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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ilbranteloth" data-source="post: 6790910" data-attributes="member: 6778044">Half-dragons go back to the 2nd Edition, and in the Forgotten Realms were originally difficult to distinguish from their humanoid parents. They were the result of the union between dragons that had the natural ability to polymorph to humanoid form and some other humanoid. Thus metallic dragons, steel dragons, and later shadow dragons (primarily with drow).I have no problem with what anybody else wants to run in their campaign, but I don't particularly care for dragon born as designed (and also tieflings, which were also much less conspicuous before), especially in the Forgotten Realms. Erin's books are fantastic, but I just wish they weren't FR.It's easy to say that I don't have to use them in my campaign. Except that it seems that dragonborn and tieflings have become the favored races in D&D, at least around here. Which means either I have to allow them, or I have to tell people they can't play what they want. I specifically tell new players I don't care for tieflings and dragonborn, and invariably that's what they come back with.The biggest issue I have with using any sort of 'monstrous' race that isn't fully part of the campaign and integrated into what is essentially a human-centric campaign world is that you either have to deal with the 'oh my god it's a monster' reactions, or you simply ignore that they look like a monster to the majority of the population. While that former can be an interesting campaign element, and has been used well at times, most of the time it just gets old. It works well in a novel (like Driz'zt), but not so much that every time your drow or dragonborn character enters a tavern that a significant portion of the NPCs would fear, hate, or just outright want to kill them. All in a world where killing 'evil' races and monsters on sight is acceptable. Actually, in many cases they wouldn't make it to the tavern.Of course I understand that the world doesn't have to be this way, and everybody is accepted. But unfortunately my FR campaign started in 1987 and as they've added significant changes like these it's difficult to maintain continuity credibly. And sure, a part of that is just that I don't care for them as they implemented them. I wasn't a fan of the Dragonlance draconians, nor the Saurians that popped up in a couple of early Realms novels. The closer to their dragon heritage the half-dragon and dragonborn drifted, the closer they felt to draconians that we were just importing parts of Dragonlance to the Realms. I'm not particularly interested in importing kender, gully dwarves, or minotaurs as primary races either.My Realms, like many D&D campaigns at the time, leaned heavily on Tolkien's human-majority with elves, dwarves, and halfling minorities. Heck, my FR was a reskinned version of my home campaigns which was a mix of homegrown and Greyhawk since that was what we had to work with in the late '70's/early '80's. As more and more of Ed Greenwood's articles appeared in Dragon, more and more of the Realms did too. The last dragonborn I allowed in the campaign I reskinned as an older variation half-steel dragon, which actually turned out to be a very young steel dragon trapped in his humanoid form. The tiefling not only had less conspicuous traits, he was unaware that he was a tiefling at all. I get that they are popular races, and because the point of the game is to have fun, I work with things as I have to. I just wish I didn't have to deal with these particular races in my campaign. Ilbranteloth</blockquote>

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