Having a hard time with including Dragonborn in your Campaign setting?

[Gundark]

the most obvious answer would be to "just not have them". However 3 of the people in the group have expressed a desire to play them. Two seem quite keen. The 3rd wants to see the crunch first.

For me the wandering mercenaries from the fallen empire seemed to fit the best. I was going to originally use giants from Arcana Unearthed, but now have replaced them with Dragonborn. I was kinda sad to see the giants go, however this just seemed the best way to work them in.

To be honest, if people in my group hadn't wanted to play them, I probably wouldn't have used them.

On a side note, I've struggled with halflings too.

 

[Mighty Veil]

I find with my current homebrew that enough 4e fluff can fit easily.

* I had the Immortals defeat the gods. 4e has the gods defeating the primordials.
* I have 4 types of elves: Arcane, Sylvan, Light and Dark (last 2 not yet PC races as they'd be +3 ECL type races). I have the northern area being invaded by Faeries from another realm, and elves were once from this realm. 4e's 3 type of elves and Feywild are an easy enough fit. I would just change the fluff a bit - Arcane elves and Light elves are eldarin, Eldarin lords are faeries, drow are Dark elves.
* I already had a history were dwarves were enslaved by giants.
* It's already a PoL setting, except the south nations. They're barely post PoL. The north is falling more and more into a PoL setting.
* I don't have tieflings. I have aasimars. My aasimars use the archtypes of the "high men" meets Istari (Gandalf). They came from a far away land leading men to defeat the giants. Wouldn't be hard to say tieflings are also from this far away land, or, like the Sith. They've always been here working behind the scene. I already have a homebrew race that fits this. I could just use the crunch of the tiefling for them instead, or replace them.
* I have two mercenary monster races, one being half-orcs. Could use dragonborn instead or just add them in. A player bought Dragon Magic, so I was thinking for to include that anyways.
* I don't use gnomes. Originally I was going too but they'd be different than 3e gnomes. Again, the change to gnomes is fine by me. I don't advertise druid or bard either, though they are available.

Dragonborn are the new monster mercenary race, replacing half-orc. Maybe they exist in your homebrew but were from a far land. Their empire destroyed, they've migrated over to your game area's nations. Maybe an evil someone made a deal with dragons to create a soldier race. The war lost, these dragonborns now have to find work. Work as mercenaries and adventurers (this is my background story for half-orcs in my game).

 

[bringerofbroom]

My way of handling the Dragonborn was to have them as dragons :

The great dragons were woken from their ancient slumber to help fight a great war against an evil foe ( a nation ruled by a devil incarnate and whose troops were half-fiend and tiefling ). The war ended with most on both sides dead, and most of the dragons dead. those that survived mated and layed eggs that hatched in to the dragonborn - a dragonborn breeds true and one that reaches a certain level of power slowly transforms in to a true dragon.

The War was almost a century before, and the dragonborn travel the land seeking wealth and war - wealth for their hoard and war as a way to prove their strength and ascend to dragonhood.

 

[hazel monday]

They look dumb to me. I'm not gonna waste my time trying to include them if I run 4.0. Why strain myself trying to fit a square peg inna round hole when I can't stand the square peg in the first place?

 

[Hussar]

I don't really agree with that. I prefer traditional dragons of myth and legend, and not the weirdness that WotC has been doing with dragons in recent years. Largely solitary uber-predators don't really have much interest in a whole pantheon of deities (or three or whatever it is now), let alone a race of servitors or 'lesser kindred spirits'

On the R&C wandering mercenary thing... eh. I can't fit that either. None of the other cultures in my world would be willing to let these creatures wander around as armed bands of warriors, particularly after someone else crushed them in a war. 'Course, I don't really want a large number of random races running about anyway. A hundred or so sentient species (let alone the staggering number of cultures) is absurd unless you're doing some sort of planar nexus setting.

Umm, what? Traditional dragons of myth and legend=/= uber solitary predators.

 

[ObsidianCrane]

Some nice ideas others have posted.

In my setting Dragonborn are rare, they come from largely unexplored lands to the south of the main setting area where ancient ruins lie in thick jungles. They are tribal, and militaristic, and they come north for a range of reasons - mostly traders, pirates, or mercenaries. For there are the remnants of a broken human Empire in their region - cities who are more Tortuga and less Port Royal since the human Empire that created them was broken by war 100 years ago.

This aligns basically with the core ideas, but makes them more workable for my campaign. They exist but are not seen often except in certain ports and in their homeland of course.

 

[Insight]

I'm planning on including Dragonborn because my new 4E setting has a nice place for them (which existed before I really knew about Dragonborn). Like others have said, I'll have to surgically remove their fluff to make it fit with my setting, but honestly, I'm gonna have to do that with Tieflings and probably Elves and Dwarves as well, so no sweat.

 

[med stud]

I will go the R&C-way it seems (I hadn't read the book). Dragonborn are loners and wanderers, creatures out of their time. A dragonborn will be restless and have a hard time settling down. Many of them live by violence, either from an ideological POV as servants of gods or higher causes and others just by being mercenaries, fighting for profit. Most of them are able to take care of themselves on their travels so purely academic dragonborn are rare.

Where do they come from? They don't know anymore than any other race. They have a number of creation myths but generally they don't care much; they are here, that's what matters.

How do they view dragons? The same way a human would view King Kong. There are some surface familiarities, the dragons are bigger but that's about it. They don't run around worshipping dragons and they don't paint dragons all over their shields.

How do they interact with humanity? They are outsiders, defenitly. Even if they are known to honour agreements and generally don't cause much problems they are most often left out of societies.

How do they work in a party of adventurers? Like a hand in the glove. Wanderlust and violence is the essence of an adventurer and many adventurers don't care if the one they are working with looks like a dragon as long as it can be trusted, which many dragonborn can be.

 

[Aeolius]

If I ever switched to 4e (unlikely), then dragonborn could either be be NPCs living on Serpent Isle (Sea Barons) or perhaps failed experiments of the Scarlet Brotherhood living on the Olman Islands.

I would not allow them as a race option for PCs, for the same reason I disallow other core races; they have neither a natural swim speed nor the ability to breathe underwater without the use of magic.

 

[hamishspence]

Dragonborn in the Realms

Possibilities:

1: Set campaign a WHILE after the Year of Blue Fire. Use the fluff as written in Races and Classes, possibly modified to incorporate the Dragonborn as written in Races of the Dragon.

2: Use them EXACTLY as written, have them originate after the DragonFall: -30000 DR.
In this version, it was really Dragonborn who the Dragons ruled over in the ancient Dragon Empires era, maybe with humans as an underclass. The usual wars between Dragons and Giants, maybe incorporating the Elemental titans concept from 4th ed. This would involve some rewriting of realms history, but maybe after the first Dracorage most of the Dragonborn kingdoms were shattered by their own rulers.

Which needs an explanation for Arkhosia. I might make Arkhosia+ Bael Turath alternate names for Raumathar and Narfell. devils fit better than demons these days as subtle corrupters. Maybe have Dragonborn as ruling class in Raumathar, fled after Kossuth scorched kingdom, now they wander, they are commonest in Unapproachable East.

How do these ideas sound?