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

 

[MonsterEnvy]

I bought the Feywild adventure, and Fizban's. Do those count? I'm not sure about the publishing order.

Pretty sure both came after Candlekeep.

 

[Haplo781]

There is a HUGE market for homebrew in D&D. There is also a HUGE market of those who like the idea of campaign settings, but do NOT ENJOY the nitty gritty of everything being defined. They want something more akin to the original Grey Box of the Forgotten Realms or less, or like the original Greyhawk Gazetteer. They want the things vague and undefined.

 

[Alzrius]

Heck, how many 3e modules were written in-house?

More than you'd expect. Just looking at the first few adventures published after 3E came out, we can see that all of them were written in-house.

• The Sunless Citadel (2000) - written by Bruce Cordell, who worked at TSR/WotC from 1995 through 2013.
• The Forge of Fury (2000) - written by Rich Baker, who worked at TSR/WotC from 1991 through 2011.
• The Speaker in Dreams (2001) - written by James Wyatt, who's worked at WotC from 2000 through to the present.
• The Standing Stone (2001) - written by John D. Rateliff; his Wikipedia bio says he worked for WotC, but I can't confirm the specific years of employment.
• Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil (2001) - written by Monte Cook, it was one of the last modules he wrote for WotC before leaving to start his own company.
• Heart of Nightfang Spire (2001) - Bruce Cordell again.
• Deep Horizon (2001) - written by Skip Williams, who joined TSR in 1976 and left WotC in 2002.
• Lord of the Iron Fortress (2001) - written by Andy Collins, who worked for WotC from 1996 through 2008.
• Bastion of Broken Souls (2002) - Bruce Cordell again.

Now, later on we saw freelancers stepping up, such as Gwendolyn Kestrel (Scourge of the Howling Horde, 2006) and Ari Marmell (Fortress of the Yuan-ti, 2007). But even then, they still had in-house writers such as Dave Noonan (The Shattered Gates of Slaughtergarde, 2006) and Ed Stark (Barrow of the Forgotten King, 2007) writing adventures.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Pretty sure both came after Candlekeep.

Fair enough. Whichever one came out last is my last WotC book (and the Feywild one was a gift).

 

[MonsterEnvy]

Several 5e adventures were also written in house.

 

[bedir than]

That's self-evidently not true. The idea of "a planar hub which you use as a base from which you go through portals to adventures on other planes" was being done by Planescape long before Radiant Citadel copied the idea.

Which I didn't claim was original. The origin cultures and the ones that are visited are original. The adventures are concepts that the constrained old guard wouldn't even understand.

 

[Velderan]

Al Qadim Is part of FR which is allowed to be published for on the DM’s Guild.
DM’s Guild is limited to certain settings until a product comes for that setting.

You're right, I completely forgot it was a part of the Realms. That makes sense.

 

[Alzrius]

Which I didn't claim was original. The origin cultures and the ones that are visited are original. The adventures are concepts that the constrained old guard wouldn't even understand.

No, they're not. They're pastiches of real-world cultures, most of which have appeared in D&D in some form or another over the years. Admittedly, some of those were sourcebooks rather than adventures, and you can certainly criticize the quality of the writing (as many have). But the adventures themselves simply apply cultural trappings to several basic adventure premises, such as "there are two factions on the brink of war; whom do you help?" (which we got in the last Jakandor book) or "stop the murderer that's on the loose!" (which we saw in the old Hour of the Knife module for Ravenloft), etc. To say that the old guard "wouldn't even understand" that is hyperbolic in the extreme.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

And here we are decades later and they are trying to turn it back and make it as generic as possible. Would be hilarious if it wasn't so sad. Shades of Grey.

Dude. Dragonlance is generic. Extremely so. It has all of the Tolkien races with minor changes (Kender were the biggest change from Hobbits). There are Dragons. There are hoards of minions from an evil race that serve their Dark Lord. There's a giant war between the forces of good and evil. There's a group of adventurers that include a rogue, fighter, wizard, and cleric. Dragonlance, (and I'm not saying this as an insult), is about as generic as it gets as a setting. I'd even say that it's more generic than the Forgotten Realms because of how close it is to the themes of Middle Earth.

It is an extremely generic world compared to D&D's more exotic settings (Dark Sun, Eberron, Planescape, Spelljammer, etc). It's already basically "as generic as possible".

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

As was said, WotC knows their audience, and they apparently don't care about real worldbuilding any more than WotC themselves do. More's the pity.

Please define "real worldbuilding" and answer how WotC has not done that in their many setting books in 5e? Because they've published settings never official before in D&D (Theros, Ravnica) and changed older settings (Spelljammer, Eberron, Ravenloft).

How is making and changing worlds not "real worldbuilding". I think that you just hate WotC's books and are trying to dismiss their worldbuilding as objectively bad. You have an opinion. And that's fine. But trying to pass it off as "they're not doing worldbuilding correctly, and their books are objectively bad" is wrong and you're letting your hatred of WotC blind your credibility in this argument.