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ShadowDragon8685
This is a thought I'd had. Basically, it goes along these lines:

"Okay everyone. You are all young Western Dragons... Yeah yeah, you can stop cheering now, mike.

But you are not ancient wyrms, leftovers from the 4th world. So you can forget your ED crap. No, all of you, to a wyrm, are new. Products of a new and exciting world - the Sixth World.

None of you know who laid you, or have any clue that you were supposed to have been raised by a Great Dragon. Oh sure, you know from watching old trids of Wyrm Talk, but you never experianced it.

No, your earliest psychic impression is a far different impression. You grew up listening to the chaotic mental sounds of Seattle - the soulless droning of the corporate enclaves, the beat of life on the streets of downtown Seattle, the cry of despair of a broken, single mother living SINless in Redmond. The excitement of a Shadowrun, the wailing of a newborn elf in Seattle General, an old troll's last, melancholy sigh as his last bottle of brew slips from his numbing fingers, shattering on the broken pavement as his astral form tears itself free of his crumbling body, dissipating into the night.


These are you earliest mental impressions, and the memories that helped shape you. There was no Great Dragon to mold you into his or her image. Only the chaotic yet somehow orderly teeming mass of Metahumanity.

You hatched on January 1st, 2068. This in and of itself is unremarkable, as it is most likely coincidence - the time was 8:17 in the morning, not something silly like 12:00 on the dot.

What is remarkable is when you wake up, you're not alone. <Insert number of other players here> other eggs are in the vaultlike masonry chamber, and you suddenly realize that you know them, on an instinctive level deeper than instinct. They've been here forever, inside you, around you, listening to the cry of the city with you.


Now, at this juncture of life, most dragons would fight with one another - fight over the first lair (the one you awoke in), fight over money, fight over power, or just fight.

But that's because most dragons are raised as solitary creatures, molded by the "Kill or be killed" impression of a Great Dragon's own experiances. But are those experiances valid anymore?

This is the Sixth World, omae. Not the Fourth (whatever that is). The one, single lesson that all of your mental impressions of Metahumanity has imprinted upon you, the one thing that reigns above all else, is their social nature, their need to work together to survive.

So sure, if you fought, eventually one dragon would emerge victorious, sad little king of a sad little pile, with nothing at all in the world to call his own.

But right now, you do have something to call your own - your hatchmates, those <insert number> other young dragons that might feel the same way.

Flash forward to 2070, omae. It's a brand new world, and you're still the small lizard on the heap. You may be a wizworm, but shit, there's still metahuman mages as tough as you, and street sammies with Vindicator miniguns, or worse - Megacorporations that would LOVE to get their claws on you.

But you have the one single advantage every other SINless drekker in this 'sprawl has - your team.
emo samurai
Hmmm... Rules?
NightmareX
Ummm...no, not my cup of tea. Dragon PCs are munchie in D&D. In SR (barring massive stat mods and handwaving regarding dragon society), they're insane.
Herald of Verjigorm
Expect many conflicts to be solved with the phrase, "Frag that, I eat him!"
Kyoto Kid
...I like the idea of an all "common man" game. You are a wageslave for XYZ corp & you have to fight struggles like, traffic, the guy in the cubicle next to you who want's that promotion at any cost (even if it means stepping all over you), the office pest (& we all have dealt with those), the unsympathetic supervisor, the mound of billing statements dropped in your inbox an hour before you clock out (that has to be completed tonight), the stale sandwich and lukewarm soycaff at the cafeteria, the bank balance that doesn't quite balance, the wife who doesn't believe you had to stay late at the office, the teenage daughter who's new boyfreind is an orc goblin rocker wannabe...

You get the picture.
Moon-Hawk
So a hatchling dragon is basically a small wyvern, only not raging insane, right? I forget the details of the dragon life-cycle.
ShadowDragon8685
Handwaving is easy. Making an interesting game? That's a challenge.

Also, regarding Dragon PCs in D&D: They're not all they're cracked up to be. Sure, they have munchy stats, when they're like, Old, Ancient, Wyrm and Great Wyrm...

But you try telling me a 3 hit dice Gold Dragon Wyrmling is suitable as an ECL 13 PC, and I'll laugh my ass off at you.

As far as Dragons in Shadowrun, these are very young. They're not Prime Runner material, and Prime Runners could probably wipe the floor with them. They're above the average starting Shadowrunner, true, but they also have complications not related to the average starting Shadowrunner.

IME, these complications should roughly balance out. For example: You may be a naturally awakened Paracritter, but that means you're also Dual-Natured. You have to worry about threats that Joe Runner dosen't have to - Astral threats.

Plus, you have to worry about disguising yourself at almost all times. If you take a joyride flying through downtown Seattle, it's going to get a whole crapload of attention.

So most of what you do will be done either privately, or in (meta)human form, nessessitating that you further learn to blend in and be able to hide in the society of Metahumanity. This means picking up skills like Computer and Firearms, instead of being able to simply focus everything on magic.

Actually, I could see a Dragon whose egg was closest to a Matrix junction box, picking up all those waves for years, who winds up Submerged instead of Awakened. That would be awkward, but funny. (Of course, you still have to deal with the dual natured aspect, so I imagine it'd wind up with an uneven split between Magical and Technomancer-y skills.)

Anyway, just a thought. Comments like "OMG munchy" aren't really helpful; thinking about the ramifications and giving feedback based on them is.
hyzmarca
QUOTE (Moon-Hawk @ Jan 31 2007, 10:47 AM)
So a hatchling dragon is basically a small wyvern, only not raging insane, right?  I forget the details of the dragon life-cycle.

Yep. Wyverns are teenagers. Hatchings have natural magical abilities, including dragonspeach, but they are very vulnerable by Fourth World standards and would be fresh meat by Sixth World standards. They are kept in their parent GD's lair until they grow into wyverns for a reason.
ShadowDragon8685
QUOTE (hyzmarca)
QUOTE (Moon-Hawk @ Jan 31 2007, 10:47 AM)
So a hatchling dragon is basically a small wyvern, only not raging insane, right?  I forget the details of the dragon life-cycle.

Yep. Wyverns are teenagers. Hatchings have natural magical abilities, including dragonspeach, but they are very vulnerable by Fourth World standards and would be fresh meet by Sixth World standards. They are kept in their parent GD's lair untill they grow into wyverns for a reason.

And metahumans operate within society's bounds and don't go around commiting crimes for a reason, too.

That makes it all the more interesting, Hyz. They're powerful, but vunerable; IE, complications. smile.gif


Because hey, life don't go smooth.
eidolon
I wouldn't enjoy it, I don't think. It hearkens back to Council of Wyrms for me, and I found that to be terrible. (I own but don't play d20 D&D, so my criticisms of the "PC dragons" idea don't come from that.)

Let us know how it turns out though.
Sicarius
I would want to pick my players very carefully for such an idea, but so long as they were people likely to be excited about the prospect of roleplaying a strange and alien creature and not just excited about the possibility to power game, you might be okay
DragginSPADE
Personally I would LOVE a Dragon game in the Shadowrun world, but not as you have laid it out. If I got to play a dragon, I'd want to actually play a DRAGON, fighting my hatchmates right out of the shell, struggling to survive while growing in strength until almost nothing but other dragons or EXTREMELY well armed strike teams could threaten me. Etc etc....

Being forced to play a dragon like it was a metahuman (cooperation with others constantly and so forth) just wouldn't feel right. IMHO a dragon campaign would be an awesome concept for a game with very few players (1-2).
fistandantilus4.0
I ran a game for a solo player set in ED w/ an adult dragon that was pretty cool.Did the whole plotting aginst settlements and other dragons and such. IT was a lot of fun. Problem came up though because the PC did go up against some pretty big and nasty things and gained a ton of Legend Points and started taking disciplines, so got strong damn fast.

Another dragon that was played in SR did much better becuase of the way the karma system works, but also started as an adult. Lots of cool plots and dragon politics.

I've also seen another player in another game play a dragon (wow, lots m,ore PC dragon's than I first thought) that went completely ape shit. HE was on a shadowrun in human form w/ a shapechange spell, and changed into dragon form iun the middle of a building.

So I guess the moral is... know your PCs, and know the type of game you want. I'd personally suggest not using "baby" dragons, but that's just me. Don't really know how a dragon group would go.
DragginSPADE
QUOTE (fistandantilus3.0)
So I guess the moral is... know your PCs,  and know the type of game you want. I'd personally suggest not using "baby" dragons, but that's just me. Don't really know how a dragon group would go.

Indeed, I'll second the bit about knowing your players. (Though it's good advice for any game, not just dragon campaigns or shadowrun.)

I got to play a dragon once, in a one shot RIFTS game that remains one of the most beloved memories of gaming in my group. We'd decided to play a quick RIFTS game in which I would be one of two players. The other player was my best friend, and we loved dragons. Naturally, we cracked open the Rifts main rulebook, saw that Dragon Hatchlings were a playable race, and that was that.

We both hatched at around the same time on the same mountain, with the poor GM thinking we'd meet and decide to go exploring together or something.

*gleeful cackle at the fond memories*

Naturally, we took one look at each other and immediately started fighting over who had to leave the other's territory. A couple of hours later, the GM had to throw a Coalition Mecha at us to force us to cooperate to repel the invaders, before we could go back to our struggle. Great times.

But anyway, the point is; you DEFINETLY have to know your players, and what type of game they expect. smile.gif
Blade
Problem I have with that is that dragons are supposed to be long-term headed people, which means that a dragon could decide to start building a plan that would take years to complete... And that's not really easy to GM.

I also have troubles picturing a group of dragons walking down the streets, even in human form... I can't really say why, but the whole idea seems... unrealistic in the shadowrun setting.
ShadowDragon8685
QUOTE
I also have troubles picturing a group of dragons walking down the streets, even in human form... I can't really say why, but the whole idea seems... unrealistic in the shadowrun setting.


That's because everyone's still grounded in the mindset of Dragons as leftovers from the (vastly different) Fourth World. IMO, the only Dragon ever truely able to adapt was Big D (and possibly Celedyr) - the others are just applying their vast intellect to survival and domina tion in a new age, rather than fitting into the new age themselves.


This came up when I brought up the concept of dragons actually, gasp, cooperating, in another thread awhile back. Someone suggested that the reasons Dragon's don't cooperate with one another is because of the Dragons we know, they're still grounded in the Fourth world. And for us to see Dragons starting to be more, well, "human" in mindset - IE, seeing beneficience and benevolance and charity as goals in and of themselves and not means to end, we would need to see Dragons born in the Sixth World, learning and viewing Metahumanity for what they are, and not Dragons as what they were, umpteen millenia ago.

Kind of like how you say "Give me a child for the first five years of it's life, and it will be mine forever". Well, this scenario I'm proposing has an isolated batch of X many eggs (where X is the number of players), removing the draconic parent, and instead giving them a mental impression of the workings and foibles of Metahumanity.

Plus, there's the fact that X many isolated dragons hatchlings are pretty much a commodity, but a team of them that works in concert can and will become much more than the sum of individual parts.
Sir_Psycho
It would be super long term, because you'd need to rack up a whole bunch of karma to get these starting dragons their spells. Would they teach themselves magic? would they have to find a human mage who doesn't baulk at the fact that some dragons just came up to him?

Actually, that would be quite funny if the dragons found an alcoholic mage and he taught them a bunch of spells, and then when he's down the bar "I taught some dragons today!" "yeah right, george. glug glug george."

Could you have a dragon sam? biggrin.gif
ShadowDragon8685
QUOTE (Sir_Psycho)
It would be super long term, because you'd need to rack up a whole bunch of karma to get these starting dragons their spells. Would they teach themselves magic? would they have to find a human mage who doesn't baulk at the fact that some dragons just came up to him?

Actually, that would be quite funny if the dragons found an alcoholic mage and he taught them a bunch of spells, and then when he's down the bar "I taught some dragons today!" "yeah right, george. glug glug george."

Could you have a dragon sam? biggrin.gif

Why not? Dragons have massive Essense, and per the rules if you pay for it with Essense, it's yours. This means it shapeshifts with you.

Heh. That would be a sight to behold; a Dragon with a Smartgunlink and a panther cannon adapted for beind held in his claws - and for autofire. smile.gif

(See, SR4? I've found the reason Panther Cannons have Recoil Compensation stats!)


The only hitch as far as I can see would be deciding whether to bend the rules to give the hatchling the Metahuman Form power, or forcing them all to be Magician enough to Sustain a shapechange spell.

As for where they learn their powers, I'd say they probably have the basic stuff on an instinctive level - Sorcery, basic spells, etcetera. They'd still need to Initiate the hard way and stuff, but I woulden't make them explain seeking out a metahuman mage and asking him for training. Although your alcoholic idea has a lot of fun to it... smile.gif
Herald of Verjigorm
Given the way it's described, dragons don't need to know spells, they can instinctively cast any effect they want. However, you might need some "inspiration list" or something like that to signify what they realize they can use as spell factors. With that in mind, teaching a spell to a dragon consists of just casting once and explaining what it's supposed to do.

On a similar note, draconic magic trumps path of righ for conjuring ability as well.

Or a mean GM could make it that they can cast any spell by instinct, but if they learn a human method of casting the spell, their actions are much more subtle to other dragons.

Also, in Dragons of the Sixth World, there is an image with a troll and a dragon who is wearing dragon-sized body armor and a dragon-modified big gun of some sort strapped to its left arm. (right arm is being used to consume booze)
ShadowDragon8685
QUOTE (Herald of Verjigorm)
Given the way it's described, dragons don't need to know spells, they can instinctively cast any effect they want. However, you might need some "inspiration list" or something like that to signify what they realize they can use as spell factors. With that in mind, teaching a spell to a dragon consists of just casting once and explaining what it's supposed to do.

On a similar note, draconic magic trumps path of righ for conjuring ability as well.

Or a mean GM could make it that they can cast any spell by instinct, but if they learn a human method of casting the spell, their actions are much more subtle to other dragons.

Also, in Dragons of the Sixth World, there is an image with a troll and a dragon who is wearing dragon-sized body armor and a dragon-modified big gun of some sort strapped to its left arm. (right arm is being used to consume booze)

Could you please:

a: Page number
B: Explain that again, but without the Earthdawn? I don't speak ED, I only speak SR. (And not too much SR 2 or 1, either. I am weak in the school of old.) What's the Path of Righ?
Herald of Verjigorm
Ok, pages:
dragon picture in DotSW: 177

The part about dragon magic in DotSW does not mention the innate understanding of every spell, that may be an ED holdover but if I see it in SR I'll get you that.

Dragon style magic is DotSW 179 & 180.

Path of Righ is a magical tradition mostly reserved for overpowered elf NPCs. It can conjure nature spirits, spirits of the elements and elementals. I was partially mistaken since those are also the three main types (watchers, allies, etc. for other possible conjurings) listed for dragon conjuring, so it does not trump as much as I thought.

Oh, there's also a section in there about dragons with cyberware. When stressed, there's a chance it goes feral. Also, dragons can only get deltaware at an even higher cost multiplier.
That makes the cyber-dragon a little harder to play.
ShadowDragon8685
Okay, now that I think I understood.

I didn't see anything (reading the intro to DotSW now), about innately knowing EVERY spell, because frankly, there's got to be as many spells as there are mages.

I mean, who woulden't make a spell to suit whatever particular need they had? "Scratch my Back", for example. Or maybe "One less Devil Rat" for dealing with pests.


However, I can easily see an innate ability to learn spells they can see (or sense) in action, or perhaps through trial and error.
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