Originally Posted by frau kaleun

Actually now that I've looked at it more in the UESP, it appears you can start it just by visiting Solstheim on your own and talking to the right people. But I'm wondering if something happens there that causes dragons to start spawning even if you haven't done the "main" main quest up to that point.

I have it but haven't played it yet so I'm not sure. TBH it doesn't make any sense to me to have the main quest of Dragonborn start unless the PC has already found out that he/she is also Dragonborn. I mean... it's called Dragonborn and the plot seems to revolve around dragons and the dragon cult and Dragonborn-y stuff in general, so it would seem odd to me to be doing that when the whole Dragonborn thing hasn't even come up at all in the main game. But as I said I haven't played it, so... I dunno.

At any rate I have no problems at all with dragons in my game, they're one of the reasons I bought the thing to begin with. I luuuuuuurve being Dragonborn.