Dragonlance DRAGONLANCE LIVES! Unearthed Arcana Explores Heroes of Krynn!

The latest Unearthed Arcana has arrived and the 6-page document contains rules for kender, lunar magic, Knights of Solamnia, and Mages of High Sorcery.

In today’s Unearthed Arcana, we explore character options from the Dragonlance setting. This playtest document presents the kender race, the Lunar Magic sorcerer subclass, the Knight of Solamnia and Mage of High Sorcery backgrounds, and a collection of new feats, all for use in Dungeons & Dragons.

Kender have a (surprisingly magical) ability to pull things out of a bag, and a supernatural taunt feature. This magical ability appears to replace the older 'kleptomania' description -- "Unknown to most mortals, a magical phenomenon surrounds a kender. Spurred by their curiosity and love for trinkets, curios, and keepsakes, a kender’s pouches or pockets will be magically filled with these objects. No one knows where these objects come from, not even the kender. This has led many kender to be mislabeled as thieves when they fish these items out of their pockets."

Lunar Magic is a sorcerer subclass which draws power from the moon(s); there are notes for using it in Eberron.

Also included are feats such as Adepts of the Black, White, and Red Robes, and Knights of the Sword, Rose, and Crown.

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[Azzy]

What product is that from?

It's from DL10, Dragons of Dreams.

 

[Parmandur]

Dragonlance is not exactly Coca Cola...

 

[Cadence]

Dragonlance is not exactly Coca Cola...

Could you make 190 different Coke novels using the different words and names they've had on the cans over the years?

 

[JEB]

Yeah. It's like WotC can make money selling the new book with updated rules and sensibilities, and the DMs Guild can convert and sell the old stuff to the old fans.

You know, it'd be interesting to see what would happen if multiple fans of Classic Ravenloft or Classic Dragonlance or whatever got together on the DM Guild and made a whole alternate version of the setting that updated/continued, rather than rebooted, the setting for 5E. (I know there have been independent projects doing the former bit by bit, but it could be neat to see them join forces.) I suppose Wizards wouldn't care about the "competition" so long as they're still getting their cut, right?

 

[Parmandur]

You know, it'd be interesting to see what would happen if multiple fans of Classic Ravenloft or Classic Dragonlance or whatever got together on the DM Guild and made a whole alternate version of the setting that updated/continued, rather than rebooted, the setting for 5E. (I know there have been independent projects doing the former bit by bit, but it could be neat to see them join forces.) I suppose Wizards wouldn't care about the "competition" so long as they're still getting their cut, right?

I mean, people already did, for Ravenloft. Tons of stuff on there.

 

[Hussar]

Mona (Paizo head publisher) said about Patherfinder's generic setting in a 2018 online interview: "We’ve got lots of different flavors to choose from. It’s a full service campaign setting."

While I couldn't locate the original quote about sales, I get the idea and it works (now). Rather than split the market like in TSR days, let's pretend there's a section of the world where dragons fight alongside humans and kender roam. While [insert everything generic D&D] may not be the norm, it could wander in. Thus, all our core material is compatible. That's a solid business model. It sells better.

But, it goes back to my original argument about slapping a nostalgia tag on a product, whether it be Ravenloft or Dragonlance or Dark Sun (all huge sellers in their day, Dark Sun AD&D and 4E were best sellers for their niche), and calling with the same when so much has been altered that it's barely recognizable from the original product. Are you simply changing the formula for Coca-Cola and calling it Coke? Can you damage a brand by re-labeling it "Dragonlance" when it is clearly "new Coke?" And why bother? If the new generation of D&D players has never heard of Dragonlance except by grognard stories, why bother? Why not simply do whatever the hell you want and call it Dragonlance?

The "next generation" will never know. They weren't born when so and so drew the maps of Xak Tsaroth and came up with storylines for Sturm Brightblade. And why bother? If only 13% (or whatever #) of enworld users have actually played Dragonlance, why even worry? The new generation, and most gamers, won't have a clue what makes Krynn special in the first place, right?


Yep. Kender play so little of a role in the history of Krynn, but damn if I can figure out why 75% of the chatter here is about how people feel on them despite UA mechanics of pulling crowbars out of pouches. No one is speaking of the morality of Knights of the Lily, or how the Khal-Thax dwarves kept minotaur slaves, or the racist Istarians pushing every non-human race onto reservations...and so on.

I wonder how much time has to pass before the "new Coke" thing stops being a meme. I mean, good grief, that was what nearly forty years ago. Let it go man. Let it go.

I have to admit though, what7s a Knight of the Lily or a Khal-Thax dwarf? Or is that all the post 3e stuff that came out later? I have to admit, my knowledge of DL ends not long after the War of the Lance. All that other stuff that they added later wasn't even part of the setting at the time. Which rolls back around to the idea of what defines Dragonlance?

 

[JEB]

I mean, people already did, for Ravenloft. Tons of stuff on there.

Right, which I acknowledged. But no unified projects to do an alternative vision of the setting as a whole, at least none that I'm aware of. Just "here's an update of this specific domain" or "here are some darklord conversions". Could be an interesting project, for folks who aren't satisfied by the official 5E reboots and want more substance than a conversion guide.

 

[Parmandur]

Right, which I acknowledged. But no unified projects to do an alternative vision of the setting as a whole, at least none that I'm aware of. Just "here's an update of this specific domain" or "here are some darklord conversions". Could be an interesting project, for folks who aren't satisfied by the official 5E reboots and want more substance than a conversion guide.

Jester David did, IIRC. To be honest, there's probably a fairly limited market for such a thing, particularly with all of the old material being on the DMsGuild anyways and easy enough to use as is.

 

[Hussar]

To be fair, all of those things are cultural, and cultural evil seems to get a pass.

And, if you think about it, there's REALLY good reasons for this.

Cultural evils aren't inherent. No one denies that people do bad things. That's where the whole "slippery slope" thing falls off a cliff. "Oh, if you remove bits from Kender because of their similarities to Romani people, then you'll have to remove all evil from the game" doesn't track because it ignores the whole reason why there's a problem with the Kender in the first place.

Having a society that steals isn't a problem. No one is saying that Thieves Guilds and Xanathar should be removed from the game. Why would they? We have real world examples of these. Lots of cultures have organized crime.

But imagine that your Waterdavian thieves guild is now hereditary. Only those of a specific race (using the DND definition of race) can be thieves. No one else can because only this specific race are thieves. Additionally, all those thieves have no concept of ownership, like to move around a lot and have a penchant for music. Or, alternatively, maybe they all share a skin tone and a prediliction for certain foods. So on and so forth. Still haven't called them by any proper nouns, so, obviously any real world analogues you might be thinking of are 100% on you and cannot possibly be taken as offensive.

Obviously it's stupid right? Everyone knows exactly what I'm talking about and, even if it was done 100% innocently and without a shred of malice, it would still be wrong.

So, having a group of halflings, let's call them Kender, some of whom wander around, some of whom stay home, some of whom do this and some of whom do that, is not a problem. Even if you have a group of bad kender that deliberately steal and cause trouble, it's still not a problem because it's a CHOICE, not inherent.

That's where all the snide, "Oh, it will be a real shame when things change" comments really have it so wrong. Because these kinds of comments just show a rather shocking lack of understanding of the issues.

To put it really basically - if the racial description of a fantasy race can map pretty much directly onto the stereotyped, racist description of a real world people, and all you really have to do is change the proper nouns, then that description needs to change. OTOH, if the description DOESN'T map directly onto a sterotyped, racist description of a real world people, then you are pretty much good to go.

It utterly baffles me how this is a difficult concept to understand.

 

[Hussar]

Right, which I acknowledged. But no unified projects to do an alternative vision of the setting as a whole, at least none that I'm aware of. Just "here's an update of this specific domain" or "here are some darklord conversions". Could be an interesting project, for folks who aren't satisfied by the official 5E reboots and want more substance than a conversion guide.

Just as a quick glance, there are over 1400 titles for Ravenloft just on DM's Guild, and that's not counting the free stuff on GM's Binder and whatnot. If you cannot find something for your Ravenloft game, you aren't trying hard enough.