So do dragons randomly appear?

[Sevron]

I've been watching videos of people fighting dragons, etc. Do they randomly appear or is it part of a quest chain where you do so many quests and then kill a dragon? Because I would love to just kill dragons if they did just randomly appear.

 

[Eturnus]

Once you've done the 1st few quests in the main story line, Dragons will start apearing randomly. If you do a few more (up till you find an paranoid old crazy man who shall remain vaguely described so as not to spoil story line plots) the rate at which they randomly apear is kick up a notch. I persoanly have not goten further than that in the main story as i keep getting destracted by butterflies ^^

Also randomly around the map are Dragon Shrines, which are gaurded by Dragons 9/10

 

[Parker]

From what I can tell, they are pretty "randomly" dispersed, but I think they have specific spawn zones. So to a point they are random yes.