Campaign - dragon war - ideas needed

[relytdan]

So the idea behind the campaign is that Bahamut and Tiamat for what ever reason have decided to goto war - and have summoned all dragons to aid them. - it seems somewhat obvious what dragons would answer the call to
to each based on their alignment -I have listed the types that would possibly answer the call, several listed below have multiple alignments
so the question is what specific dragons would you disallow as a potential player race for either side ? - no need to mention reasonings.

Bahamut Platinum Male Lesser deity, air, good, luck, protection, ( LG ) good dragons, wind
Bahamut Platinum Male Always: lawful good

Tiamat Chromatic Female Lesser deity, destruction, evil, law, trickery, ( LE ) evil dragons, conquest
Tiamat Chromatic Female Alignment: lawful evil


CHAOTIC:
Black Dragon Chromatic Alignment: Always chaotic evil
Red Dragon Chromatic Alignment: Always chaotic evil
White Dragon Chromatic Alignment: Always chaotic evil
Shadow Dragon Alignment: Always chaotic evil
Deep Dragon Always chaotic evil
Yellow Dragon "Missing" chromatic Alignment: Always chaotic evil


Crystal Dragon Gem Alignment: Always chaotic neutral
Topaz Dragon Gem Alignment: Always chaotic neutral
Fang Dragon Alignment: Always chaotic neutral
Sand Dragon Alignment: Always chaotic neutral


Brass Dragon Metallic Alignment: Always chaotic good
Copper Dragon Metallic Alignment: Always chaotic good


NEUTRAL:
Styx Dragon Planar Alignment: Always neutral evil
Tun Mi Lung (Typhoon Dragon) Lung Useually Neutral Evil
Brown Dragon Useually Neutral Evil


Amethyst Dragon Gem Alignment: Always neutral
Ethereal Dragon Planar Alignment: Always neutral
Skeletal Dragon Alignment: Always neutral
Li Lung (Earth Dragon) Lung Useually Neutral
Lung Wang (Sea Dragon) Lung Useually Neutral
Yu Lung (Carp Dragon) Lung Useually Neutral
Force Dragon Epic Alignment: Usually neutral
Prismatic Dragon Epic Alignment: Usually neutral


Battle Dragon Planar Alignment: Always neutral good
Oceanus Dragon Planar Alignment: Always neutral good


LAWFUL:
Blue Dragon Chromatic Alignment: Always lawful evil
Green Dragon Chromatic Alignment: Always lawful evil
Purple Dragon "Missing" chromatic Alignment: Always lawful evil


Emerald Dragon Gem Alignment: Always lawful neutral
Sapphire Dragon Gem Alignment: Always lawful neutral
Chiang Lung (River Dragon) Lung Useually Lawful Neutral
Pan Lung (Coiled Dragon) Lung Useually Lawful Neutral
Shen Lung (Spirit Dragon) Lung Useually Lawful Neutral
T'ien Lung (Celestial Dragon) Lung Useually Lawful Neutral


Bronze Dragon Metallic Alignment: Always lawful good
Gold Dragon Metallic Alignment: Always lawful good
Silver Dragon Metallic Alignment: Always lawful good
Radiant Dragon Planar Alignment: Always lawful good


MIXED:
Chaos Dragon Planar Alignment: Always chaotic (good, neutral, or evil)

Howling Dragon Planar Alignment: Always chaotic evil or chaotic neutral

Pyroclastic Dragon Planar Alignment: Always lawful evil or neutral evil

Rust Dragon Planar Alignment: Always lawful evil or lawful neutral

Tarterian Dragon Planar Alignment: Always neutral evil or chaotic evil

Song Dragon Always chaotic evil or chaotic neutral

Incarnum Dragon Alignment: Lawful good, lawful evil, chaotic good, or chaotic evil

[Mr.Sandman]

What do you plan on doing in the game? If the PC's are all dragons, and the enemies are all dragons, things may get pretty repetitive quickly. I would consider looking into Dragonborn of Bahamut and Spawn of Tiamat for some variety, perhaps lizardlike and dragonlike beings join the war as well too?

[Darkhope]

What campaign setting? A good one would be Forgotten Realms, in 1374 was the Year of Rogue Dragons. I ran a campaign where PC's had to constantly put down Dragons of all types to save the populace. The encounters were epic where every one was a close call. Are your PC's going to be dragons or dragon races? Or can they be any of the traditional races as long as backgrounds go along with the plot? Do you have NPC antagonist's setup? Tiamat and Bahamut would have proxy's or champions representing their interest for the war, not their actual selves. You could use Nexus or Lareth, Great Wyrm gold's representing Bahamut and Tchazzar, Great Wyrm Red Chosen of Tiamat for Tiamat.

Dragons are notoriously non-cooperative in large groups, even good aligned ones. Gonna be difficult to rally hundreds of dragons under one flag and common cause to wage a war. But, small groups of opposing factions is possible. For example, Tchazzar and a dozen or so allied, smaller dragons and their minions are directly going against The Talons of Justice, (a silver dragon organization). They could be warring with each other and the PC's city is stuck in the middle. But, if you want the big all out epic war, go for it! But keep in mind thats a super big plot, with super big NPC's and monsters with CR's into the high 30's. Unless your party is starting out EPIC or near epic they won't be able to hang with the big boys.

[Darkhope]

If the PC's are all dragons, and the enemies are all dragons, things may get pretty repetitive quickly.

This is true. I recommend traditional PC's characters optimized or semi-optimized for dragon slaying. maybe their a 10th level adventuring group that the central city seeks out and hires to deal with their dragon problem and they soon discover its a war. Do they pick a side or does the city try to stay neutral? Also don't forget not every encounter has to be PC vs. Dragon. Dragons have lair's, fake lairs, traps, humanoid minions, cults, followers, etc... Every encounter can be unique.

[Black Jester]

One of the latter supplements for AD&D was the box Council of Wyrms, which was basically built around the ideas of dragons as PCs. While you can obviously not use much of the mechanics for a 3.X game, you can probably still harvest a few ideas from there.
In Dragon magazine #320 were rules for monstrous advancement levels for metallic dragons; chromatics were included in #332. As most monstrous advancement levels they are a bit underwhelming if you think 'Dragon'!, but you can combine them with gestalt rules to build halfway decent characters.
One of the PCs we had once in our nigh-legendary 'pretty close to perfection' campaign (a copper dragon//bard) who basically made a pact with the other PCs: when they look after him and protect him while he is young naive, and vulnerable, he will look after their descendants and families for the rest of his life once he is old and powerful. In the first adventure, we had to save the poor dragon from the captivity of a snooty princess.
We had the idea for a clutch of young dragons as a concept group (everybody plays a dragon gestalt character) but that went nowhere.

However, if you want to play a campaign focused on dragons, including one (or more) as PCs makes sense and will make it memorable.

[Big Fau]

Sounds like an Eberron campaign set during the Age of Demons (which had Tiamat on the Fiends' side IIRC). Or during the Age of Monsters, when the Elves went to war with the Dragons.

[relytdan]

So the idea behind the campaign is that Bahamut and Tiamat for what ever reason have decided to goto war

( forgotten realms or ebberon or other is not important )
The Players will play a dragon type with no duplication between players

So WHICH SPECIFIC DRAGONS WOULD YOU DISALLOW ??? - no need to mention reasonings

[Big Fau]

So the idea behind the campaign is that Bahamut and Tiamat for what ever reason have decided to goto war

( forgotten realms or ebberon or other is not important )
The Players will play a dragon type with no duplication between players

So WHICH SPECIFIC DRAGONS WOULD YOU DISALLOW ??? - no need to mention reasonings

Everything that can get spellcasting during the campaign's lifetime.

[Black Jester]

Depending on how well versed your players are in the D&D lore and backgrounds, i would probably reduce the options to classic chromatic and metallic dragons. If you have a campaign focused on a cosmic war where everybody plays a very different character than usual and have the draconic PCs significantly influence the outcome of the war (presumably despite being barely old enough to be on the radar for most other dragons when the campaign begins), you already have a very novel, very unique campaign at your hand and the fact that the PCs are dragons - who presumably cannot just go shopping at the bazaar or will talk to the stranger in the corner of the tavern - will require a lot more attention to details you can normally just gloss over in a normal campaign. That can -and very likely will - require more thought and work than a usual campaign if it isn't supposed to run on its novelty factor alone. Therefore I would recommend to keep it as streamlined and simple and most importantly focused as possible. All the other dragon gods mentioned in Draconomicon? Are they really needed for this conflict, and if not, why keep them? All those extra dragons to fill out the colour palette and include a few more random metals? Do you they potentially add to the story or are they just gonna be mentioned from time to time (in which case they aren't worth it).

If this were my campaign, I would get rid of the metallic dragons (who in truth all metallic dragons have a colour and it is all the same: beige) as well as all alignment restrictions. There are different dragon types (there are still more than enough with the chromatic ones, especially when you include one or two extra types in addition to the classic five) and as sentient creatures, they have the ability to choose their own destiny between good and evil and are not necessarily predisposed towards any direction - and most importantly any one of the two factions in this war. Suddenly this conflict is more than a turf war between the dragon boss monsters, but it is a conflict about the very soul and direction of dragonkind in its entirety. Besides, with all dragons basically being neutral, you never know were the NPCs alliances might lie. Suddenly, politics and intrigues become more significant - as it fits for a game where the characters are creatures of this power level and opinions might be swayed and changed, perhaps even because of petty rivalries.
And in the end you could use this as the one great award for the PCs: Let's assume they side with Bahamut, because players usually don't want to be called evil and let's futher assume they win the conflict either totally or by defeating Tiamat enough to seal her in a pandora's box for a millennium or two: You can reward your PC dragons for their services to the now ruling dragon god by *turning them into the very first metallic dragons, the forefathers of a set of complete new species.*

[DragonisaDM]

I would think about adding other draconic species, such as drakes, half-dragons, and kobolds, to the mix. That would
A) make it easier for players to level up without having to fight insanely powerful dragons
B) mix it up so players don’t get bored. That is the WORST THING that can happen in a campaign.
C) make it easier to have, say, minions, so it won’t just be boss fight after boss fight.
D) making the roleplaying more interesting, so they can interact with not just huge monsterous enemies, but normal(ish) uhhh... humanoids?

I also think you should take out some of the dragons, because that is A LOT. It might get confusing to you and especially your players. I’d keep with the chromatic/metallic dragons and the gem dragons.

But overall, great idea! I’ll be using some of this in my similar campaign!

Also I wouldn’t have your players play dragons, I’d have them be half-dragons and Dragonborn, possibly kobolds.