I mean I get color and metallic dragons their separate gods hate each other but like a color dragon with another color yea kinda weird and doesnt make sense

I thought the canon was that the offspring just rarely becomes a hybrid, and usually becomes the same type as one of the parents, but with maybe a few oddities. A green dragon with a red dragon parent might be bigger and bulkier than other green dragons, for example.

@@TheHornedKing Besides chromatic dragons hate each other why would they procreate i’m pretty sure a black dragon won’t mate with a neighbouring Green dragon some other lore says that Tiamat had a sister that was killed answer sister had created The other chromatic dragons The purple dragons The orange dragons the grey dragons the yellow dragons and no pink dragons don’t count they were a fan submitted monster plus it’s a bit too silly to be a chromatic dragon

This might be outdated, but from what I remember dragons are generally unlikely to mate with different dragons. But when they do, there's a chance a hybrid is born. Hybrids are not a species onto themselves, they are unique individuals. But there's also stuff written about how chromatic dragons follow color theory. Purple coming from Red and Blue dragon parents. There's more about Tiamat not allowing a hybrid between a metallic and a chromatic to be born. But this would only apply to Toril and not other worlds like Abeir. I also remember that the same person who made the whole color theory thing for chromatics, mentioned a sister god to Tiamat. Tiamat killed her. Apparently there's lore that this is where the hydra come from as well (the spilling of that god's blood), so do with all that what you will. Personally, I think the "hybrids are rare, and matting between dragon species is also rare" thing is just there to explain why these are the dragon species that exist, and why we don't see others. But this basically leaves it to the GM to do with what they like, since rare does not mean impossible.

To be fair Halfdragons and Dragonborns only exist because players kept asking if they could play as a dragon. Finally one DM said 'Here, you can play as a halfass dragon or this thing I call a dragonborn. Now go fuck yourself."

I literally thought that was the case, and that deep dragons are just mistaken for purple dragons in-lore.

That does seem to have been the original intention, 3.5 era Dragon Compendium ( which took older edition articles from Dragon Magazine and updated them to 3.5 ) had an official Purple Dragon in it and Deep Dragon was labeled as a "Faerunian Dragon"

That's how I treat them.

Deep dragons are Shadow dragons pulling off the ninja replacement trick, only instead of a log they cobble something out of the corpses of a big fish and a giant bat. Purple dragons keep Shadow dragons as butlers, so if someone comes lookimg for them the shadow dragon can do the replacement trick to get rid of the adventurer. Purples find pesky humans too boring to even lift a paw at them.

If I’m being honest, I like all three genres!

@@creativeusername7366 he he me too. :)

Retro-spect is a portmanteau as well! Retroactive Perspective Retrospect!

Today I learned what an acronym is, I mean it makes in a retroactive perspective but wow

It's not an acronym, like radar or laser, but a portmanteau.

Yes! Go give Dungeon Dad some love!

Same.

I'm glad to hear that! Still tinkering with the format, but hopefully I'm in the right direction.

3e was always when I truly learned D&D and delved deep into it as both player and DM. The 3e purple dragon is really solid, and like many things from that era, is a good balance of oldschool and newschool.

No kidding? What issue? I didn't come across that while researching.

@esperthebard I can't remember what issue off the top of my head but if you can find a PDF of the Dragon Compendium Vol 1 ( despite that they never made a vol 2) its totally in there alongside the Yellow and Orange dragons

retcon = retroactive continuity. If something is removed or otherwise not present, there is no continuity.

To be clear, they were mentioned in Fizban's, but only in a sticky-note style textbox stating that they are essentially an urban myth.

@@brianroberts783 Correct, in Fizban's it was stated that they were likely just other metallic dragons disguised as them, basically scrubbing them away in the lore.

@@tyreecesalandy9269 Just gonna ignore that, and pretend that this is just how good Steel and Song dragons are at staying hidden.

@@ODXT So am I.

This would fit with Out of the Abyss. Gonna steal this idea; some Purple dragons made the mistake of making a deal with a Demon Lord.

@@ODXT By all means you are welcome. You haven't stolen i gave it willingly.

The 3e version was definitely cool in its own way, and the 4e version, while not quite as cool, still carried the main idea and worked well for that system. It's really the 5e version that got really wonky. They fleshed out more lore and gave it more uniqueness, while warping it beyond recognition and insulting it by making it googly-eyed, toothless thing that's weaker than all other true dragons.

@@esperthebard They also removed Steel and Song dragons. I went the route that Steel, Song, and Purple dragons actively fool sages into believing that they don't exist or are some other thing.

Prismatic and force dragons weren't part of the game yet when the original "color wheel" version of the purple dragon was published. At the time, they pretty much deserved the "most powerful" title for then-extant dragons, assuming we exclude Tiamat and Bahamut from the running.

@@sharondornhoff7563 True enough. Do prismatic and force dragons still exist in current ed?

If i want to have something it Will be on there

I appreciate that the 5e designers wanted to do something distinct with the deep dragon, and they did flesh out more lore than in previous editions ... but they wrecked the whole monster in the process. I agree with what you wrote. They should have made a proper purple dragon, then made a spin-off dragon-kin like a "salamander dragon" or "fungus dragon" or a monstrosity that is distantly related to dragons.

@@esperthebardNo reason the purple dragon can still be done in a later book? I never like the purple dragon being called deep dragon anyway. 'Deep' has no symbolism to purple. creativity, imagination, independence, and a sense of adventure is what purple signified for romance. Purple also represented royalty & dreams. far better concepts for the purple dragon I think.

​@@esperthebard I thought of an interesting concept for the purple dragon as every dragon has niece & it's layer. Why not make the purple dragon the roamer that can't stand being in anyone place while treated as ab outcast 1/2 cast. weaker breath weapon but ignores all resistance & immunity as mentioned. I imagine the purple dragon from old art as a slender sleek being that you can never keep down or locked in one place. I think movement though smaller cramped spaces as normal for 2 or 3 sizes smaller & make it have a highest speed on land of say 60=80ft etcetera of all the dragons would be am amazing vibe. A young purple dragon sized large being able to even follow & hunt down small or tiny races would be a fun change of pace. Long slender legs that that form flat with it's body to slither. Purple dragon should be the roaming independent most serpent like of dragons. A huge or Gargantuan purple dragon winding as it traverses though the corridors of a castle or keep as if a medium creature would be terrify to the players on sight & it's breath will guarantee damage even if of a lower d4 dies instead of d6's. Put a very high stealth & dexterity with mobility as mentioned imagine getting a surprise round off as a purple dragon on a oblivious party with the breath attack mentioned. The purple dragon should never be seen & those that do a rarely around for long after? The fun of it & table flipped up but a perfe You get no riches from the purple dragon all it wants is to have his creativity & imagination amused regardless of the cost to others, To the purple dragon greatest treasure is to experience in new stimulation to feed it's imagination for entertainment as they are ever curious like most snakes that as soon as you open the tank they want to get out out to have look about or even a chance to absconder. The red & blue dragons both have pride of might-destruction for red with blue as a patient tactician. A purple dragons pride of manipulation showing it's self to only to a select while remaining hidden to all others as their pray question if the dragon is real or not & they aren't sure of they are dreaming-insane. The purple dragon should want to induce madness into it's pray as it is akin to the sweetest nectar to them. This whole approach would explain why purple dragons are common in the under dark but really large geographic area they can remain unseen with plenty of cover & obfuscation. The best apex predators are the ones you never saw or coming. A dragon so rare & so few survivor that many people even often doubt their existence as nothing more then camp fire story or a collective string of madness. That's the sort of purple dragon I would like as it isn't the strongest or toughest but the most persistent predator like we humans as it selected pray it will never leaves alone for long & no uninterrupted sleep can be had by that the chaotic evil purple predates.

“Oh man, other people enjoying something I do too but they’re funny-looking and different from me and believe in inclusivity so I hate it now”

Keep in mind I'm promoting quality over ideology, not "try to remove all ideology". In other words, the quality of the art, the writing, the characters, the world building, the system mechanics, etc. get prioritized above any philosophy or politics.

@esperthebard I one hundred percent understand that. Again, it's why I enjoy your videos as much as I do. I'm just saying it's impossible to remove ideology from art. And because of that, the higher quality you produce, you are inherently more powerfully serving your ideology. To quote George Orwell, "All art is propaganda." And I think that's fine. But let's not pretend it's not. Thanks for taking the time to respond.

Video did feel a bit like that, although like you said there are good points. But at the end of the day players homebrew shit all the time, especially stuff from older editions. Something that could have made this more productive was to turn the conversation into "This is what you're missing out on" and teaching people about older Purple Dragons (Maybe even give suggestions on homebrew). Then people have an option to add to their 5e game. You still get to complain, and people get more out of it than "they changed this thing that I liked and now I'm mad about it". Personally, I preferred the 3e version. The older edition is kinda meh, cool breath weapon but otherwise just a stronger Blue dragon. But 3e is an intelligent horror monster and explorer, with plot-hooks for the Drow and mind flayers.

I'm still working on getting the format right, both from a production standpoint and the tone of the content. I think I'm getting close to hitting a sweet spot, but still need to improve. Hope to have you back at some point.

@@esperthebard it’s obvious you love the game or you wouldn’t have this channel and we all love it or we wouldn’t be coming here. It’s also obvious to most people that it’s not perfect. Hardly anything is. But a huge thing you need to keep in mind is everything you and I and everyone else feels about it entirely subjective. Some people don’t like 5e art, I think a good portion of the art in older editions are steaming hot garbage. Change for sake of change sucks, I think everyone agrees. You say you’ll make changes for quality over ideology, but to some people ideology and inclusivity are hugely important qualities. Doesn’t an imagination-based game benefit from having more imaginations to work with? I don’t understand what’s wrong with making something traditionally associated with “outcasts and nerds” more appealing to more people. Especially something entirely made up in the first place that you can change to literally however you want. I know that you said something like you should be able to “play it right from the box” without having to do some work beforehand, but not many things in the world actually require no effort. I see in a lot of comment sections in channels like yours that “rainbow-haired ideologies are ruing the game,” even on this video. It seems like there’s always some subsection that gets vocal and offended whenever a group likes to insist that they are in fact humans with rights and dignities like everyone else. We can save discussions about media literacy, because this ttrpg in particular is so totally about imagination that change is inherent. How many different campaign settings and planes are there? There’s no reason for dnd to not be as inclusive and welcoming as possible. Don’t get me wrong, it’s important to be able to speak out when you’re not happy about something, and people who think otherwise are just plain wrong, but lately when I watch your videos it feels like you’re taking a giant dump on the things we like, while most in the comment sections cheer you on, which most of us get enough of in our lives already from other people and it’s been getting kinda depressing. I’m neurodivergent in more than one way, I’m not able to sit with people and play the game as much as I want to, and the only way to feel like I’m in any way part of the community is through channels like yours.

​@@esperthebard Not the person you responded to, but here's my two cents. The balance of the video is a bit off. You have information about how this dragon used to be in prior editions. But the focus is on complaining about decisions WoTC have made (which is fair). In older videos you've talked about how you would change things so they fit into a setting and/or system. Which I think was missing here. It doesn't feel like this was made for someone interested in Purple Dragons and wanted to learn more. They were just a vehicle to end on the premise that WoTC is doing a bad job (or related statements). I'm all for shitting on them, but it's empty calories.

@@ODXT Early in the video, I mentioned how I had to completely redo it, as my first attempt wasn't landing right. The problem was basically what you described, too much griping (even if I thought it was well articulated and made some good points). The second attempt eased off of the criticism a bit, and delved more into the purple dragon throughout the history of D&D. But, in the end, it still was a bit off. A bit out of balance, like you said. At the same time, I made some improvement in other areas, as I'm still trying to get the format right. So it wasn't a total failure by any means. Just gotta learn, adjust, and keep moving forward. I'm optimistic about how the next one will turn out.

@@esperthebard Agreed. It's not an easy thing, and again, I don't want to make it seem like the video is bad. Just giving you feedback that you've likely already considered.