Let's Build a World: The Empire of Dragons - Some Ground Rules

The setting idea that I’ve been kicking around—a world dominated by a Dragon empire—carries some assumptions with it. You can’t just plunk a global dragon empire into Points of Light (well maybe you can, you’re probably better at D&D than I am). There are some extra ground rules that will need to be in play in order for this to work. Here’s what I came up with to start us off:

·         The world is high-powered. There are low-level commoners running around, doing their thing, but while “standard” D&D might have kings high priests and other power players weighing in at mid-level (which I will probably always think of as “Paragon Tier”) everyone in the world of the Empire of Dragons needs to be able to go toe-to-toe with a society of incredibly powerful dragons. So if there’s an elf kingdom, you can have individual Level 1 Elf Archers hanging out in the trees or whatever, but there will have to be something to explain why the Dragon empire hasn’t just flown over and conquered the heck out of them. Maybe the Elf Queen and her Elf Council are all epic-level wizards. Maybe there’s a magical artifact lying around. Maybe the land itself protects them somehow. The point is, a dragon empire effectively raises the stakes for everyone who wants to play ball in their world.

·         Dragons, as a group, are unified. Because frankly I think the whole good-dragons-versus- evil-dragons thing is old hat. Dragons are unspeakably old, god-like entities whose concept of morality has nothing to do with our puny, human notions of “good” and “evil.” Also see my Obligatory Alignment Post. In default D&D, dragons might be solitary, these dragons are social, and that’s how they were able to conquer most of the world. There are still internal conflicts, but dragons hold each other in mutual esteem. Each dragon may see themselves as the best dragon, but other dragons are still dragons and thus worthy of respect. Also, I’m throwing out the Color Coded for Your Convenience thing for dragons, too. I’m going to say that the standard alignments for dragon types amount to no more than stereotypes in this world. Sure, you might meet a dragon that conforms exactly to the Monster Manual description, but generally a dragon’s type won’t tell you anything about their personality or alignment (inasmuch as dragons even conform to ordinary ideas of alignment). The absence of the chromatic-versus-metallic dynamic also has some implications for the gods in this world, which I’ll get to in another post.

·         Players will be important. Eventually. I think there’s an unspoken assumption nowadays that the game world revolves around the PCs. The story does, but that’s an important distinction that I might elaborate on in another post. Suffice it to say that in a world ruled by high-level dragons (and entities that can stand up to them), low-level PCs are not going to be important, or even exceptional. The flip side of this is that the movers and shakers of this world aren’t unattainably powerful. If we do this setting in 4e it means basically nothing over level 30.  I hope Next doesn’t have a PC level cap, because that offers a lot more flexibility here. The point is that the PCs can rule this world, but they’ll have to earn it.

·         It’s not Greyhawk and it’s not Dark Sun. I mean, it’s not any other setting, hopefully, but that’s not what I mean. Some settings, like The Forgotten Realms, Greyhawk, or the Points of Light, don’t stray very far from “standard,” elves-and-wizards medieval fantasy D&D. I don’t want to do that. On the other hand, I don’t want to go too far from “standard” D&D. I don’t want players to have to be familiar with the setting before they sit down and play in it. I don’t want to have to give players a big list of Don’ts before they make characters. That’s what Dark Sun feels like, at least just reading about it. Fascinating, probably tons of fun, sure. But it requires way more buy-in from players than I’m necessarily willing to ask with this setting (side note, I am kicking around an idea for a setting that’s a more radical departure from normal D&D, so if that’s more your thing then stay tuned).

I think that’s it for ground rules. I might come back and edit this post later if I can think of anything that really belongs here as opposed to a later post. Frankly, it sort of feels like this is just stuff I need to “get out of the way” before I start actually trying to build a world. Now we can get to the fun stuff.

Next time: What’s it Like to Live There?