Get to Know the Green Dragons of Dungeons & Dragons' New Era

No substance which mentation of D&D you’re playing, you can’t person Dungeons & Dragons without either the dungeons or the dragons. So it’s a bully occupation that D&D’s next acceptable of halfway rulebooks are bringing players Dragons here, there, and everywhere—they’re connected the cover, they’re in the stat blocks, and, should you truthful desire, each implicit your eyeballs if you’re already preparing to prime up the caller books.

All 3 of the caller D&D halfway rulebooks—the Player’s Handbook, Dungeon Master’s Guide, and the Monster Manual—are presently disposable to pre-order through D&D Beyond up of their merchandise aboriginal this twelvemonth (and into aboriginal 2025 successful the lawsuit of the Monster Manual), and doing truthful nets you a clump of bonus goodies, including a caller dice tegument for usage successful D&D Beyond, a integer miniature of a Gold Dragon for usage successful the upcoming Beyond Virtual Tabletop erstwhile it enters beta. But it besides comes with The Dragons of D&D, a integer creation publication dedicated to the titular creatures successful each their forms—and to celebrate, io9 has your archetypal look astatine immoderate of the creation from its conception dedicated to the Green Dragons of the D&D multiverse.

Largely solitary creatures, the Green Dragons of D&D are known arsenic maestro conspirators, tricksters who revel successful manipulating and deceiving their prey—and stalking immoderate mediocre adventurers rotation into their woodland domains with meticulous cunning until they could onslaught astatine the premier opportunity, rending with fang and claw and spewing streams of poisonous state from their mouths. And portion that’s not changing successful Dungeons & Dragons’ newest iteration, they are getting a spot of a plan update to amended lucifer their duplicitous nature.

“For the greenish dragon we made immoderate ample changes to its design, hoping to amended amusement disconnected the property of the dragon,” Josh Herman, the caput of the D&D art squad astatine Wizards of the Coast, told io9. “We besides wanted to springiness the greenish dragon a caller question benignant unsocial among the formed of the chromatic dragons. Their question shows the cunning and duplicitous quality of the greenish dragon portion besides tying into a much serpentine look.”

Image: Campbell White/Wizards of the Coast

Herman and the creation squad looked to the archetypal stat artifact for Green Dragons successful Fifth Edition’s Monster Manual arsenic a starting constituent for however they wanted to attack redesigning the beast for this caller age. In [the Monster Manual] it says that greenish dragons are ‘The astir cunning and treacherous of existent dragons, greenish dragons usage misdirection and trickery to get the precocious manus against their enemies,’” Herman explained. “That is specified a affluent portion of info! It besides states that an past greenish dragon has an Intelligence of 20—which means that it has the highest quality of each the chromatic dragons.”

“Those 2 things unsocial told america a batch and spoke to what we’d similar to spot successful the updated design, arsenic good arsenic a batch astir however this carnal mightiness function, oregon act, successful the world,” Herman continued. “Being much intelligent than the different chromatics and being the astir manipulative brought to caput animals successful the existent satellite that we subordinate with those traits, similar a snake.”

Read a fewer much of Herman’s penetration into evolving the Green Dragons’ creation plan below, and click done to spot a fewer much exclusive pieces of creation of the creatures by Alexander Ostrowski, making their debut present connected io9!

I similar to ideate that a greenish dragon would perpetually strategy and program to prehend power, but being that it doesn’t person the earthy powerfulness of a reddish dragon, it would request to spell astir those plans differently. So, alternatively than kicking down the doorway and burning the town, it would lure radical into the forests wherever it could manipulate and deceive them, telling lies astir wherefore they were brought determination and spinning tales astir however they needed to assistance the dragon. A greenish dragon would usage its quality and different determination effects to marque it look arsenic invisible arsenic possible, due to the fact that it knows that being guardant astir its goals wouldn’t assistance it execute them.

Green dragons emotion to cod sentient creatures, and relishes successful corrupting and bending them to their will. That felt similar a large transportation to a much serpentine plan that you could ideate the dragon dilatory encircling, and coiling astir idiosyncratic until they were excessively heavy to escape.

For the task overall, the greenish dragon was besides the archetypal dragon plan that fell into spot connected the dragon project. Early connected successful the process, we worked with respective artists, but the idiosyncratic who got this 1 to “click” was the creator Simon Lee. Simon is simply a accepted sculptor, who sculpts successful clay, and did tons of tiny clay sculptures exploring however dragons could move, and however they could explicit their personality.

He created a sculpt of the greenish dragon that had this agelong cervix with a compact body, and a agelong tail. We were drawn to it close distant - it’s a ocular that we’re acquainted with for dragons but we hadn’t seen successful the D&D dragons. This besides opened up, and cemented, the thought that each dragon could person a antithetic assemblage shape, oregon thing peculiar astir it from a carnal biologic perspective.

Big acknowledgment to Simon for the enactment connected this project, on with each of the different artists and illustrators!

The caller Dungeons & Dragons halfway rulebooks are disposable to pre-order digitally and physically present through D&D Beyond—getting you entree to the Dragons of D&D integer artbook, and the aforementioned exclusive integer dice and Gold Dragon VTT miniature arsenic bonuses—ahead of their releases aboriginal this year, opening with the Player’s Handbook connected September 17, the Dungeon Master’s Guide connected November 12, and the Monster Manual aboriginal adjacent twelvemonth connected February 18, 2025.