Dragons in the Dungeons and Dragons role-playing games are the central monsters of the story. In our Eberron campaign they not only rule an entire mysterious continent, but they are credited with the very creation of the world and everything. Not only monsters, but also gods, is a pretty big order for a character to fill.
Skye, the Blue Dragon to the left above is a dragon who believes that human people are the most important part of fulfilling the Dragon Prophecy. Therefore the characters can rely on him as an ally, and sometimes even a patron. He is a blue chromatic dragon with lightning breath, and the Blue Dragon Aureon, his great great grandfather, is an important leader of the god-dragons worshiped as the Sovereign Host.
Phaeros, the great crested red dragon, is a servant of chaos who actively opposes all that is good. He works with orcish dictators and priests of the Dark Six to accomplish vast swaths of damage, destruction, and war.
He is a big bad villain that has to come at the end of a campaign, because dragons are not only powerful fire-breathers with monstrous monster-damage capability, they also know far more magic than even the wisest of wizards. My players have not crossed him yet, but if they start finding the missing dragon eggs, that will happen soon.
You may notice that my dragon pictures are mostly coloring-book pictures repeated with different colors, but in many ways dragons are like that. They all have the cookie-cutter qualities of a dragon, but with different-colored personalities and powers and ideas of good and evil.
Pennie is a copper dragon with divided loyalties and the soul of a clown. She never takes the adventure at hand too seriously. But if she decides to help the player characters find the missing dragon eggs, no ally will prove stronger and more helpful than her. And she knows things that the players need to learn from her to find the missing eggs.
So dragons come in many forms and personalities.
In fact, the search for the missing dragon eggs will be critically affected by the fact that the eggs have all five hatched and dragons instinctively protect themselves when young by using their polymorph self magic to become some other creature. And someone has implanted the idea of using human form as the default even though the wormlings have never actually seen a human being in real life.
This is a double portrait of Calcryx, both as a white dragon wormling and a young girl.
So, playing games with dragons is fun and archetypal story-telling, and I will continue to do it, even if it means getting burned now and again.
More Simple Answers to Complicated Problems
Part A, Solving Racism
I know… Saying I can solve racism simply marks me as something of an idiot. It is a complicated and deeply-embedded weakness of the human race. We are programmed with certain instincts that make us fearful of anyone or anything unknown to us, unfamiliar, or obviously different in some manner.
Consider allowing someone like Minnie Mouse to hug my young daughter. As people go, she is somewhat suspicious-looking. Notice the color of her skin on the neck, ankles, and arms. This is a black person apparently wearing white-face makeup. Is that not something suspicious? Something to be cautious about? In fact, look at the mouse ears and black, mouse nose. She’s not even human! She’s an anthropomorphic mouse-lady. Tucker Carlson would warn you against trusting her with the Princess. And if you point out how silly these arguments are about a Disneyland performer in a costume that represents Minnie Mouse, a character we all know and love, I would say, “YES! Exactly! An unknown person hiding her identity under a costume that will put adults and children at ease… and make them vulnerable to who-knows-what?” Maybe Florida Governor DeSaniflush was right to attack Disney by charging his Floridians more in taxes in the Disney name.
Yes, human beans are inherently suspicious, paranoid, and hateful when it comes to groups that are different than the one we identify with.
Of course, there is a simple answer if you are only willing to look at it that way. There should be no racism because we are not different. We are all one race, the human race.
That means, Mr. Toilet-Cleaning-Chemicals, that you and I are actually the same. You are not made, as I have believed incorrectly, of poop-dissolving chemicals as my demented and paranoid brain keeps thinking because of your DeSantis misnomer. You are not the saint you believe you are because of the meaning of your name in Spanish either. We are both human beans. The same race.
And you are the same race as the beautiful young ballerina I pictured before I added the photo of you thinking about eating too many baked beans, and then drinking Coca Cola while eating Mentos. You are not going to explode. Because even if you consume those ingredients you were thinking about, they can’t actually dissolve the poop you are filled with most of your time on Earth as a human bean.
As a teacher I learned the hard way that all kids are kids. They are all human beans. They all have blood and brains and wants and needs and loves and hates. No matter what color they are. No matter what culture they grew up in, or what religion their parents taught them, or failed to teach them. As a teacher, you have to be able to love all of them. Even the ugly ones. Even the ones whose names remind me of poop-dissolving chemicals and seem to be constantly full of fear and hatred and racism.
Here’s the skinny on those things racists need to hear;
The human beans you need to hate and fear and distrust, the truly evil people, come in every color, creed, culture, and calamitous character. Yes, rich white people, they even come in the color white. No matter what Tucker Carlson says… or thinks about a malevolent Minnie Mouse who may somehow be trying to “replace us.”
And the people you need to get more familiar with, whose culture you need to witness, whose stories you need to hear, and you desperately need to learn to love, come in every color too. Yes, rich white people, even in the color white. I am no more a reverse racist than I am a racist.
And there is a simple cure for racism.
Jesus taught it. So did Buddha, Mohammed, Zoaster, Walt Whitman, and Alan Watts. Jean Paul Sartre too, come to think of it.
The cure is to love everybody. Hate nobody. Suprisingly, if you do that simple thing, nobody will hate you in return. Racism is then cured. I know it is not feasible. Not everybody will even bother to listen to this advice. But the world won’t get any worse while you try to make it happen.
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