Editing Age Of Dragons: Characterisation (section)

==Aesthetic Detailing==
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Though the chapters on [[Age Of Dragons: Biology|biology]] and [[Age Of Dragons: The Twelve Breeds|draconic breeds]] give you a rough idea of what a Dragon of your breed will look like, bear in mind that dragons do not all look the same.
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This does present a challenge for player characters, of course. While dragons may be obviously varying in appearance from the viewpoint of other dragons, to human eyes, all dragons can look pretty similar. In game, it can be said that dragons have equal difficulty telling different humans apart aside from referring to the most obvious features - sure, that human there has yellow hair, and that one black, and that ones probably female because she's slightly curvier, but to the draconic eye, these little scurrying mammals all look pretty similar.
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The difficulty comes then, when we (hopefully) human players try to describe characters that to our own eyes would be pretty similar.
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Try to avoid gross anatomical variations. Saying a dragon has an extra horn is like saying a human has an extra ear. Saying that their scales are twice as large as normal would be as strange as saying a human has fingers and toes of double length.
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Instead, its worth considering superficial features that have a story to them ("my dragon has a short scar above his left forelimb, from a duel in his youth, and walks with a slight limp when grounded") and emotive features ("my dragon has a sly and slightly shifty look to him, which gives others the impression he's about to either snap or take flight at any second"). Describing your dragon in these terms allows you to maintain versimillitude, while at the same time allowing for a degree of aesthetic variation.
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