Quote:
Originally Posted by khorboth
So, my biggest questions, I guess, are: How much variety should I have in dragons? How many dragons should I have? Why can only this one kingdom train them? (I'm thinking it's some magical talent in the royal line) What is the mechanism of training?
What are your thoughts, great crowd to whom I'm sourcing?
|
The first HtTYD basically had a unique dragon type for each of the main characters along with several other types shown (I haven't seen anything further in the franchise). This seems unlikely unless dragons are basically the stand-in for every animal the size of a dog or larger. If you have somewhere around 5-10 types of dragons, they could reasonably be considered the equivalent of the largest animals in that world like hippos, rhinos, elephants and whales, which would not break agriculture, hunting and the like.
If you keep the largest dragons to around elephant size, a nation the size of India could easily have hundreds if not thousands (if many are herbivores).
If you make the requirement to train dragons part of a bloodline, you end up with lots of inbreeding and/or other nations accessing the ability via political marriages or kidnapping + rape. An alternative would be a mystical stone that prospective dragon trainers have to visit or meditate at to gain the ability to tame dragons. If the stone is large enough that it can't readily be moved, other nations would have to infiltrate whatever school is responsible for educating dragon trainers.
Training animals usually involves establishing a bond of some kind, depending on the nature of the animal species that bond can be based on trust, dominance, or a variety of other factors. Once a bond is established, effective training usually involves understanding the personality of the animal and how to motivate it.
The trope version establishing a bond is often portrayed as having the character presented with a lot of options, and having the character finding the one that matches their personality after going through every option. After the selection process, the training is usually just kept to "How Does X Work?" which is frequently played for comedic effect.