mortal society and culture changes in the blink of an eye to a dragon. This magnifies the empathy problem above, and gets worse over time. When the exiled titan Ophecles decided to carve out a kingdom in a weakened Antiochid Empire, and reintroduced the death penalty for talking back to one's parents or having certain haircuts, he was quickly overthrown.

Dragons are not entirely to blame in all of this. Mortals tend to be delusional and self-serving – even the good ones. To a mortal desiring advancement, dragons holding the levers of power is a very bad thing. A dragon king will likely keep the same people in office under him, for it is hardly worth the effort to fire and reorganise his privy council every couple of years for a few centuries. As a result, all of the ambitious courtiers and nobles who otherwise would seek office will be unable to with the dragon in power. As the slighted will greatly outnumber the honoured, this swiftly leads to the downfall of dragons.

Moreover, humans innovate. Dragons never needed swords because their claws were long and sharp enough as it was, but humans developed sharpened metal sticks with which to slay dragons and each other. Dragons never needed to study magic because it was innate within them, but humanoids created wizardry to get the same levels of power. This means that the numerically superior humans often end up ahead of dragons in the arms race, even if dragons are more powerful in every conceivable way.

Dragons also suffer by being monstrous. They have the natural ability to polymorph themselves into humanoids, but that doesn't change the fact that they are castle-sized reptilian beasts that breathe fire, lightning, and other such things. Even well-intentioned dragons are terrifying, and humanoids greatly esteem those who slay terrifying things.

Finally, there are different things that motivate mortals and dragons. Dragons, at the end of the day, are just magnificently powerful and intelligent magpies. Their goals mean that they don't normally need power, just a cave and a pile of coins. Humans, on the other hand, show far more variety in motivation than dragons. Some want gold, but others want power, family, or crave the love of their fellows. This adds to the empathy problem for dragon rulers, but also means that dragons tend not to want to rule the world.

Most of what is said above applies to other races to, even between mortals. Long-lived dwarves and elves tend to make poor rulers of humans for much the same reasons that dragons do. Differences in motivation also explains why other immortals don't rule the world. Why would a god limit themselves to temporal power over one plane of existence when they can rule entire planes and have trillions in thrall to them across the multiverse as worshippers? Titans, genies, and other outsiders tend to have more pressing concerns on their own plane, and view the material plane as either a side show or as a source of souls. Aberrations have alien minds that don't even make sense to other immortals, and so their motives are difficult to comprehend for mortals, and sphinxes and other intelligent monsters tend to just want to do particular things like set riddles and eat the occasional mortal that wanders into their labyrinth.

The only immortal monsters with a predilection for rule over other mortals, and the ability to do so successfully (at least for a short time) are those that were once mortal themselves. The chief examples of these are intelligent undead such as liches and vampires. However, even their rule will come undone eventually. They have the same problems as dragons in that they eventually lose their ability (or willingness) to empathise, come to view humans as cattle, find that their views swiftly become outdated, and that they are – at the end of the day – hideous, terrifying monsters.

[Mystral]

They don't rule the world because they are too busy playing that stupid game of theirs.

[BWR]

In the Dragonstar setting they do rule the world, and about a thousand others. Basically, they got together and said "we are ridiculously smart, powerful physically and magically, and live longer than the lesser races; why the hell do we sit in caves and let them kill us for our stuff?"
Then they banded together and took over a planet, spread to the stars and have an empire that's lasted 5000 years and going strong.

There's obviously more to it than that, but that's the gist of it.

For all the other problems it had, the Dragonmage trilogy for Mystara did present a functioning dragon government and culture. They tend to keep to themselves and the ones you meet as monsters are the outliers and renegades. The dragons keep their true power and organization secret because for all their might, they are vastly outnumbered by the lesser races. Quantity has a quality all its own, and all that.

[wumpus]

I'd have to assume that if you asked a dragon, they would ask you in what way *don't* they rule the world? Humans certainly think they rule the world, but it is quite possible that an alien observer would determine that ants are clearly the dominant life form (actually bacteria rules in terms of shear biomass and any other criteria, we are just more aware of the ants).

"That stupid game of theirs" presumably has very specific values for loot that aren't the same as other species (thus any dragon simply demanding treasure from mortals is losing badly enough to build a bed out of "off brand" gold).

[Jay R]

I like C. S. Lewis's answer from The Voyage of the Dawn Treader:

And there is nothing a dragon likes so well as fresh dragon. That is why you so seldom find more than one dragon in the same county.

There is also J. K. Rowling's answer from Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.

“The Prime Minister gazed hopelessly at the pair of them for a moment, then the words he had fought to suppress all evening burst from him at last.
“But for heaven’s sake — you’re wizards! You can do magic! Surely you can sort out — well — anything!”
Scrimgeour turned slowly on the spot and exchanged an incredulous look with Fudge, who really did manage a smile this time as he said kindly, “The trouble is, the other side can do magic too, Prime Minister.”

In short, you are making the false assumption that "Dragons" represent a single side. In fact, there are dragons of all nine alignments, and they don't all get along.

Evil dragons don't rule the world because good dragons don't want them to. Good dragons don't rule the world because the evil dragons can prevent it.

The biggest threat to dragons is other dragons.

And finally, it's possible that in their eyes, they do rule the world - or at least, as much of it as they care about. Humans are scattered around all over collected into town and villages where the dragons can harvest meat any time they choose. In the eyes of the local dragon, how is this different from a farm?

One envisions the cows in a pasture looking up at the farmhouse, wondering why the humans don't rule the world. "After all, they have guns and could kill us all, but they don't. We are left here in the pasture contentedly eating grass and growing fat."

[Darth Ultron]

They don't want too, is the most basic answer. ''Ruling the world '' is after all a human idea. At the most basic dragons want a nice home with a big pile of treasure, and not all that much else. That does not ''sound'' like ''enough'' to a human, but then dragons are not human.

In a general sense, there are not all that many dragons to ''rule the world''. The worldwide dragon population is not all that big.

Also, dragons might rule the world...but just not show it. The rule the world in the crazy evil cartoon way does not really work in the long run. Like say dragons obliterated everything and enslaved everyone...ok, then they what? They have the slaves remake the world into just a park for the dragons....but ok, then what? Then just sit back and do nothing? It's a lot more possible that they just let things be and ''rule'' everything from behind.

And you do have the gods to stop the dragons.

Plus tons of other powerful people and creatures

Note the Forgotten Realms was once ruled by dragons, until the evles stopped them. They used epic magic to make the dragons go crazy. Worse it made the dragons near mindless brutes that would not use magic or tactics, and so could be defeated easily.

[Yora]

Dragons could rule as god kings if they wanted to. But apparently they don't. Whatever being a powerful ruler gets you, the vast majority of dragons don't appear to care for it.

[usorer]

I guess it was always that way. But there is no rule to against it. Especially for role playing games, game master has the flexibility to change or create worlds.

[Coidzor]

Because they do in some settings, but it'd be boring if every setting ended up the exact same way.

[Quiver]

There are so many varieties and takes on dragons that the answer could be "whatever reason the storyteller feels like giving".

Maybe Dragons are little more than feral beasts, as in A Song of Ice and Fire; they don't have sapience, and more like natural disasters, so obviously they can't rule the world.
Maybe they are smart enough to rule the world, but they are too combative with their own kind to truly organise a take over; basically, "dragons are orcs" argument.
Or maybe they DO rule the world in a labyrinthine conspiracy, and only appear not to. Every time a hero is despatched by their king to off a dragon, they might be serving the whims of a machiamvelian conspiracy whose understanding far exceeds human comprehension.

[Strigon]

First off, I'd like to point out that, in most cosmologies, gods do rule the world. But they have no interest in the day-to-day, it seems like they don't.

Secondly, I believe the reason that dragons, titans, or other similarly powerful beasties don't rule the world is largely down to what I call the Qui-Gon principle; there's always a bigger fish. This is very true for Dungeons and Dragons worlds, where there are many powerful creatures, each with a very good reason not to let the others rule the world. So none of them can. Even if there were a single being powerful enough to overthrow all challengers, any intelligent creature can gain class levels, so they won't stay on top for long.

And third, ruling the world is a means to an end, not an end. You rule the world so you can have material possessions, love, revenge, to keep someone safe, et cetera. You don't rule the world to rule the world.
When you're as powerful as a Titan, what do you want with ruling the world? Nothing, that's what.

[Jay R]

A king does not rule a kingdom alone. He's at the top of a large group that put him there, defends him, and administers his policy.

Unless dragons can work together in groups larger than a family, then "ruling a kingdom" is something they simply cannot, by their nature, do.

And unless all the most powerful dragons - gold, red, and every other kind - can all agree to get along, ruling the world is likewise impossible.

[Yora]

I'd have to assume that if you asked a dragon, they would ask you in what way *don't* they rule the world?

I found this a very good explanation for why evil dragons don't completely wipe out any human population for several hundred miles around their lairs. Dragons would defend their territory against any competition. But as dragons are concerned, villages and even cities might not register as threats to their control of the region. As long as they can do what they want and don't have the resources they care for disrupted by other creatures, they are in full control.
If humans would start to kill all the large animals that a dragon wants to eat, that would change things. Then the dragon would have good reason to either start eating humans or if that turns out to be annoying for some reason to drive them out of the territory.

[Stryyke]

They can't fit into the tiny houses.

[Darth Ultron]

I found this a very good explanation for why evil dragons don't completely wipe out any human population for several hundred miles around their lairs. Dragons would defend their territory against any competition. But as dragons are concerned, villages and even cities might not register as threats to their control of the region. As long as they can do what they want and don't have the resources they care for disrupted by other creatures, they are in full control.

Dragons would see humanoids a lot the same way humans see animals in their backyard. When some ants make a tiny hill in your backyard far, far, far away from your house, do you care? The pond you have out back has fish in it, but they are of little concern. Even better some of them, like bees even make useful things for you. And oysters are the best...they make pearls.

[King539]

Low reproduction rates.

[Amphetryon]

It's cute how humanoids think Dragons don't rule the world.

[thamolas]

It's cute how humanoids think Dragons don't rule the world.

In many settings, powerful dragons are able to assume humanoid (and other) forms. Who says that some of them don't assume humanoid identities and rule over humanoid empires, all without anyone knowing their true nature?

It's even possible that this (or something similar) is going on the real world -- how would anyone know?

[AslanCross]

In Eberron, they sort of do.

The continent of Argonnessen is the homeland of the dragons, and over 50,000 of dragons of various ages live there. ALL the dragon races get along; no color-coding in Eberron. There are fortresses, vast repositories of magical lore and items, and wealth that would break any mortal economy. They have armies of non-dragon devotees, which include dragon-totem barbarians tribes and actual soldiers from various races. Their army, the Light of Siberys, if it takes wing, could conceivably lay waste to Khorvaire (the continent where most mortal races dwell) in short order, especially since the setting itself does not have many high-level NPCs wandering about (unlike the dozens of supreme archmages in FR). But the thing is, they have different concerns.

1. The Demon Overlords. There are thirty known Demon Overlords imprisoned all around Eberron, and these are more than just Demon Princes in the way that Demogorgon and Graz'zt are very powerful demons who command vast cults and armies. The Overlords are actual physical manifestations of evil concepts, and as such, can never be truly killed. One such Demon Overlord (Tiamat) is imprisoned in the middle of Argonnessen, and they devote great wealth and security to ensuring she never awakens. And that's just one. The other Overlords not only have vast amounts of power; they also have followers who constantly seek their release: the Rakshasa Lords of Dust.
This was actually the hook I used in my Eberron run of Red Hand of Doom; the Fane of Tiamat was actually part of a planet-wide seal that powered Tiamat's main prison. If the dragons sensed its disruption, they would respond with apocalyptic force...

2. ...Which they have done before. The dragons invented magic. They passed it on to the giants, who once had a continental empire on Xen'Drik. Long story short, the giants abused the gift of magic (breaking a moon and the planes in the process), which led to the dragons putting an end to the empire and the giant civilization forever. The dragons broke the continent in a cataclysm that reduced the giants to small, wandering tribes, and distorted time and space on that continent, preventing them from ever coming back together. So yes, in this setting, the dragons have militarized their might, but only in response to world-threatening catastrophes. Being very long-lived, I think they also have vastly different perspectives from mortals who are always trying to survive in a world that constantly victimizes them. Speaking of extinction-level events...

3. There's the Draconic Prophecy. It's a vast, fragmented, constantly evolving mass of prophecies on pretty much everything. The dragons devote their lives to its study; the elders to its preservation, the younger, more active ones, to its manipulation and manifestation. The dragons have agents who try to constantly cause, prevent, or otherwise manipulate the events of the Prophecy, while fighting against their enemies, the Lords of Dust, who are constantly doing the same, but to steer the Prophecy to meet the conditions of the Overlords' release. To this end, some dragons do hide among the mortal races as agents and spies.


That's setting-specific, but I think it does give some idea of the capabilities of dragons as a civilization, as well as why they don't do what um, humans would do, given that power.
I guess, coming from a more philosophical perspective, humans are constantly struggling for survival, and as such feel the need to wield such superiority against others to subjugate them.
Dragons, with their long lives and foresight, together with their great power---have a level of comfort that we could compare to how we feel toward ants.

Ants constantly dig and expand their warrens, and constantly forage for food. They spend their entire short lifespans--minuscule compared to ours---digging and feeding their queen. We could exterminate an anthill in short order and kill or spare ants at whim. Perhaps if they could think in the way we do, they would wonder why humans don't just exterminate them all, but instead spend their considerable lifespans sending electric signals to each other to debate about imaginary creatures.

The view is different from the top.

[Jay R]

Dragons would see humanoids a lot the same way humans see animals in their backyard. When some ants make a tiny hill in your backyard far, far, far away from your house, do you care? The pond you have out back has fish in it, but they are of little concern. Even better some of them, like bees even make useful things for you. And oysters are the best...they make pearls.

They also see humans as humans see cows. They don't wipe out all the people in the village for the same reason no rancher wipes out his entire herd - that's a sustainable food source.

[Xuc Xac]

Human kings don't inform field mice of the locations of the boundaries between their kingdoms. Dragons probably treat humans the same way.

[Dalinale]

A couple of possibilities;

- Large groups of powerful dragons tends to attract opposition from other heavy hitters in the Monster Manual, up to and including the lower tiers of powerful unique outsiders with posses of 20 CR outsiders following them. A extended group of Chromatic Dragons banding together is the sort of thing that could convince a kingdom to start getting in touch with celestials.

- Extremely powerful dragons are best treated as upper-middle players in the great planer game. A Great Wyrm Red Dragon, instead of conquering puny mortals, might prefer to abscond to the Elemental Plane of Fire or attempt to gain greater glory elsewhere in the universe. In this case, dragons might be ruling a world, just not the world in question.

- Metallics and Chromatics hate each other, and even if alignments restrictions were removed, some would still lean towards Bahamut and others towards Tiamat, and in a traditional DnD setting cooperation between the two would be close to null. 'Dragons' can hardly be considered a united front in most cases when it comes to long-term goals; even a group of dragon-slayers could very well be directed by a dragon behind the scenes in order to eliminate problematic rivals, for example.

- They occasionally do, just not as a unified front; some major families of magic users, merchant guilds, nobility, and the occasional isolated tribe of conqueror types in a setting could all have ties to a hidden or open dragon overlord, either through politics, servitude, or blood. However, the machinations of dragons last as long as the dragon in question exists or sees fit to continue them, and as such there is no one single continuous period of dragon dominance.

[Steampunkette]

In 5e?

Bounded Accuracy.

In basically any other game system?

CRITS.

You can breathe fire and kill a few dozen rampaging villagers, sure, but get enough villagers together and there'll be plenty enough 20s rolled to kill even the most powerful dragon.

Humans: Dangerous because each one of us gets to roll at least -1- d20 in a given fight.

[Cazero]

What, and be held responsible? And being expected to solve issues of commoners?
Have you ever seen a cat?

[Madbox]

They have better things to do. Why get wrapped up in the petty day to day nature of ruling a nation, when easily manipulated humans can do all that work? Just nudge things in the right direction if you don't like where it's going, and focus on trying to find the Plane of Raw Steaks and Endless Gold.

[Mando Knight]

In the Forgotten Realms, the Time of Dragons was broken by the elven Dracorage mythal, a world-encompassing spell that plunged the dragons into a bloodlust, forcing them to destroy and devour their own machinations (and anything else in their way). The mythal was also set to repeat the dracorage when the stars aligned, so while dragons would occasionally carve out kingdoms (or usurp them) on an individual basis, as a whole the dragons were disrupted enough that the humanoid races could keep them from re-establishing global dominance.

And then the lich Sammaster subverted Dracorage for his own purposes in 1373 DR, leading to its unraveling at the hands of a band of adventurers. And then 4e caused the Spellplague to hit in 1385 and mess up magic everywhere, and 5e led Ao to put everything back mostly the way it was in 1482, so there hasn't really been time to coordinate a post-Dracorage resurgence of dragonkind as masters of Faerûn.

[oudeis]

they have better things to do. Why get wrapped up in the petty day to day nature of ruling a nation, when easily manipulated humans can do all that work? Just nudge things in the right direction if you don't like where it's going, and focus on trying to find the plane of raw steaks and endless gold.

This is easily one of the best things I've ever read on this forum.

[Cosi]

There's not really any terribly compelling reason for a long lived, magically powerful creature like a dragon to rule a human kingdom. Between fabricate and planar binding they have the tools to create anything they might want without ever bothering to interact with mortals at all. The only reason to bother with humans (or elves, or dwarves) is to subjugate them for their own amusement. Between the fact that dragons already have kobolds for that, and might be reasonably expected to be possessed of an impressive degree of racial arrogance (by virtue of, you know, being smarter, stronger, and longer lived than other races), it's not at all unexpected that they might simply ignore most species.

[Max_Killjoy]

Rulership implies social structure. Dragons don't appear to be very social.

[Mechalich]

In D&D, the ability to reign as a tyrannical god-king is all about magic. The one who has the biggest, baddest magical repertoire wins, full stop. That isn't dragons. As a result dragons can only rule in a situation where they seize power early and limit the magical development of those races with the capability to churn out even one single 20th level wizard. In the Forgotten Realms and in Dragonlance they did that happened, and dragons did indeed rule - for draconic values of rule - for quite some time but ultimately the pesky elves got their hands on the secrets of mighty spells and the stranglehold of the dragons was broken.