It’s interesting to see how my FR playstyle is influenced by my WD playstyle in regards to breeding and family trees.
I joined WD in the era of Big Studs, when Sunfall and Faelor were in their heyday and it seemed like every other wolf was related to them and/or Michael Scott. The playerbase reacted hard against this. People culled wolves with “big name” heritage and made thinly disguised forum blacklists of big-name studs. They set their stud prices high to limit the spread of their bloodlines, lest they become what they were trying to avoid. Pups were advertised as “no LB” (no leaderboard ancestry) or “no dick.” (Swiftla renamed Faelor to Dick. It was a brilliant power move.)
Anyway, I reacted hard against the reaction. I liked all my big-name-heritage pups and didn’t appreciate the sentiment that they were worth less because of their ancestry. Lore-wise, I think big-name heritage is something to be proud of. If a stud is popular, it’s because he’s got good traits (base, marks, stats). Good traits are good! Success should be celebrated, not disdained. In particular, if a stud gained popularity through his leaderboard status, that should be a source of inspiration for his descendants.
Because of this mindset, I’ve always desired to spread my studs’ heritage as much as possible. I want to have such a prolific stud that people avoid his name and cast aspersions upon his offspring in main chat. It’s never going to happen, but, y’know, that’s the dream.
Razanei was my second stud, and my first with a lunar base + lunar marks. I liked him so much that I immortalized him. (Gameplay immortality only. In lore, he died, but he visits frequently as a ghost, so the pack reserves his favorite den spot for him.) When I joined FR, I named my starter dragon Razanei, because coming up with names is hard, but quickly decided he was the same character reincarnated as a dragon.
Wolf Razanei never quite reached megachad status, but he did pretty well for himself; he sired 506 pups during his lifetime. Dragon Razanei immediately started working on his offspring list. From the start I wanted him to have a massive, rambling, colorful extended family tree, just like in Wolvden.
Turns out that people in FR are also snobbish about lineage, though for different reasons than in WD—there’s no stud system, and generally no issue with genetic bottlenecks. But the mindset is a lot more rigid: many people dislike breeding dragons at all. It’s well-known that if you breed a dragon, you tank its resale value. Every month or so, a topic pops up “What’s your greatest FR regret?” and the #1 response is, “Breeding my progens.” (#2: “Not buying more luminous halos.”)
I understand wanting unbred dragons for specific lore purposes, e.g., the dragon is a fandragon or a sona, or some kind of divine/eldritch/non-draconic being that would not logically have dragon offspring. However, that’s a small niche. A lot of people don’t even do lore. So I don’t understand why “don’t breed your dragons” is such a prevalent mindset. People act like you took the tag off a Beanie baby. If it’s about aesthetics, I find long offspring lists aesthetic—that’s the WD influence talking. Fly high and spread your lineage across the earth.
(okay I exalt 90% of Razanei’s descendants but SOME of them find homes and that’s what’s important. also exaltation does not exist in my lore, they’re all canonically still out there making a ruckus)
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Pictured: Ollie and Derecho, Razanei's grandsons, and Clive, Razanei's great-grandson. (whoops all spirals. well, we're working on improving the species diversity of the family tree - in fact that's my major project right now - but my attempts at breeding obelisks/skydancers/bogs haven't been successful, so here we are.)
