Dragonborn/Tiefling- which campaign setting?

[Jhaelen]

I just want to know if I sat down at your game table and said I want to play a gnome, would you let me?

I am going to guess the answer would be yes, I could play a gnome.

Well, this question wasn't addressed at me, but I can tell you for certain that I would never have allowed you to play a gnome in my campaign.
In my campaign there simply are no gnomes. Elves exist, but they're not available as a player's choice. They're fey and all fey races are off-limits. Since the campaign is set in an arctic region any races originating from warm climates are also not allowed.

I don't know how other DMs do this, but when I had my first ideas for a new campaign, I put together a short introductory flyer and asked around if anyone would be interested in a campaign with the stated changes/limitations.
Everyone knew right from the start what to expect.

I highly doubt when they do Dark Sun 4e it will have tieflings or dragonborn.

Well, it depends on the execution. Dark Sun didn't have a place for 'standard' halflings, dwarves or elves either. There was a Dark Sun version for all of them. I'd imagine dragonborn could actually fit rather well.
Tieflings might be a bit more problematic.

 

[CAFRedblade]

I've been thinking about this since the release of the information on Dragonborn being the new race and how the Eladrin, Tiefling and now Dragonborn fit in to the main established settings.

Forgotten Realms: Eladrin and Elves, no really big change, FR has multiple types of elves.
Tieflings have been around in various forms but not as a single race of late
What predominantly comes to mind are the half elf/demons from the fallen
Mithal city (can't remember the specific name)
Another area they could come from is the Underdark, or from the merging
of Abeir and Toril(if this is what happens) with the timeline change
Now the Dragonborn, I'd simply call em the PC form of the Saurial, a
dragon/dinosaur race previously and long ago introduced to the campaign
world.

Dragonlance: Eladrin and Elves, again, shouldn't be too hard, several varieties exist
Dragonborn, the PC form of the Draconians already existing.
Tieflings are the tricky ones here, not sure where they could pop up from.

Eberron: Eladrin and Elves are spread throughout the Khorvaire elven populace,
Eladrin make up the high cast on Aerenal and Elves the lower caste,
while the Valenar are the regular elves.
Tieflings can easily come from the NorthWestern Demon Wastes, and have
been spreading out slowly since the start of the last war, and now come in
greater numbers. Could also come from Xen'Drik
DragonBorn are either a servant or slave race to the Dragons of
Argonessen primarily. A tribe or Clan has recently been sent to Q'Barra to
watch over the Corrupted Dragon Guardian and his lizardfolk tribe by the
members of the Chamber or another faction.

This is how I see things from the limited information I've read, and I'm looking forward to more.

CAFRedblade
*Quick edit for spacing.

 

[Nahat Anoj]

Hi

Since Dragonborn and Tieflings are now part of the core-books, would anyone care to explain which campaign settings they will fit into? I mean - I have not heard about Dragonborn in the FR nor in a lot of the other settings. Does this mean that we will se a new setting with 4E, just as we had Eberron in 3E? One that totally encompasses the ideas of "points of light" and the two new races?

I don't know much about other settings except for FR, but could someone tell me if this fits well into Dragonlance, Eberron etc.... And if not - what do you think WOTC is up to with those new races? They are not going to add two new races without having a setting that is ideal for trying out the new stuff.

FR has the saurials, which were introduced in Azure Bonds (the first FR novel I read). There's also a bunch of reptilian humanoid info in Serpent Kingdoms. Tieflings could already be present, maybe they were in hiding. Alternatively, they may be newcomers - perhaps they came around when Mystra got whacked.

As far as the various elf types, the moon and wood elves will probably be 4e elves, while gold elves will probably be 4e eladrin. The elves are already referred to as fae anyway (I just read the Hunter's Blade trilogy).

In anycase, FR did just fine by having gold elves and moon elves, which if you remember is not the "default" D&D assumption (high elves being "normal" and gray elves being snotty).

 

[Twiggly the Gnome]

Eberron: Eladrin and Elves are spread throughout the Khorvaire elven populace,
Eladrin make up the high cast on Aerenal and Elves the lower caste,
while the Valenar are the regular elves.

I'd much rather see Eberron's Eladrin receive a treatment marking them as distinct from Elves, something involving Thelanis and the Twilight Demense would be good. The Aerenal and Valenar are members of a single race, with different cultures.

 

[redmagerush]

I just want to know if I sat down at your game table and said I want to play a gnome, would you let me?

I am going to guess the answer would be yes, I could play a gnome.

As someone else has already said, you didn't ask me this, but I'm going to answer anyway.

At my table, no way. Usually if I'm running a fantasy game, humans are the only sentient race. Or at least the only one open to players.

 

[Gundark]

Every major setting, including 3rd party settings that wants to update to 4e, needs to allocate a space for them in the same way that it was before with half-orcs and monks for instance.

There is nothing forcing 3rd parties to use Teiflings and Dragonborn. Just like there was nothing them forcing them to use half-orcs or monks

 

[Monkey Boy]

The whole lightining strikes and leaves a draconic egg behind has nothing (so far) to do with the Dragonborn. And to clarify: some of the lighting strikes where marking impact points of a year long rain of meteors, which apparently contained the dragon eggs.

Oh my god, that sounds so much worse.

I will however subscribe to the monkey magic method of birth.

 

[The Ubbergeek]

You know, dragon-men races exist in some videogame rpg... Like the later Wizardry games or one of those Elder Scrolls (?) games.

They fit classic fantasy, I say.

 

[helium3]

Gnomes are a specific idea that only fit in games that allow for them, for example:

A world that has a joyful, mountain or underearth dwelling race that is fey like (i.e. the original folklore behind dwarves).

A world with tinkers and their psuedo-science contraptions.

A world rife with illusionary magic and fey like glamours that needs a hidden and secretive race that embraces these things.​

These feelings go contray to the grittier, dark style or sword and sorcery style of fantasy I prefer.

So why not change the base assumptions of what it means to be a gnome rather than ban them outright?

 

[Rechan]

You know, dragon-men races exist in some videogame rpg... Like the later Wizardry games or one of those Elder Scrolls (?) games.

I'm pretty sure the Argonians are just lizards, not dragons. They didn't really do anything overtly "Dragonish"; they just lived in a swamp, were immune to disease/poison, and could breathe underwater.