Dragonborn in Faerun

[Hussar]

I'd say that they are considerably closer to humans than elves. Elves are immortal! Or, close enough from a human perspective. They would share virtually nothing in common. Their points of view would be completely different. An elf is closer to a tree as far as viewpoint is concerned. Humans would be a faceless mass with no more impact than a gerbil. Dragon born, OTOH, have a pretty common point of view with humans, share similar outlooks and goals. Socially, Dragonborn and Humans are actually pretty close. They certainly aren't virtually immortal magical faeries. Dragon born are described as honourable and courteous, elves are chaotic and flighty.

So, you have a highly structured, honourable race that is generally willing to deal with you very fairly and on equal terms, and a race of chaotic, inward looking immortals who view you as little more than somewhat intelligent apes. I mean, DB have very human like clans and family ties just like halflings. Culturally, DB aren't all that different from humans.
The biggest sticking point might be the lack of faith on the part of DB.

I'm thinking DB would be pretty easy to accept in human lands. Again, Saurials were introduced to FR about twenty years ago in the novels (I'm not sure of the Forgotten Realms date and my Google-fu has failed) without too much of an issue. I don't really see why Dragonborn would be much different. I mean, good grief, Genasi are accepted in public in FR. If a dude whose hair is on fire can walk down the street, I'm thinking a big arsed lizard isn't much of an issue.

This is a setting that has two trunked talking elephants. Again, I'm not sure that talking lizards would really be an issue.

 

[Mecheon]

Yeah, for all of the psychical closeness between humans and elves, psychologically they'd be miles apart

Dragonborn would be closer with humans just because they're far similar in how their worldview sets them about

 

[Scribe]

I dont know how Dragonborn are easier to integrate than Tieflings, even the 4th/5th edition versions (which I still cannot get behind fully, what was wrong with how they looked in 3.5 and before...) but a Tiefling is at least human appearing outside the horns/tail/eyes, and those are not too out of control, to me.

I think we are downplaying the importance of the face to humans. Its what we look at, its part of our communication system, and a LIZARD looking back at me, is a whole other thing than maybe some horns or weird eyes.

Erin touches on this a bit, but to me Dragonborn are far more 'other' than a Tiefling.

 

[Hussar]

I dont know how Dragonborn are easier to integrate than Tieflings, even the 4th/5th edition versions (which I still cannot get behind fully, what was wrong with how they looked in 3.5 and before...) but a Tiefling is at least human appearing outside the horns/tail/eyes, and those are not too out of control, to me.

I think we are downplaying the importance of the face to humans. Its what we look at, its part of our communication system, and a LIZARD looking back at me, is a whole other thing than maybe some horns or weird eyes.

Erin touches on this a bit, but to me Dragonborn are far more 'other' than a Tiefling.

Fair enough. But, there should be a few points to remember. 1. We don't have to deal with other intelligent faces (by and large). Someone in FR does. Regularly. Again, if someone who looks like this:

or this:

can walk down the street and go into a bar without too much of a reaction, I'm thinking that this:

isn't going to be much of an issue.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

It's also worth remembering that pretty much every place in Faerun, backwoods or not, tends to have some degree of population mixing, such that half-orcs are something people are expected to know of (just as an example).

When you're already used to people having a far, far greater variation in height, weight, skin tone, and hair color, it's not hard to believe that people could be, ever so slightly, more "open-minded" than we might expect. I can't even imagine how different Earth cultures would be, if we had four-to-six other relatively common sentient species that were clearly not human; we might be a little more willing to overlook human ethnic differences and a little more likely to take the medieval tack, where nationality and religion mattered substantially more than what you specifically looked like (though physical appearance might be used to guess at nationality).

In other words: I feel like the inherently greater variety present in even a "classic"/"core four" races setting would temper some of the relations between more distinctly other-than-human species, including dragonborn and tieflings. I can certainly see skittishness, or more "subtle" racism (assuming guilt, for instance, or paying a particularly close watch) but torches-and-pitchforks reactions, IMO, would generally need at least a little more justification than just "backwoods yokel that's never seen a dragonborn before." Simple example: backwoods-yokel town gets raided by a band of unscrupulous dragonborn mercs, as a ploy by a local baron to get the town to make concessions to him (e.g. higher taxes). Now, they have seen dragonborn--and 100% of the dragonborn they've seen were definitely a threat. That kind of feeling can persist for a generation or more after the fact. It can even result in something humorous, when they don't question the sight of an actual dragonborn because they haven't seen one before, but freak out when they learn the "truth." Reconciling the twelve-foot-tall, fire-spewing, bladed monstrosity they were imagining (from the aggrandized tale of surviving the assault) with one of the heroes that just saved them and shared a barrel of beer with the whole town can be a good laugh.

Finding a good balance point between ignoring other-ness/rarity, and harping on it to the point of boredom, might not be easy. But I don't think it's impossible.

 

[Ilbranteloth]

Fair enough. But, there should be a few points to remember. 1. We don't have to deal with other intelligent faces (by and large). Someone in FR does. Regularly. Again, if someone who looks like this:

or this:

can walk down the street and go into a bar without too much of a reaction, I'm thinking that this:

isn't going to be much of an issue.

And this explains exactly where my problem lies. Once TSR/WotC decided that everything fits in the Forgotten Realms, they drastically changed the setting.

I totally get that I may be in the minority here, and that for most people in this thread the Forgotten Realms has always had this nature. But it hasn't. Go back earlier and what became known as 'planetouched' were more subtle. Humans with a touch of an extraplanar race that gave them some extra abilities, and possibly disadvantages. So the visual aspect wasn't there. I'm OK with that because it doesn't fundamentally change the world.

Those races are rare to non-existent as well. Tieflings and Aasimar in Mulhorond (but don't look like that) because they are distantly related to the God-Kings that actually lived in their land for centuries. Of course, if their bloodlines came from an Egyptian-based pantheon they shouldn't look like the second picture there.

Genasi in Calimshan, if at all. And again, less obvious. An extreme racial minority that looks that different won't survive long in a land where slavery and assassins are part of the culture.

And if you go with the Dragonborn and their country being dropped into the Forgotten Realms, who is going to wander off to other lands? Farmers? Oh wait, they are probably carnivores, aren't they? Merchants? They aren't human, what are they trading? What are they trading for? Why are they bipedal, instead of at least occasionally quadrupedal? Why did they build a human-like society and culture?

It's primarily the adventurers that would wander the world. We always seem to forget that adventurers are a rare breed in the world. It's actually a perfect example of the rare feeling like the norm since that's all we play. As such they would be rare. And anybody in their right mind would be a bit wary of adventurers of any race. They always seem to bring trouble with them. Sure, they can be helpful from time-to-time, but overall they usually just seem to bring trouble.

Ilbranteloth

 

[Ilbranteloth]

...The man definitely understood design.

Huh? All you have to read is something like the dwarves special abilities:

Detect grade or slope in passage: 75% probability (d4, score 1-3)
Detect sliding or shifting walls or rooms: 66 2/3% probability (d6, score 1-4)
Detect traps...: 50% probability (d4 score 1-2, or d6, score 1-3)

His design and mechanics are all over the place. I'm not actually criticizing this, the game started as an off-shoot of war-games and he was designing in part by borrowing or expanding existing rules, along with finding solutions to new problems.

And his rhetoric was always full of 'musts' and 'must nots', although his home games from what I understood were not quite as rigid. So apparently what he viewed as good game design for publication was different than that of actually playing the thing.

As far as what he wrote about in terms of game worlds, etc. Remember that the DMG was published before the World of Greyhawk supplement, and that was far from a complete game world. Tekumel was the only real campaign setting at the time, and one could argue that it wasn't equalled/surpassed until the release of the Forgotten Realms a decade later.

We've also had 30+ years of science-fiction and fantasy movies, shared-world novels, video games and of course an enormous amount of RPG material released. The idea of building an entire fantasy world, with Tolkien as the yard-stick, made it seem far more daunting in the mid-to-late '70's than it does today. Your frame of reference today is vastly different than it was then.

No doubt the quality of homegrown game worlds varies greatly, but the thing is, it's OK. It just needs to be good enough. Some of us are more particular than others (I'm sure I'm in that group), and that can be a good thing, and a bad thing. I've developed several worlds, and ultimately came to the conclusion that the Forgotten Realms (which I was also still running) made it much easier to focus on what's really important for a DM - running a good game. I could spent a week detailing some corner of a world that might never come into play, or focus on being prepared for the next session.

I do agree that a lot of players pick certain races because they see them as more powerful. Why? Because that's my experience. Over and over. Perhaps nowadays people play them because they are different, rather than more powerful. Which leads to my other primary experience - those choosing these types of races grow tired of not being different/powerful enough, something new comes along, and they want to play that instead. Obviously that's not the case with everybody.

Remember that most of these races go back to earlier editions where they were more powerful. 5th edition has scaled (pun not intended) them back to be in line with the other races, with optional rules to provided them with some of their additional 'innate' abilities. I've never liked tying racial abilities to class level. If it's an innate racial ability, rather than one that's learned, shouldn't it at least be tied to age?

I do think it's a lot harder than people think to design a world where humans aren't the central role, or even just a non-human race. The vast majority of alien races are designed basically as re-skinned humans. Even the dragonborn.

Have you ever played, or had a player in your game play a character or race that wasn't 'human?' Why are dragonborn designed to be humans in a dragon skin? Why not capable of being both bipedal and quadrupedal? Why would they develop a human-like society and culture? Why would they even see humans, or other humanoid races, as equals and not just a food source? Their language would be vastly different, and would they even be able to speak our languages? Why would they want to? For a creature with natural weapons, why would they invent a sword? Wouldn't their natural fighting style be different? Wouldn't they design any weapons to take advantage of that? If they designed armor, wouldn't they design something in an attempt to counter the most common weapon used by their opponents? As in, their breath weapon?

The standard dragonborn character sounds and acts human, and in game it's generally forgotten that they look different, and the only real in-game identifier is their breath weapon. Just killed an orc in plate. Oh, I'll take it. Yeah, it'll fit.

Add on the cultural issues, the fact that most conflicts in the world revolve around religion or race, or some power-hungry individual that manipulates religion or race, it's just very difficult for me to work into my world. Hey, that's probably just me. I'm no Greenwood, Tolkien, or one of many other extremely talented individuals that has designed a successful fantasy world. But I like the world I design, or at least modify, to make sense to me. That helps me to make it make sense to my players.

As an example, my lizardfolk are much more reptilian. Their 'culture' grew out of the fact that their mothers lay a clutch of eggs and abandon them. They are stealthy, can move in both a bipedal and quadrupedal fashion, climb and swim. Of course they are also cold-blooded and live only in warmer climates. Swamps are common, but so are arid grasslands. They differ regionally, in color patterns, crests, and other identifying features, sometimes with several in a given region that frequently war with each other. Well, war is a bit too organized a term. Essentially, anything that's not them is considered prey, if they think they can kill it. Otherwise it's to be avoided.

They don't fit any type of humanoid armor, but they can use weapons. Although they prefer small weapons that don't impeded their movement. Rocks and slings are more common than spears. Shields are sometimes used, as long as they can strap it to their back. Some are innately magical, so there are 'fighters' and 'sorcerers.' Any group is based solely on oppression, and if the leader is killed the group is more likely to disband than have a successor. Otherwise they are semi-cooperative. Several may attack the same prey, which helps bring them down, but then they fight amongst themselves for the largest share of the food. They do like trinkets and shiny things, which they will wear if possible, but otherwise bring back to their lair. But not to the degree that they would worry about taking it all with them if they move. They would take what they can carry and leave the rest, if at all. Their language is primitive, conveying only basic concepts of prey, danger, etc, and some communication is handled through scent, posture, and other non-verbal approaches and cannot be learned by other races as a result.

The only more 'organized' groups are those controlled by yuan-ti. They are treated and controlled more like guard dogs than an intelligent race. They generally have to be kept caged or chained to avoid them wandering off. But when pointed in the direction of prey, they are reliable enough, but with quite low morale unless compelled by magic. And they would never be a PC class. It just doesn't make sense.

But, I've started a new 'anything goes' campaign to see how it goes. So far it's fun, but I'm not sure it will have the depth, the ties that make it feel like a living breathing world. We'll see. The racial mix sounds like it's already going to shift with the next new player based on what he wants to play, so we'll see what happens.

Ilbranteloth

 

[Ilbranteloth]

Morphology may not mean everything but it still plays a part, even if only in the unconscious minds of the players. Dwarves are indeed a bit mysterious. We at least know that elves interbreed with humans, and halflings have human-like families and communities. Dwarves may be odd but still appear largely (or shortly if you prefer) human. Dragonborn are lizards. It is definitely a step farther. Is it a step too far? That's up to the DM and players. Closer than what? Closer than a gelatinous cube surely. Closer than an elf or halfling? No. Whether or not this important is up to you.

And in the Realms, the dwarves and elves came first. The elves, and to a lesser degree the dwarves, helped build human society. The centuries of history between the races has a huge impact. A dragonborn walking into a village, town, or even city, for the first time would be quite noticeable, amongst the humans, elves, half-elves, dwarves, and such.

As originally described in Waterdeep and the North, even this most cosmopolitan city is primarily human. Of all of the NPCs listed in the supplement, all are human except for 1 elf, 1 half-elf, 1 dwarf, 1 gnome, 1 halfling, 1 half-orc, and 1 beholder. The beholder, of course, is the Xanathar and doesn't wander the streets.

The description of the half-orc states: Half-orcs are rare in Waterdeep, but are tolerated as all beings short of dow and illithids (mind flayers) are, if their gold is good. Ulmrin can pass for human in appearance...

Likewise, Greenwood's description of the North in the same supplement gives the following overview of history: One thousand years ago, the North consisted of a number of civilized elven and dwarvish realms surrounded by a wilderness roamed by fearsome monsters, and such races as orcs, trolls, hobgoblins, and bugbears. Human tribes were few and primitive, dwelling along the coast. The lower birth rates of the demo-human races rendered them less able to replace casualties suffered in their almost continual fighting with the aggressive humanoids, and with the years their number dwindled. They have been steadily pushed southward by the ever-expanding, fecund orc tribes, abandoning realm after realm, or being overwhelmed by numbers and slaughtered. The many resulting, largely-empty dwarves delves and holds are what human adventurers refer to as “dungeons.”

The demi-humans, although they achieved many splendid victories in battle, could not stem the humanoid tide even when they united (see “the Fallen Kingdom,” page 5). Today, the dwarves remain only around the richest “mithril mines” in the North, and no known elven settlements of any size exist north of Evereska. The rise of human power in the North outstripped even the growth of the orcs, and prevented the collapse of civilization in the area.

The Realms (and D&D) as a whole was this way well into the 2nd edition. I think the first organized foray into playing 'monstrous' races was the Complete Book of Humanoids in 1993, and additional races weren't really made 'canon' until the 3rd Edition Campaign Setting in 2001.

Granted, the Forgotten Realms have been around as long with all of those races as without (bearing in mind that Greenwood has been writing stories since '69). Published accounts, of course, didn't exist until the late '70's. But for a lot of us, it was exactly the world we were looking for. And for more than two decades it was. When they did introduce the planetouched, they looked like this:

http://daedaluswing.wdfiles.com/local--files/planetouched/raceplanetouched.jpg

Planetouched are described as '...in most ways appear completely human.' Aasimar and tieflings both say 'some have a minor physical trait suggesting their heritage,' and the genasi are described as 'mostly human, with one or two unusual traits reflecting their quasi-elemental nature.' Also, the genasi are largely from Calimshan, a land where genies, djinn, jann, etc. have a long history, as the 'nation' was founded by genies, and now they are banned. So in their homeland they are persecuted, and would most likely go out of their way to hide their heritage even if they left the land.

These added unique alternatives, without having to drastically change the very humanocentric campaign that had long existed.

Only with Races of Faerun in 2003 did we start seeing exotic races (aarokocra, centaurs, lizard folk, yuan-ti, etc.) as playable races. To me, playing an unusual race like that is most interesting in a campaign designed for that purpose. The Stranger in a Strange Land trope works best if that's the actual focus of the campaign, which means that the focus is on a single individual.

So the Realms were very centered on a Tolkien-based worlds (complete with the elves in retreat), which fit very, very well into Gygax's concept of D&D, at least as it was published. The racial limits in AD&D built in an automatic limiter to make certain races and classes less common, particularly if you followed the rules and rolled up a character by rolling 3d6 for each ability, in order. You rolled, you got what you got, and you built your character off of those stats. If you were interested in rising to the highest levels possible, you had to be human.

Up until c2001, the published Forgotten Realms was very distinct, and then it started being pulled into the D&D homogenizer.

Ilbranteloth

 

[Ilbranteloth]

I'd say that they are considerably closer to humans than elves. Elves are immortal! Or, close enough from a human perspective. They would share virtually nothing in common. Their points of view would be completely different. An elf is closer to a tree as far as viewpoint is concerned. Humans would be a faceless mass with no more impact than a gerbil. Dragon born, OTOH, have a pretty common point of view with humans, share similar outlooks and goals. Socially, Dragonborn and Humans are actually pretty close. They certainly aren't virtually immortal magical faeries. Dragon born are described as honourable and courteous, elves are chaotic and flighty.

So, you have a highly structured, honourable race that is generally willing to deal with you very fairly and on equal terms, and a race of chaotic, inward looking immortals who view you as little more than somewhat intelligent apes. I mean, DB have very human like clans and family ties just like halflings. Culturally, DB aren't all that different from humans.
The biggest sticking point might be the lack of faith on the part of DB.

I'm thinking DB would be pretty easy to accept in human lands. Again, Saurials were introduced to FR about twenty years ago in the novels (I'm not sure of the Forgotten Realms date and my Google-fu has failed) without too much of an issue. I don't really see why Dragonborn would be much different. I mean, good grief, Genasi are accepted in public in FR. If a dude whose hair is on fire can walk down the street, I'm thinking a big arsed lizard isn't much of an issue.

This is a setting that has two trunked talking elephants. Again, I'm not sure that talking lizards would really be an issue.

Except that the elves helped the Realmsfolk build their civilization. The elves and humans share many values as a result. Yes, there are great differences. But their very nature is more human.

Dragonborn are described as all of those things, but that's part of what doesn't make sense to me. Why would they be that way? What would cause them to evolve into a human-like creature at all? Not to mention I don't think we can underestimate the nature of humans and how they would view something that looks so completely different from a physical standpoint. Particularly because they look like dragons, they are very large, and look like they would be a threat. Not a stretch considering most people's first-hand knowledge of dragons would be extremely negative, and their lore would also be about how dragons attack and horde treasure, etc.

Saurials were introduced poorly in my opinion, I have the same issues with them. Plus, the end state of them in the novels and game supplements is that they live in a very secluded part of the Realms and were never seen again. They too were an alien race, and despite it coming from Jeff Grubb, I'm convinced that it was one of the earliest examples of rebranding of a story to dump it in the Realms because it would sell more.

And again, genasi as originally described looked almost entirely human, and they were/are very rare. The act of simply publishing something as a playable race seems to instantly make it 'common.' They are possibly common in adventuring parties in the D&D game, but adventurers are very rare too. It just doesn't seem like it, since we all play adventurers.

Ilbranteloth

 

[KahlessNestor]

Except that the elves helped the Realmsfolk build their civilization. The elves and humans share many values as a result. Yes, there are great differences. But their very nature is more human.

Dragonborn are described as all of those things, but that's part of what doesn't make sense to me. Why would they be that way? What would cause them to evolve into a human-like creature at all? Not to mention I don't think we can underestimate the nature of humans and how they would view something that looks so completely different from a physical standpoint. Particularly because they look like dragons, they are very large, and look like they would be a threat. Not a stretch considering most people's first-hand knowledge of dragons would be extremely negative, and their lore would also be about how dragons attack and horde treasure, etc.

Saurials were introduced poorly in my opinion, I have the same issues with them. Plus, the end state of them in the novels and game supplements is that they live in a very secluded part of the Realms and were never seen again. They too were an alien race, and despite it coming from Jeff Grubb, I'm convinced that it was one of the earliest examples of rebranding of a story to dump it in the Realms because it would sell more.

And again, genasi as originally described looked almost entirely human, and they were/are very rare. The act of simply publishing something as a playable race seems to instantly make it 'common.' They are possibly common in adventuring parties in the D&D game, but adventurers are very rare too. It just doesn't seem like it, since we all play adventurers.

Ilbranteloth

Those genasi pictures you posted weren't very "human" looking. Still the flaming hair and green skin. Still very "out there" and certainly not "human with a touch of otherness".

And remember, there were humans on Abeir. Lots of them. The majority. And probably elves and Dwarves and such. Same standard races. We don't know how the dragons created the dragonborn. Make up your own reasons why they are humanoid.