Post/Author/DateTime	Post
#1 crazy_monkey Sep 16, 2008 16:53:16	Monkey's favorite setting got voted off the island for the "Other Worlds" sub-forums. Then again, Monkey is probably one of the few die-hard fans of Council of Wyrms. :D Anyone else a fan of CoW?
#2 Artifact Sep 16, 2008 17:39:58	Gotta raise my hand here ;). Hard to believe it's been almost 15 years since the boxed set. Anyone buy the harcover released a few years later? It used the trade dress of the Player's Option books (black cover); think they released right before/after 3.0 showed up (late 2000?). My first dragon PC was a silver named Celmynthesius or "Celsius" for short. The dragon PC was joined by a dwarf fighter-cleric (a rare choice for kindred) nicknamed "Bulb" ;). What was unusual about this pair was that it was deliberately left vague if they were male or female.
#3 crazy_monkey Sep 16, 2008 17:44:15	I owned the boxed set (and tacked all of the posters on my walls :D) but never picked up the hardcover that came out later. I had a full campaign, levels 1-20, all charted out that incorporated the adventures in the set and built on the little plot hook snippets hinted at on the random encounter cards included in the box. Duergar serving as kindred to shadow dragons and drow serving as kindred to deep dragons were both going to feature prominently as bad guys. :D
#4 colman Sep 17, 2008 4:26:18	Loved the idea, even played it a bit. I'm trying to work some of it into a FR campaign for my own amusement.
#5 blu_skreem Sep 17, 2008 12:18:01	Got to say I loved Council of Wyrms, I've only had a few campaigns set in it, but that box set was worth it's weight n gold. One of the best products TSR produced. I do wish there had been a third ed revision (Draconomicon was to much of a head ache IMO.)
#6 mourn_dup Sep 18, 2008 12:48:30	This could be done in 4e. You create "races" for each dragon color, and a number of classes to fill the 4e combat roles, while allowing access to "color-specific" powers, like acid breath for black dragons. You would be less powerful than a MM dragon, but it would be balanced with other characters.
#7 crazy_monkey Sep 18, 2008 14:19:19	I think the main issue of Dragon PCs has always been the desire to balance them against regular races. Dragon PCs, from a game mechanics stand point, just really aren't ever going be balanced with other PCs...they're dragons. ;) However, if you go with the core concept of CoW of focusing on the Dragons and making other races secondary (and keeping them less powerful) then it works.
#8 blu_skreem Sep 19, 2008 0:48:18	I had a good time as a Crystal dragon for quite a while. Gem Dragons were always my favorites, I do hope they don't get skipped in 4th ed's Draconomicon series. I'd love to see a 4ed mock up of Council of Wyrms. Perhaps playing Dragons would simply require the starting level to be pushed up to 5, and add dragon specific Powers (Breath Weapons, Flight, Blind Sightedness, ect.)
#9 taurren Sep 20, 2008 10:25:38	~duplicate post~
#10 taurren Sep 20, 2008 10:40:56	I'm a big fan of CoW. My most memorable game was a combination of CoW and Fireborn from FFG. I really liked how Fireborn's plot device of re-living a past life integrated with the story. In a nutshell, the PC's re-lived (adventured) at a time when they were a dragon (CoW) and then used the knowledge they "remembered" back in the actual storyline.
#11 crazy_monkey Sep 20, 2008 18:50:50	I think 3.5 would be a little better at capturing the feel of CoW while providing a decent rules structure, especially with Gem Dragons (my favorites) and psionics (XPH would be invaluable). If one divorces oneself from the idea of having to play the dragons exactly as they appear in the Monster Manual (from a rules perspective), one can tinker a fair bit with 3.5 and achieve a reasonable set of rules for dragons. I may have to put this on my project list. :D
#12 deama Sep 21, 2008 2:45:03	CoW was by far a great setting and ranks 2nd/3rd in my list of favorites (FR and DL are tied for 1st) and I loved hawking explosive luggies (Amethyst Dragon) for fun. A few friends and I will probably try and build at least a dragon race build for 4e (we already started) that could be used for CoW in fact what were play testing right now it balanced with both MM Dragons and PC races and it is going good so far.
#13 crazy_monkey Sep 21, 2008 18:35:38	Some preliminary brainstorms on CoW in 3.5 (I'll do a 4E version when the Psionic power source comes along). Design Notes: What I'm shooting for here is playable dragons in a campaign focused on dragons. They won't be balanced against PCs of other races and classes as that is not the overall goal. They also won't exactly match the Monster Manual entries. Dragon Racial Traits Immune to Paralysis and Sleep Blindsense 60' Normal Vision 4 times better than human vision Low-light Vision Darkvision 120' Dragon Classes What I'm shooting for here is to make each dragon color its own class. Thus, all dragons use the racial traits listed above and the choice of color determines class features. Obviously, multiclassing isn't a possibility except maybe into the draconic prestige classes in Draconomicon (which I don't have, unfortunately). All dragons in this system would have 3 HD at level 1 and gain 3 HD every level they gain, capping out at level 12 (to represent the 12 age categories). As an example: White Dragon Level 1: 3 Hit Dice, 2 Feats, BAB +3, Base Saves +3, Breath Weapon, Natural Attacks At each level, the dragon gains all of the features the dragon would gain at the appropriate age category. So, at level 6, the white dragon would gain Sorcerer caster level 1, and gust of wind as a spell-like ability. When I have time, I'm also planning on revising the Gem Dragons so that they are more psionically flavored (SLAs replaced with Psi-like Abilities, for example). More to come.
#14 bigmac Sep 28, 2008 13:08:55	Monkey's favorite setting got voted off the island for the "Other Worlds" sub-forums. Then again, Monkey is probably one of the few die-hard fans of Council of Wyrms. :D If you get enough Council of Wyrms posts (and threads) going you can probably persuade the forum management to reconsider this. Anyone else a fan of CoW? I gave up playing AD&D when the words in the rulebooks started to get larger and larger for no apparant reason. So sadly I wasn't playing when Council of Wyrms came out. But from what I have heard about it third hand, it sounds like I would have liked it. I think 3.5 would be a little better at capturing the feel of CoW while providing a decent rules structure, especially with Gem Dragons (my favorites) and psionics (XPH would be invaluable). If one divorces oneself from the idea of having to play the dragons exactly as they appear in the Monster Manual (from a rules perspective), one can tinker a fair bit with 3.5 and achieve a reasonable set of rules for dragons. I may have to put this on my project list. :D Have you checked with EN World's Creature Catalogue project to see if they have converted these dragons to 3rd edition rules? They have over 1,000 monsters to convert to 3e, but are aiming to get every unconverted monster adapted.
#15 crazy_monkey Oct 10, 2008 19:15:06	I have an idea floating around for 4E that would work well with Dragon PCs. Multi-class feats and power suites (but not an actual full class) for powerful monsters as PCs. So, the race would have a full race write-up and pick a normal class, and they could pick up the multi-class feat to acquire more aspects of their monster type.
#16 blu_skreem Oct 10, 2008 23:42:42	I really dig that Idea, CM, I wish I had thought of it. That could really make a CoW setting work real well in the 4th ed Mechanics. The Dragon Race would have a feature that granted a Dragon MC feat, and the second attribute +2 depends on the MC feat taken. Fantastic! I especially like how this would work with the Tiers, a Young Dragon (heroic) would not have access to their full capabilities until they reached Adult (Paragon).
#17 crazy_monkey Oct 11, 2008 13:46:46	Precisely. :D Obviously there would need to be a more well rounded suite of powers available than what the dragons in the MM have. Although, I wouldn't give the dragon character the mult-class feat automatically. If the player wanted to just use the base traits and not mult-class, that would be an option also. The multi-class feat and powers would just allow the character to be more "dragony."
#18 bigmac Oct 11, 2008 18:17:45	Design Notes: What I'm shooting for here is playable dragons in a campaign focused on dragons. They won't be balanced against PCs of other races and classes as that is not the overall goal. They also won't exactly match the Monster Manual entries. Dragon Racial Traits Immune to Paralysis and Sleep Blindsense 60' Normal Vision 4 times better than human vision Low-light Vision Darkvision 120' Dragon Classes What I'm shooting for here is to make each dragon color its own class. Thus, all dragons use the racial traits listed above and the choice of color determines class features. Obviously, multiclassing isn't a possibility except maybe into the draconic prestige classes in Draconomicon (which I don't have, unfortunately). All dragons in this system would have 3 HD at level 1 and gain 3 HD every level they gain, capping out at level 12 (to represent the 12 age categories). As an example: White Dragon Level 1: 3 Hit Dice, 2 Feats, BAB +3, Base Saves +3, Breath Weapon, Natural Attacks At each level, the dragon gains all of the features the dragon would gain at the appropriate age category. So, at level 6, the white dragon would gain Sorcerer caster level 1, and gust of wind as a spell-like ability. Have you seen some of the Racial Classes in Races of Ansalon (the Dragonlance hardback by Margaret Weis Productions)? They seem to be very similar to your idea. Some of the monsters don't advance HD every level of the Racial Class. It all works out the same as you would get if you used Level Adjustments, but you can start off as a 1 HD character of the race concerned. This also reminds me a bit of Racial Paragon Classes. I would actually like to see this idea get fully developed (to the same level as the other two things).
#19 crazy_monkey Oct 11, 2008 19:15:42	Yes, that's what I based the idea on. Savage Species originated the idea of monster class progressions, though it required a hefty amount of updating to 3.5, which I've been doing off and on as a side project. However, the LA system has always been a bit clunky and if I were to do a CoW conversion, I'd do it on the premise that the Dragons don't need to be balanced against "normal" characters, thus dropping LA entirely in favor of Dragon centric classes.
#20 bigmac Oct 12, 2008 6:14:51	However, the LA system has always been a bit clunky and if I were to do a CoW conversion, I'd do it on the premise that the Dragons don't need to be balanced against "normal" characters, thus dropping LA entirely in favor of Dragon centric classes. That could work as a standalone thing, but I would personally love to see dragon PCs that were balanced with conventional PCs, so I think I'd go with the slow progression (where characters get 1 HD and then advance 1 HD every 2nd level until their LA is taken care of). And after the LA is paid off, you can multiclass as a sorcerer (or whatever). Ideally, I'd like to be able to do a CoW/Spelljammer crossover campaign and build an entire crystal sphere around the CoW concept. So being able to take one of your PC dragons and transport them (via spelljamming) to Krynn, Toril or Oerth would be essential (to me). But it looks like you don't need this sort of thing, so a tweaked D&D that only works for dragons could be the best way for you to go. I'll be very interested to see your entire system. Even if it doesn't work totally for me, I might be able to tweak your stuff to make it more compatible with what I need. It is a real shame that we never got a CoW conversion for 3rd edition (or an official CoW fansite) because this is something that could easily appeal to fans of many other campaign settings. (I'm sure that playable dragons would be very popular with some of the DL community.)
#21 crazy_monkey Oct 12, 2008 9:25:05	This is very true. One alternative is the house rule that allows characters following a "monster progression" to multiclass anytime during the progression. The normal rule doesn't allow a creature character to multi-class untl they finish their progression, which is a very long time for a dragon. ;) The other problem with balancing dragons against other character types is that campaigns don't often get to epic levels and part of the thrill of being a dragon is reaching that "Great Wyrm" status. If you have to wait until level 50 or more to be a Great Wyrm, part of the appeal is lost.
#22 crazy_monkey Oct 12, 2008 10:24:21	Starting baseline for 3.5 draconic progressions would be the following articles from the print version of Dragon magazine. Issue 320 - Dragon Player Characters by Mike McArtor [INDENT]Provides 1-20 progressions for the five metallic dragon races.[/INDENT] Issue 332 - Chromatic PCs by Mike McArtor [INDENT]Provides 1-20 progressions for the five chromatic dragons races.[/INDENT] Based on those articles, I put together a progression for Crystal Dragons for my own campaigns. Note: These conversions are in no way official and represent my interpretation of the rules. References: Player’s Handbook v.3.5 (including errata), Monster Manual v.3.5 (including errata), Monster Manual II (including 3.5 update booklet available at www.wizards.com and errata), Savage Species, Expanded Psionics Handbook (including errata), Dragon Magazine Issue #320 (June, 2004), Dragon Magazine Issue #332 (June, 2005) Notes on the Crystal Dragon: I made several revisions to the crystal dragon above and beyond the 3.5 updates presented in the update booklet, based on the notion that the crystal dragon is a psionic dragon. First, I swapped out Use Magic Device as a class skill for Use Psionic Device. I also gave the crystal dragon 1st level manifester level at juvenile age category and 3rd manifester level at young adult age category since it seemed odd for it to start at 5th level at adult, when other gem dragons started at 1st level at juvenile. Wherever possible, I changed the crystal dragon’s spell-like abilities to psi-like abilities with thematically similar or identical effects. Spell Resistance became Power Resistance (thematic change as it has no actual game effect unless the “Psionics are Different” variant is used). Crystal Dragon Racial Traits o Starting Ability Score Adjustments: None o Small: As Small creatures, crystal dragons gain a +1 size bonus to Armor Class, a +1 size bonus on attack rolls, +4 size bonus on Hide checks, a -4 size penalty on grapple checks, and their lifting and carrying limits are three-quarters those of Medium characters. o Speed: Crystal dragon base land speed is 40 ft. This gives the crystal dragon a +4 bonus on Jump checks. Crystal dragons also have a swim speed of 40 ft. This provides the crystal dragon a +8 on any Swim check to perform some special action or avoid a hazard. The crystal dragon can always choose to take 10 on a Swim check, even if distracted or endangered. It can use the run action while swimming, provided it swims in a straight line. o Dragon Type: As a creature of the Dragon type, the crystal dragon has the following traits [INDENT]o Darkvision 120 ft. o Low-light vision o Immunity to magic sleep effects and paralysis effects.[/indent] o Keen Senses: A dragon sees four times as well as a human in shadowy illumination and twice as well in normal light. o Automatic Languages: Draconic. Bonus Languages: Any (other than secret languages, such as Druidic). o Favored Class: Psion (Telepath). Actual Psion levels and the crystal dragon’s base manifesting ability stack when determining power points per day and other effects dependent on manifester level. For example, a 2nd level juvenile crystal dragon psion has the same power points per day, powers known, and manifester level of a 3rd level psion. Note that if the crystal dragon takes levels in Psion with a discipline other than telepathy, the class is not considered favored and its innate manifester level does not stack with its psion levels. Class Skills The crystal Dragon’s class skills (and the key ability for each skill) are Concentration (Con), Diplomacy (Cha), Escape Artist (Dex), Gather Information (Cha), Intimidate (Cha), Jump (Str), Knowledge (all skills, taken individually) (Int), Listen (Wis), Search (Int), Sense Motive, Spot (Wis), Swim (Str), and Use Psionic Device (Cha) Monster Manual II Classes Table 2: The Crystal Dragon
#23 bigmac Oct 12, 2008 18:31:50	The other problem with balancing dragons against other character types is that campaigns don't often get to epic levels and part of the thrill of being a dragon is reaching that "Great Wyrm" status. If you have to wait until level 50 or more to be a Great Wyrm, part of the appeal is lost. Good point. Of course, that sort of thing isn't an issue for games like World of Warcraft where you can go up to level 60 or 70, but for D&D I see your point!
#24 Luis_Carlos Oct 20, 2008 15:16:29	Council of Wyrns: player guide would be perfect for monster class. I would like monster class (like from Savage Species) with all dragons.. I like the true dragons (all with age categories). Why not the return of monster class for 4th edition?
#25 crazy_monkey Oct 20, 2008 16:36:37	I'd like to see playable monsters (especially dragons ;)) in 4E as well. I even sent in an article proposal for Dragon magazine based on that very subject. :D
#26 anubis_reynard Oct 27, 2008 11:12:05	I've been working on my own conversion, mone more focused on bringing the spirit ofthe Council of Wyrms into the 4e Cosmoligy. Stat wise, I flat out declare 1 dragon = 2.5 adventurers of equal level, then throw on a template to have "classed" dragons. Story-wise, after accounting for Io's death and the Dragonborn, it starts to look like an "ancient Archosa" campain setting, but that can be worked with. Bael Turath instead of dragonslayers, ect.
#27 zenontheterrible_dup Nov 03, 2008 2:34:01	i never played council of worms but i think it would be an awesome idea for fourth edition. as long as they don't try to make it balanced with the regular races/classes.
#28 crazy_monkey Nov 03, 2008 7:37:07	Hrm... Monkey is having a thought here. The player character dragons aspect of it was always secondary for me as I thought the setting was quite awesome. Would Council of Wyrms work as a Dragonborn dominated setting in 4E?
#29 anubis_reynard Nov 05, 2008 13:30:27	Like I said, Ancient Arkhosia. Dragons are the BBEGs and quest-givers, and all of them claim to worship Bahamut, even the chromatics. If we fiddle with the timeline, we can make it a contemorary of the Minotaur empire, have Tiamat throwing kobolds and humans across the sea, and elementals, Giants and Archions attacking from the North and South.
#30 crazy_monkey Nov 05, 2008 13:56:11	Hrm... I wonder if we could do the Dragonborn version of the setting while still preserving the flavor of the Io's Blood Isles? Various clans aligned with the colors of dragons, with each clan of dragonborn ruled, at least in theory, by an actual dragon. The other PC races are subservient to the dragonborn, with humans being the primary enemy race, living on a continent across the ocean (maybe make tieflings bad guys in this scenario as well). Just a thought or two. :D
#31 anubis_reynard Nov 05, 2008 19:26:48	If I recall my 4E myths, Tieflings were human, up until a certian point... My version had Io's 4E death (Bahamut and Tiamat's creation) be above the Io's Blood isles... and the Primordial they fought formed the Land of Fire Giants (and elementals and archions) and the Land of Ice Giants. (and elementals and archions)
#32 Elrik_Darkstorm Nov 09, 2008 15:14:14	Hey there I have the council of worms box set that i am looking to sell,it is pretty much brand new ,it is opened but i have never used it,so if anyone is interested you can send me a pm on here and i will get back to you asap.thanks alot and have a great day/night/weekend/week/whatever.pieceout
#33 bigmac Nov 11, 2008 0:35:19	If I recall my 4E myths, Tieflings were human, up until a certian point... Yes. The point when one of their human ancestors had sex with an outsider from the lower planes. The resulting offspring then went back to having sex with humans until only a small outsider bloodline remained. I believe this is why 3e calls them (and other similar creatures) "Planetouched".
#34 bigmac Nov 11, 2008 0:44:05	I wonder if we could do the Dragonborn version of the setting while still preserving the flavor of the Io's Blood Isles? Various clans aligned with the colors of dragons, with each clan of dragonborn ruled, at least in theory, by an actual dragon. The other PC races are subservient to the dragonborn, with humans being the primary enemy race, living on a continent across the ocean (maybe make tieflings bad guys in this scenario as well). That is probably how the Points of Light (4e) version would go (although the humans would probably be available as a minor PC race that wasn't evil). I think that for a more 3e version of Council of Wyrms you could keep the dragons, introduce dragon bloodlines (for sorcereres), introduce lots of dragon related things to the other (humanoid) races, import the dracon (dragon-like centaur) from Spelljammer and perhaps give all non-dragon PCs a free cohort* (as per the leadership feat) to try to balance off the LA penalty that dragons were getting away with. * = If you gave a human or elf a dragon cohort (of appropriate level) you could make the human/dragon or human/elf combo have an ECL that was equal to a PC dragon. You would probably go just below this, as the PC would have a second NPC character to aid them and would therefore be getting additional attacks.
#35 Mulhull Jan 11, 2009 16:37:58	What world was Council of Wyrms on? It was mentioned it was on Io's blood chain islands, is that in FR? Actually, I think Io might be a god who has followers on both Greyhawk and Forgotten Realms. A multi-sphere deity. His avatar is immune even to wishes if they are the change his alignment. Hmm, I wonder what his avatar was in the time of troubles.
#36 crazy_monkey Jan 11, 2009 18:57:36	Io's Blood Isles were never "officially" placed on any other campaign world. The islands cover a large continent's worth of geography and thus would take some creative map manipulating to fit them into the official world maps of Greyhawk of the Realms. I always operated under the assumption that they were on their own world.
#37 havard Jan 12, 2009 13:46:45	Io's Blood Isles were never "officially" placed on any other campaign world. The islands cover a large continent's worth of geography and thus would take some creative map manipulating to fit them into the official world maps of Greyhawk of the Realms. I always operated under the assumption that they were on their own world. Huh, I never realized the Isles were so big: http://www.dragnix.net/Role_Playing/Council_of_Wyrms/Io%27s_Blood_Island_Chain.jpg As to Io, he might even exist on Krynn as well: http://www.dragonlanceforums.com/forums/showthread.php?t=18009 Havard
#38 halsfield Feb 04, 2009 11:56:03	i would love to see Council of Wyrms redone in 4e. it was just so incredibly in-depth for one box and the gem dragons were amazing. i too loved the posters and hung them up for a long time but one of them tore and i took the rest down =(. i loved the ideas of vassals as well, maybe have them as companions for dragon pc's. how hilarious would that be? an elf ranger with a drake pet and a crystal dragon with an elf vassal "pet".
#39 mourn_dup Feb 11, 2009 14:02:55	Yes. The point when one of their human ancestors had sex with an outsider from the lower planes. The resulting offspring then went back to having sex with humans until only a small outsider bloodline remained. I believe this is why 3e calls them (and other similar creatures) "Planetouched". 4e Tieflings are not the result of "Grandpa boned a devil." They're the result of a series of ancient pacts with devils changing them, through arcane power, into tieflings. As for Council of Wyrms... I liked it in theory, and disliked it in execution. If I were to do a 4e conversion, it would place them at the same power levels as normal player characters to allow integration of a dragon character into a party.
#40 willpell May 29, 2009 5:18:05	The Council of Wyrms setting is of vague interest to me, although I doubt I have the patience to deal with the issues it would pose. Politics play has never been my style, and giving a serious challenge to players of even, say, young adult dragons wouldn't be easy. I do like the idea of hybridizing with Fireborn, though; I've been interested in the Fireborn premise for some time, but having just read its Wikipedia article, it sounds like the dice system is too screwy for me to pick up on, so a 3E D&D/D20 Modern conversion seems more sensible (not that I have Modern, but I might pick it up sometime since it'll allow me to work on bridging all the other RPGs I play, which are set in the 20th century, with D&D.) Another thing you could do is cross the system with Exalted. The Terrestrial Exalted characters in the game are also known as the "Dragon Blooded"; canonically, the five elemental dragons that they're associated with are godlike spirits, but you could rule otherwise and have the TX's actually be half-dragons, products of ceremonial matings between a dragon which is worshipped as a god and a selected "chosen one". Perhaps add the ability for the character to take on the war-form of an actual dragon (initially of moderate size), and then have them square off against Lunar X "werewolves" and Abyssal X "demons" and so forth. Even the colors and elements match up pretty well - red Fire in the south, green Wood in the east, white Air/Cold in the north, and then you have to adjust slightly since West is blue Water and center is Earth (I forget what color they used there; my brain is telling me both Air and Earth were white, but that has to be wrong). If you say that black dragons are blue instead and blue dragons are whatever color Earth was instead, you'd have everything straightened out. So there has never been an official name for the world on which Council of Wyrms took place, huh? That's sad; I'm working on collating a list of all the worlds in the D&D universe, and at the moment I have only 10 names (several of the campaign settings aren't "worlds" in the sense of being a planet or something close to a planet...Ravenloft, Planescape and Spelljamer are all more like framing devices into which worlds are placed, which disqualifies them from my list). If anyone would like to help me out with this list, the names I have so far are Oerth (Greyhawk), Abeir-Toril (Forgotten Realms), Krynn (Dragonlance), Tellene (Kalamar), Mystara (Blackmoor), Nehwon (Lankhmar), Athas (Dark Sun), Aebrynis (Birthright), Pelinore, and Eberron. It'd be nice if I could find at least one more name of an official D&D planet for this list, as I'm working on a theme of 11 being a significant number in D&D (there are 11 core character classes and 11 terrain classifications; those are not exhaustive lists, but if I treat them as being special somehow, and do the same with worlds, it gives the impression that the gods like the number 11, which would be neat since 11 is almost never given its numerological props the way 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 and 12 often are.
#41 crazy_monkey May 29, 2009 8:04:22	Your 11th planet would be Earth. ;) AD&D 2nd Edition had a series of Historical Reference supplements (the HR series green cover books) and Masque of the Red Death for Ravenloft was set on Earth. There was also hintings in obscure 1E and 2E Dragonlance, Forgotten Realms and Greyhawk sources that there were connections between those worlds and Earth. A few of the 2E Ravenloft domains also appeared to have been drawn from Earth.
#42 willpell May 30, 2009 4:54:49	Your 11th planet would be Earth. ;) AD&D 2nd Edition had a series of Historical Reference supplements (the HR series green cover books) and Masque of the Red Death for Ravenloft was set on Earth. There was also hintings in obscure 1E and 2E Dragonlance, Forgotten Realms and Greyhawk sources that there were connections between those worlds and Earth. A few of the 2E Ravenloft domains also appeared to have been drawn from Earth. I might go for that except for the fact that the Greyhawk planet is named Oerth; the spelling distinction isn't applicable, even given that I've explicitly made my world's Common conicidentally similar to English, because EA and OE describe such similar sounds that they don't provide adequate distinction for my satisfaction. If I decide to reference Reality at all, I'll probably call it Terra or Chthonos or Midgard or something, on the assumption that English is too new a language for the English term for the planet to have become its "true name" as it were. And anyway I can't use the real world for this purpose; even if there is real magic in our universe as some would claim, it's unquestionably not the Vancian kind used by all D&D universes of which I'm aware. Just as I would rule that Earth doesn't get MTG planeswalkers visiting it because it contains no mana, I would rule it doesn't count as part of the D&D multiverse, or at least as a very innacessible part that nobody would bother with. We have no elves, no dragons, no elementals, no gods (at least not the kind that grant Cure or Inflict spells every 24 hours), none of the things that make a D&D reality work; PCs coming to this reality might well drop dead instantly just because the laws of physics are too different for them to be able to breathe our air (since many things in D&D work so much unlike the known laws of science that it's entirely possible D&D matter isn't made out of atoms and molecules, or at least not out of quarks and probability clouds). I'm thinking that Archaeus, the world of Talislanta, might be close enough to use. It wasn't ever a D&D product, but one of its editions was published by Wizards of the Cost, so that means it's at least vaguely connected to TSR by association; I'll call that good enough if nobody can suggest a better name. Lacking a name for the planets of Jakandator, Points of Light or the Io's Blood Isles, I have to simply pretend they don't exist, and while all of these worlds started out no better than any other campaign setting somebody brewed up in their basement, the fact of their "officialness" still gives them a special status that I can't afford to any non-published setting. Anyone's campaign world exists in the Multiverse, but not in the particular "Shard" I'm classifying the published worlds into.
#43 bigmac Jun 14, 2009 14:49:35	4e Tieflings are not the result of "Grandpa boned a devil." They're the result of a series of ancient pacts with devils changing them, through arcane power, into tieflings. Thanks, Mourn. 4e Tieflings? You mean that WotC have changed tieflings? I guess I'll stick with the pre-4e "grandpa boned a devil" explanation as it is more fun. Actually, looking at Planewalker Encyclopedia I see some interesting stuff about tieflings. They are apparantly all decended from a Tanar'ri, Baatezu or Yugoloth. So maybe we should be saying: "grandpa boned a tanar'ri, a baatezu or a yugoloth" instead! :D I really like the idea that "no two tieflings are the same, either physically or as to the "special" traits they may exhibit" and I think that makes them much more interesting that the version presented in 3e's FRCS. Your 11th planet would be Earth. ;) AD&D 2nd Edition had a series of Historical Reference supplements (the HR series green cover books) and Masque of the Red Death for Ravenloft was set on Earth. There was also hintings in obscure 1E and 2E Dragonlance, Forgotten Realms and Greyhawk sources that there were connections between those worlds and Earth. A few of the 2E Ravenloft domains also appeared to have been drawn from Earth. Don't forget that the AD&D Adventures in Space boxed set also gave details for the time taken to travel around the real-world solar system in a spelljamming ship. If you need another D&D campaign setting to take a world name from, then how about Wilderlands or Ghostwalk. I think I would rather keep Council of Wyrms on its own planet, rather than put it on the same planet as another D&D campaign setting. However, spelljamming would be a good way to get PCs from other planets to the CoW planet. If I was going to create a crystal sphere around CoW, I would introduce a Saddle Helm, that a dragon could wear on its back. I think that something like this could take the "dragons working with humans" concept to another level. Essentially the dragon and dragon rider would work together, with the rider being a helmsman that could push the dragon through space at spelljamming speed. And in the air (and at tactical speed) the rider could be an extra pair of eyes and might even be able to wield something like a dragonlance (from the Dragonlance Campaign Setting).
#44 bikermattus May 15, 2010 7:22:49	If you want the easiest way to put all the dragons in (in the same flavor as CoW box), you can just use what's available from the MM and multiply the XP needed by 2 to 5...  In the box set, the "Dragon PC" class was straight out of the MM and MCA, so that fits with the theme.