What role do reptile people play in your setting?

[DMH]

Are they intelligent dragon or dinosaur desendants? Are they elder races that have degenerated over the aeons? Are they city builders still? Are they the result of magical experiments on lizards and snakes?

By reptile people, I mean lizardmen, kobolds, troglodytes, nagas, etc., not yuan-ti.

 

[Krug]

They're the PCs.

 

[Hand of Evil]

They all come from a single elder race, for the most part related.

Kolbolds were a service race, the low rung, Lizardmen the warrior race, troglodytes are the closes to the what the race looked like, nagas are not part of the mix being new.

 

[diaglo]

lizard men and trogs are from a divergent evolution.

they both love meat. Human flesh in particular.

lizard men though are on Neutral terms with the Lawful races.
Trogs aren't.


kobolds are in the gnoll line of ancestry. dogmen.

frogmen, grippli, and bullywugs are also around.

 

[WayneLigon]

Normally I don't give much thought to what they descended from unless it becomes important to a plot or idea I have; then I might come up with something. In one setting, all reptillian creatures (lizardmen, troglodytes, yuan-ti, nagas, serpent people, all that like) derive from one Great Wyrm dragon (her name means 'Mother of Serpents') who created them as servant creatures, warriors, etc. They all do her bidding, save some groups of lizardmen who have broken away from her control.

 

[DMScott]

In my homebrew setting, I only really use kobolds out of the list you give. They and a type of snake-people are the servants and children of one of the "evil" deities in my homebrew setting - I don't actually use alignments, but the deity in question works towards the extinction of humankind (and other intelligent mammalian species) so from a PC perspective he's as close to pure evil as it gets.

 

[NewJeffCT]

I was always a bit fascinated with the Warhammer take on them - the original race on the world, run by powerful mage-priests with specially bred warriors (standard MM lizardfolk) & workers (maybe bullywugs?). But, that is if I ever get around to finishing my own home brew world... maybe some time after I retire in 2031 and we're on D&D 7.0.

 

[David Howery]

Waaay back in my 2E gaming days, I had all the lizard folk descended from a single pre-human lizardish race. This race, called the Samat, were incredibly powerful mages, way beyond anything humans and their kin are capable of. I brought up the whole concept for an adventure where the PCs came upon the buried tomb of a Samat and accidently resurrected it... most of them lived to regret it.
Through a roundabout process, the samats ended up in the Nyambe: African Adventures book from Atlas, where they got altered into a snakish creature and (in that world at least) were the ancestors of the yuan ti....

 

[painandgreed]

Except for lizardfolk, most reptilian races are decnded from evil outsiders (think Cthulhu) who broke through and made tainted perversions of dragons. The natural order finally put a stop to it by creating the elves, dwarves, giants and other fey to wipe them out.

 

[Ceresco]

I use them as the original empire that destroyed all the other ancient societies. I get my take on lizardfolk from Ssethragore: Empire of the Serpents, by Paradigm Concepts. Though it is written specifically for the Arcanis setting it's so well written that it can be used where ever you have an evil serpent kingdom, preferably in a swamp.

Regards,
Edward Kopp