The Great Auction

The kingdom's financial difficulties forced it to auction off the right to name the next year, but good came out of it. There was much entertainment had by the people as the wealthy put forth publicly the names they intended to give it, whether reminders of their glorious ancestors or sentimental tributes to their present-day families. Brotherhoods scraped together all the promises they could from multiple members in the hope of attaching some reference only members of a particular occupation understood. The king tried not to discourage anyone by giving his opinion, but court-watchers reported his every expression when he heard of the latest proposed name.
The day of the auction came too soon for the public's liking but just in time for the treasury. As the event began in the grand hall, the king himself watching though not presiding, the great door burst open and there stood a man. It was Aldis, the great hero who had saved the kingdom countless times, outfitted in his magical armor of blue and armed with his adamant-cleaving sword. No one expected him, for he had left the kingdom to seek more adventure and beside that was no rich man, having the custom of giving away wealth as soon as he took it as he did.
"I have slain the wicked dragon Tyvithoda!" he declared to the wondering gasps of all there. "And plundered all that vast hoard. None, I think, will outbid me now."
The people begged to hear what he had chosen as the name, but to judge by the king's grimace, he knew already. Neither was Aldis mistaken about his superiority in wealth, and accordingly was the year entered into the annals as the Year of the King Still Wets His Bed.
Happy New Year!
Finis

A Long-Delayed Progression

We have to level fantasy up into fantaser or even fantasest. My suggestion: Dragons only, no humans. They have dragon swords!

Addendum

Would it be gauche for the card game to have dragons in it? Humans don't see it that way, but you know how dragons can be.

The Next Evolution of a Venerable Art

Riding dragons is pretty cool, but what if you played a card game while you did it?

Dragon Cunning

Sometimes dragons pretend to be people, but what about pretending to be other dragons? Think of the legal complications.

Mayvember Is the Month for Spooky Merriment

"Think we'll get a lot of scares, Durg?"
"Doubt it, Gevins. Mayvember is here, so everybody's steeled against it." Durg set about securing the connections between the two halves of the dragon costume. "But we'll scare the people who are ready to be scared, and they're the ones who matter. There."
But what was this? The joined costume fused together and absorbed the two young men wearing it by Mayvember magic! This was the birth of the invincible hero, Draconic King Gevidax!
"What's happening, Gevins?"
"I don't know, Durg! It feels like I've . . . like we've become a real dragon! Maybe we'll scarea few more than we thought."
Gevins and Durg mastered Gevidax's basic movement just in time, for when they returned to their village, the scaring had already begun! But not harmless Mayvember pranks. It was Ur-Sphinx Keptet that attacked! Fight, Gevidax! Rake the enemy, Dragon Claw! Roast him, Dragon Blast! The world's peace is yours to protect. Heaven's Anger Wyrm Sword!
Finis

Addendum

A blond human who is actually a dragon carries a golem hammer through the portal. What lies on the other side? A tyrant who's actually a transformed black hole, of course, but the point is, hammers are only a good weapon for a hero if they're really big, and I mean ultra huge.

The Secret of the Well

Once upon a time, there was a well. One day, villagers heard a voice coming from it. "Help me," it said. "I'm a dragon stuck in this well. Help me get out."
"That explains why we never get any water out of this thing, I suppose." Thus said one villager.
"We'd better get that dragon out," another concluded.
But before they fell to devising a method to accomplish that, Skeptical Leonard spoke skeptically. "If you're a dragon, how did you get down there in the first place? It's a serious question."
"It is," the dragon admitted. "Thinking about it, it's really dark down here. I'm not actually sure I'm a dragon or what I am. I suppose it was more of an aspiration. Aren't dragons cool?"
Even Skeptical Leonard agreed that they were. He and all the villagers equipped themselves with shovels to get digging. They dug and they dug until at last they were able to rescue the creature, which of course turned out to be an oivel, as anyone more educated than the average villager would have guessed.
The freed oivel assisted the villagers in picking a better location for a well. After that, it opened a museum dedicated to dragons and dragon-related subjects which operates to this day, and if you tell them old Millard sent you, they'll knock a bit off the admission fee for you.
Finis

Dragon Logistics

The general inspected the preparations and found them to be proceeding in good order. The palisade was up, the tents would soon join it, and the dragons were hauling in the engines required for the siege.
"General, I'm puzzled. Why do we have dragons do manual labor? Couldn't they take down the walls themselves?"
These brats from the elite families always asked dumb questions like that. So far the general had managed to preserve his patience in every such instance, which was the reason he had been able to become a general. "Yes. Then they claim the city for themselves. As it is, they don't even know what we're going to do with that mangonel, for instance." He pointed at a dragon who deposited that engine, accepted a copper bracelet as payment, and flew off.
"I get it now. That's why we have them digging the latrine, right?"
At least the brat was impressed with his own powers of extrapolation. The general was not. "Yes. They're excellent at it. Far better than my men."
"OK. I guess they're excellent doctors, too." The twerp looked at a dragon wearing a white coat who was struggling to set a bone without killing its owner.
"They're terrible at it, but you can't just look at that. A human would be much better, but that same human will be even more useful in the siege compared to a dragon. Something can be at a disadvantage in itself but still result in an advantage when you compare the optimum use for whatever is superior to it." Did the elites not teach their children economics? The general worried about the future of the country even if the siege were successful.
Finis

Startling!

Readers won't even believe this nonsense! Let's start!

Desert in the north!
Humans are the warrior species!
Elves . . . are bad?!?!
Dragons! Not such a problem!
The galactic empire is the good guys!
Aliens are technologically inferior to humans!
Trolls are smart!

Everything's been done before but tell your shills to claim whatever you do is totally original! Readers can't know they're supposed to be shocked if you don't tell them!

Pioneer Concerns

Another historic day! Every day seemed historic, or rather, was historic. How could it not be in New Jericho, humanity's first city on another planet? The governor did a few stretches. He needed to be historically serious to deal with the momentous, era-defining task he had the unique opportunity to complete.
On his desk waited the first, no, the inaugural New Jericho survey. The colonists, chosen from a vast population by not only the examination board set up at the sponsors' request but also by their own daring personalities, had all been consulted as to the state of the city in every important facet. Beyond that, they were encouraged to write in the empty portion any items they believed to be essential for the city's prosperity that had been neglected to that point.
Governor Erle Drake sat himself down and read through the surveys, ebullient at first, then disconcerted, and at last positively discombobulated. "But . . . but . . ." His composure abandoned him just as he had left Earth. Dashing to the balcony, he yelled, "Who is it? Who thinks the most pressing business is . . . is . . . remaking astrological charts?"
"Me," a structural engineer passing below said.
"Same," concurred a nearby psychiatrist. "The stars are all different here, so, you know."
"I suppose!" Governor Drake clenched the railing and tried to expel the scorn from his words. "I suppose that next you would like us to establish a commission, for the purpose, of inventing, a creation myth for this planet! And its people!" The scorn was still there. "Oh, can we do that?" A crowd gathered below the capitol building.
"That sounds great!"
"I hope we get something more inspiring than a celestial egg."
"Can it have dragons in it?"
"Better be some incest. Not a proper creation myth without it."
"How about this for a start: once upon a time, matter was energy, and energy matter."
And so a commission was formed, and the governor lost a spoonful of enthusiasm. The next historic event corrected that deficiency, however. There was no shortage of those.
Finis

Non-Human Politics

A dragon who wins election ten times becomes a dracodecagogue obviously, which is twice as good as a demidracodecagogue. But what do adventurers in non-electoral polities do? Level up off of aristocrats and tyrants? That sounds plausibly bloody. The best method is to have a ton of kids so your heir can farm his half-brothers for XP.

Thoughts on Dragalia Lost

As an expert in not playing Dragalia Lost, seeing as I only played the intro, I decided to explain its failure. Publish or perish, after all.
First, right from the beginning, the controls felt worse than similar games like Bleach Brave Souls.
Second, that intro gave the impression the game would be dungeon-focused, but when I looked in later, it seemed the entire thing was boss-in-a-box fights with a heavy co-op focus. The audience that wants more of the former feels deceived, and that which wants the latter will never know that game has it.
The biggest problem, however, is that it missed its aesthetic. It seems to me, a professor of not playing Dragalia Lost, that there's a triumvirate of aesthetic categories such that the successful mobile games hit one or two hard, which we will call Cute, Cool, and Coom. Games can touch on all three, but you can tell where its heart is. Granblue Fantasy is cool and Princess Connect is cute, for example.
So what's Dragalia Lost? It has those chibis, so it's cute, right? Not really. They don't have particularly cute expressions. They look like low-poly characters in an early Playstation game, as if their tininess were a technical limitation rather than a choice. Furthermore, they're being used to tell a pretty po-faced fantasy story about dragons and time travel. The music is cutesy, not cute. The difference is crucial. Maybe it's cool, but then, it's full of chibis and tubby dragons, not to mention pastels and slice of life type wyrmprint art are not the least bit cool, to say nothing of Euden's hair. It certainly isn't coom. The occasional bikini doesn't cut it. You need to hit different tastes and have a sense of the erotic which Dragalia Lost lacks almost completely. That's why it got so little fanart.
You can talk about this or that update or monetization all you want, but that only matters if people play it in the first place. Dragalia Lost's numbers were disappointing from the very beginning. I contend the primary reason was the lack of aesthetic appeal, although of course some people liked it a lot. Plenty of stuff I like also isn't popular, so I know how it is.

Nostalgia Corner

Remember dragons? Those were the days.

Fantasy-Wide Alert

It seems Guild Wars 2 has ended all dragons. Switch to giants immediately. I repeat, switch to giants now.

Worldbuilding Tips

People like jewelry I guess, so throw some of that in there. Rings and junk. You can put most of it under a dragon, though, if it makes you feel better. A space dragon, because people in the future are still going to like jewelry.

Addendum

Would the Forsaken have glowing weak spots? Need you even ask?

As Long As We're Changing Stuff

All the Forsaken should be killed by Rand during shoot-'em-up sections where he rides a dragon. They can reuse the dragon-calling segment each time it happens.

Mobile Gaming News

Did Dragalia . . . win?
No, but you have to say that for legal reasons. Cosmic legality.

Worldbuilding Q&A

Q. Why would people build walls in a world with dragons?
A. The existence of dragons does not preclude the existence of things that are not dragons, such as other people.