Goodman Games

I am preparing a 4th edition campaign set in the Known Realms, but I have a question. How would you fit Dragonborn and Warforged into the world. My first thought was to ignore them entirely, but I have players who want to use them. Please help.

David,

Not a problem. Dragonborn fit in really easily, actually. DCC #30, Vault of the Dragon Kings, provides a fair bit of backstory for the Dragon Kings --- a race of draconic, humanoid titans, as it were. Their empire has long since faded from the annals of history, but is roughly conterminous with the demon-priest empire of Nimoria.

There's a fair bit of history here, but without going into it terribly much, yes the Dragonborn exist in Áereth, though they are far from common. They are the last warrior-kings of a fallen empire, trying to uphold honorable traditions that seem increasingly out of step with the "modern" world.

As for warforged, I did a rough write up in here someplace. Let me track it down.

//H

Found it:

Harley Stroh wrote:(In general, if it is in the core books (and if Wizards' GSL permits) it exists in Áereth ... after a fashion.

But first, a cautionary tale: Adrian, Chris and I were hanging out with Ed Greenwood at a habachi grill one night. I asked how he coordinates his personal Realms-lore with the dozens of sourcebooks.

This was his response: "I tell readers that everything I say is canon – up until something different appears in print."

So, taking my cue off of Ed "Elminster" Greenwood, here's what I'm working with, but understand that it isn't canon until it appears in print. )

Our warforged are distinct from the sort found in Eberron. I hope that's not what your friend is looking for.

Known Realms warforged hail from a specific time, and a specific war in the lost history of the Known Realms, when the sentient races were doing everything in their power to ward off a terrible foe. (Vague, I know, but you can find it in the Known Realms books.) One spellcaster, a master artificer, raised the creation of golems to dizzying heights, endowing his creations with sentience and --- some sages aver --- souls.

A total of 12 true warforged were created before the spellcaster was slain. (There are a number of theories explaining how and why he was murdered, but more on that later.) Of those 12, some have slipped in and out of history, appearing at key moments only to vanish again into the mists of time. And some have slept away the ages, only to awaken in recent years, answering some unheard call to battle.

Your friend's warforged (if he is still willing to play one) is one of those 12. Careful though. He has 11 siblings (some very sinister, weaving plots that span centuries) that have plans for him.

As always, grain of salt. Use what you like, discard the rest. We'll see if my warforged section makes it into the boxed set or not.

So it turns out that Warforged are NOT in the GSL, so take my text only as "fan material" for Áereth.

//H

I really like how the term "have plans for him" can have either a beneficent or malevolent connotation, depending on how you want to run warforged (and how rat-bastardly a DM you are)!

I can just hear a mechanical, "Join us....or die," rasped out in a gravelly voice from an ancient warforged NPC to the player. At bladepoint.

Oh, and there's... this!

http://www.goodman-games.com/4411preview.html

World neutral like the DCC's, but default assumptions are geared toward Aereth...

goodmangames wrote:Oh, and there's... this!

http://www.goodman-games.com/4411preview.html

World neutral like the DCC's, but default assumptions are geared toward Aereth...

Damn! More of my hard earned cash I have to give you

Out of curiousity is there any plan to release Aereth as a campaign setting? Probably already asked, but I'm lazy .

Arawn76 wrote:Out of curiousity is there any plan to release Aereth as a campaign setting? Probably already asked, but I'm lazy .

We did that already in DCC #35. Oh, wait, you mean for 4E? Hey, good idea... we'll have to think about that...

goodmangames wrote:We did that already in DCC #35. Oh, wait, you mean for 4E? Hey, good idea... we'll have to think about that...

You tease you

And we'd buy it.... (well, I would)

I realize this topic hasn't been posted in for a little over a year now, but I thought I'd throw my experience in all the same. The game I'm currently running is in Aereth using Paizo's Pathfinder Rules (AKA 3.7). I'm using all DCC modules at this point, but only the first has been run "straight"; the rest have had to go through an adaptation phase to run smoothly For instance, the party is 5th to 6th level and are currently in the Temple of the Dragon Cult; there are nerfing rules provided, but they still need to be fine-tuned, especially with the 3.7 rules... I'm also planning on running a couple of 4ed modules, which will need to be more-or-less rewritten to work right.

Anyway, back to the topic. I have one player who really, really wanted to play a dragonborn - she had a dragonborn she really, really liked in our previous 4ed game before we ditched it in favor of 3.5/3.7 - but with the whole back story of the Dragon Kings it took a while to come up with a storyline justification for the existance of dragonborns.

What I came up with is this: my player's dragonborn is the *first* dragonborn... and he didn't choose to become dragonborn (which is the mechanism from the Races of the Dragon supplement), it was imposed on him around puberty (which retains some of the 3.5/3.7 mechanism of adding the dragonborn template to an existing character). This was done by the 3.5 Dragon-God pantheon.

In my storyline, the presence of the Dragon Kings and the Pool of Dreams is preventing the Dragon-gods from establishing themselves in Aereth - they have little to no influence as long as the presence of the Dragon Kings remains.

So, one of my campaign story arcs will take the PCs through DCC 30 and at the "completion" of the module (should they succeed, of course), the Dragon King's influence will finally be dissipated enough for the Dragon Pantheon to take hold in Aereth, and the dragonborn PC's "mission" will be complete. Then, of course, dragonborn characters could be made the "normal" way.

I just bring this up as a possible way to introduce dragonborns into other game: play you game on the assumtion that some hero somewhere along the way completed DCC 30, and the influence of the Dragon Kings has given way to the Dragon Pantheon. And dragonborns exist in the world accordingly.

I just realized that it's been so long since I've even looked at the 4ed rules that I may be wrong about the "story" behind the dragonborn race - my story line is based on the 3.5 Races of the Dragon "story"... but something along this line might work for 4ed dragonborns, too.

Just a thought