What is the best kind of dragon?
How well do you know your FR Authors? Every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, you can expect an update to the author roundtable, featuring many of our best Forgotten Realms authors’ answers to the world’s most important questions, right here on this blog. Submissions for new questions welcome through private message.
Rosemary Jones (author of City of the Dead): Topiary. At least I have a warm corner in my heart for topiary dragons after writing City of the Dead. In opera, it’s Fafner, of course. When playing D&D, so far the best kind of dragon has been a dead one: the live ones keep trying to eat me! (Friend Rosemary)
Elaine Cunningham(co-author of The City of Splendors): One that’s in a very deep state of hibernation. (Friend Elaine)
Richard Baker (author of Avenger): The rich, dead kind lying with my sword through its foul black heart. Especially if it was holding captive a fair maiden. A very grateful fair maiden. (Friend Richard)
Ed Greenwood (author of The Sword Never Sleeps): The friendly kind.
Mark Sehestedt (author of The Fall of Highwatch): The Welsh Red, of course. But if you mean D&D dragons, I’ve always been fond of the white, because a reptile-like creature that thrives in a cold climate is way cool. Ba-dump-bump.
Richard Lee Byers (author of Unholy): The kind that isn’t hungry.
Philip Athans (author of A Reader’s Guide to R.A. Salvatore’s Legend of Drizzt): The one that’s on your side. (Friend Philip)
Erin Evans (author of The God Catcher): Blue! I can’t help it. I’m biased, I know. But what’s not to love? Smart, dangerous, reasonable to an extent, really interesting-looking—it’s like a graceful, deadly rhinoceros! Plus: lightning breath. First it flashes, then it zaps, then it’s LOUD. (Friend Erin)
Christopher Rowe (author of a story in Realms of the Dead): Brown dragons, beets, Battlestar Galactica. (Friend Christopher)
Jak Koke (author of The Edge of Chaos): The friendly, un-hungry kind. (Friend Jak)
Erik Scott de Bie (author of Downshadow): Any dragon that can change shape into a humanoid shape—or, even better, a nymph. 
(Friend Erik)
Jaleigh Johnson (author of Mistshore): The kind that exists only in your imagination—except when you think you catch a glimpse of scales out of the corner of your eye, or the sunlight glances off a wingtip high in the clouds. The dragons I see in my mind are the most wondrous. (Friend Jaleigh)
Bruce R. Cordell (author of City of Torment): An ancient and benevolent dragon-king that rules from its mountain lair. Sort of like a fantasy version of a benevolent AI taking over from all these foolish monkey-heads that individually an attain greatness, but en masse tend to act in less than ideal ways. (Friend Bruce)
James P. Davis (author of Circle of Skulls): The one that is talked about over a mug of ale in any tavern almost anywhere. The exploits of the inebriated storyteller’s dragon are usually far and beyond the abilities of the dragon (or dragonlike creature) in question. What starts as a snake someone almost stepped on in one village ends up as the pinnacle of draconic imagery in the next village over: horns like castle towers, teeth like demonic swords, wings that eclipse the sun, terrible claws, and breath that could burn the world to ash. All witnessed by a drunken farmer that might have fallen stone-dead if presented with an overly large lizard . . . which is why they tell the tales late at night when everyone within earshot is well into their cups. (Friend James)
Lisa Smedman (author of Ascendancy of the Last): The ones on my skin. (See FR Authors Speak: Captain Obvious.)
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