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Dragons: A Fantasy Made Real

Posted: Sun Sep 25, 2005 8:42 pm
by ScS of the Fraternity
I just finished watching a special made by Animal Planet, called Dragons: A fantasy made real.
The entire show is fiction, written in the style of a nature documentry in which scientists discover a dragon carcase frozen in the carpathians. The show features extensive computer animation of dragons battling dinosaurs, tigers, other dragons and the world's tastiest snack, humans. Best of all, the show is narrated by Jean Luc Picard himself, Patric Stuwart.
The show tries to explain the dragon myths as part of a real creature, even discussing how a creature alive in the time of the dinosaurs could have survived the KT extinction and lived into the medieval ages.

Its a great resource for anyone who wants to use dragons in their campaigns.

Here's the link: http://animal.discovery.com/convergence/dragons/

Posted: Mon Sep 26, 2005 12:51 pm
by Charney
Sounds cool. Hope I can get to see it!

Posted: Tue Sep 27, 2005 1:30 am
by JinnTolser
I remember seeing that when they first aired it. It was an extremely interesting program. I liked how they were able to come up with fairly plausible scientific explanations for where such large creatures might have come from, even how they could be so big and still fly and how they could breathe fire.
Quite an interesting watch, although it never occurred to me to try and adapt its ideas to a D&D game. Anybody else thought of this?

Posted: Tue Sep 27, 2005 7:40 am
by ScS of the Fraternity
Well, I certainly like the applications of divergant evolution to the dragons. Rather than based on silly skin-pigments, these dragons would be divided by their range.
Forest dragons are speedy hunters, capaable of leaping huge disances.
Mountain dragons are the standard flying, fire breathers
Marine Dragons are the mythical sea serpents
and Prehistoric dragons are swift terrors on the plains

These more realistic, animalistic dragons make for a more interesting challenge. Such things would be the top of the food chain, yet not preculde humans from civilization.

I think you could run a campaign with players working as professional dragon-slayers.

Posted: Thu Oct 06, 2005 2:37 pm
by Vorpal Dragon
Why do I recall a similar conversation not too long ago.....

Very interesting... and looks to be a little tricky to acquire in the UK.

I found Dragons World and The Last Dragon, which look like they're from the same series.