Dragon monks, ninjas, and pirates oh my!

[Bloosquig]

Hello all I just wanted to throw some ideas out there for you all to digest. Everytime I read a thread about multiple attacks and natural attacks someone mentions the infamous dragon monk. My question is this; where the heck do dragon monks get training? Is there some infamous dragon monastary somewhere high in the mountains where they grow green tea and meditate on the meaning of life? Or is there an entire dragon culture based off of the orient? If so they must have ninjas. And of course where there are ninjas there must be pirates to fight them.

I'm thinking of making any orient based stuff in my next campaign be based off of a dragon culture. The idea of warring samurai dragons over a dragon city seems cool to my mind's eye. Plus it would be fun to give out a funny looking magical scythe just to reveal later its a dragon sized kama.

So here's the meat of the thread for all you lovely folks on my favorite RPG website. Anyone have good stats or stories for dragon's with classes or an entire dragon culture in a regular campaign world? Or half-dragons I suppose.

 

[Rodrigo Istalindir]

Read Naomi Novik's Tremeraire books, specifically the second one. It deals entirely with an oriental culture where dragons and humans are more or less equally represented.

 

[Bloosquig]

I appreciate the tip Rodrigo I'll have to read that. Now if I can just get my head on straight about the rest of the campaign and actually do some work on it I'll be getting somewhere.

 

[Kristian Serrano]

Get your hands on a copy of Council of Wyrms. It was a 2e campaign option by TSR, and you can purchase the PDF for $4. There were actually two versions, the later version just updated the first.

A friend of mine ran a homebrew campaign that was something similar to what you describe, but dragons, while present, weren't heavily involved. The main monestary just revered dragons in a spiritual sense. That's not to say dragons weren't present as they did make appearances as key NPCs. As an aside, the entire campaign assumed we all at least had a handful of levels of monk and were allowed to multi-class freely. Eventually, we were bestowed half-dragon progressive templates, too.

I've been flexing my atrophied creative muscles for a dragon-themed campaign using Draconomicon, Races of the Dragon, and Dragon Magic myself, but I haven't had time to get very far with it.

 

[hamishspence]

Which book has Dragon monks and why are they infamous?

I wondered about Dragon Samurai from Minatures Handbook. They were interesting critters. Not sure how i'd fit them in: maybe in a Dragon-centric campaign we have tribes serving individual ancient or olders dragon with the prestige classes opening to those who have earned great repute in the tribe?

 

[Voadam]

Strange Lands: Lost Tribes of the Scarred Lands http://www.rpgnow.com/product_info.php?products_id=1601&it=1

One portion of the book details the Dragon Lands which have a strong oriental flavor to them and heavy dragon involvement.

AEG's Dragons also has a specific dragon monk class IIRC.