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

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

I'm not sure what you mean by "new" writers here, because several of the writers you highlighted have very deep histories where writing D&D products are concerned.

I meant "new writers to 5e". Which is what I'm assuming @Micah Sweet was talking about. Because the topic was about official 5e books having new and different authors for certain 5e books.

 

[Dragonhelm]

Much like Dragonborn, Drow don’t exist on Krynn.

Dragonborn have never been addressed officially either way.

Drow have been seen before on Krynn. In most cases it's considered a kender tale. Wild Elves had a Spelljamming vessel with drow on it crash.

There are ways to include them. Dragonborn could be the proto-draconians from Taladas. Drow could be the elves who contracted sunblight in Key of Destiny.

Unless you know something we don’t they may now in 5e. The video even says “play anything in the game” so warforged or auto gnome or plasmid or drow or orc all seem to be in the table.

One of my pet peeves is when people say, "X doesn't exist in Dragonlance" when either they do, or it isn't addressed either way. I prefer to say yes unless there's a good reason not to.

Autognomes make a great fit for Dragonlance, being the creation of tinker gnomes. Warforged could also be seen that way.

 

[Alzrius]

I meant "new writers to 5e". Which is what I'm assuming @Micah Sweet was talking about. Because the topic was about official 5e books having new and different authors for certain 5e books.

I'm not sure I understand; when the game first came out, wouldn't all writers be new to 5E? I mean, there were no official adventures (notwithstanding the D&D Next playtest books) before Hoard of the Dragon Queen, for instance.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

That's objectively false. It lacks orcs, many PC races, most D&D monsters(per the Unified Ansalon Monster Chart which lists monsters that can be encountered), some classes and at least 1 rogue subclass. It's not as generic as possible.

"Some things from D&D don't exist in this world" isn't a sign of not being generic. And I meant generic fantasy (similar to Tolkien's Middle Earth books), not completely specific to D&D.

If someone made a world that was basically a carbon copy to Middle Earth except the Balrog didn't exist, the setting would still be extremely generic.

 

[Maxperson]

"Some things from D&D don't exist in this world" isn't a sign of not being generic. And I meant generic fantasy (similar to Tolkien's Middle Earth books), not completely specific to D&D.

If someone made a world that was basically a carbon copy to Middle Earth except the Balrog didn't exist, the setting would still be extremely generic.

That's fair. I've been equating generic with kitchen sink which isn't quite the same. Dragonlance is generic, but it was far from kitchen sink.

I disagree that it's so close to Middle Earth, though. There are a lot of pretty significant differences.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

I'm not sure I understand; when the game first came out, wouldn't all writers be new to 5E? I mean, there were no official products (notwithstanding the D&D Next playtest books) before Hoard of the Dragon Queen, for instance.

Technically, I guess, but 5e already had a design team that were writing the core rulebooks (Perkins, Mearls, Crawford, Thompson, etc). That's the design team I'm referring to.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

That's fair. I've been equating generic with kitchen sink which isn't quite the same. Dragonlance is generic, but it was far from kitchen sink.

I disagree that it's so close to Middle Earth, though. There are a lot of pretty significant differences.

Yeah, generic and "kitchen sink" are very different terms. Keith Baker designed Eberron with the intention of it being a Kitchen Sink setting, but it very much is not "generic fantasy" or even "generic D&D". Basically everything in D&D can exist in Eberron, but how it approaches those specific parts are very different from base fantasy/D&D worlds.

Eberron is a kitchen sink but not generic. Dragonlance is a generic fantasy non-kitchen sink setting. That's what I was saying.

 

[The Perechon]

Eberron has unique mechanics and magic assumptions that don't exist in the Realms. Dragonlance does not.

I see no reason to give WotC money for another kitchen sink setting, especially when they are gimping us on pages. I made that mistake with Spelljammer and I'm not paying them for another substandard setting.

Welllll... phases of the moon corresponding to a wizard's choice of order impacting the effectiveness of their spells, a wizard's spell list curated by that order, and a continent-wide organization that regulates the practice of all arcane magic, provides a haven for mages of all stripes to meet and confer on neutral ground and requires a life or death (and often death) test of a wizard's abilities prior to that wizard being able to continue to study past a certain level of proficiency are unique mechanics and magic assumptions that don't exist in the Realms.

Now, how much of that makes it into 5e Dragonlance, I don't know. They certainly existed in earlier editions. I think that's the question, though - not "is there anything unique about DL" but "how much of the things that are unique about DL make it into this 5e DL product." Fingers crossed.

Probably not too much, which would be a shame because I always found those things interesting about the setting that differentiated it from others. But I get it, you don't find DL particularly unique. That's fine, to each their own, but us DL fans out here would argue there are plenty of things found on Krynn that aren't found on Toril (or Athas, or Oerth, etc.) - just in case anyone who's not familiar with the setting is reading this board and deciding whether or not to dive into DL for the first time.

 

[Dragonhelm]

Nobody said otherwise. My point was simply that, in the novels, the game effects of that class - specifically their spellcasting, is never addressed or even mentioned.

You see Knights of the Sword casting healing spells in Dragons of Summer Flame, but that's about it for Sword Knight cleric abilities.

 

[Maxperson]

Welllll... phases of the moon corresponding to a wizard's choice of order impacting the effectiveness of their spells, a wizard's spell list curated by that order, and a continent-wide organization that regulates the practice of all arcane magic, provides a haven for mages of all stripes to meet and confer on neutral ground and requires a life or death (and often death) test of a wizard's abilities prior to that wizard being able to continue to study past a certain level of proficiency are unique mechanics and magic assumptions that don't exist in the Realms.

That's how it was, but not how the UA was presented. The phases of the moon didn't do anything for the wizards, nor was there any sort of spell curation. When you picked the Initiate of High Sorcery feat, you got some minor spells based on the moon, but that's basically the Magic Initiate feat from the PHB. The rest of that, the test and organization aren't mechanics.

Probably not too much, which would be a shame because I always found those things interesting about the setting that differentiated it from others. But I get it, you don't find DL particularly unique.

I do! But the original setting. The new one isn't going to be unique, which as you note is a shame.