Dragonlance Dragonlance Brings New Options to D&D

As expected, Wizards Presents had Dragonlance announcements, starting with a release date – December 6, 2022 – and players will have several choices as to which Dragonlance product they buy.

Like other adventures, Dragonlance: Shadow of the Dragon Queen, will have two editions: a mass market edition with a cover by Cynthia Sheppard, and an alternative cover edition featuring Lord Soth, only available through game stores. That latter cover, with art by Chase Stone, almost makes his helmet look three dimensional. The 224-page adventure will take players from 1st to 11th level.

Another of the new purchase options is one fans have been clamoring for – bundles of the physical book and a digital copy through D&D Beyond. Those who pre-order the bundle will get their digital copy on November 22, two weeks before the physical book is available. Unfortunately, the digital/book bundle only applies to the standard cover so if you buy alternative covers through your local game store, a digital bundle isn't available.

Additionally, WotC is offering Dragonlance: Shadow of the Dragon Queen Deluxe Edition, which includes:

• The physical book (Cover by Antonio Jose Manzanedo and Anato Finnstark)
• The digital book via D&D Beyond
• The board game Dragonlance: Warriors of Krynn
• A DM screen

The deluxe edition will cost $154.98 and includes free shipping for the U.S., UK, France, and Germany.

“Dragonlance is really D&D's setting for war, for massive conflicts, for these worldwide, sweeping, world-changing battles” Wes Schneider, Senior Game Designer for D&D and project lead for Dragonlance: Shadow of the Dragon Queen, said at a press event on August 16. “In this adventure, we're going to take players back to the storied War of the Lance where the forces of the infamous Tiamat, or Takhisis as she is known in Krynn, is marching her armies of evil dragons and draconian dragon folks and other evil humanoids against the people of Krynn, trying to take over the world.”

“In this adventure we're going to see the dragon army's incursion into Solamnia, which is a land of knights and heroes. The players will find themselves at the forefront of this battle in the defense of Solmnia against this evil wave of tyranny,” continued Schneider. “It's not just the fate of a town, it's not just the fate of your pocketbook. It's the fate of the entire world at stake in this.”

Kate Irwin, Principal Art Director for D&D, then talked about demonstrating the expanse of Dragonlance to life through the artwork.

“It's not just plucky band of adventurers going off to do something,” said irwin. “The stakes are very high. So when we were talking about art for this, we asked how do we show that epic expanse of what can happen. Our chapter openers are always a big flashy part of the book so in this case instead of doing a single page piece of art, we're doing a double page piece of art. The artists who are doing the chapter openers were able to focus then on some personal stories and also that great, big expanse of war and see how this is different from other books.”

“We took aspiration from movies and famous photographs from World War I and World War II. The dragon where the adventurers are on top of the dragon was kind of inspired by 'oh, we captured a tank and now we're taking a picture with a tank'.”

“Another thing you don't often see in D&D stories is people riding dragons, partnering with dragons,” added Irwin while talking about what makes Dragonlance different. DLSotDQ features several images of dragon riders, sometimes leading armies.

When talking about a piece of art featuring knights from early in the adventure Irwin said, “I think there's something really relatable even though it's showing this big epic. Like I said, we were taking inspiration from movies like Saving Private Ryan or 1917 where you are involved in the characters that are in the movie, but you're also involved in feeling like a part of something so much bigger.”

That aesthetic ties into the design created by Bree Heiss, Art Director for D&D, for the board game, Dragonlance: Warriors of Krynn. “That Dragonlance through line, that small group fighting against the odds in a world at war is present in the board game, as well.”

For groups playing both the TTRPG and the board game, there will be places where you can switch from RPG to board game to play out a battle and then go back to the RPG. The board game comes with a few “plucky allies” that players can choose, and one such ally is especially dear to Heiss.

“I'm a huge Dragonlance fan, in case that isn't obvious, and I always imagined myself as a Knight of the Rose and I got to, as we were making the figures for the game, I got to have a little bit of input,” said Heiss, “and we wanted our Solamnic knight to be maximum tall, like [Game of Thrones'] Brianne of Tarth, so strong and so big, and I'm so ready to play this. The horns on her helm, she would place [in real life] at 6'5”, 6'7” – she's gonna stomp.”

Iconic Dragonlance villain Lord Soth appears in the adventure, riding a Death Dragon, a new type of undead dragon. Schneider commented that even if people don't know Lord Soth from dozens of stories and adventures that they know him from the Monster Manual.

“Lord Soth is D&D's iconic Death Knight, and when we knew we were returning to the world of Krynn and the Dragonlance campaign setting, we knew we had to have one of D&D's most famous villains central to the threat,” said Schneider.

Draconians were also re-conceptualized for DLSotDQ to clearly distinguish them from dragonborn and other bipedal lizards in D&D. It also plays up the fact that in Dragonlance evil chromatic dragons have been stealing metallic dragon eggs, manipulating them with magic, and turning them into Takhisis' evil foot soldiers. This has both weakened the forces of good and made the adult good dragons hesitate because they'd be fighting their own children.

DLSotDQ also contains a gazetteer. The focus is on eastern Solamnia, though, so don't expect a deep dive into Krynn. A poster map also comes with the book. DLSotDQ is a complete story, not beholden to the novels or prior adventures. Schneider compared it to the new Star Wars TV shows in that you know the beloved heroes are out there doing things but DLSotDQ focuses on different characters in a different region.

DLSotDQ and DLWoK fall “very early in the War of the Lance, early into the invasion of western Solamnia,”said Schneider. “Stories have been told about the major offenses from the middle of the continent further to the west. This is a new story about the very first launch the red dragon army does into Solamnia, an early forey with specific plots and goals to bring a devastating weapon to bear.”

“You're getting not just this massive, epic, D&D narrative adventure in the RPG experience but you also have the Warriors of Krynn board game... and they're meant to weave in and out of each other,” said Schneider.

Schneider then clarified that if you play both, you can take your RPG characters to the board game and then back to the RPG. “Warriors of Krynn isn't your usual moving units and strategy. This is more of a strategy game that focuses on those elements but from a D&D perspective. You're still playing your characters, around the edges of battle, doing what's important to turn the tide of battle, all of the little things that thousands of lives might be riding on. And then once you've played that out you can then take that result back to [Shadow of the Dragon Queen] and have that result affect how your RPG continues.”

However, you do not need DLWoK to play DLSotDQ and vice versa. DLWoK can be played independently from the RPG DLSotDQ. Similarly, if you only want to play the TTRPG, it has instructions on how to handle the battles instead of switching to the board game.

Miniatures that come with DLWoK are the same scale as conventional miniatures, such as WizKids minis. So if you want to use the exact mini for your character while playing the RPG you can bring it right to the board game. The board game also comes with six hero miniatures you can use while playing if you don't have your own minis.

Choices that you make in DLWoK will carry through, but it's not a legacy board game. No cards or such are torn up or removed, but what you do in the board game affects the RPG if you're playing both.

Dragonlance: Warriors of Krynn is a cooperative board game designed by Rob Daviau and Stephen Baker. Back in April at D&D Direct, when asked if DLWoK could be used to stage large-scale battles in other iconic D&D settings, Ray Winninger, Executive Producer of Dungeons & Dragons, said yes, adding that if it does well they'll consider customized versions for other settings.

Pre-orders for the bundles can be placed through dndstore.wizards.com.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

This is a perfect example of a sniffer failing the sniff test. Use some simple logic here sir to see how you must be missing the humor.
Who is laughing at a person with dementia? Not the readers. They know Fizban doesn't really have dementia, he's faking it. Not the heroes. They treat him respectfully and notice when they get short with him (they are under immense stress after all) Paladine bears his fangs.
If nobody is laughing at the old guy with dementia then what's funny?
That he's fooling them with such silly ploys as arguing with a tree about moving its shade.
That's FUNNY. Not disrespectful.
He is fooling them by acting foolish.
NO ONE thinks dementia's funny.
Fizban is funny.
I've been diagnosed with early onset dementia. I've EXPERIENCED what its like. It is your worst nightmare.
But Fizban is beloved and funny af.
We had a word in my day for self righteous people with no sense of humor who preached their morality to everyone. We called them squares.
Be cool. Be groovy. Peace out.
And laugh. Always laugh.

You don't find out that Fizban is a god until the end of the 3rd book, right? So, none of what you said here applies. The scene of him forgetting the rest of the words to "Feather Fall" and just saying "feather" which causes an explosion of feathers and his fakeout death is intended to be a funny scene playing on the character's apparent dementia. It's a "what if a wizard had dementia and forgot what spell they were casting halfway through the spell" joke.

The Tinker Gnomes are intended to be funny and are just dumb. Gully Dwarves are intended to be funny and have a lot of problems with them.

It's not that I don't have a sense of humor. My sense of humor is fine. Arrested Development and 30 Rock are two of my favorite TV shows precisely because of their humor. I just don't like jokes that punch down or make a mockery of real-world conditions/people.

 

[jasper]

I like dimes and quarters.

I am not above nickels and pennies.

 

[mamba]

You don't find out that Fizban is a god until the end of the 3rd book, right? So, none of what you said here applies. The scene of him forgetting the rest of the words to "Feather Fall" and just saying "feather" which causes an explosion of feathers and his fakeout death is intended to be a funny scene playing on the character's apparent dementia. It's a "what if a wizard had dementia and forgot what spell they were casting halfway through the spell" joke.

No, it is not a joke on dementia, and we had a good idea that Fizban was not what he seemed / was a god way before book three, basically right from when we met him for the first time, it's just than he admitted it then.

 

[Chaosmancer]

Clearly it isn’t, and no one ever even implied that

You did seem to imply that, pretty directly.

Paul Farquhar mentioned Fizban's depiction as being "punching down" towards people with dementia.

Your literal response was "As to Fizban, he is not suffering from dementia, it obviously is all an act and comic relief - but I guess in your mind that does not make it any better… must be tough to not be able to distinguish between fiction and real life"

So, how is Fizban pretending to have dementia for comic relief NOT making fun of the trauma of dealing with Dementia? Especially as you follow it up with dismissing it as "not making it better" and saying that we can't distinguish between fiction and reality?

I’d don’t know, on the one hand some things clearly aren’t (I am not interested in discussing which ones this are), on the other hand comedy needs to be able to cross some boundaries (again, the question just is which ones).
Not interested in pursuing it, so I leave it at that.

So, you do get it, you just wish to ignore it because.... reasons I suppose.

 

[Chaosmancer]

We live on a world that has a lot fewer things in it that are considered good fodder for comedy than used to be the case.

And the world is a better and kinder place for it. I've heard some people's idea of "humor", the joke is that they said something shocking and horrific, haha, so funny.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

We live on a world that has a lot fewer things in it that are considered good fodder for comedy than used to be the case.

This is kind of a half-truth, because it's technically true, but obscures two important points.

Firstly, it's a matter of "broadly" rather than "absolutely". Yes, a lot of things that used to be broadly considered "good fodder" for comedy aren't any more. That doesn't mean no-one uses them or that they can't be used, just that they're not considered good subjects by most comedians in most circumstances.

This is important because that's always been an issue with comedy. Things have always been unpopular or ill-advised, or actively off-limits. Every society that even allows comedy, this is the case. There's never been an exception. Not at any point in human history. Realistically, you can get away with more in mainstream comedy now than in, say, 1990. Edgy comedy of certain kinds is also more likely to be called out now than in 1990, but that is simply the combination of social media, clickbait mainstream media, and the 24-hour news cycle's voraciousness, none of which was really "a thing" in 1990.

Secondly, a bunch of stuff that didn't used to be "broadly" considered "good fodder" is now considered that, including religion, sex, drugs and politics, which were considered pretty much taboo until the 1960s and only gradually went from edgy material to mainstream material. People often have very selective memories here, thinking Lenny Bruce, for example, was like the "norm", when he was actually far out on the edge. Different material is generally popular with audiences now than in say, 2000. But the exact same was true between 2000 and 1980, and 1980 and 1960, and so on. Most older comics fall out of favour with younger audiences - it was ever thus.

Only truly exceptional comics retain success over multiple eras, and a comedian who might have been incredibly popular 20 or 40 years ago is not necessarily one of those exceptional comics. I could give a lot of examples, though perhaps that would be distracting (if nostalgic). Not everyone can be George Carlin.

Dementia and being stupid to the level of appearing seriously mentally disabled (rather than merely a twit) are two things no longer popular in comedy. The former hasn't been "broadly considered good fodder" since the 2000s, but it is still used either by people who just think it's really funny, or in the right circumstances, and with care. The latter has been decreasing in popularity since literally the 1940s! Doing impressions of mentally disabled people was looking pretty bad by the 1980s, and by the 1990s, it put you into the realms of fairly extreme edgy comedians.

More to the point, Dragonlance was never particularly strong at humour. A lot of the stuff that was clearly intended to be funny fell completely flat with nothing to do with subjects no longer working. Tinker Gnomes for example. That just was fundamentally not particularly funny. Gully Dwarves similarly, except they incorporated some nasty themes to just add to the basically unfunny and kind of eye-roll-inducing concept.

And it's notable that actually-funny fantasy comedy from the same era, like I dunno, the entire Discworld series hasn't really suffered from this. The only places where his stuff is less funny is where the times of fantasy it was parodying have largely vanished (and he moved away from much parody fairly early on) and a couple of ill-advised "foreigners are funny" efforts.

 

[Chaosmancer]

Sticks and stones and all that.

I'm not a young person. Heck, I won't even talk about myself. I'll talk about an even older person. Big public speaker, got brought up at work recently. Dr. Stephen Sroka, gives speeches to educators. The man is easily 75 years old. He supposedly went to a 50 year reunion of one of his classes from when he was a teacher. THOSE students still remember the kind words he said to them, five decades and a lifetime later. Sroka still remembers the cruel words spoken to him in elementary school by his fellow students, over seven decades prior.

Sticks and stones can ONLY break your bones. Words can haunt you forever.

 

[DarkCrisis]

Once you remove all the “problem stuff” and remove the cataclysm and remove the barriers that the Mages installed and make the Knights another generic order of Knights etc what have you got left?

Krynn the world where they fought a war with dragon riders a couple times. Which seems to be what WotC wants.

Bland and grey and same old but hey dragons.

I don’t know why anyone would buy that aside from name recognition.

Dragons and Soth! Buy it!

 

[mamba]

You did seem to imply that, pretty directly.

Was not my intention and I still don't see that (not that you cannot read that into it if you really want to)

Paul Farquhar mentioned Fizban's depiction as being "punching down" towards people with dementia.

Your literal response was "As to Fizban, he is not suffering from dementia, it obviously is all an act and comic relief - but I guess in your mind that does not make it any better… must be tough to not be able to distinguish between fiction and real life"

So, how is Fizban pretending to have dementia for comic relief NOT making fun of the trauma of dealing with Dementia? Especially as you follow it up with dismissing it as "not making it better" and saying that we can't distinguish between fiction and reality?

Because one is fiction and the other is real life. Something that happens in fiction can be funny even if the same thing happening in real life would not be, ever heard of slapstick ?

Also, regardless of how you perceive it, it clearly was intended as comic relief. Maybe I should have written 'and intended as comic relief' to make that clearer.

 

[Reynard]

Once you remove all the “problem stuff” and remove the cataclysm and remove the barriers that the Mages installed and make the Knights another generic order of Knights etc what have you got left?

Krynn the world where they fought a war with dragon riders a couple times. Which seems to be what WotC wants.

Bland and grey and same old but hey dragons.

I don’t know why anyone would buy that aside from name recognition.

Dragons and Soth! Buy it!

There is no indication that any of that is being removed. And if the artwork is any indication it is actually working to get deeper in the mud of war-- that is, focusing on the things that make DL unique.

Frankly, I think people complaining about Soth having draconian under his command instead of skeletal warriors don't actually care about the setting and are just looking for things to bitch about.