D&D 5E The October D&D Book is Fizban’s Treasury of Dragons

As revealed by Nerd Immersion by deciphering computer code from D&D Beyond!

Spoiler

Fizban the Fabulous is, of course, the accident-prone, befuddled alter-ego of Dragonlance’s god of good dragons, Paladine, the platinum dragon (Dragonlance’s version of Bahamut).

Which makes my guess earlier this year spot on!

UPDATE -- the book now has a description!

D&D 5E - Fizban's Treasury: The Dragon Book Now Has A Description... And A Feat

Courtesy of Amazon, we now have a description for Fizban's Treasury of Dragons, the October D&D hardcover. The book introduces gem dragons, dragon-themed player options, and plenty of draconic lore! This joins September's The Wild Beyond the Witchlight, and November's Strixhaven: Curriculum of...

www.enworld.org

D&D 5E - My guess for the other D&D book this year... Draconomicon!

We know the fifth major product this year will be James Wyatt‘s as-yet unannounced project, and we know it will be coming out this year between Witchlight and Strixhaven. Wyatt co-wrote the Draconomicon for 3E. There have been two recent dragon-themed Unearthed Arcanas — dragon-themed...

www.enworld.org

Fizban the Fabulous by Vera Gentinetta

 

[Charlaquin]

I actually call a group of dragons a "calamity" in my games! Along with a quake of giants and an onding of yeti.

I love collective creature terms!

How about a rumbling of titans?

 

[Parmandur]

True . . . but WotC still owns the resulting novels straight out, story, characters, setting, all of the IP. They also exhibit creative control during the editing process. They are still very much involved in the process of putting out new Drizzt and Dragonlance novels, they just aren't doing the actual publishing anymore.

Right, my narrow point was just that WotC doesnpublish any book themselves, it's all about what external partners are willing to pay for.

 

[Dire Bare]

I always wondered why there was such an issue with the Cataclysm. Seem pretty bog standard mythology to me.

I mean, good grief, we got a world war (for a given value of the word world) in the ancient world because of a beauty contest between goddesses that D&D treats as good that saw massive deaths and suffering.

Sending the flaming booger of the gawds because folks stepped out of line? This is pretty standard IMO.

The problem isn't that the gods threw a mountain at Krynn, killing millions in the Cataclysm . . . the problem is that it was done by the gods of "good". That was not a good act, not by any means.

Now, if you make a simple change to Krynn's cosmology . . . instead of Paladine leading the goods of "good" and Takhisis leading the gods of "evil" . . . switch it over to the law-chaos axis. The gods of "law" got pissy and dropped a mountain on Krynn. It's much less problematic with a simple change like that.

 

[Parmandur]

I'm guessing they will rely on templates and new optional lair actions to expand the things dragons can do in battle.

Mythic versions seem probable.

 

[Parmandur]

The name Fizban in this book points to a reset for Dragonlance since Fizban, in the current timeline, no longer exists.

You can't put a Greater God down.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Not really. WotC approved all of it -- until they had a PR bomb go off with hiring practices within WotC on the M:TG side, contracting with a nutbar Qanon artist, and otherwise with their racial depiction of drow within D&D. It had nothing to do with DragonLance. But by that time, they had already approved Dragons of Deceit. WotC apparently did not want to unapprove it and make further changes -- instead, they wanted to prevent it from being published for all time.

That's one interpretation of events. But as I recall, the lawsuit itself says that WotC objected to elements of the proposed story and, after going back and forth several times with Weis/Hickman, apparently gave up on the process. The lawsuit was to get WotC to pay up or restart the process, which is what it accomplished.

The "oh, the problem was actually the drow" is speculation by folks that don't want any fault to land on Weis or Hickman.

Together with the press release which confirms the subject matter and characters of the new novels are the original characters, it is plain and obvious that the subject matter of the trilogy is the War of the Lance and that the forthcoming trilogy will be the Second Lost Chronicles, to be published by Del-Rey. That isn't really speculation. That looks balls on accurate to me.

I remember when November's book was "definitely" going to be Dragonlance, too, and that there was no way that Strixhaven was going to be a D&D setting this year. (Both arguments have been made here since January, often quite vehemently.)

The part I find remarkable on this is that WotC decided that the content of these novels was so harmful to their reputation that they would rather they never, ever came out. The only thing I can think of which would merit drowning of the DragonLance baby in the bathtub for negative PR has to be the ongoing inclusion of Goldmoon and Riverwind in Dragons of Deceit's approved storyline. I can't think of anything else which would have caused them to want to otherwise pump the brakes on the whole thing.

Gully dwarves say hello.

Dragonlance has a lot of stuff that would never be part of a WotC setting released for the first time in WotC. Deciding that none of that stuff is the problem is dancing past a lot of pre-existing issues with the brand.

So, I don't get it. I guess WotC decided there wasn't really enough money left to make on DragonLance. At least, not enough to be worth the negative PR. If they thought there was, they'd publish the books themselves. Instead, they licensed out the novels to W&H to flog on their own at Del-Rey.

If your argument is a bunch of suppositions based on your other suppositions based on still other suppositions, it's going to be hard to correctly reverse-engineer WotC's thought processes.

The only thing we know for sure is that WotC doesn't think Dragonlance is a money maker for them, given that they've never published any game material for it themselves. They've obviously considered it, including for this edition, with the D&D Next Kender. (No one knows when Joe Mangionello's alleged playtest draconians were created, so it's not evidence of any Dragonlance plans later than D&D Next unless we get some concrete details, not supposition, that clarify things.)

 

[Zaukrie]

I'm guessing they will rely on templates and new optional lair actions to expand the things dragons can do in battle.

Good point on the lair and legendary and whatnot actions.....

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Honestly, I'm wondering: how are they going to get a whole book out of just dragons? Playable dragon rules, a dragon-themed bestiary, and ... what else? It doesn't seem like you could fill up a whole book with just that. Random hoard tables, maybe?

Subclasses, spells, magic items, lots of monsters, setting info, rules for making dragons more impressive in game. (Decades of Dragon magazine articles show there's an unending appetite for this, in whatever edition.)

 

[Parmandur]

Technically while the majority of 5e APs have been set in the realms (and the sword coast in particular), the assumed default setting of 5e is actually not FR, but an interconnected multiverse in which all the various D&D settings exist. You can see this in the PHB, with the way they talk about “the worlds of D&D” (worlds, plural) and throw in tons of little references to different settzings. It has also been confirmed by Jeremy Crawford.

Even the Adventure books usually give some help on how retool the plot for other Settings, specifically Dragonlance, Eberron, Exandria, Mystara, Dark Sun, and Greyhawk at Sundry points.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I expect Fizban's Treasury to have a similar amount of Dragonlance material as Mordenkainen's had Greyhaek material, or Volo's had Forgotten Realms material: possibly a couple of sentences.

I'm not saying it's probable. I'm saying that, if I were 5E's lead designer, I'd put a modest Krynn gazetteer in, along with Io's Blood Isles, Dragon Mountain and Sarlonna. It'd expand the utility of the book at tables and be a finger in the wind to see if there's genuine demand (to be measured in future surveys) for more.