Dragonborn & Tieflings: What is their place in your world?

[balard]

I just don't see the need to make tieflings and dragonborn(or any other race) a "common race" in any of my campaign settings. That includes eberron and titan. Amost every D&D world has at least 300 sentient races, isn't that problematic that PCs use some very rare races. I just say they already exist, but live far away and all...

I really think eberron should not change anything to acomodate these races. Fey, half-dragons and tiefling always existed in the world, i don't need to come with any excuses for players to play with than. It just wont be a dragonborn village or a eledrin district in Sharn...

 

[CleverNickName]

When/if I start up a 4E campaign, I won't be using dragonborn or tieflings. In my games, dragons and demons are clearly the "bad guys" of the land, and I don't like to blur the line between them and the heroes. It's the same reason that I don't use half-orcs. I'm not saying they are badwrongfun and you should avoid them at all cost; I just don't care for the flavor.

But if I were going to use them...

Dragonborn would be the champions, noblemen, and ambassadors of countries ruled by dragons. Perhaps there are two large territories ruled by Good and Evil tribes of dragons, and the humanoid races are sandwiched between the two factions?

Tieflings are a dying race of cursed humans, born under a terrible curse that causes monstrous deformities and insanity with age. I would give them an Ancient Egypt flavor: their demonic appearance would more closely resemble the demons and evil gods of the pharaonic pantheon. Instead of hooves and horns, they would have scales, crocodile heads, owl wings, jackal-like features, etc.

 

[Jack Colby]

I'm incredibly boring. I will be using them the way the rulebooks present them, using whatever background info is mentioned in the text. But my game will be a fresh start, since I am not trying to adapt an old world to new rules.

 

[Mathew_Freeman]

I'm incredibly boring. I will be using them the way the rulebooks present them, using whatever background info is mentioned in the text. But my game will be a fresh start, since I am not trying to adapt an old world to new rules.

That's not boring at all!

I'm going to let my players determine what sort of place the Dragonborn and Teiflings have in the world - same as all the other races.

What I mean is - I'm going to encourage each player to flesh out the background of their character in play, and that means telling me what their race is like, too. Comments like "Hey, we all know Dwarves love pie, right?" are what I'm talking about, all the way up to "My eladrin family have cast me out - they are a proud and vengeful people".

I'll be keeping notes as we go through the published modules (starting with KotS) and then in further campaigns (should they happen) I can use those notes as the basis for the world (although with the timeline advanced so the first set of PC's can be heroes from the past).

 

[DeusExMachina]

I am doing a game of exploration, where the races in the 3.5 phb have traveled the sees for a long time after a flood and then land on a new continent inhabited by the new races (tiefling, dragonborn, eladrin) and try to find their own place there...
I am still going to use some of the background in the PHB like the dragonborn empires and such as part of the background of my campaign...