How do you incorporate draconic humanoids into your fantasy campaign?

Today I just remembered an argument I had with James Raggi regarding 4E's dragonborn, and how one might incorporate them into a darker, weird fantasy setting like Lamentations of the Flame Princess. And I've been thinking about it all day.

Dragon blood is potent stuff in many European mythologies; either it makes you stronger, or it kills you.
Siegfried drank dragon's blood and gained the ability to communicate with birds (Daztur's faerie tale thread also mentions dragon's blood being used to resurrect queens and princesses, and so on.)
Beowulf nearly got dissolved by dragon's blood; the dragon's blood in his saga was acidic and could eat through iron armour.
In Slavic myth, the blood of a dragon is so vile that Mother Earth rejects it; the blood just pools on the ground for all eternity.

Many myths also concern men, like Fafnir, and Cadmus, transforming into dragons.

Spoiler

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What if dragon's blood causes mutations? And dragon slayers, exposed to dragon's blood, are cursed to slowly transform into dragons themselves?

Now, I'm also writing a card-based roleplaying game of my own called Dragon Forest, so I've also been thinking about splitting the draconic curse up into four strains each associated with an element and a suit of Tarot cards.

Burning Curse
Fire | Wands
The curse starts with a fever, then swells into a roaring fire that burns the afflicted from within.
In the late stages, the afflicted becomes an ashen draugr; a walking funeral pyre ever burning and never dying.

Winged Curse
Air | Swords
The accursed first withdraws from the light, then develops a craving for insects that advances to a craving for warm blood. Over time, the afflicted develops bat-like features and becomes a winged creature of the night.

Coiling Curse
Earth | Pentacles/Coins
The unfortunate soul becomes fixated upon spiral shapes. In time, their spine and limbs stretch and twist into writhing coils. In the late stages, the accursed may develop features of snakes, centipedes, or snails.

Egg Curse
Water | Cups
It begins with a promise of power, temptation, an urge to change and grow and transcend one's human limitations. When the accursed succumbs to the egg's call, they become apostate, and their body becomes host to chaos transformations. Their bodies expand and sprout excess limbs, eyes, or extra heads, some bestial, some alien, and some disturbingly human.


(And yes, I'm drawing inspiration from Bloodborne here, as well as Berserk, Uzumaki, and Dracula.)



So how about it?
What do dragons and dragon-men look like in your setting?

In mine they are more like advanced lizard men. Or chromatic themed lizard men with a leaning more to power and personality over cunning and endurance. Functioning much like Dragonborn do in 5e.  

This is pretty much how I treat them in my 5e Karameikos campaign with the added element that dragonblood sorcerers turn into these permanently too.

In Dragon Storm dragon bloodlines manifest as a sort of lycanthropic effect with the true form hidden behind some humanoid appearance and usually not manifesting until exposure to a dragon storm, a necro force change spell, or intense stress. There is no humanoid middle form.

As for the power of dragons blood. Anythings possible. But I tend to limit the spectacular effects to the adult and ancient stages.

Some effects Ive used.
Bathing in and/or drinking dragons blood turns the person into a dragonborn if the make a save. Otherwise it kills them or turns them into an alligator/crocodile. Or having the dragon use its breath weapon on the person has the same effect.
Bathing a non-magical weapon in the blood makes it magical with the property attributed to that dragon type. Essentually an element themed version of the Flame tongue. Magical items are destroyed or cursed. Cursed items have the curse removed. Or having the dragon use its breath weapon on the item has the same effect.
Part of various high end potions, scrolls and magic item creation.
Used to activate certain dormant or incomplete magical artifacts.
Forged into a weapon or whip with the same end result as the Flametongue above.
and so on. I usually only use one or two in a single campaign if it ever comes up.

Dragons aren't lizards, why should their offspring be?

My version of Kobolds are called Dragon-Imps, but that's more a description of where they can be found and what they do than their ancestry. They're basically a Dragon's familiar.

In my old school games, dragons are living weapons created by an ancient serpent folk civilization using the poorly understood magic/science of even older civilizations. Orbs of dragonkind? Control mechanisms. Metallic dragons? Mark II models introduced when the Mark I (chromatics) rebelled against their masters. Wyverns and linnorms? Initial attempts that bred true, whose central nervous system was not yet developed enough to sustain a transferred serpent folk intellect.

I've thought of using draconians (a la Dragonlance) as the result of apocalyptic dragon cultists tampering with dragon eggs. But alchemical shenanigans with dragon's blood are also a great idea. Maybe the cultists transform themselves into dragon-people? Maybe they have a Francis Dolarhyde thing going on? Maybe they're on the right track and dragonborn/draconians actually are larval dragons, a la Gloranthan dragonewts?

You know, I used to be really excited about dragonborn as a playable race in D&D. They were visually striking, had reptilian role-playing opportunities, a cool combat ability that was good for PCs and antagonists, filled the "big intimidating dude" niche in a way I preferred over the half-orc...

Lately though, I really feel they just don't 'fit' in the same lineup as the elf-dwarf-halfling-orc array. It's awkward, like "vaguely human, vaguely human, vaguely human, animal-headed Egyptian god thing". Maybe my long run in Eberron has started to sour me on awkward fantasy kitchen sinks.

If I ever get back to homebrewing settings, I think I might try sticking the dragonborn in a more exotic lineup, like thri-kreen, tabaxi, playable gargoyle, whatever.

I haven't gone down those paths. Dragons have been dragons. Dragon + human = dragon dung. No one's ever ridden a dragon in my campaigns, either.

One friend GM did go down that path, but in her own game-world & religious cosmology. A paladin's squire got left someplace for 20-30 years and ended up turned into some sort of half-dragon who had trouble controlling his dragon nature, was lord of someplace, could take semi-dragon form, had some sort of bonus powers which we didn't know what they were, and was half-aligned with a goddess whose main minions were all sorts of demons. It was fairly interesting because of the character & relationship shifts that involved. The dragon part though wasn't really necessary to achieve the effects that I thought were interesting though.

In my Nyrgard campaign, I borrowed strongly from Dark Sun and Norse myth, saying that as most sorcerers and wizards grow more powerful, eventually they transform themselves into dragons, because a dragon is an immortal apex predator.  Part of it is that I like the explanation that the final step in a magic-users path is to transform themselves into something terrible and immortal, and second of all it ties into Nyrgard's Norse roots with Fafnir originally being a dwarf, etc.

In my current campaign there is a slumbering dragon. The dragon is able to take on human form and in that guise has produced offspring with humans a number of times over its long life. It has an inate ability to sense those of the "Dragonborn" lineage if they are close by, just as they can sense it. Most of the surviving dragonkin are several generations removed from their draconic ancestor and so appear completely human.

Those closer to the dragon in ancestry may appear more draconic in character, but there haven't been any of those for hundreds of years.

Dragons and Dragon-kin in Earthdawn are all wrapped up with the FASA meta-plot.

Short version with minor spoilers:

T'skrang - A playable race of "lizard-men" name-givers. Their culture is a river-focused combination of steam-driven paddlewheel merchant ships and bravado-fencing schools. They have myths about a couple of great dragons founding their race. There are huge "degenerate" versions of them that exist as head-hunting tribes in the deep jungle.

Draco-forms - Wyverns and other dragon-like "natural or magical creatures" that do not have a name-giver-equivalent intelligence.

Drakes and "False" Drakes - Drakes are bred to be Dragon servants, and replace a previous experiment (immortal elves *SHHHHHHH*). They appear as small draco-forms that more closely resemble dragons and great dragons. They can speak name-giver languages and may practice a Discipline("Class").  The ones from Wyrm Wood cannot speak name-giver languages or shapeshift, as their great dragon really really doesn't trust free-willed servants (*SHHHHH*).

Dragons - These are your classic fantasy dragons. They describe themselves as "Name-Givers" (or "Name-Takers" relating to the naming ritual of other races compared to their own) and can practice any name-giver Discipline as well as their own dragon-magic.

Great Dragons - These are the ruling clique of Dragons in Barsaive (or other lands) and are described in the (freely available) "DRAGONS" sourcebook that was almost released when FASA closed shop the first time. If you need a collection of ancient wyrms with their own personalities and machinations, this is a good one. It was made available online, but those links appear to have died. Here is a current link: https://www.scribd.com/document/164346143/Earthdawn-Sourcebook-Dragons-pdf

I liked draconians as monsters in Dragonlance, but generally dislike dragonborn etc as in 5e. I prefer a more primitive lizard man I think.

Quote from: Cave Bear;932091How do you incorporate draconic humanoids into your fantasy campaign?

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I don't.  I see them as pure power gaming constructs.  Bipedal suarians (e.g. lizard men), sure, but they have more disadvantages than advantages over the more evolved metabolisms of mammals.

D&D Dragon Fetishism can go die in a fire. I hear anything Draconic tastes like Chicken.  Drow, Tieflings, Dragonborn, the Special Snowflake Syndrome Poster Child Flavor of the Month just keeps getting weirder and stupider.

Now, I'm sure there's a lot of people's campaigns that have decent use of dragons, and they have thought out the whole "Draconic" side of things clearly as far as Kobolds, Draconians, Dragonborn, Dragonnewts, whatever the fuck they want to call their setting's Dragon Gene Shenanigans.

Anything standard WotC will not be among them.