WotC Dragonlance: Everything You Need For Shadow of the Dragon Queen

WotC has shared a video explaining the Dragonlance setting, and what to expect when it is released in December.

World at War: Introduces war as a genre of play to fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons.

Dragonlance: Introduces the Dragonlance setting with a focus on the War of the Lance and an overview of what players and DMs need to run adventures during this world spanning conflict.

Heroes of War: Provides character creation rules highlighting core elements of the Dragonlance setting, including the kender race and new backgrounds for the Knight of Solamnia and Mage of High Sorcery magic-users. Also introduces the Lunar Sorcery sorcerer subclass with new spells that bind your character to Krynn's three mystical moons and imbues you with lunar magic.

Villains: Pits heroes against the infamous death knight Lord Soth and his army of draconians.

Notes --

• 224 page hardcover adventure
• D&D's setting for war
• Set in eastern Solamnia
• War is represented by context -- it's not goblins attacking the village, but evil forces; refugees, rumours
• You can play anything from D&D - clerics included, although many classic D&D elements have been forgotten
• Introductory scenarios bring you up to speed on the world so no prior research needed

 

[Mark Craddock]

Going to be interesting to see how they somehow meld "I'm playing a Dragonborn" (play what you normally play) with "You run into this new secret humanoid dragon race, the Draconians!"

Also a Half-Orc or Orc, though i can already guess.

Sometimes the DM chooses to limit some things. I think that approach is okay and I think "its all D&D so you can choose any class or race" is also okay.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Sometimes the DM chooses to limit some things. I think that approach is okay and I think "its all D&D so you can choose any class or race" is also okay.

Yeah, but it's a shame the second option is pushed so hard it feels like they want you to feel bad about wanting the first.

 

[Delazar]

Folks at WotC are sharing bits of art during this promotion. Have we seen these before?

Who’s in them?
View attachment 264215View attachment 264216

That KoS in the second picture is already bringing back so many memories! Can’t wait for this!

 

[darjr]

The following art is from the DNDBeyond article linked below. I dunno if it's been posted but I just saw it and thought I'd share.

What Is Dragonlance? Krynn: A World at War

This December, combat dragons in a war over the historic Dragonlance setting, Krynn. Not familiar with it? Here's a look at the birth of Krynn and the e...

www.dndbeyond.com

 

[Hussar]

It does rather sound like they are leaving it up to individual tables to decide how closely they want to adhere to original canon. After all, if you're completely new to the setting and know nothing about DL, why would you care about the fact that forty years ago, the Dev's decided that there were no drow in the setting? It's not like you have any connection to that decision.

OTOH, if you're a long time fan, and you're running this module, then you need to ovary up and tell your players what the limitations are and try to convince your players that your limitations are going to be fun.

It's nice when we don't have WotC telling us what to do for a change. Make the campaign your own.

 

[Dire Bare]

Because they specifically said you can use the board game to resolve battles in the adventure book? It's not required, but if you chose to use the board game you'll have to switch games when you get to the designated point in the adventure which wouldn't always line up perfectly with the start of a new session.

Eh, it seems an invented problem. So, you finish this week's RP session a little early. Then play the board game next week.

I don't know if I'll like the adventure or the board game, but I'll wait until they are actually out before I start worrying about "maybes".

 

[Libertad]

I posted this on another forum involving Dragonlance talk, but figured to bring it up here given the city in which this adventure takes place. Although the Knights of Solamnia are one of the "iconic" classes and concepts of the setting, at the Time of the War of the Lance they are far from popular in the land of their namesake. After the Cataclysm, word spread of Lord Soth's failure, which via a game of telephone morphed into the rumor that the Knights of Solamnia could've prevented the Cataclysm but chose not to. This caused lots of violent upheaval, to the point that their few remaining strongholds were in Sancrist and a garrison at the High Clerist's Tower in Palanthas. The majority of Solamnia was made up various governments, from councils of wealthy commoners to more traditional non-Knight feudal nobilities which sprang up in the centuries since.

Kalaman in particular was pretty much an early republic phase; after overthrowing the Knights they redistributed the wealth and instituted generous social safety nets. Powerful trade guilds ended up becoming the real political power, but it was a pretty interesting example in a departure from feudalism and reflecting Solamnia's diversity. I don't exactly have much faith in WotC, but I'm hoping with Shadow they touch upon the city's unorthodox political system and Solamnia's regional variations beyond "land of goodly knights."

Kalaman being one of the easternmost cities pretty made it one of the first casualties of the War of the Lance, and Lady Kitiara of the Blue Dragonarmy used it as a base of operations once conquered. So I'm quite sure that the module will be the Fort Sumpter or Pearl Harbor of the Solamnia-Dragonarmies War.*

*not an official name, I made it up

 

[Ath'kethin]

I've never gotten around to the novels; how did the Knight capabilities differ from the game sourcebooks?

No Knight in any of the core novels ever cast a spell, and there is no reference anywhere to their ability to do so.

 

[Ath'kethin]

I like the second, but the first looks rather generic (though, is that Maquesta Kar-Thon in the front?).

My thought exactly. The other two seem to be nobodies, though, and possibly to point out that the setting takes all comers now, so it's possible all three are new.

 

[Hussar]

No Knight in any of the core novels ever cast a spell, and here is no reference anywhere to their ability to do so.

Maybe not in the novels, but, Knights of the Sword were spell casters in the Dragonlance Adventures book. They got clerical spells all the way up to 7th (max cleric) level.

Which kinda brings me around to the point about setting canon and whatnot.

Believe it or not, I'm actually quite sympathetic to the idea of keeping Dragonlance concepts in the game. If I had my druthers, I'd run a DL campaign that was strongly based on the original modules and the original limitations of the setting.

But, I have come to the realization that there are two problems with that.

1. No one will play with me if I do that. Most people aren't big Dragonlance nerds and they simply don't care. To them, Dragonlance is just that setting with lots of dragons. The details, if they even knew them at any point in the past, are long forgotten and they don't care. So, me trying to run the campaign based on what I feel Dragonlance should look like is only servicing me. The players, by and large, and I think the larger majority of D&D gamers, simply could not give a rat's petoot about what came before.

2. By WotC simply pushing everything off to the table, they avoid all the back and forth with all the misinformation about the setting. What people see as Dragonlance varies HUGELY. Is DL just the original modules? The novels? The novels+modules? What about the later stuff? The 3e stuff that was extremely well written but also written for people who were already deeply into the lore of the setting? On and on.

They touch on that in the video. If the setting truly is for "everyone" then you simply cannot expect people who have zero context and no interest either, in forty year old modules to go out and read them just so they can understand the setting. That's not going to happen.