I'm a bit confused by what everyone is saying. Is it possible to not have dragons appear, not including helgen, and complete the civil war questline?

Yes it's a pity they didn't make the civil war a quest on it's own instead of tying it in to the mq like that.

You can finish the mq without doing any civil war quests, they should have made it the other way round as well.

The Legion and the Stormcloacks are mainquest related factions. Natuarally if you progress in them then at some point you will find yourself on the same path as when you start the mainquest neutral.

You just had the bad luck that your two main ideas on what to do both ended up in the main quest. However everything else in the game is seperate from the main quest. So just go do any of the other thousand things you can do and you should be fine.

I've been playing for 100 hours spread over 5 characters and none of them have done the main quest. Also one of them is in the Legion. I did have to kill the dragon and the people in Whiterun believe me to be the dragonborn but I just roleplay that I find that nonesense. I do encounter a few dragons in the world now but besides some people in Whiterun I am still not known as the dragonborn.

If you do only kill the first dragon; how often do you encounter other dragons?

Yeah, I don't like that you have to be "dragonborn" to finish the civil war quests.

Quite a bit. They appear to have a chance of appearing on Fast Travel, as well as in the Radiant Story (A guard or someone will say "I heard a dragon is roosting at .") Besides that they seem kind of common, I've seen 3-4 flying around just from standing outside Whiterun.

Played the MQ once, I won't play it again. I just don't talk to the Jarl and "I just do what I want (in Eric Cartman voice)".

About one every hour, but you don't always have to kill them. Sometimes you see them in the distance flying over mountains. It actually is rather cool to have them in the game. I just don't like that you have to absorb their power. I just want to be a unknown character slaying dragons, not the dragonborn.

If you do the civil war quests then dragons to have a habbit of popping up in the war camps if you fasttravel to them. You'll then kill the dragons with the help of the troops there. I dont recall the imperials calling me dragonborn when I absorbed the soul. But I imagine that stormcloak troops would call you dragonborn...

From the time u get that dragon stone, they random spawn.

Actually, in an open world RPG one should not be shoe-horned into starting the main quest.
This is far from baseless as starting the main quest will cause dragons to appear, and people may not want that.
When you want to play this game the way you like it, instead of being put on rails and told what to do, this complaint is valid, reasonable and logical.
It is rather annoying however to have to read replies such as yours, people that automatically attack anyone who is unhappy with something no matter how well-spoken they are or how logical it is for them to be unhappy with a feature, no, just because the defence force cannot stand heresy you have to jump at the chance to say something silly, snide and insulting that has nothing to do with the topic at hand and only serves to put down. Well done.

To the OP: You can avoid starting the main quest in the palace in Whiterun.
When you enter the palace a guard will come moving towards you who will engage some dialogue about why you are there.
If youre fast and lure him to one end of the hall before you sprint towards the other, you will be able to deliver the sword etc. without starting that conversation.

Is this really true?

I have to agree with the OP, it definitely was an oversight error on Beth's part.

I wouldn't let it get to you too much. That guy loves to insult people and whine about their whining.

Also, for those of you looking to completely avoid Riverwood/Whiterun, as you leave Helgen you can loop around to the south to find a road that leads to Riften.

I'll be sure to try that next time. Thank you!

I'm pretty sure the random dragon spawns start from the point you deliver the dragon stone from Bleak Falls Barrow to the court wizard. Could be wrong though, but it would mean you could kill the first dragon that attacks the west tower and stop there.

The only reason I don't like the main quest is because it triggers random dragons.

I've heard the following console command will stop new random dragons from spawning (though randoms that already exist are still around):

Type ~ to enter console.
Type: set MQ106TurnOffRandomDragons to 1

Not sure if this actually works, though.

I was level 32 before i started the main quest (was forced because of the civil war quest), but anyway, just dont go to white run. Remember when you escape the cave after helgen and that guy tells you that you should split up? thats the time to split up dude. But i agree that the civil war quest restriction is stupid

But doesn't the first dragon appear only after you return the dragon stone and get the scripted scene?

I delivered the sword from his daughter and collected a bounty without triggering the main quest, by avoiding the guy who walks up to you when you enter the palace.
He has his weapon drawn and moves quite slowly. He will ask what your business is in the palace yadda yadda, main quest.
Just save before you enter. Lure him to the back, move sideways, sprint to the front.

The civil war quest can only be done when youre at a certain point in the main quest though, but it does work for things like bounties.

For normal quests yes, for civil war quest no. The jarl will tell you that he is busy with the dragon problem. EVEN though you(or anyone) has told him about the attack on Helgen yet...

If the guard does talk to you, you can just press b. No probs. But only for non civil war quests

With my character, I didn't even talk to the girl in Riverwood. Walked straight past it and took a cart to Windhelm. And the Civil War questline is godawful anyway, the most flimsy of all the major groups in Skyrim.

Would it not work if you skipped Riverwood completely?
If you don't ever speak to Alvor or the stormcloak woman then how will the Jarl learn of the dragon?

Never thought of that. Wow, i feel like an idiot now.

No, no, see, you're trying to use logic here. That won't do.

That's the way it ought to work. But that's not how it actually works, and that's one of the problems. If you do the civil war quests before the main quest the Jarl inexplicably knows all about the events at Helgen.

And the whole business gets even more ridiculous. The Jarl not only knows about Helgen before he's been officially informed, but your dialog informing him about it is still right there in your dialog options. So we have an incredible screw-up: after the Jarl tells you he won't accept the axe until you deal with his Dragon problem you can then choose the dialog telling him for the first time about the Dragon.

This is a bug, pure and simple.