Dragon Trading?

[Dray]

I was wondering about taking the dragon swap a little further by allowing dragons from certain templates to be tradeable in and of themselves. Essentially, everyone who had one of the dragons of the tradeable variety could pass them back and forth. The reasoning behind this, perhaps, would be because one could only breed those dragons in their possession, using the idea of pre-mated flights. Each dragon or subsequent offspring could be traded or given between members of the Nexus, and used in regular flights and frenzies if anyone so chose.

Mind, the first problem that one would run into is record-keeping. I can't think of a way to keep records up to date that wouldn't be extremely involved. On the other hand, I'm not sure if anyone would be interested in a 'keep your own records if you want to' policy. Another problem would be that people might abuse the system; where they 'traded' the dragon but kept the image up--essentially the dragon would seem cloned. Leading from that, a person might simply click-and-take without any permission in the first place. This might lead to requiring certificates of authenticity, like those found at some adoptable sites outside the Nexus. Perhaps keeping a certain page layout for each owner would allow everyone easier access for record-keeping; but certificates of authenticity for each dragon may be difficult. That might have to fall on each owner to add the newest owner's name to the list before trading away?

I can see other problems with the idea of dragon-trading, but let's assume for a moment that everyone who owns one of these guys knows that the dragon itself -can- be cloned, that having copies is permissable (albeit, that it will lower the rarity-factor of that particular image!)

What I was thinking was that this could be an open-ended project. Everyone who wants to participate can lend a hand in setting up a single draconic species (like the Alskyrians were made, or the Icharians.) This species that we decide on using would have a base structure, along with a list of not only colours, but other traits as well (fur, horns, etc.) Once that list was settled upon, the dragon-species traits would be set in stone--enough room to play around in, but definite limits as to how whacky they can get. Everyone who wanted to set up a dragonry would then be able to do so! You could send a pair to someone else to breed, or simply breed your own to your heart's content, using your own template, or one that somebody else created for the public.

Either we could set breeding restrictions from the start, or we could leave it up to the better judgement of those who do breedings; though I think number of offspring and kinds of starter dragons (it's no fun to start out with a loaded dragon because you can't work up to it, right?) those would be a couple of important things to consider!

How colours and traits pass on might be a good thing to define from the start, as well.

Rats, I've got to run and get some RL errands done. I'll have to continue this train of thought later. In the meantime, any thoughts?