What role do reptile people play in your setting?

[Vorith]

I hate reptiles...

 

[reanjr]

Little defined role, usually. They haven't come up in my current campaign, but usually they fill the following roles.

Lizardmen occupy swamps and jungles, but in minimal numbers. They are generally reclusive and usually neutral with a strong druidic tradition.

Kobold are clannish mountain dwellers with powerful sorcerers and adepts that do not technical rule the tribes, but have great influence of them.

Yuan-ti I've never used, but I would probably make them an elder race that is powerful but dying out.

Naga I don't usually use, either. I would place them as unique, enigmatic creatures, living in lost ruins filled with ancient knowledge.

Troglodytes I've never used, either. I don't really know what I would do with them.

 

[Darrin Drader]

See Serpent Kingdoms.

 

[DMH]

I have looked at that a couple times and it just doesn't click for me. I have no problem buying FR books (I really like Lords of Darkness), but SK just gets a meh from me.

 

[jeff37923]

All of the reptile people in my homebrew setting taste like chicken.

 

[mhacdebhandia]

The first thing that comes to mind when I contemplate lizardfolk and other reptilian races is that I probably wouldn't use them at all if they weren't a major part of the campaign.

I can see the attraction of a Planet of the Lizards-style game - perhaps using what I'd call number 10 of the top 10 cliched ways to start a campaign, "party is accidentally hurled by magic to a strange land".

 

[schnee]

In my campaign, reptile people make a great pair of boots.

Or several, depending how big they are.

 

[EditorBFG]

From The Seven Geases, by Clark Ashton Smith:

". . . He came anon to the spacious caverns in which the serpent-men were busying themselves with a multitude of tasks. They walked lithely and sinuously erect on pre-mammalian members, their pied and hairless bodies bending with great suppleness. There was a loud and constant hissing of formulae as they went to and fro. Some were smelting the black nether ores; some were blowing molten obsidian into forms of flask and urn; some were measuring chemicals; others were decanting strange liquids and curious colloids. In their intense preoccupation, none of them seemed to notice the arrival of Ralibar Vooz and his guide.

After the hunter had repeated many times the message given him by Haon-Dor, one of the walking reptiles at last perceived his presence. This being eyed him with cold but highly disconcerting curiosity, and then emitted a sonorous hiss that was audible above all the noises of labor and converse. The other serpentmen ceased their toil imnediately and began to crowd around Ralibar Vooz. From the tone of their sibilations, it seemed that there was much argument among them. Certain of their number sidled close to the Commorian, touching his face and hands with their chill, scaly digits, and prying beaeath his armor. He felt that they were anatomizing him with methodical minuteness. At the same time, he perceived that they paid no attention to Raphtontis, who had perched himself on a large alembic.

After a while, some of the chemists went away and returned quickly, bearing among them two great jars of glass filled with a clear liquid. In one of the jars there floated upright a well-developed and mature male Voormi; in the other, a large and equally perfect specimen of Hyperborean manhood, not without a sort of general likeness to Ralibar Vooz himself. The bearers of these specimens deposited their burdens beside the hunter and then each of them delivered what was doubtless a learned dissertation on comparative biology.

This series of lectures, unlike many such, was quite brief. At the end the reptilian chemists returned to their various labors, and the jars were removed. One of the scientists then addressed himself to Ralibar Vooz with a fair though somewhat sibilant approximation of human speech . . ."

That is how I treat the Serpent Men: alien, unknowable occult scientists who predate humanity by eons and dwell now only in warmer climes deep beneath the surface of the Earth. It sorts well with the way this race was introduced, in the first d20 adventure I ran, Green Ronin's Death in Freeport.

It was either that or, you know, like Sleestacks in Land of the Lost. I mean, I went Smith-Lovecraftian but . . . yeah, coulda been Sleestacks.

 

[Shades of Green]

In my campaign setting, both Lizardfolk and Celirans (also called Renyas and nicknamed 'Greens' and 'Fruit-Eaters') have decended from the same progenitor race; Kobolds and Trogs came from another progenitor race.

Celirans are human-shaped creatures possesing features of both mammals and reptiles, standing approximately 1.6 feet tall and possesing a prehensile tail. Their skin is covered by soft green scales, and has minor adaptive coloration features (+2 to Hide; Priestesses could sometimes magically turn this into a full chameleon ability by a Class Ability). They posses almost no body hair, except for on their head, which is thick, black and oily. Celirans reproduce in a manner similar to primitive mammals - they lay eggs, but breast feed their hatchlings. They are also homeothermic ("hot blooded"). Their diet consists mostly of fruits and insects, and the occasional swamp fish.

Celiran society is matriarchal and semi-tribal. Most of them live in the Renya Swamps - more accurately, on the trees abouve these swamps.