Dragonborn in Faerun

[Ilbranteloth]

Yeah, no. We are not, in any way, obligated to give a damn about Tolkien while playing games, or writing fantasy, for that matter. The origins of a thing are useful for understanding it, but they are absolutely not something to abide by, or feel beholden to when making new things.

And if you honestly don't think that the fact (yes, fact) that people tend to get set in their ways and resist change as a default position, I can't imagine what world you live in, but it isn't this one. Traditionalism is a distressingly common mindset, and it leads people to assume a "no change without very compelling reasons" mentality, which is strictly a bad thing.

And pretty much no one thinks that change is always good, but progress is, in a cultural/social context, literally positive change, in a "forward" direction. Ie, toward egalitarianism, fairness, and a better world in general. In tech, progress is change that improves the technology in some way.

So, while one can imagine progress (which is a distinct term from change) that leads to bad things, in general progress is better than stagnation.

also, nearly every time someone has had an example of "bad progress", in my experience, it's been some nonsense about the soviet union, that actually has nothing at all to do with progress, and is just radical change, usually going backward, or claiming progress while doing pretty much what the old boss did with a new paint job. Well, and there's the people who think that segregation was good and the nation has gone downhill since women got the vote, but I just assume no one on here is in that camp.


and to be clear, I love JRRT. I've read everything published while he was alive (and every word of every appendix contained therein) and a lot of what Chris has published, from the trilogy and the Hobbit, to the Silmarillion, to everything in the Reader, his Beowulf, etc. I've written fanfic, played plenty of game sessions in Arda, between homebrewed dnd and more recently the One Ring rpg by cubicle 7. I know who the Noldor are and where Arnor was, and I wish my mind was retentive enough to challenge Stephen Colbert on the subject.

But none of that love and respect for the man and his work, and the fact he essentially invented what we now think of as fantasy fiction, means that I'm beholden to him when telling fantasy stories.

Totally agree. And some of the most interesting fantasy has been, not really anti-Tolkien, but entirely different. And I think that would make for a really incredible campaign too. It's just that I've invested a lot, and have a much more limited amount of time, that I want to see through what I've started.

On the other hand for those of us that choose to be more traditionalist might choose it for other reasons. Like, we really like it and think there are still really creative and 'progressive' things to do within the stories. It's kind of like music, to many 'pop' is a dirty word. But for some, the challenge of making a statement in about 3 minutes and be fresh and new is a worthy exercise.

I embrace change and incorporate a lot of new ideas and things from many sources, although they tend to be more story elements than world-changing events like Returned Abeir. But part of embracing change and progress also involves rejecting other ideas, whether they are old and/or traditional or new, and usually it's a combination of the two.

Ilbranteloth

 

[Ilbranteloth]

My experience with playing rare stuff bears no relationship with that, and it's not because my group and I "don't care".

Thing is, non mundane stuff isn't rare, when taken as a whole, in the Realms. Any given individual part may be, but as a whole, not so much.

Look at it this way. Rather than looking at a tall white guy in a fairly monolithic Asian country, the dragonborn is like a Sikh in the full traditional garb, dagger and bracelets and turban and rad beard and all, wandering into a bar in the US, in a town with no Sikh population, but in general a diverse demographical makeup. Does the Sikh turn some heads? Sure, most people in the bar have never met one. Depending on the bar, someone might make a rude and ignorant comment about people from the Middle East. If a backward enough place, people might even generally mistake the man for a Muslim, and due to rabid mouth frothing racist idiocy, treat him poorly.

But, the reactions are not going to be the same as they would if the same man walked into an establishment in boot scoot Nebraska, circa 1950. (and now I have "Boot Scootin Boogie" stuck in my head...I hate that song)

FR has been for some time a place where there are plenty of non human, even non Tolkien, people running around in enough places, killing monsters and running bakeries and what have you, that while a person of an unknown race, obviously from a far off land will attract notice, it's nothing on the order of a teifling walking into the Prancing Pony.

In other words, there are plenty of ways to deal with players playing things which are rare in the game world, without it going the way you've described.

edit: and without losing the "stranger in a strange land" vibe.
But also, if a group doens't want to deal with that, and just wants to assume that dragonborn are well known enough that people don't really freak out or even stare much, and just get's treated like a foreigner, at worst, that's fine. The point of playing a dragonborn isn't to play a stranger in a strange land for everyone. For many people, it's about things entirely unrelated to that, in any way.

I agree it's not because they don't care.

But in my campaign we do care. To me/us it is more like Nebraska, 1950. Or, you know, the middle ages. It's all about how many of those types of people are in your particular Realms. Those elements have increased enormously as the setting has grown from being closely tied to Ed's original campaign. We find the cultural relationships interesting because it adds additional layers of intrigue when dealing with groups of people.


POTENTIAL SPOILER ALERT


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This is even addressed in the Councils in Rise of Tiamat, and the collapse of the treaties in Luruar also has some racial and cultural elements in it as well.

Ilbranteloth

 

[MG.0]

I'm not a big fan of Dragonborn or Tieflings (Tiefling is perhaps the stupidest name for a race I've ever heard). Some of my players like them so I don't ban them but I don't particularly like them.

Here's an interesting quote by Gygax from the 1st edition DMG which I agree with and which seems appropriate to the conversation at hand:

On occasion one player or another will evidence a strong desire to operate
as a monster, conceiving a playable character as a strong demon, a devil,
a dragon, or one of the most powerful sort of undead creatures. This is
done principally because the player sees the desired monster character as
superior to his or her peers and likely to provide a dominant role for him or
her in the campaign. A moment of reflection will bring them to the un-
alterable conclusion that the game is heavily weighted towards mankind.

ADVANCED D&D is unquestionably "humanocentric", with demi-humans,
semi-humans, and humanoids in various orbits around the sun of
humanity. Men are the worst monsters, particularly high level characters
such as clerics, fighters, and magic-users - whether singly, in small
groups, or in large companies. The ultra-powerful beings of other planes
are more fearsome - the 3 D's of demi-gods, demons, and devils are
enough to strike fear into most characters, let alone when the very gods
themselves are brought into consideration. Yet, there is a point where the
well-equipped, high-level party of adventurers can challenge a demon
prince, an arch-devil, or a demi-god. While there might well be some near
or part humans with the group so doing, it is certain that the leaders will be
human. In co-operation men bring ruin upon monsterdom, for they have
no upper limits as to level or acquired power from spells or items.

The game features humankind for a reason. It is the most logical basis in
an illogical game. From a design aspect it provides the sound groundwork.
From a standpoint of creating the campaign milieu it provides the most
readily usable assumptions. From a participation approach it is the only
method, for all players are, after all is said and done, human, and it allows
them the role with which most are most desirous and capable of identify-
ing with. From all views then it is enough fantasy to assume a swords &
sorcery cosmos, with impossible professions and make-believe magic. To
adventure amongst the weird is fantasy enough without becoming that
too! Consider also that each and every Dungeon Master worthy of that title
is continually at work expanding his or her campaign milieu. The game is
not merely a meaningless dungeon and an urban base around which is
plopped the dreaded wilderness. Each of you must design a world, piece
by piece, as if a jigsaw puzzle were being hand crafted, and each new
section must fit perfectly the pattern of the other pieces. Faced with such a
task all of us need all of the aid and assistance we can get. Without such
help the sheer magnitude of the task would force most of us to throw up
our hands in despair.

By having a basis to work from, and a well-developed body of work to
draw upon, at least part of this task is handled for us. When history, folk-
lore, myth, fable and fiction can be incorporated or used as reference for
the campaign, the magnitude of the effort required is reduced by several
degrees. Even actual sciences can be used - geography, chemistry,
physics, and so forth. Alien viewpoints can be found, of course, but not in
quantity (and often not in much quality either). Those works which do not
feature mankind in a central role are uncommon. Those which do not deal
with men at all are scarce indeed. To attempt to utilize any such bases as
the central, let alone sole, theme for a campaign milieu is destined to be
shallow, incomplete, and totally unsatisfying for all parties concerned
unless the creator is a Renaissance Man and all-around universal genius
with a decade or two to prepare the game and milieu. Even then, how can
such an effort rival one which borrows from the talents of genius and
imaginative thinking which come to us from literature?

Having established the why of the humanocentric basis of the game, you
will certainly see the impossibility of any lasting success for a monster
player character. The environment for adventuring will be built around
humans and demi-humans for the most part. Similarly, the majority of
participants in the campaign will be human. So unless the player desires a
character which will lurk alone somewhere and be hunted by adventurers,
there are only a few options open to him or her. A gold dragon can assume
human shape, so that is a common choice for monster characters. If align-
ment is stressed, this might discourage the would-be gold dragon. If it is
also pointed out that he or she must begin at the lowest possible value,
and only time and the accumulation and retention of great masses of
wealth will allow any increase in level (age), the idea should be properly
squelched. If even that fails, point out that the natural bent of dragons is
certainly for their own kind - if not absolute solitude - so what part
could a solitary dragon play in a group participation game made up of
non-dragons? Dragon non-player characters, yes! As player characters, not
likely at all.

As to other sorts of monsters as player characters, you as DM must decide
in light of your aims and the style of your campaign. The considered
opinion of this writer is that such characters are not beneficial to the game
and should be excluded. Note that exclusion is best handled by restriction
and not by refusal. Enumeration of the limits and drawbacks which are
attendant upon the monster character will always be sufficient to steer the
intelligent player away from the monster approach, for in most cases it
was only thought of as a likely manner of game domination. The truly ex-
perimental-type player might be allowed to play such a monster character
for a time so as to satisfy curiosity, and it can then be moved to non-player
status and still be an interesting part of the campaign -and the player is
most likely to desire to drop the monster character once he or she has
examined its potential and played that role for a time. The less intelligent
players who demand to play monster characters regardless of obvious con-
sequences will soon remove themselves from play in any event, for their
own ineptness will serve to have players or monsters or traps finish them
off.

So you are virtually on your own with regard to monsters as player
characters. You have advice as to why they are not featured, why no
details of monster character classes are given herein. The rest is up to you,
for when all is said and done, it is your world, and your players must live in
it with their characters. Be good to yourself as well as them, and everyone
concerned will benefit from a well-conceived, well-ordered, fairly-judged
campaign built upon the best of imaginative and creative thinking.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I'm not a big fan of Dragonborn or Tieflings (Tiefling is perhaps the stupidest name for a race I've ever heard). Some of my players like them so I don't ban them but I don't particularly like them.

Here's an interesting quote by Gygax from the 1st edition DMG which I agree with and which seems appropriate to the conversation at hand:

On occasion one player or another will evidence a strong desire to operate
as a monster, conceiving a playable character as a strong demon, a devil,
a dragon, or one of the most powerful sort of undead creatures. This is
done principally because the player sees the desired monster character as
superior to his or her peers and likely to provide a dominant role for him or
her in the campaign. A moment of reflection will bring them to the un-
alterable conclusion that the game is heavily weighted towards mankind.

Don't need to go any further than this.

I'm only interested in this because I see the character as superior? Because I expect it to give a "dominant role"?

@#$% you, you presumptive arse. I like dragonborn because they look cool, and because their culture--as sketchily-drawn as it may be, being a culture in an RPG--appeals to me. "Dominance" or "superiority" has nothing to do with it, and I'm frankly offended that people would seriously suggest that it does.

But that was one of the things Gygax did best: having good DM advice wrapped in often-inflammatory rhetoric.

 

[Hussar]

To be fair to EGG though, he was writing this at a time when there wasn't a huge body of work in the game to draw on. Compared to now where you have decades of material and thousands, and thousands of pages spread across dozens of writers, all detailing the myth and background of the Forgotten Realms milieu. The advice that "you are virtually on your own with regard to monsters as player characters" isn't true any more. There's a ton of advice for doing this. Note, his issue is more with the idea of playing dragons or demons and he freely accepts the idea of demi- and semi- humans in the campaign.

I'd say Dragonborn are far, far closer to semi-humans than actual dragons or demons. His issues stem mostly from balance and practical reasons which I completely agree with. But, he's also not really talking about humanoid characters.

In any case, the advice is very outdated. Even the idea of the "mostly human group" didn't last that long. Look at Dragonlance. Of the 6 original Heroes of the Lance, half of them aren't human. Half-elf, kender, dwarf, and 3 humans (Caramon, Raistlin and Sturm). And that was being created pretty much at the same time as the AD&D DMG. Moving forward, you have numerous generic books - Complete Humanoids, Savage Species, etc - detailing mechanics for playing non-humans and most published settings came out with more and more non-human races to be played. 3e took a serious stab at making solid mechanics for playing truly non-humanoid characters with some degree of success - the Level Adjustment system did work, most of the time. 4e took a different tack and tried to tie racial abilities to feats and levels - again, with some degree of success.

From a purely mechanical standpoint, there's no particular issue with Dragonborn. It's not like they're over or under powered. They're mechanically perfectly fine.

For my own FR games, I'd go the direction of Dragonborn simply being yet another race and no one really has any issue with it. Treat them like Chewbacca from the original SW Trilogy (Han Solo's best friend is a seven or eight foot gorilla and not one person reacts in the slightest to seeing him, despite the fact that not one other Wookie appears in any of the original trilogy movies). Sure, he's weird looking, but, then again, this is a fantasy setting with a bajillion sentient species floating around. He's not that much weirder looking than a half orc or a Saurial (which live in the Dalelands, not that far from the Sword Coast and have been there for quite some time). So, yeah, I'd have no real issue with a DB character wandering around the setting.

 

[MG.0]

Don't need to go any further than this.

I'm only interested in this because I see the character as superior? Because I expect it to give a "dominant role"?

@#$% you, you presumptive arse. I like dragonborn because they look cool, and because their culture--as sketchily-drawn as it may be, being a culture in an RPG--appeals to me. "Dominance" or "superiority" has nothing to do with it, and I'm frankly offended that people would seriously suggest that it does.

But that was one of the things Gygax did best: having good DM advice wrapped in often-inflammatory rhetoric.

It's a shame you didn't read further. I quoted the entire section because I think it is interesting, but the parts further down were particularly relevant.

Gygax's observations about players wanting to play dragons, demons, and the like is pretty spot-on in my experience, but starting with the third paragraph and running to the end are some great insights about the game and the people playing it.

I see Dragonborn and Tieflings as borderline cases. Almost too monster-like to be useful as a character.

 

[MG.0]

Yeah, I honestly don't think that Gygax quote is really all that relevant to this topic considering he is talking about play as full fledged demons, dragons, and undead. Dragonborn are nowhere near as powerful as dragons and tieflings do not have at their disposal all of the powers of a full-on demon. A player saying that they want to run a dragonborn is not the same as a player wanting to run an ancient gold dragon.

The beginning is about playing powerful monsters, yes. The rest of the section is more general advice.

 

[MG.0]

Note, his issue is more with the idea of playing dragons or demons and he freely accepts the idea of demi- and semi- humans in the campaign.

Sure, although first and second edition had level limits for demi-humans because the game really was geared towards human characters.

I'd say Dragonborn are far, far closer to semi-humans than actual dragons or demons. His issues stem mostly from balance and practical reasons which I completely agree with. But, he's also not really talking about humanoid characters.

The first paragraph is definitely about powerful monsters as characters and concerned with balance, but I think it is a mistake to write off the rest of the section. There are some important ideas in there: Namely that the players are human and can identifiy most closely with human characters. Every step away from humanity is a step towards the player being unable to play it believably, nevermind imagining themselves as the creature in question.

In any case, the advice is very outdated. Even the idea of the "mostly human group" didn't last that long. Look at Dragonlance. Of the 6 original Heroes of the Lance, half of them aren't human. Half-elf, kender, dwarf, and 3 humans (Caramon, Raistlin and Sturm). And that was being created pretty much at the same time as the AD&D DMG. Moving forward, you have numerous generic books - Complete Humanoids, Savage Species, etc - detailing mechanics for playing non-humans and most published settings came out with more and more non-human races to be played. 3e took a serious stab at making solid mechanics for playing truly non-humanoid characters with some degree of success - the Level Adjustment system did work, most of the time. 4e took a different tack and tried to tie racial abilities to feats and levels - again, with some degree of success.

I agree there has been a noticable shift in what is accepted and normal within the game. I still think there is value in those original ideas however.

From a purely mechanical standpoint, there's no particular issue with Dragonborn. It's not like they're over or under powered. They're mechanically perfectly fine.

For me, it isn't a question of power or balance. It is the very obvious non-humanity of the races in question. I'd have an even bigger issue with a sentient slime character, even it were perfectly balanced.

For my own FR games, I'd go the direction of Dragonborn simply being yet another race and no one really has any issue with it. Treat them like Chewbacca from the original SW Trilogy (Han Solo's best friend is a seven or eight foot gorilla and not one person reacts in the slightest to seeing him, despite the fact that not one other Wookie appears in any of the original trilogy movies). Sure, he's weird looking, but, then again, this is a fantasy setting with a bajillion sentient species floating around. He's not that much weirder looking than a half orc or a Saurial (which live in the Dalelands, not that far from the Sword Coast and have been there for quite some time). So, yeah, I'd have no real issue with a DB character wandering around the setting.

To each his own. As someone mentioned earlier, making every session a scene fromt the Mos Eisley cantina is not what I'm looking for.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Totally agree. And some of the most interesting fantasy has been, not really anti-Tolkien, but entirely different. And I think that would make for a really incredible campaign too. It's just that I've invested a lot, and have a much more limited amount of time, that I want to see through what I've started.

On the other hand for those of us that choose to be more traditionalist might choose it for other reasons. Like, we really like it and think there are still really creative and 'progressive' things to do within the stories. It's kind of like music, to many 'pop' is a dirty word. But for some, the challenge of making a statement in about 3 minutes and be fresh and new is a worthy exercise.

I embrace change and incorporate a lot of new ideas and things from many sources, although they tend to be more story elements than world-changing events like Returned Abeir. But part of embracing change and progress also involves rejecting other ideas, whether they are old and/or traditional or new, and usually it's a combination of the two.

Ilbranteloth

Sure. Honestly, my objections to what you're saying kinda went awy the more I realized your concern is with your specific campaign, rather than FR as a published official setting and how anyone else runs a game, etc.

For a given campaign like that, I would just present it to new players as a homebrew campaign based on the earliest FR info, before a lot of new stuff existed, and so some of the newer stuff might be hard to fit into the campaign. That's no less a reasonable way to run things than making a homebrew campaign that only has Gnomes, Goliaths, Minotaurs and Drow, and is based strongly on the Mediterranean, Byzantines and Abbasid Caliphate, and thus doesn't allow any elf characters.

I almost want to play that now...but I have too many campaigns as it is...

I agree it's not because they don't care.

But in my campaign we do care. To me/us it is more like Nebraska, 1950. Or, you know, the middle ages. It's all about how many of those types of people are in your particular Realms. Those elements have increased enormously as the setting has grown from being closely tied to Ed's original campaign. We find the cultural relationships interesting because it adds additional layers of intrigue when dealing with groups of people.





Ilbranteloth

Funny thing about the middle ages europe. If you lived in any sizable port town, you would almost certainly see someone who wasn't white, and it would happen more than once. Africans of various cultures traveled all over, as did people from the near and far east. Europeans saw a lot more diversity than fiction portrays. Not saying you're off track or anything, just that it's good to remember that trade and travel didn't cease in the middle ages, and a very very small portion of Europe genuinely experienced a "dark age", and it didn't last very long.

A player saying that they want to run a dragonborn is not the same as a player wanting to run an ancient gold dragon.

Also, I'm not sure what's wrong with wanting to play an actual dragon, so long as it's a young one, and low level. It would have been easier to build in 4e, probably, but I'm sure a clever DM could work something up to allow someone to play a young dragon in 5e that would balance just fine, gaining power and size, and the ability to polymorph, as it levels.

To each his own. As someone mentioned earlier, making every session a scene fromt the Mos Eisley cantina is not what I'm looking for.

It's not a binary.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

It's a shame you didn't read further. I quoted the entire section because I think it is interesting, but the parts further down were particularly relevant.

Gygax's observations about players wanting to play dragons, demons, and the like is pretty spot-on in my experience, but starting with the third paragraph and running to the end are some great insights about the game and the people playing it.

I see Dragonborn and Tieflings as borderline cases. Almost too monster-like to be useful as a character.

Alright. Having heard your request to read further, I have read the entire thing. I'll start, though, by giving a summary of the two paragraphs you're saying we can ignore. Paragraph 1 is, more or less, "players who want to play non-humans are powergamers, don't encourage them." Which we know to not be a generally true statement today. And paragraph 2 is, more or less, "I wrote AD&D to be humanocentric." Which, sure, that could quite easily be a factually true statement, but it's no longer relevant because, at least on the subject of dragonborn and tieflings, we're fundamentally not talking about that game--so, again, not applicable. I agree with your assessment of those paragraphs.

Now let's look at the next few paragraphs.

P3&4: The first half is a non-sequitur about the difficulty of making games with *no* humans. But showing that humans should be "featured" does not show they should be central and exclusive. He then argues that the DMs' jobs are so fantastically difficult that they'd need to be be Renaissance-level geniuses if we ask for more than humans, which is hyperbole of the worst sort. We're now surrounded by settings (whether tabletop or videogame) which feature distinctly non-human races in a believable fashion. That you can cite the Mos Eisley cantina at all--for or against--proves it's possible, even for a newbie director. Hell, Star Trek had a staff of people whose specific job was to come up with language symbols, and to flesh out things like the Klingon culture. So I think we can declare these, instead of irrelevant, factually disproven.

P5: First sentence non-starter; not great. Lotta unfounded assumptions thrown around, like the idea that being non-human equates to being hunted by adventurers. And leading questions, asked not because the writer has established the centrality and exclusivity of humankind, but because he wishes to establish it. So the argument has become circular, mostly by confusing "humans should be present" with "humans should be the end-all, be-all." Particularly when stuff like "the natural bent of dragons is certainly for their own kind - if not absolute solitude" is only a rule Gygax made up to keep dragons out of the limelight (in other words, to make humanocentrism, and thus inappropriate to use as justification for it)!

P6: Well of course Gygax is going to assume that it's only unintelligent players that are going to like playing monsters more than once. I mean, how could any TRULY intelligent person ENJOY that??? Moving past the (again) incredibly presumptuous rhetoric, and a return of the "people want non-humans for power alone" stuff we've already rejected, all we're left with is...um...actually, I don't think there is anything left. "Most smart players won't want to do this at all, if you show them how badwrong it is. Maybe some will still want to try it, but experiencing it will convince them of its badwrongness. Anyone who doesn't realize how badwrong it is, must be too stupid to succeed, and will thus remove the problem of their own accord." I don't think I need to say why I'm not interested in the "advice" in this paragraph.

P6: Eugh, those first two sentences. "I've told you why it's badwrongfun, so now you know why I didn't try to help you have any badwrongfun." The rest is pretty generic, meaningless platitudes: "players have to live with the consequences of their choices," "be good to yourself and your players," "everyone benefits from good judgment and creative thinking." Not really what I'd consider profound advice.

However, on thinking back over what was said here, I noticed three interesting sentences (ironically, both in the paragraphs we had agreed to reject). I hadn't seen two of them previously, because I only read the first paragraph. They are (emphasis mine):
"On occasion one player or another will evidence a strong desire to operate as a monster, conceiving a playable character as a strong demon, a devil, a dragon, or one of the most powerful sort of undead creatures."
"ADVANCED D&D is unquestionably "humanocentric", with demi-humans, semi-humans, and humanoids in various orbits around the sun of humanity."
"While there might well be some near or part humans with the group so doing, it is certain that the leaders will be human."

I don't buy the "humans always lead, humans are the center around which everything spins" idea. They certainly can be, but they don't have to be. But notice that, in the first sentence, Gygax appears to be talking about extremely powerful monsters: fully-grown dragons, "strong demons," vampire ancients, etc. That's a pretty different sort of thing from simply being non-human! Now, I don't know the definitions of "demi-human," "semi-human," or "humanoid" in this case, and as I understand it they might have been almost terms of art for Gygax (such that a poster, some time back, argued that gnomes were "humanoidish" but not "humanoids"...). But I feel like any reasonable definition of those terms should include dragonborn in one of them. Dragonborn are certainly nothing near the kind of being that a "strong demon, a devil, a dragon, or one of the most powerful sort of undead" is!

So...I kind of wonder if the entire thing is unrelated, even by the standards Gygax is using. We're not even talking about making worlds where humans aren't the "sun" that the other races "orbit" (a turn of phrase that I don't quite care for, myself). We're just talking about a planet slightly more different than the ones that came before--maybe a Roche world! --certainly not a new star.

It's not a binary.

It's not even a single axis.