Dragonlance Dragonlance "Reimagined".

[Eubani]

I believe that once again WotC will do the bare minimum possible, less if they feel they can get away with it. This has been an ongoing problem since the beginning of 5e. This shows in such things as putting the simple and advance fighter into the one class all the way to the diet light that was Ravenloft. Spelljammer was just another example of this.

 

[JEB]

The setting gets updated so you don't have to do all the work of converting your old books

5E Eberron was updated in a way that saves you the trouble of converting old Eberron material. 5E Ravenloft changes so much that a veteran fan is still mostly on their own for conversions. (Fortunately, some DM Guild designers have stepped in to fill the gap. But those aren't official updates, and that matters to some folks.)

Where 5E Dragonlance falls on that spectrum remains to be seen. Previously I'd been betting on a careful middle where they just avoid anything from the original stories and focus on new characters and situations, but the word "reimagined" makes me wonder.

 

[pnewman]

Going to change my Robe factions to Slytherin, Hufflepuff, and Griffindor.

They arent evil, they are just ambitious.

It's good that you're excluding Ravenclaw, since having to be studious would seem unfair to Sorcerers and Warlocks....

 

[humble minion]

I know the old settings have a lot of problems. I'd just rather see them retired rather than messed with because WotC believes (rightly, I suspect) that brand recognition will squeeze a few extra dollars out of folks.

Settings always get messed with. Even back in 2e, settings got messed with, as supplements piled on each other and TSRs shambolic management made it impossible to keep consistency between books (and forget about consistency between the novel and game lines...). Setting revisions under 2e messed with the originals. The 3e books messed with the 2e books. As soon as a setting gets its second sourcebook, it's being messed with and there's going to be questions about which canon is the true one.

The question (that has no single answer) is always about what aspects of the setting constitute its heart and soul, and can't be messed with without fundamentally changing its nature and turning it into something else. Is the barring of women from Solamnic knighthood core enough to what Dragonlance is, that removing it would transform the setting? For me, no, there's ways you could do it and minimise inconsistency with the old canon. The knighthood is already portrayed as weak and divided and understrength and far-flung at the start of the War of the Lance - perhaps there's argument over the matter, perhaps factions within the knighthood who DO knight women, or roving knights errant who take on female squires, etc etc. And that'd be a change that allowed female Knight PCs while emphasising the actual themes of the divisions and bickering on the side of good early in the War of the Lance. So for me, that's a change that could be handled in a way that allows players more freedom while staying true to the heart of the original.

But something like decoupling the world from the good vs evil axis - that's a much much harder sell for me. Clearly D&D has moved away from hard mechanical enforcement of alignment, but it really is baked into the very DNA of Dragonlance. How do you get a chaotic evil White Robe? What attracts them to the Order, why does their master sponsor them, how do they pass the Test - it's like trying to put a square peg into a hole designed by engineers and geometricians to specifically exclude square pegs.

And there's others. The whole clerical magic issue (would it work if you set the new campaign AFTER Goldmoon brought clerical magic back, or perhaps the PCs could find some artifact that allows cleric PCs to function until she does, a bit like the Blue Crystal Staff did in the original?) Draconians/dragonborn (I dunno). If you introduce new races, would that be messing too much with the lore of the Greygem? (For me no, but someone profoundly disagreed with me on that in a previous thread on the topic)

But the point is that everyone has a different vision of what the heart and soul immutable aspects of Dragonlance are. And even the most rigid proponents of adherence to canon must have, given the state of canon, managed somehow to reconcile previous canon changes with their personal vision.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

5E Eberron was updated in a way that saves you the trouble of converting old Eberron material.

There is quite a bit that 3.5e Eberron purists would have to do to fully update the setting to 5e just as it was in 3.5e.But I do agree with you that the changes to Ravenloft were more substantial.

 

[Hussar]

Well, I'm not sure it's QUITE that simple.

Opinion on Ravenloft was ... extremely split. A whole bunch love it, a whole bunch hate it.
/snip

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that a whole lot more loved it than hated. Otherwise, it's pretty unlikely WotC would have gone back to the well a second time for Von Richten's.

See, that's the problem with these conversations. Everyone stakes out positions that are based on their preferences and then tries to pretend that their preferences are the "best way forward". It gets especially frustrating when we start talking about re-releasing material because inevitably it's "Well, it's different, therefore it's bad".

Like I said, we have already got FOUR versions of Dragonlance. You can play a 5e campaign based on Dragonlance in numerous time periods right now. There is nothing stopping you. You have all the material you could ever possibly want already. Thousands of pages of setting material between 1e-present. Never minding the novels, I'm talking about actual setting books and adventures. I know you can do this because I've seen it done and seen it done very, very well.

But, guess what? I don't need a fifth kick at the cat retreading the same stuff yet again. Who gives a rat's petoot about canon? Why can't I have what I want when you've already got what you want? (Note, the "I" and the "you" there are generic and not specific to me or anyone else)

Why do people absolutely insist that the game must never, ever change or reimagine ideas? There's all sorts of really cool ideas in Dragonlance. It's a very popular setting for very good reasons. "Evil wizards must wear black" is NOT the reason Dragonlance is popular. It's like the whole bit about kender possibly being linked to the Faewild.

Me? I thought it was a fantastic idea. DL has always had strong Faewild vibes - the first adventures leading to centaurs and a unicorn, the whole Lorac's Nightmare segment is very Faewild, just as two examples. Giving Kender a faewild origin was actually pretty cool. It explained a lot and opened up all sorts of design space. But, nope. The canon police rush in and bludgeon everyone about the head and shoulders, not because it's a bad idea, but, simply because it's new idea. It's not what they did back in 1982, so, absolutely not, we cannot do it now.

 

[Hussar]

I believe that once again WotC will do the bare minimum possible, less if they feel they can get away with it. This has been an ongoing problem since the beginning of 5e. This shows in such things as putting the simple and advance fighter into the one class all the way to the diet light that was Ravenloft. Spelljammer was just another example of this.

Your problem is my solution.

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

My opinion is Dragonlance is too important for Hasbro if this has got serious projects of D&D to be adapted to the main media.

One of the reasons of the "reimagination" is the D&D settings have to send the message all players from all origins are wellcome. The color of your eyes or hair in the real life don't matter at all if you are enjoing playing D&D and its lines. Adding that "cosmopolitan touch" (or I would rather to use the term "cosmpolitan") to introduce no-Caucasian characters, and other PC races and classes is justified.

Maybe there are psionic mystic in Krynn thanks a member of the seekers who met a psionic ardent who travelled in a trader spelljammer, and later this became rogue or renegade.

Hasbro has to work a lot with this franchise if they want it was loved by the new generation of fandom.

 

[humble minion]

My opinion is Dragonlance is too important for Hasbro if this has got serious projects of D&D to be adapted to the main media.

If Dragonlance was seen as important to WotC, let along Hasbro, they would have released it a long time ago.

WotC is FR-centric now and has been for all of 5e, The movie will only cement that.

They'll certainly hope the Dragonlance book does well, but I think the near certainty is that once it's out, they won't release anything else Krynnish (perhaps aside from some miniatures sets) for probably another decade or so.

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

D&D is FR-centric, but Dragonlance has got a great potential as multimedia franchise. A cartoon movie based in the book of Dragonlance was produced, and it was a critical fail. Hasbro can't repeat the same mistake again. To learn to walk before you have to learn to crawl.

Hasbro is dyings to can sell actions figures of the heroes of the lance, but they have to learn how to produce a true blockbuster. Here not even the main movie studios haven't found it the secret, and even if they had, the audience would change because always the same style becomes boring.

Some time ago Dragonlance was the most sold saga fantasy after Tolkien's work. Why a second opportunity? Because also Transformers was also a relatively dead franchise until the action-live movie was broadcasted.

My doubts is if a new Dragonlance animated serie will be broadcasted in Netflix or Paramount+. Sometimes I have wondered about how would be characters if these were designed by Disney.