Draconomicon + Dragon Magic = Council of Wyrms Rehatched

Council of Wyrms...a neat idea greatly hindered by the 2.0 rules engine, which just wasn't set up for that sort of thing.

My thought is to take that basic premise --- a vast continent of independent realms controlled by metallic, gem, and chromatic dragons, brought together by a Council of Wyrms with representatives of all nine types, and all manner of lesser beings acting as vassals....why, that's the sort of thing 3.5 can really handle.

My personal preference would be to drop the idea that humans are outlander dragon-slayers and half-dragons are pariahs. I prefer humans as another servitor race and half-dragons as go-betweens and scions.

A PC party could be one dragon and a bunch of vassels, or you could adopt the idea from the original Coucil of Wyrms that each player plays both a dragon and a bonded humanoid. The default campaign setting could remain --- the Council raises some hatchlings of different types together to facilitate understanding and coopertation among dragonkind.

Every so often, the campaign could skip ahead to the next age level, with the dragons becoming more powerful and a new generation of vassals taking over. 3.5 rules would let you mix up dragon "monster levels" with regular PC classes.

I haven't seen Dragon Magic yet, of course...but it sounds like plenty of stuff to work with, on top of all the resources already available for dracocentric PCs.

Sounds ideal to drop onto that dragon continent in Eberron.

Indeed. That would throw some additional wrinkles into things --- the Draconic Prophesy and dragons that routinely defy the conventional alignment restrictions, for starters.

Of course, Faerun has several huge unexplored continents, and the Realms are a great place for epic-level adventuring.

Anyone up for another collaborative campaign setting thread? Start with the premise "A world where true dragons are the ruling class..." and let the rest evolve post by post like the other collaborative threads did.

Count me in - are we allowed to use the Dragon MAgazine Articles on Dragons as PC's?

Why, sure...mixed in with the guidelines for dragon PCs in the Draconomicon as appropriate. As your age advances, you have to take a certain number of levels of your "dragon class"; but in the years or decades between age level advancements, you can add some paladin levels to your gold dragon or barbarian levels to your red dragon or whatever.

Hmmm...gonna need some dragon substitution levels, because some abilities don't work well with dragons. I propose "Summon Rider" in lieu of "Summon Mount" for draconic paladins.

I started the collaborative setting thread here.

I started to write up a setting like that some time ago. Lemme find my notes...

Here we go:
[sblock=Dragon Lords notes]Dragon Lords

Ancient History

About 10,000 years ago (long enough for 2 to 4 generations even for dragons) a great priest of Io arose amoung dragon kind preaching unity, that the division between Dragons and lesser beings was more important than philisophical or idealogical differences. He managed to unite dragon kind under one banner, and united there was no force in the world that could stop them. In the 50 years war they conquered all the world, and settled down to rule it.

They set up a system where a Council of one of each dragon type plus the head of the Order of Io rules the dragons and thus everything. Each city, town, villege, or hamlet has a dragon ruleing over it. The dragons and their retinues shift cities at regular intervals (not unlike the ancient chinese buracracy). While cities do tend to be influenced by the alignment of their draconic rulers the periodic shifts in rulership tend to counterbalance this in the long run, though manuvering to keep like minded dragons in rulership of certain choice cities is one of the primary games of dragon politics. Disputes between dragons are settled before the council, by combat, or by battle between champions if the matter does not warrant the spilling of draconic blood.

Distribution of races

The dragons generally favor wilderness over civilization. Most of the land is wilderness, dotted here and there with small to medium sized towns. Hunting and fishing are prefered to herding which is prefered to farming. Farmland really only exists around the large cities. Only the tiniest of hamlets consist of a single race. The dragons do not much percieve the differences between lesser races and have encouraged intermingling. Only those races which could not abide even the semi-civilization that the dragons enforce do not live in cities. Trolls for example are only found in the wilderness (where the younger dragons consider them to be excellent sport.) The streets of a large city will be teeming with everything from kobalds and halflings to humans and gnolls to ogres and centaurs. As one might expect half dragons are fairly commonplace and many show traces of draconic blood. *

Even the youngest half-dragon has social status equivalent to a Knight and should be addressed as Sir or Lady.

Campaign Focus

About a hundred and fifty years ago a psionic plauge swept across the world. Most of the psionic orders were wiped out. Many of the crystal dragon perished. Unknown to most the illithids were wiped out to the last.

In an isolated town one psionic order has survived but is trapped by terror of the plauge. They have determined that it lingers in any psionically enchanted item handled by a plague victem and can spring up anew at anytime as long as any infected items remain. So they have placed a sphere of annihilation in a pit outside of town and hired a group of non-psionic adventurers to find and destroy every psionic item they can locate.

As this is a stable and sophisticated culture, high levels of training are the accepted norm. Mages for example are still considered journeymen untill they prove mastery of third order spells. Therefore starting level for PCs is 4th. This allows either some level of competancy to justify their hireing, or allows character concepts that require multiclassing to express, or allows characters of +ecl races. Average Npcs are generally 1st to 3rd level. Important NPCs will usually be 5th level and up.

Law

The dragons have an odd mixture of freedom and law in place. The preservation of draconic rule is the primary focus of the law. Preservation of the dragons comfort follows, and finally the organization of the realm comes a distant third.

The law is divided into four sets. Wilderness law, road law, city law and realm law.

In the wilderness there is no law. The land between civilization is the realm of monsters, refugees and bandits. It is the hunting preserve of the dragons. It is the saftey valve of their society. In theory the will of the council holds sway even here. In practice the small, the desperate and the very great are unlikely to care about the will of the council. Cross country travel is not a commonplace occurance. Those unfortunate towns not on the road network are very parochial and usually xenophobic.

On the roads violence is prohibited. Any conflict will draw an investigation by the draconic authorities. As a result caravans take their protection very seriously since any bandits must wipe them out if they hope to avoid destruction themselves. The roads do connect most (70%) cities.[/sblock]