The basic setup was that the setting was one in which dragons had pretty much ruled it for a long time. The (dragon) gods gave the dragons the gift of bonding with humanoids, the idea being that with the two minds linked together, the dragons would develop a lot more quickly than otherwise. Eventually, it became the rule that dragons who bonded with riders had to be raised by the army and do military service afterwards for a few years. So our group was a five-pair squadron. We had a couple of players have their schedule change, so we arranged an in-game event that took two of the pairs away from the rest.

Because all of us have done the two-PC thing before, we have shorthand for identifying who’s talking. WE simplified combat by saying that the pair had one initiative roll between them, so we didn’t have to remember which character of ours was on what tick.

As for challenges, we actually ended up trying to avoid combat for the first part of the game, because our guns were way bigger than our shields. Then we were fighting other dragon pairs, mostly, and the challenge leveled as we did.

I really enjoyed it. I played two characters with very different personalities–a thoughtful but moody white dragon and a drow who I blatantly modeled on Starbuck from the new BSG.

I did recaps for the campaign, if you’d like to get a taste of what we did–they start here: http://silenceleigh.livejournal.com/?skip=40&tag=tiamat's%20kittens

I’m sure any other suggested system might work as well, these are just in my experience. In fact I can’t really see what systems couldn’t work, many would work fine.

I really like your dragons as stars game– it’d be fun to drag squishy little people around, puffing up their pride so they think they’re running the show. Hmmm, could be like Douglas Adam’s mice…

@Roxysteve – Ooh, that is interesting: playing dragons as extensions and reflections of the character’s personality. That gets around some of the “playing two characters” drawback for the player running both.

Your other social and cultural quirks also seem great for keeping the players on their toes– and reminding them that the dragons are their own beasts.

So it’s really not a “what system should I use?” question at all. Any -system- can be arranged to work with this, because none of the problems we’re REALLY trying to solve here are mechanical. It’s not a question of “a d20 stat based system doesn’t model this adequately”.

So we start with the setting questions. They’re going to provide the answers to the others, and unfortunately, the original request is really vague.

Are we looking at a “DragonLance” sort of setup, with pretty standard fantasy world that just happens to use dragons as mounts for combat, where the focus is going to be on cool aerial combat scenes? Then I don’t really see a need to heavily develop the dragons at all – give them a small set of traits that define their personality characteristics, some stats that define how they work in a fight, and let each player run their own dragon. This isn’t a personality driven sort of story.

On the other hand, you could be looking at more of a “Dragonriders of Pern” sort of arrangement (Note: It’s almost completely irrelevant whether the dragons are “dragons” “alien bat beasts” or whatever. You can fill in this sort of detail for color and background, but from a ‘how do I run the game’ standpoint, it’s superfluous.) where Dragon and Rider are very intimately connected in nearly all aspects of life – and tend to be similar – you can probably _still_ have players run their own dragons, just come up with an interesting way to extrapolate the dragon from the character.

On the third hand, if you really want to make life difficult, and go for something more like Naomi Novik’s His Majesty’s Dragon (Aside: Highly recommended reading for anyone who intends to run a game featuring dragon riding. Or, for that matter, anyone who just thinks dragons are cool.) then you really need to go with the aforementioned Wraith-style “play the dragon for the person on your left” arrangement, I think, simply because the ‘emphasis’ of the game is so broad – yes, there’s combat, and yes, there’s human/dragon interaction, but there’s also a lot of human/human politicking that doesn’t directly involve the dragons.

So start by answering the important setting questions, and they will guide the pseudo-mechanical questions. As for what system you want to use? Any reasonably flexible non-class-based Stat+Skill based system should do. I’d stay away from D&D, because the rigid class (and with 4e, powers) system doesn’t seem easily adapted to this kind of arrangement, but otherwise? Should be easy.

Some factors to remember: The Pern dragons were not only telepathically linked to their riders, they were emotionally linked too. The pair were in some cases really just two facets of one personality. A corpulent rider would have a fat dragon. A dead dragon usually left the rider mentally crippled. A dead rider always resulted in a dragon suiciding.

And don’t ask about what happened when the female dragons entered their mating season. Let’s just say that weyr discipline became “an issue”.

Personally, I’d make these things more of a challenge to have around. After all, if the dragons were likable, clone-like paragons of good behavior, wouldn’t 8every* adventurer-class person be riding one?

So why don’t they?

An intelligent yet un-telepathic dragon could be a blast to run for a player. Every move would be second guessed by an indecisive dragon.

A smug dragon would drive the rider mad with “I told you so”s.

A lascivious dragon would turn everything a player said into a double entendre, until the player felt like screaming.

How about a dragon who accompanies boring long distance flights with endless verses of “John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt” or “IC Bottles of Mead on the Wall”, preventing the player from communicating with the others in the party by drowning them out?

What if a whole flight of dragons enjoy passing the time this way by working the song in close harmony, or as a round?

Any long trip would end with a -4 fatigue penalty – two for the journey itself (think: long distance motorbike ride) and two more for the wearing effect of the singing.

And a clever, avaricious dragon might steal from everyone while they slept and make stashes of treasure all over the place, just because, well, that’s what dragons do.

Or, if those don’t tickle your DM nodes, how about if the +players* rather than the characters must put up with some trade-off factor?

What if the Dragon, as an intelligent part of the team, gets a share of the XP? Who’s going to tell the dragon who has decided that *this* chest of GPs is *his* share that they can’t have it? Especially if you, the Dm, have taken the precaution of making the Dragon a worthy opponent for the team.

And if you have one quirky dragon, chances are they will *all* be as quirky as a room full of Unix sysadmins, at least, those so quirky as to submit to being a glorified warhorse. What’s in it for the Dragon? If the answer comes back “nothing really” then you need another reason for them to not just walk off into the sunset.

If there is more than one NPC dragon in the party they might often compete over incomprehensible (to humans) stuff. Imagine a party asking one dragon to burn down a door, only to have all the dragons laugh condescendingly and one of the (non asked) dragons say “You wouldn’t ask that if you understood what you were asking” or something equally as meaningless and opaque.

And what kind of dragon would willingly enter a space where it couldn’t stretch it’s wings? That’s gonna put a crimp in the old dungeoneering plans.

Whoops! Far too much stuff. I’ll stop now.

Steve.

The GM will constantly stumble if he’s trying to manage the dragons as NPCs if they’re stars of the show. You will get into situations where you are talking to yourself. Speaking from experience on both sides of the table, this isn’t fun.

If everyone needs a dragon of their own, I’d suggest you make it difficult to have a conversation with them. Perhaps

1) the dragons’ voices are so loud and otherworldly that players have to save vs fear when they talk, or take some noticeable penalties

2) the dragons speak like the Ents from Lord of the Rings–players won’t want to carry on conversations

3) “normal” dragons don’t talk, so the dragons take care to not reveal this ability around anyone but the riders

4) the dragons communication is an empathetic link. it isn’t telepathic (this doesn’t solve the language issue), instead, the player knows when the dragon is angry, or cocky, or uncertain.

As far as the dragon “questioning what is asked of it” aspect, man, that could get tough. I mean, in a sense, the GM could be trying to build a railroad with wings. It would seem like the dragons would have to either be geas-ed to the humans, or perhaps they are sort of like gods who are curious to see what puny humans do, and so go along for the ride, even when they know it is a mistake. (I’m thinking of the plot to a major show involving an island, here)

And lastly, as far as system, I’d run this in Fate. That’s probably because I have an embarrassing man-crush on Fred Hicks right now due to excitement for the Dresden Files RPG, but Fate is a great system to design exactly what you want, and not worry terribly much about issues like CR and LA and bookkeeping like that.