Can a world overrun by dragons survive?

[F5]

So, I've been tossing this idea for a campaign back and forth in my head for a little while now.

Every game I've ever played in, and every game I've ever run, has had dragons as epic forces of Good/Evil, that dwarfed the power of mere mortals. Up until about 15th level or so, an encounter with a dragon was one where you considered yourself lucky to escape alive, never mind actually defeating it.

What would a campaign be like where the main enemy was dragons? Since dragons’ age categories scale through just about all experience levels, PCs could be fighting them almost exclusively from the beginning of their careers. Assume that Dragons are prolific enough that wyrmlings are a dime a dozen, even if they get progressively rarer as they go up in age category. The dragons have their own servitor races; the kobolds, the Lizardfolk, troglodytes…all the reptilian humanoids. Could you build a game around that? What would be the consequences of such a setting on plain vanilla D&D? It completely destroys the image of dragons being epic adversaries, for one thing.

Or does it? If you spend your entire adventuring career fighting a particular Great Wyrm's hellish spawn, couldn't an encounter with the Mother herself be pretty Epic?

If any of this inspires some crazy ideas, let me hear 'em. Help me build up the details of this world...

 

[Vraille Darkfang]

1. See Dragonlance (Recent Fifth Age Stuff).

2. See Council of Wyrms Box Set.

Dragons as top dog (wyrm) has been doen before.

Didn't care for the Dragonlance Dragon Overlords,

But Council of Wyrms was pretty cool.

 

[Rackhir]

So, I've been tossing this idea for a campaign back and forth in my head for a little while now.

Every game I've ever played in, and every game I've ever run, has had dragons as epic forces of Good/Evil, that dwarfed the power of mere mortals. Up until about 15th level or so, an encounter with a dragon was one where you considered yourself lucky to escape alive, never mind actually defeating it.

What would a campaign be like where the main enemy was dragons? Since dragons’ age categories scale through just about all experience levels, PCs could be fighting them almost exclusively from the beginning of their careers. Assume that Dragons are prolific enough that wyrmlings are a dime a dozen, even if they get progressively rarer as they go up in age category. The dragons have their own servitor races; the kobolds, the Lizardfolk, troglodytes…all the reptilian humanoids. Could you build a game around that? What would be the consequences of such a setting on plain vanilla D&D? It completely destroys the image of dragons being epic adversaries, for one thing.

Or does it? If you spend your entire adventuring career fighting a particular Great Wyrm's hellish spawn, couldn't an encounter with the Mother herself be pretty Epic?

If any of this inspires some crazy ideas, let me hear 'em. Help me build up the details of this world...

Well the movie "Reign of Fire", from a couple of years back was about a world that was overrun by dragons. You might want to watch that for some inspiration. Of course there is Dragonslayer the old Disney movie and Smaug from the Hobbit.

Some of the "Good has Lost and Evil Reigns" settings like Midnight? might be good for inspiration as well.

I don't think such a setting necessarily means that dragons wouldn't be viewed as fearsome foes. You just have to make sure that the similar CR dragons are always tough fights. Nobody is going to take a great wyrm lightly just because for 15th level characters wyrmlings are a walk over.

I guess one of the question you need to decide on is how powerful the dragons are relative to the main society. Are you talking about a Reign of Fire world, where humanity has been pushed to the very margins and they are desperately striving not to be wiped out. Or Something more equal see-saw battleish.

One suggestion I would have is that you make dragons non-sentient until fairly large sizes. Doesn't mean that they are stupid, they can be quite clever and nasty, but just without that ability to look at the larger picture and plot larger strategy. It could make for quite a nasty shock for the PCs, they've gotten used to dragons that are tactically vicious, but strategically unaware. Then they run into a dragon that is clearly thinking circles around them, knows all about them and has counters for their favorite tactics and strategies.

 

[ElvishBard]

Richard A. Knaak has written a series of books about this sort of thing. The books have the dragons as the all powerful overlords, yet they need to have humans alive to grow them food and be food. Plus, the dragons are low in number, and are not sure that they could defeat the humans due to their mass numbers.

 

[jonesy]

1. See Dragonlance (Recent Fifth Age Stuff).

Early Fifth Age actually.

In the current timeline only one of the Overlords is still breathing.

But yeah, the Overlords were pretty much the rulers of the world for a while.

Then there's the dragon planet from which they came, but there's no information on it.

Richard A. Knaak has written a series of books about this sort of thing.

Knaaks books aren't really about the Overlords. He's more of a minotaur kind of writer.

Edit: oh wait, you weren't talking of the DL books? Sorry about that.

 

[Gidien]

My very first campaign was much like this. The dragons weren't common creatures or in charge per say, but I loved using them and pitted the characters against them frequently. Each dragon usually had a pack of servitor humanoids, lizardfolk for the black dragon in the swamp, orcs for the big mean red that tried to assualt their home city, etc.

It made for a lot of fun, and lent an epic feel even while the characters were fairly low level, eventually building up to a fun aerial battle with the pcs riding dragons into battle to seal a planar rift. But I will admit that making dragons rare and fearsome foes in my later campaigns never really worked with these players, and I almost never used them afterwards.

If you don't mind losing the impact of dragons in later campaigns, it can be a lot of fun.

 

[sniffles]

I always have a friendly disagreement with a friend of mine because he thinks dragons ought to be enormous (150 ft.) and I think that's just ridiculous. Granted, fantasy settings aren't exactly realistic, but at some point the idea of having these huge creatures running all over the place just becomes untenable, IMHO. So I'd say that if you want to have dragons be fairly commonplace without turning your campaign world into a post-apocalyptic wasteland, you should reduce their size and power levels, so that the oldest and most powerful dragons are not colossal great wyrms (or if they are, there are very few of them). After all, an *army* of wyrmlings could be pretty scary!

 

[Thornir Alekeg]

I think you can do this if you do a couple of things:

Dragon wyrmlings are born in nests away from dragon lairs and are left to fend for themselves. If you have a dragon society where a mother is protective of her young, your PCs will find themselves facing the wrath of an older dragon long before they are ready.

Dragons are the main enemy of the player races, but the main enemy of dragons are other dragons. Some older, more powerful dragons may be able to hold together a clan of dragons, but for the most part they fight and plot against each other. The player races, like the dragon's servitor races are pretty much disdained unless they start getting a little uppity or step out of line.

I really like the idea of dragon's achieving full sentience only at the larger sizes.

 

[Hand of Evil]

Yes, dragons would rule and some races would disappear but others would find a niche.

 

[greywulf]

Love the idea, especially if you throw enough twists in to make it clear that dragons aren't just your usual uber-powerful foe. Something like:

- Sorcerers, being the spies and agents of Dragons, are either hated and reviled, or would act as the "Inquisitors" for a dragon-centred religion

- Dragon Disciples would be an aspiration for almost every class, and would probably need breaking into multiple PrCs - I imagine a Black Dragon Disciple would be a very different beastie (with different requirements) to a Gold Dragon Disciple

- Dragons would control trade. Merchant dragons are something I've used in a campaign before, and work very well even at quite low levels. The PCs freak when they discover that the trade caravan they're protecting is owned by a Blue, and it's being taken through a Red's trade zone.

- Still on trade, bartering would be the name of the game for the "common" races - all gold and gems would be state (ie, dragon) controlled.

- Dragon Eggs. Forget gems - these beauties are the major currency. Just one single gold dragon egg could be fought over and covetted by both good and evil factions for their own nefarious reasons

- Playing a party of dragons would be fun, and possible (using the rules in Savage Species) to play all the way from low to epic level. You'd need a good reason to get all of those different colours and chromes to work together though I bag the Red Dragon barbarian!

- Lots more arial combat. Dragons think in 3d and certainly won't be limited to flat surface combat. This will also affect architecture too - no low-slung buildings. Think tall, narrow spires, vertical dungeons and huge plateaus

- Expect a lot of regional variations for the core races, similar in type to the dragons themselves. I'd expect Red Elves and Gold Elves to hate each other, and White Dwarves to live in the snow capped wastes while the Green Halflings toil in the swamps.

In other words, sound like a great idea - run with it!