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

 

[Dire Bare]

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

Um, actually . . . while it's been a while since I've read that last Dragonlance book . . . I'm pretty sure Fizban/Paladine didn't die, but was depowered and is no longer a god. He continues to wander the face of Krynn in old man wizard form. When Takhisis was killed, Paladine needed to be removed to preserve the "balance" . . . but simply took mortal form and gave up godhood forever.

 

[Parmandur]

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.

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.)


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.


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.)

They almost brought Dragonlance to 4E as the next annual Setting after Dark Sun, but that's when they abandoned the original 4E model.

 

[Bitbrain]

How about a rumbling of titans?

cough attack of titans cough

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

They almost brought Dragonlance to 4E as the next annual Setting after Dark Sun, but that's when they abandoned the original 4E model.

Horseshoes and hand grenades

 

[CasvalRemDeikun]

You can't put a Greater God down.

You can when he voluntarily stops being a god to keep one of the other Greater gods down. But I wonder if Takhisis was able to undo things like Thanos did in Endgame.

 

[slobster]

How about a rumbling of titans?

A thicket of hydras. A nuisance of pixies.

 

[dave2008]

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

The 4e Draconomicon had optional "powers" for each dragon type. I could definitely see some optional traits and actions being included. The MM dragons really need some themed attack options / legendary actions.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Um, actually . . . while it's been a while since I've read that last Dragonlance book . . . I'm pretty sure Fizban/Paladine didn't die, but was depowered and is no longer a god. He continues to wander the face of Krynn in old man wizard form. When Takhisis was killed, Paladine needed to be removed to preserve the "balance" . . . but simply took mortal form and gave up godhood forever.

Given that Takhsis is now officially Tiamat, that almost certainly means that Paladine is now officially Bahamut. Since Bahamut hasn't gone anywhere, at worst, Fizban is a low level aspect of Bahamut. (An extremely good deal for the "balance.")

 

[Disgruntled Hobbit]

At its peak, Dragonlance had much more of a footprint than Ravenloft ever did, not only among D&D players but also in the fantasy fandom generally. (The books were New York Times bestsellers back in the day.) While long-running Ravenloft fans might indeed be a "small minority" that can be safely ignored, I suspect there are more long-running Dragonlance fans, plus a larger number of casual "I read those books as a kid!" fans who'd have nostalgic interest in a revived setting. A sweeping Dragonlance reboot is therefore likely to not only annoy at least some of the former group, but also turn off parts of the latter group (when they go looking for all the familiar touchstones and can't find them).

Is that a risk Wizards is willing to take? Maybe. It probably depends on their perception (accurate or not) of how Ravenloft was received. If "sweeping reboot with some references sprinkled in" seemed to be a win, they'll happily reboot Dragonlance (and Planescape and Dark Sun and so on) and aim squarely at their new fans, confident that older fans are indeed irrelevant or can at least be pacified with Easter eggs. If they think the 2014-2020 approach worked better (limited retcons and broad compatibility with older lore), then they'll do something truer to the older material. Guess we'll see.

Keywords being "peak" and "back in the day"
That peak was twenty-five years ago. Maybe thirty
Half of the DnD audience wasn't even born then. And 75% wasn't old enough to read Dragonlance during the peak
And of the remaining 25% that are old enough to remember Dragonlance, what percentage actually cared?

The number of casual l "I read those books as a kid!" fans is probably a tenth of the audience at most. And that's enough to completely ignore

Not likely if they are using the campaign setting survey results. Both Dark Sun and Planescape scored substantially higher than Dragonlance. I'm still anticipating Dark Sun and some kind of Planescape/Spelljammer crossover setting next year.

That survey is no longer valid
It was done in 2015 before the explosion in popularity in D&D and streaming games. If done now, Exandria would probably be twice as popular as any other setting
It's also fundamentally biased. It asks what official setting you care about and not what percentage of gamers care about official settings. By that metric, none of the official settings would warrant attention

Because any setting will need to be sold and advertised like it's new to the 3/4 of the audience that doesn't know about old settings, any setting is as good as another

Dark Sun is more popular among old gamers, but it makes fundamental use of problematic elements, like slavery, which WizCo likely wants to avoid
Dragonlance doesn't have the same ick factor and it has a bunch of popular novels that can be reissued to gain attention. And it's easy enough to reboot and reimagine
PlaneJammer is probably the third setting

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Dark Sun is more popular among old gamers, but it makes fundamental use of problematic elements, like slavery, which WizCo likely wants to avoid

Does it make any more "fundamental use" of slavery than pulp games make of all the atrocities that the Nazis were involved in? If the slavers are bad guys, how is that a deal breaker? (And if the "good guys" are slavers, that sounds like an argument to overthrow them or make them villains.)

Dragonlance doesn't have the same ick factor

Oh, man, you have missed some threads.